The New Kid on the Block

A post-mortem of the American debut of Al-Jazeera News.

The American news machine has long been dominated by a select few companies which held sway over millions of perceptions. Last summer a new kid arrived in town to upset the balance; this challenger was Al-Jazeera America. The Al-Jazeera news agency was already a well-entrenched news agency overseas. The agency had yet to appear in the United States however. For the past decade or so the large portion of the population of the USA has had negative connotations towards anything to come out of the Middle East. This is somewhat understandable; all the wars of our generation have been based out of that area of the world. So when Al-Jazeera announced that it was planning on moving into the US news territory it was no surprise to be told that the desk was somewhat stacked against them.

Going back to the new kid on the block analogy, Al-Jazeera America is not some scrappy kid fighting to fit in and claim his own ground, he's more like the rich kid who just moved in the next block over and whose family can more or less afford to buy his way into all the exclusive places. He’s the kid who shows up to little league with the bat signed by A-Rod. Al-Jazeera more or less brute forced their way in their efforts to build their American enterprise. They fully expected to take losses in the beginning of the enterprise, and threw quite a large fund at getting set up.

Critics were fairly split on the concept of this new news agency. On one had there was the possibility of a new, non-politically biased, refreshing news outlet coming on the scene; other critics were concerned about a news agency that is effectively government run (not that this has had a particularly negative impact on BBC). Right before the official release of Al-Jazeera America news was buzzing about their premier on the American news scene. Curiosity reached a crescendo right before they made their entrance. The tension of competing news agencies was palpable. And the n Al-Jazeera did possibly the worst thing they could have: They did it all perfectly.

The release went off without a hitch. Their reporting was solid and for the most part non-controversial. They did everything the right way, and because of that everyone forgot about them.

Source: http://xkcd.com/756/

"No publicity is bad publicity" is the phrase often used to describe entities within the media world. People remember the entity long after they remember what made them remember it. Think about Miley Cyrus’s performance a little while ago and the controversy that it sparked. Did it hurt her career? On the contrary it shot her back into the limelight and put her name in every other news story for the next week or so. So in the world where the only bad publicity is not having publicity, and there is no such thing as bad publicity, Al-Jazeera broke the one rule: they didn't upset anyone.

In the weeks leading up to their release Al-Jazeera tried to ensure that they would be absolutely politically correct and stable. They were worried that they were already on shaky ground broadcasting in America where there very language of their name had negative connotations to many people. They tried their best to avoid controversy, never worrying that if they succeeded they might be destroying the one major asset they had going for them, controversy.

Months later they are still going, for the most part sliding under the radar and staying out of the limelight for the most part. Luckily for Al-Jazeera they have the backing to afford taking a loss in the beginning to maintain their foothold. They have been steadily building their advertising campaign over the months. Their story is far from over, the new kid on the block news channel has a lot going for them and it may yet turn out that starting out slow and under the radar was the right path to choose. After all, slow and steady wins the race.