Sounds medical, yes? In print journalism, it has always meant how well and how predictably a newspaper is delivered, especially to its home subscribers. In the U.S., the circulation department was always seen as mildly disreputable, slippery characters leading a crew of people you might hope did not get on the same elevator as you […]

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Ever wonder what the inside of a modern newsroom in the UAE looks like? Feel free to have a look at this brief video done by a multi-media staffer, and you can see the interior of The National newsroom, as well as lay eyes on a couple of people you might know.

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It was four years ago today, October 18, 2009, that we began work at The National, in Abu Dhabi. I did not mention Day 1, in the blog entry that day, but it shows us going to the mall and trying to get a sense of the UAE. Seems like yesterday … and a lifetime […]

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I suppose this entry is a day late. I actually gave up on the Dodgers when they lost that 13-inning game to St. Louis in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. I had just written an email to a friend — it was the 12th inning — saying that whoever won Game 1 […]

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One more bite of the apple here … (did you know Brits say “bite of the cherry”?). Some links to interesting post-America’s Cup stories.

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I like Bic pens. I’ve been using them throughout my professional career. “Medium black”, specifically. Nothing else will do. No fancy pens, and no blue Bics or “fine” points. Medium black, please. One of the great French inventions that has nothing to do with food or wine. Their attributes of Bic pens are many. Cheap, […]

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It had never occurred to me. That Vin Scully’s hair might not be his own. It required a British colleague, at The National, to make me confront this. He had seen a photo of the Dodgers broadcaster on a page proof; I had run a small story on our two-page lighter-side-of-sports package in The National, […]

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Today was the final day of the World Championships in Athletics — or track and field, as it is known in North America. It was the first of several big events to be held in Russia in the next few years. The Winter Olympics in Sochi next February, the soccer World Cup in 2018. They […]

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Some stir in the blogosphere over the meticulously planned (and exhaustively justified) suicide of a former Kansas City Star sports journalist. It got a bit more exposure when Jim Romenesko posted excerpts of a Kansas City Star obituary and also some of the rationalizations behind the actions of the man who killed himself in the […]

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It was on Tuesday that several people in the newsroom of The National chuckled over one of the two cover stories on the front page, that morning, of an English-language newspaper rival, here in the UAE. UAE unaffected by Indian onion price hike Early this week, in the wake of Ramadan and Eid, things had […]

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