Last Wednesday a crisis was in progress. There was a need for me to be in Riyadh at a roundtable discussion scheduled for journalists with an executive of a major technology company. Unfortunately, no flight reservations were available. This left me stuck in Alkhobar with the 12:30 start of the roundtable approaching. What to do? “Conference me in,” I advised the event coordinator. “Brilliant idea,” he replied. At 12:30 the telephone rang, I answered and joined the discussion over an open connection routed to an audio conference device set on a table in Riyadh.

Technology has changed the news business and how journalists work. For example, conference calls are now a standard approach to sharing information. Every afternoon, conference calls are made by the editorial team in Jeddah to our bureaus in other cities. As a group, the journalists discuss that day’s edition and articles in progress are followed-up. Suggestions for new storylines are proposed. During the conference calls, everything about Arab News is critiqued by the editorial team jointly in a constant effort to enhance the final product.

Digital Age communications have made an enormous difference in news gathering. Arab News reporters carry mobile handsets and these are answered around the clock. No longer is there a need to search for a reporter when news is breaking. One phone call speeds the journalist on his way. If a journalist is already on the scene or in a press conference, essential information or a question to be asked may be sent to him by SMS. On a breaking story, where the mobile network is stressed, journalists can send out advisements by SMS so the editorial team will be standing by.

E-mail is another form of digital communication which has changed journalism. Just five years ago, correspondents from around the world submitted their articles to Arab News by facsimile. It was complicated. The faxes had to be scanned or retyped before the stories could be sent to layout. Obviously, with such a procedure, typographical errors were a constant problem. Now, most Arab News reporters compose their articles directly into a word processing program. After spell-checking, the text is e-mailed to an editor in our Jeddah newsroom. That editor makes any final changes based on space or content requirements, and then the reporter’s text is inserted directly to the newspaper page being created. Handling text by e-mail has improved the quality of Arab News while reducing the amount of time it takes to prepare a news article for publication.

Digitization has also meant an enormous shift in how Arab News deals with photography. Five years back, the best we could do was to have our photographers in other cities scan the photo prints and then send them to our Jeddah newsroom using a direct modem-to-modem connection. Then came digital photography and the Saudi Internet. Now, many journalists on our staff carry digital cameras. Since they can see the shot immediately, they know instantly if they have a good pictorial record of the event. Film developing is history. To send the picture to the newsroom all the journalist needs is the camera, her laptop and an Internet connection. This allows Arab News to publish reports of important news stories that take place in the evening — photo and all.

Computerization of the entire production process means that most of the pages in Arab News aren’t created until after 7 p.m. each day and the front page is usually completed after midnight. During the hours that the pages are in progress, news stories are coming in from our reporters and press agencies worldwide. Throughout the evening, adjustments will be made on the pages to accommodate breaking news. Headlines and even entire stories are often rewritten as new details become available. Finally, as the printing deadline approaches, the pages are proofread and final corrections are made.

What if Arab News editor in chief is not in Jeddah and he would like to see any page before it’s printed? Not a problem. The completed page is transformed into a PDF document and sent to his e-mail. Then, even from the other side of the planet, Khaled Almaeena can see exactly how the printed page will appear. If he has any comments, a quick phone call is placed to the responsible editor, and the changes are made.

Arab News now prints in Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam. The digitized text is sent out over a secure connection to teams operating the Saudi Research & Publishing Company’s presses in Riyadh and Dammam. In those cities in the wee hours of the morning, Arab News rolls off the presses. This is quite a change from the days when the newspaper had to be either flown across the country from Jeddah, or until last year, trucked from our presses in Riyadh to readers in the Eastern Province.

Do things ever go wrong? Well, since publishing Arab News is a technology-dependent process it’s almost a guarantee that there will be the occasional spectacular failure. E-mail can go down. The network can crash. Connectivity can be lost. The possibilities are endless. One thing is certain though. Arab News will print every night. Having a back-up plan for every part of the process, and editorial and production teams agile enough to move with the punches, means that a quality newspaper reaches our readers every morning — no matter what the techno horrors of the night before.

The really good news is that most of the time, technology is a great help in producing a first-rate publication. We are especially proud of how technology has enabled us to improve our coverage of the annual Haj — an event of importance worldwide. For the pilgrimage, our team of journalists goes out to the holy sites equipped with cell phones, digital cameras and laptops. The reports they send by phone and e-mail from Makkah, Arafat and Mina are published in Arab News and arabnews.com, forming a vital link between the millions of pilgrims and their communities around the globe.

Thirty years ago technology allowed Arab News to reach out across this nation. Today, technology enables Arab News to reach out to the world.

(Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Editor, Gulf, is a Saudi national of American heritage. Her column Local View anchors Compunet every Tuesday in Arab News.)