By Jamal Elabiad
Recently, a university student of English asked me by email whether the new issue of The Casablanca Analyst had been published. The student also wrote that he decided to ask me after emailing the chief editor many times, but in vain.
Doubtless the university student found my email address while reading one of the articles I published in The Casablanca Analyst, a Moroccan newspaper in English. It was launched in May 2007 by Mohamed Oujetti and Bouchaib El Idrissi, the chief editor and the director respectively. Among the topics The Analyst promised to shed light on are the question of the Moroccan Sahara, democracy, corruption, the press freedom, women’s rights, and the Palestinian issue.
I started writing in The Analyst since the third issue. Soon after I learnt of its birth, I emailed Mohamed Oujetti asking whether to express my views in his newborn newspaper. He quickly replied asking to send my articles. I was so glad to receive an email from him saying the article I sent was “interesting” and would surely be included in the next issue. Few are those who know that my first piece was published in The Analyst.
It’s stated on a front-page article of the first edition that The Analyst “will be a weekly newspaper, though it will appear in this initial period as a monthly.” But since its inception, the Analyst was published neither weekly nor monthly. The fifth issue, for instance, wasn’t published till three months passed since the publication of the fourth one. Plus, the seventh issue hasn’t been published for almost a year. This is why I stopped emailing my articles to the editor. And I can say absolute certainty that I am not the sole contributing writer of The Analyst who still hasn’t known for sure why the forthcoming issue hasn’t been published yet.
I emailed last November the editor asking whether to do an interview with him. One of the questions I prepared for the interview is: “Can we consider the fact that the seventh edition hasn’t been published since February 2009 a clear sign of the death of The Casablanca Analyst?” The interview was to be published in Moroccoboard as well as my weblog.
Mohamed Oujetti responded to my email after a month or so. I don’t know why. For him, “it would be more appropriate to do so ]the interview[ after the publication of the forthcoming issue of The Analyst.”
I think conducting the interview after the publication of the seventh edition will be meaningless, for my rationale behind interviewing the editor is ensuring whether the Analyst is still alive.
As mentioned above, the sixth issue of The Analyst was published in February 2009, and the seventh issue hasn’t appeared since then. I therefore think the time has come for the Analyst team to announce the death of the sole Moroccan newspaper in English.
The reasons behind the death of The Analyst are many. To mention a few, the lack of funding and Moroccan professional writers in English, the fact that both the editor and director are neither old hand at journalism nor devoted only to the publication of The Casablanca Analyst, and the fact that Moroccans do not read in Arabic, let alone English.