Al Ateeqi highlighted the former glory of Qatari cultural journalism, pointing out the cultural reports, weekly content, and magazines as essential platforms for writers, researchers and readers alike. The share of culture in daily newspaper has shrunk, and traditional magazines have stopped being published, he added, indicating that fast and visual content has dominated all.
The more optimistic view regarding Qatari cultural press is the news aspect, which is related to the advanced cultural infrastructure in Qatar, as local newspapers work to cover and document cultural activities and events, contributing to promoting them, he added.
As for the analytical aspect of Qatari cultural journalism, which is represented in keeping pace with events and cultural production through criticism, interpretation and evaluation, he noted that specialists in cultural journalism play these roles.
In this regard, he referred to statistics previously published by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNE
SCO), which revealed that the majority of audience of cultural magazines was the youth category, explaining that the challenges that cultural press editors face today include the ability to provide cultural content that attracts young people in light of new patterns of cultural consumption.
For her part, the Writer, Academic and University Professor Dr. Ibtisam Al Sammadi told Qatar News Agency that it is difficult to separate cultural from its people, as the two usually reflect each other. She emphasized, at the same time, that cultural journalism is a tributary of awareness. / Dr. Al Sammadi said that the role of cultural journalism began to decline gradually, starting from the abolition of the paper press to the emergence of electronic journalism to the reluctance to pay attention to it and go to dispersion and flatness, especially in the field of literary human writing, which documents the human being in all cases and the revolutions of peoples are part of experiences.
In his statements to QNA, the Syri
an Poet and Writer Issa Al-Sheikh Hassan pointed out that the question of cultural journalism refers to the crisis of journalism, pointing out that journalism in its paper form is on the verge of going extinct.
The cultural concern has declined for almost a quarter of a century with the atrophy of the conflict between the East and the West, he indicated, adding that the new global technological development has contributed to the decline of the role of words in exchange for the dominance of images, especially after the development of the virtual screen.
He affirmed that cultural journalism has contributed to the cultural movement in the State of Qatar for about a quarter of a century and that it witnessed more than one weekly or monthly published literature by Qatari and Arab writers and authors in three newspapers covering cultural activities (Doha Cultural Festival, Doha Theatrical Festival, and Doha International Book Fair) with professional coverage.
Hassan attributed the decline of cultural journalism
in recent years to the circumstances of Coronavirus and quarantine, underlining the transformation of journalism at that time to electronic journalism, and the development of virtual screens with various devices, such as computers, tablets, mobile phones and others. He stressed that the biggest challenge is the gradual and accelerating transformation from the written content into the visual content.
He concluded that literature has always faced challenges and that cultural journalism must be encouraged by proposing solutions that restore its glory.
Source: Qatar News Agency