Publishing a magazine was challenging for me. As a journalist, I was born in an age of print when there was no Internet. I studied journalism at Damascus University and began working with traditional media when we did not learn anything about online journalism and digital media.
My degree taught me how to design a magazine, newspaper and how to write the news. After graduation, I worked as a freelance journalist with many print media, particularly magazines. However, I was always keen to create my print magazine and lead a team of ambitious and talented young people. I love magazines, colours, images, and design.
Over the past decade, the publishing industry has changed a lot: newspapers and magazines have closed down and went online. Thousands of websites created, and social media platforms set up. This transformation has shifted my vision of media. It has been harder to follow new media technology as it keeps changing all the time.
My interest in digital media is both professional and personal. As a journalist, I closely followed the role of social media in covering the Arab Spring and how young people used digital media platforms as an alternative public sphere to report and spread their social and political activism. Protesters crossed the boundaries of traditional journalism, using the applications in their smartphones to cover street revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria.
That motivated me to be more engaged in digital media as the future of journalism. As a result, I enrolled in the Digital Media Management course at Birkbeck University. The course provided me with academic education, research, and management skills.
Creating Caravel Magazine in the area of art and culture is crucial nowadays for many reasons. Firstly, the digital revolution offers an opportunity to document cultural heritage through digital content. Secondly, international media has ignored cultural diversity in the region, and Caravel magazine could be a window to explore those exciting angles in the MENA. Thirdly art and culture can bring a community together as an open space for different voices and vehicles to inform and educate people.
I believe Caravel magazine will bring artists, journalists, and other relevant people together to share their knowledge and experience. The war in the Middle East and North Africa has been destroyed much cultural heritage and ancient cities such as Aleppo citadel and Mosul library. Caravel magazine aims to document artworks, cultural and traditional heritage to protect and enable them to survive digitally.
Caravel Magazine intends to become a helpful reference and source for academics, institutions, and students in the long run.
Sulaiman Othman