Toilet paper

This morning’s Financial Times leads with ‘Dollar fear sparks rush to oil and gold’, the Wall Street Journal also goes with oil (‘Oil Hits $100, Jolting Markets’). Emirates Business 247, the UAE’s month old business newspaper (advertising slogan: ‘Hungry For Dominance?’) goes with ‘Sheikh Mohammed the leader of change’.
This, according to Emirates Business, is a news story. Presumably this time last week Sheikh Mohammed wasn’t a leader of change, but, perhaps thanks to some change of policy over the new year break, he now is. Whatever, Emirates Business’ gushing 400 words don’t tell us much – other than that tomorrow is the second anniversary of Sheikh Mohammed’s ascension as the vice president, Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai.
Not to hammer Emirates Business (or the achievements of Sheikh Mohammed), but this is an extremely lame lead story. Okay, it might make for a decent analysis piece (evaluating the changes over the past two years) but as a front page lead it is an example of the powder puff pieces of old, not the ‘pioneering’ qualities parped by Emirates Business’ in its ‘About Us’ section. Tellingly, no other business media feels the need to lead with such a soft feature.
This matters because Dubai needs strong business media. It is a city built on commerce, one that is increasingly seen in the international news, and the failure of a government-owned paper (one that has just undergone an expensive relaunch) is not helpful. Emirates Business claims the region now ‘has a publication worthy of its economic and financial dynamism’. That is a back-handed compliment.