Al-Masry Media Corporation, which owns Al-Masry Al-Youm, has established a board of trustees that brings together national figures to put together a strategy for the institution and guarantee the independence of all of its publications, the management announced.
According to Sherif Wadoud, the CEO of Al-Masry Media Corporation, the institution is seeking to build a comprehensive administrative structure, not only to serve the Arabic print edition, but also the electronic portal, Al-Masry’s research and studies department, and all of its publications.
"To achieve those goals, Al-Masry Al-Youm needs to have the proper structure of a genuine institution," said Wadoud. "For that end, Al-Masry is soliciting the opinions of Egyptian experts as well as drawing on the experience of the British Guardian in this regard."
Ian Wright, who runs the Guardian Foundation and has an extensive experience with the Guardian newspaper, said that the idea behind the Guardian's trust is to make sure "to continue to publish the Guardian." Wright points to the varied experiences of trustees in different media organizations and to varying degrees of the success. Questions he asks about the relevance of a board of trustees include, "What does this new board bring to the enterprise in terms of the authority of the paper and the independence of its editors? Are there any difficulty in the relation between the people working in the paper and its owners? Where do you see Al-Masry Al-Youm in 10 years?"
The new board of trustees members include Dr. Mohamed Ghoneim, a world-acclaimed Egyptian kidney transplant surgeon who is also a member of the board of trustees of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party . It also includes academic and literary critic Salah Fadl; professor of political science at the American University in Cairo Mona Makram Ebeid; and Nabil Fahmy, former ambassador to several countries, including Japan and the US. Tahany al-Gibaly, vice president of the Supreme Constitutional Court, is also a board member, alongside Salah Montasser, columnist with Al-Ahram; renowed novelist Alaa Al Aswany; MP Amr al-Shobaky; Bahey al-Din Hassan, the head of the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies; filmmaker Youssry Nassrallah; Adham al-Khouly, a young engineer; and Mohamed Salmway, the head of the Egyptian Writers Union and the secretary general of the General Union of Arab Writers.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
