A Day in The Washington Post Newsroom
By Mohammed Ali Salih

Washington, Asharq Al Awsat – Four months after the request was made to ‘The Washington Post’, the prominent American paper finally agreed to host ‘Asharq Al Awsat’ in its newsroom for one day. Kate Carlyle, head of the Washington Post News Service, whose Arabic copyright is obtained by Asharq Al Awsat, apologized for the delay. Leonard Downie, “The Post’s” Executive Editor, had to approve the request and to choose someone to oversee the visit, she said. He asked Lexie Verdon, deputy assistant managing editor for continuous news, to show me around, and he kindly informed his staff of my visit and advised them to help introduce me to the newsroom.

Asharq Alawsat runs a feature story about the newsroom operations at The Washington Post. The story itself is of moderate interest, particularly in its comparisons of the image created through the film “All the President’s Men” some 30 years ago.

What’s fascinating—to me, anyway—are the questions being asked about newsroom responsibilities, editors’ trust in their reporters, and the general lack of reporters’ being fired. The questions were being published because the answers were so very different from the norm in Arab newsrooms.

If you’re interested in reading between the lines, this is a good article.