News outlet expands coverage of Arab higher education

London, 5 December 2013 – Al-Fanar Media, the online publication founded by the Alexandria Trust that covers higher education in the Arab world, is expanding its readership and journalistic reach, and improving its coverage of research.

The publication has hired a community editor to build engagement and readership for the website, will be hiring a reporter to write about all forms of academic research, and is expanding the geographic scope of its coverage to provide more in-depth articles about all of the countries in the Arab League. The expansion and additional positions are being supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The corporation’s support gives Al-Fanar Media important resources at a critical time in its development, bolstering its editorial core and building its capacity to serve as a forum for academic debate.

Al-Fanar Media, which launched online in March 2013, features independent news and opinion on the state of higher education in the Arab region, in both English and Arabic. The publication seeks to fill a vacuum of serious regional discussion about Arab higher education and to be the go-to resource for information, insights, and analysis about the sector.

Recent topics covered by Al-Fanar Media include online exchange programs between the West and the Arab world, student protests on Egyptian campuses, Lebanese student election conflicts and the gender gap in the MENA region. The publication also provides access to valuable educational resources such as a list of the Arab ministries responsible for higher education with links to their websites, as well as a list of Arabic literature translation projects.

David L. Wheeler, former managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, leads the planning and ongoing editorial management of Al-Fanar Media. Experienced journalists, writing about news and trends at Arab universities, provide the publication’s editorial core, which is supplemented by commentary from academics in the region. Al-Fanar Media’s senior editor is Rasha Faek, a Syrian journalist based in Amman, Jordan.

Al-Fanar Media began as the Alexandria Trust’s first signature project. The Trust is a British charity committed to supporting world-class standards of education across the Arab region, incubating strong projects that foster public debate, accelerate educational reform, and widen access to knowledge in the Arab world.

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