In her final letter, the paper’s Chief Editor, Lina Attalah, holds out hope for the future of the paper: “We leave you with the hope of coming back soon, stronger and unbeaten, ready to incessantly travel to uncharted territories of storytelling.”

You can download The Independent‘s final issue here; for those of you in Egypt, it’s unfortunately unavailable in print as Al Masry Al Youm ordered a “last-minute stoppage” after “scrutinizing” its content. I’ll be writing more about the closing of the paper in Egypt in the coming days. In the meantime, here are a few highlights from the final issue of one of the world’s finest English language news sources.

“The Triumph of Practice” by Lina Attalah

“I expected more failures than successes, but my brave boss at the time — the founding editor of this newspaper — provided ample space for my doubts. She left me traveling between sections, writing about politics, getting bored, then writing about art, then going back to politics, then taking a break and traveling, then coming back and trying to write again.

When she left, disillusioned by the organization’s performance and how the newspaper was always treated like an unwanted child of the institution, she entrusted me with continuing it.

The newspaper has since become an intellectual laboratory in which we haven’t only grappled with current news, but more importantly, how to talk about the news.

How can we navigate through the rigidity of the journalistic form? How can we narrate a story through our multilayered subjectivities? How do we emancipate ourselves from predetermined notions of representation?

How do we create affect? How do we engage? How do we afflict? How do we comfort? How do we become active mediators as opposed to silent vehicles of information?

We didn’t develop full answers, but kept asking and investing in a practice that constantly activated these questions.”

 

“Our ‘naive’ generation will bring down your media system” by Nora Younis: 

I may have been “naive,” but mine is the naivety of a generation that launches revolutions and brings down regimes by its spontaneous bias to simply do what seems legitimate and right…

It’s crystal clear to me that the current structure of media ownership is only going to continue to reproduce the same old, polarized, colored journalism that is used to serve owners’ interests.
What is also obvious is that this “naïve” generation of journalists will create alternative media ownership structures, liberate FM waves and do what they believe is legitimate and right.

 

“Three journalists survive two closures in one year” by Amira Salah-Ahmed, Dalia Rabie, and Mai Shams El-Din:

Salah-Ahmed: The interesting thing is that this time around, we actually got a chance and time to try and save the paper. And we did amazingly well.

We proved that we can sell the product to people because we know what we’re selling and to whom. Unlike the commercial side, which knows nothing about the content we produce or the audience we’re targeting.

I really thought that after we miraculously managed to boost our subscription numbers and copy sales in just two months, the management would finally see what they’ve been doing wrong, and know that this has real potential that’s been unrealized. But it seems like the decision to close has nothing to do with the numbers.

Shams El-Din: Yes. This time, it’s obviously political. I have no other explanation.

Rabie: I would say it is also very much financial.

Salah-Ahmed: It’s financial, but there’s something behind the lack of will and interest in figuring out a solution to the financial troubles.

Shams El-Din: I also believe it’s political. The lack of this will you are talking about, Amira, is politicized in a way.

 

“Liberal illusions” by Hesham Sallam:

The liberal prescription of free and fair elections confronts an insurmountable paradox: How can elections create a national political arena capable of resolving pressing conflicts over economic and social rights if those who lack and demand these rights are constantly crowded out of this same arena by default? In this respect, the power that liberals attribute to free and fair elections to resolve the social conflicts that are tearing Egypt apart today is little more than an illusion.

The class compromises required for an “exit door” from the current predicament are too deep to be resolved through the electoral process, no matter how “free and fair.”

 

“How poor management destroyed a leading voice” by Heba Afify:

Wadood says the English edition was first conceived as a profitable endeavor. With no high-quality daily English-language newspapers in Egypt, he says, the market was wide open.

But a combination of poor management and circumstances kept the paper from reaching its fiscal potential. The first glitch happened, Wadood says, when it became clear that the bulk of the advertising share would always be allocated to the Arabic edition of the paper, to the detriment of Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition, which later became Egypt Independent.

The year 2011 witnessed a defining schism between the two editorial teams. Following an editorial fallout between the English edition and its Arabic stepsister, Egypt Independent acquired a separate printing license and chose its new name.

Alex Shephard is the director of digital media for Melville House, and a former bookseller.