The Times They Are A Changing

- Austyn Allison

Khaleej Times is the UAE’s oldest paper, so you might be forgiven for thinking it is also the country’s most old-fashioned. But with 30 per cent more web traffic than its nearest competition, according to monitoring firm Effective Measure, its management say it is the most popular news website among the population.

It must still evolve, though, says Ravi Raman, the newspaper’s newly appointed senior vice-president.

Following a series of redundancies at Khaleej Times last November, Raman was brought in this April with a four-part remit. Raman, who was vice-president of Bloomberg Business Week Middle East for three years before taking up the Khaleej Times role, has been tasked with launching new products, realigning the organisation’s processes, updating the core product and people’s perceptions of it, and keeping Khaleej Times a publishing success. Raman’s first day coincided with the newspaper’s 39th birthday celebrations.

The new vice-president’s remit could be tough. Newspaper advertising spend dropped an estimated 35 per cent between 2015 and 2016 in the UAE, according to media agency Zenith, falling from $60m two years ago to $39m last year. It is predicted to fall another 26 per cent this year, to $29m. In the last year, Dubai-based daily 7DAYS has ceased publication, Abu Dhabi state-owned paper The National has been taken private and laid off a reported 40-odd staffers, and Gulf News has closed its Aquarius magazine, among other closures and cutbacks in the newspaper industry.

But