This struck me today. At the morning news meeting, as I looked around the crowded round table:

The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi has to be one of the most diverse print media outlets in the world.

Let’s enumerate.

Here is the list of nationalities among the 13 people at the meeting table, starting with the man running the event:

British, British, Canadian, Canadian, British, Canadian, British, British, American, British-Iraqi, Indian, Syrian, Jordanian.

And, normally, the executive editor, a citizen of the UAE, would have been at that table, too. Meaning eight nationalities at the news meeting.

Just looking around the newsroom, I also can find journalists from Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Palestine, Kuwait, Singapore, Malaysia, the Czech Republic,the Philippines, South Africa, Ireland, Egypt, Uganda, Bulgaria and Sri Lanka.

I’m sure I’m missing one or two. Or three or four.

These are not just people who carry a passport from those nationalities, these are people with deep connections to that country, who lived there and have relatives there now.

I would be interested to know which newspapers in the world have that sort of diversity. Talking about full-time editorial employees here. Not including correspondents, part-timers or clerks.

The newspaper’s diversity sometimes makes for interesting conversations, as we try to grasp each other’s English accents.

But, on the whole, the spectrum of nationalities cannot help but broaden the newspaper’s outlook on the world.

It is a paper that could have named itself The International.