Al Anwar

Al Anwar was launched by publishing house Dar Assayad in 1959.[5][6][7] The publishing house also owns nine daily, weekly and monthly publications, including Assayad magazine.[8][9] The founder of the daily was Said Freiha who was an advocate of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.[8][10] The headquarters of the paper is in Beirut.[11]

At its initial phase, Al Anwar had just eight pages.[8] The daily launched its website in 1996.[12] It is published in broadsheet format.[13]

Al Anwar claimed that it reinforced the long-term stability and prosperity of Lebanon.[14] It was described by BBC as an independent and centrist daily.[15] It is further argued that the paper avoids aggressive reporting.[16] However, during and after the Nasser era the paper had a pro-Egyptian stance.[17] In the mid-1990s the paper was considered to have an Arab nationalist trend.[18] In 2009, IREX, an international research board, regarded it as one of the advocates of the 14 March alliance.[3]

The editor-in-chief of Al Anwar is Rafiq Khoury and its managing editor is Fouad Daaboul.[14] Palestinian journalist and writer Ghassan Kanafani served in the editorial board of the paper from 1967 to 1969.[19]

The daily covers both Lebanese and Arabic affairs.[20] The last page of the daily includes sports and social news.[14]

Following the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the daily published three articles from 16 to 18 February 2005 the first two of which were written by editor-in-chief, Khoury.[21] The last one was a commentary titled "The mentality of the paupers and a regime in coma" and was written by Rauf Shahuri.[21] All articles condemned the assassination.[21] In August 2013 the paper criticized the possible US-led intervention against Syria and stated the intervention would be like "Hollywood's action and horror movies".[22]

In addition to its native readers in Lebanon, Al Anwar was read by officials, intellectuals and activists outside Lebanon.[23] It was distributed in other Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE.[24]

In the 1980s Al Anwar had wide circulation in East Beirut.[25] Its popularity in East Beirut continued until the 2000s.[26] The circulation of the paper was 20,000 copies in 2003 and it was the fourth best selling Lebanese newspaper.[13]

In a 2006 study carried out by Ipsos, it was found that Al Anwar had lower circulation in capital Beirut than other regions.[27] In the capital the paper was the sixth among seven dailies, having daily circulation at 10.7%.[27] However, it was the second daily with 12.6% in the Biqa region after Sada al-Balad which had 12.7% of the daily circulation.[27] In Mount Lebanon Al Anwar was the fifth daily, having 38.4% of the daily circulation, whereas in southern Lebanon it was the third with 15.2% of the daily circulation.[27]

Based on the data provided by the DAS research group the daily reported its average net daily sales in 2012 as 49.043 copies.[24] The daily had a circulation of 6,003 copies in Europe in 2012.[24] The same year the website of Al Anwar had 1.1 million hits and 63,010 visitors per month.[24]

Al Anwar was awarded by different bodies, including the UNESCO Prize for Social Reporting and Columbia University's James Wechsler Award for best international reporting.[14]

• List of newspapers in Lebanon

• Official website