Since its launch, Arab News realized that its commitment to its readers meant reporting straight from the source of the news. Having started off in the headquarters in Jeddah in 1975, the newspaper’s decision-makers realized that other bureaus must be opened in the Kingdom. Events reported directly from those areas added strength, depth and integrity to the stories.

Riyadh Bureau

Established in the late 1970s, the bureau was the first for Arab News. Its first bureau chief was John Rossand, an American national. For several years, Rossand was running a one-man show before he was joined by Javid Hassan, a reporter who had joined the paper after working in two of India’s finest English dailies, The Times of India and The Indian Express.

Hassan, who is one of the most senior staff members in Arab News, recalls being transferred from Jeddah to Riyadh in mid-1981.

“At that time there used to be Arab News and Saudi Business — a weekly business magazine produced by the Saudi Research & Publishing Company and distributed in the United States.”

He said part of his job was reporting for the newspaper and also preparing business articles for the weekly magazine.

“The headquarters of the Riyadh Bureau was located in Al-Rajhi building in the Al-Batha area,” Hassan said.

“We didn’t have fax machines at that time. We used to send reports to the main office by telex. I did not know how to operate a telex properly, so they sent me back to Jeddah for training. After some months of training, I was sent back again to Riyadh.”

Hassan said the staff in Riyadh continued to use the telex machine until the fax machine arrived two years later in 1983. In the mid-1980s, the computer arrived, but stories were still printed out and sent by fax to Jeddah. It was only in the mid-1990s that stories were sent directly through the server to the main office. The Internet service also arrived to the newspaper at that time.

John Rossand left in June 1981, and Hassan was reporting from the capital alone.

In 1983, the paper transferred Sir Sidahmed from the main office in Jeddah to Riyadh as its new bureau chief. He resigned from the paper a couple of years later.

In 1985, the newspaper employed Doug Graham as bureau chief. After working in Riyadh for five years, Graham called it quits in 1990 and once again Hassan was reporting alone from Riyadh.

Afshin Molavi, an Iranian-American, was then transferred from Jeddah to Riyadh and appointed as Riyadh Bureau chief in 1990. He left the paper a few years later.

In 1993, M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan joined the newspaper as a freelancer. By the end of the year, he was employed full time, and, together with Hassan became a dynamic duo in the bureau.

This reporter joined the team as Riyadh Bureau chief in March 2003 after beginning his journalistic career with Arab News in 1999 and then becoming a full-time editor in 2000.

In 2004 the Riyadh Bureau then welcomed Mohammed Rasooldeen who had worked at the Riyadh Daily for 18 years. Rodolfo C. Estimo, Jr. later joined the bureau as the editor of Pinoy Xtra, Arab News’ weekly publication in Tagalog. Recently, Abdul Hannan Faisal Tago joined the bureau as a reporter for Arab News and Pinoy Xtra, focusing mainly on news items related to the Philippine Muslim community in the Kingdom.

Over the years, the Arab News office in Riyadh moved from Al-Rajhi building in Al-Batha to a villa on Al-Hassa Street near the office of the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu. It then moved to Abanumay Commercial Center on Sitteen Street before finally moving to the Saudi Research & Publishing Company HQ building on Makkah Road in 1993.

As narrated by Javid Hassan, Riyadh of 1980 is certainly not Riyadh of 2005. There were no skyscrapers, no fast-food restaurants and no hypermarkets. The city was much smaller in size, and it did not have the numerous flyovers or three-lane freeways it has today.

“Riyadh ended north where Olaya and Sulaimaniya is today,” Hassan says. Everything beyond that point was a stretch of desert. Even King Khaled International Airport was still under construction.

Reporting from the capital in the early 1980s was a tough task. “Most of the time government officials whom we wanted to interview would demand that we bring letters of identification from the main office.”

The papers would be processed and then the interview would be granted. Unlike today, most government officials did not speak directly to reporters over the phone.

And like other things that have evolved over time, today’s freedom of criticism — especially concerning the performance of some government bodies — was not at all accepted in the paper in the 1980s or even in the 1990s. Furthermore, as Hassan says, “any progress or development in the country had to be attributed to the government.”

However, he says that in the early 1980s, Jeddah was still the commercial hub of Saudi Arabia where most companies established their headquarters.

“At that time, we used to cover most news from big hospitals here at Riyadh in addition to reports of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce & Industry, international schools, embassies and so forth,” he says.

Hassan also says that the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) in English at that time was of little use. Most statements about diplomatic visits or meetings, he says, only contained a few sentences mentioning the “cordial ties between the two countries” and that “officials exchanged greetings and so and so attended,” leaving out the issues discussed and other information of journalistic importance.Speaking on some of the changes in Saudi lifestyle over the past 25 years, Hassan says in the early 1980s, Saudi youth did not wear pants and shirts as they do now. They would wear their traditional dress from their childhood.

“Now we see Saudi youth wearing pants and shirts. And instead of hearing Arabic music pumped out from cars we now hear Western music,” he said.

The spread of fast-food restaurants in the city has changed the eating habits of Saudis as well, notes Hassan. As for guys chasing or harassing girls in malls during those times, such phenomena did not exist, he said.

Another particular change noticed in the city over the past three decades was that in the past, the religious police used to be very strict. “They used to tell foreign women — and not just Saudi women — that they should cover their faces. This was a nuisance for families who used to go out,” he says.

The city itself was more conservative in its nature than now. Hassan remembers seeing signs near schools that displayed the famous two children figure crossing the street with their heads in the sign removed because the religious authorities used to tell people it was sinful to display a head in a drawing or painting. “Even ads that used to appear in Arab News at that time would have a balloon or an empty head figure replacing the head,” says Hassan.

The past two years have been exciting for the Riyadh Bureau. Since May 12, 2003, when terrorism started knocking on the doors of Saudi Arabia, most terrorist incidents that have occurred in the Kingdom have been reported from Riyadh.

Arab News was there when terrorists attacked three Western compounds on May 12. And the Riyadh bureau was there when terrorists again attacked the Al-Muhaya compound on Nov. 18 the same year. In fact, Arab News was among the few Saudi newspapers that went in the compound the day after the blasts, talked to the residents, and also took exclusive photos of the devastation inside.

When terrorists targeted the Main Traffic Department building in the capital, the Riyadh Bureau was there, not only to report the incident, but to do follow-up stories of shattered lives, and damage to private and public property.

And when Al-Qaeda started its spree of assassinations in the capital last year, the Riyadh Bureau was at every location, taking notes, conducting interviews with eyewitnesses, taking photos and contacting authorities.

One by one, we reported the killings of the top terrorists in Saudi Arabia by security officers. Our job is not finished yet.

One particular incident that is still at the back of my mind is when I rushed to the location of a gunbattle that broke out between terrorists and security officers in Al-Rawda district. There, a special forces officer stopped my car from proceeding in the alley. And there I saw a jeep still burning in flames after terrorists blew it up with a rocket-propelled grenade. A slain terrorist’s corpse was seen in the villa some meters away. And the alley itself, with bullet-riddled walls of the villas, looked like Beirut in 1980.

Many global media giants have contacted and continue to contact the Riyadh Bureau for an inside story from the capital when a terrorist incident occurs. Over the past two years, CNN, BBC, Fox News, NBC, ABC, National Public Radio (NPR), Radio South Africa, Radio New Zealand and dozens of others have contacted the bureau.

Besides reporting terrorist incidents, the bureau takes pride in reporting the first-ever municipal elections in Saudi Arabia that kicked off in Riyadh, filing seven stories on the election day alone and meeting with candidates and voters in different areas of the capital. We also took part in the first human rights conference hosted in Saudi Arabia in 2004. A few months ago, we participated in the coverage of the Counterterrorism International Conference.

As events in the capital are rapidly growing, and with the team of experienced journalists who have a passion for the job, readers can rest assured that no event, big or small, will be overlooked by the Riyadh Bureau.

Gulf Bureau

The bureau began humbly on Sept. 5, 1986, in Dammam Industrial City.

Editor in Chief Khaled Almaeena assigned Saeed Haider to open the bureau after he joined the main office in Jeddah in 1985.

The bureau was essentially a one-man job for years, with Haider covering events that occurred in Dammam, Alkhobar, Dhahran and even in Jubail.

Haider’s task was not an easy one — not because he had to report from those cities, but because he had to establish a foundation for the paper in the Eastern Province.

News coverage and public relations worked side by side, and in a year’s time, English readers in the Eastern Province became more familiar with the bureau’s name and its reports.

In 1989, Almaeena visited the bureau for the first time. He liked everything, as Saeed says, except the location. In those days Dammam Industrial City was a secluded area, which was neither in Dammam nor Alkhobar. He immediately ordered that the bureau be shifted from there to Alkhobar. In 1989, the entire Saudi Research & Publishing Company shifted to Alkhobar on King Abdul Aziz Street. It was one of the finest locations at that time — just a few minutes drive from KFUPM, Aramco, Half Moon Beach and the King Fahd Causeway.

In the same year, the editor in chief also appointed its new bureau chief, Molouk Y. Ba-Isa. The staff of the bureau increased to six with the arrival of Ba-Isa and several other journalists, such as Muhammad Abdul Qader Ambah, a young and enthusiastic Saudi.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Gulf Bureau became the center of activity, not just for SRPC publications but many other international newspapers. Dozens of foreign journalists made frequent visits to the bureau including the legendary Oriana Fallaci, Pulitzer winner Carol Murphy of The Washington Post, and CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. It can safely be said that during the first Gulf War, the media was operating from two locations: The Joint International Bureau at the Dhahran International Airport and Arab News Gulf Bureau in Alkhobar.

Then SRPC Director General Muhammad Al-Shibani decided to give the Gulf offices of the company a more professional look. He appointed a young journalist from Al-Hassa, Khaled Bu Ali, as manager of the Gulf Office of SRPC. Bu Ali gave a new direction to the Gulf Bureau. The new Dammam offices now had a more professional look under him and became a force to reckon with.

One of the major events covered by the Gulf Bureau in the past year was the bloodbath that occurred in Alkhobar when terrorists killed 17 people and took 50 foreign hostages. The incident was the first of its kind in the city, and the aftermath is still felt there today.

Saeed Haider resigned from Arab News Gulf Bureau after serving the paper for nearly 20 years.

On the other hand, its bureau chief was allocated the task of preparing the weekly “Compunet” that is published in the paper.

In addition to her reporting skills and dynamic energy, Ba-Isa has been covering many IT events in the Gulf region. Her knowledge of the IT industry has made her name a reputable one, not only in the Eastern Province, but in adjacent countries like Bahrain and the UAE.

Washington Bureau

The Internet has made the world, as we know it today, a tiny village. Thanks to the World Wide Web, Arab News’ website is being viewed by hundreds of thousands of readers abroad, the majority of whom are from the United States.

Realizing the importance of projecting the true image of Saudi Arabia in the West, particularly in the US, the editor in chief appointed Barbara Ferguson as Washington Bureau chief in 1998. Ferguson, as she says in her own words, is the first American woman who holds such a position for an Arab daily. “Something that did not go unnoticed in Washington,” she says.

Over the years, her tasks have been enormous. Not only was she to establish a foundation for the paper in Washington, but she also had to introduce top officials in Washington to the paper, its objectives and its mission.

Newspapers send their top journalists to Washington to cover the politicians whose decisions directly affect the welfare of the world. Reporters from all over the world are assigned to cover the White House, Senate, Congress, State Department and the Pentagon. Arab News reporters were no exception.

Her appointment as bureau chief of the Washington Bureau “caused people to readjust their perspectives about Arabs, and specifically about Saudi Arabia. ‘I thought they didn’t let women work,’ or ‘How come the Saudis have a woman as a bureau chief?’ or ‘Do you have to wear a head scarf when you work?’ All those stereotypical statements provided me a great opportunity to inform and educate,” she says.

Many people also know the newspaper and know that it has worked hard to establish a reputation of balance and fairness.

“During the Iraq war, Arab News was one of the few Arab newspapers that did not use the occasion as an opportunity to bash the United States. Something I was very grateful for, as at that time, I was embedded with the Marines — all of whom were very curious about what many called ‘A-rab News,’” she said.