Today, 22 December, marks Watani’s anniversary, the day its first issue hit the newsstands in 1958. As it closes its 66th year and embarks on its 67th, Watani carries on with its journalistic and media mission serving Egypt, a mission rooted and cultivated by its founder and spiritual father, Antoun Sidhom (1915 – 1995) who carried its torch till he departed our world on 2 May 1995. He left behind a Watani family with a great legacy that had grown and flourished over 37 years, a legacy I have often likened to a fruitful tree with lush leaves and abundant fruit. The tree’s lush leaves represent the members of Watani’s team, and its fruit has been the invaluable journalistic work that has served Egypt and its Church.
Today, almost three decades on Antoun Sidhom’s passing, Watani continues to honour the mission he served. We did not just preserve the talent we received, that being the weekly Sunday paper with its various pages and platforms. The Watani family diligently developed and improved on its legacy, bringing the work up to the changing requirements of modern times. Along our journey post-1995, their was a dream to move from a weekly to a daily Watani, but we decided to abandon that dream in favour of the electronic age that was transforming our lives at head-spinning speed. In the early 2000s, we launched the website www.wataninet.com through which we aimed to use digital media to reach new generations of readers and viewers. Around the same time and with the same goal of reaching new readers, we issued the Watani supplements addressing Egyptians abroad. In 2001, our English-language pages were launched under the title Watani International and, in 2005, Watani Francophone was issued in French; this in addition to another supplement in Arabic which ventured on analyses of global events.
Furthermore, out of Watani’s keenness to serve the nation even beyond its journalistic and media mission, Watani in 2000 took two initiatives that aimed at addressing the need to engage Egyptian youth in political participation and in professional training. Watani founded its Youth Parliament that looked to instil in Egypt’s young people concepts of engagement, freedom of expression, democracy and respect of the other. The Journalism Formation Centre was the other initiative that Watani took, looking to train young journalists and form them into capable calibres who could effectively join the media field. These initiatives were indeed fruitful, and led to the launching of excellent Egyptian calibres onto fields of national effort and professional media.
Today, Watani continues to fix its eyes on future horizons by engaging in the ever- developing social media. Watani’s YouTube channel is up and running, airing a diverse variety of videos and documentaries.
While I remain proud of Watani’s achievements in developing and moving forward, I cannot ignore the fact that it may soon be necessary to abandon old tools in favour of new ones that better serve its mission in modern times. With resignation and acceptance, I realise it may soon be time for print journalism to move over and give way to digital media in order to keep up with the requirements of the era. One has to see this as just another episode in the natural series of change and development, an episode that will certainly be followed by many others as the times change. Most important, however, is that we hold on to the mission we believe in, and use all available tools to serve it.
Watani International
22 December 2024
