Anyway, this is an article on global changes in news consumption, with some MENA perspectives.

In our last interview Jassim Almass a 24-year-old Qatari graphic designer, recommended we interview Rashid Al Kuwari co-founder of Qartoon.

I started drawing on my maths and schools books. I didn’t pay much attention to the teacher. But by luck or not, I ended up as a cartoonist for a newspaper.

The best cartoons come without words so that people in any language understand the idea.

My grandparents tell me that the old souk used to have art and cartoons on the walls. But at the moment, in Qatar our culture puts cartoons at the end of the newspaper, and sees animation as the thing for children.

In Qartoon we are trying to build awareness of this culture and develop an art form which connects the worlds of adults and children. We use Qatari slang to express ourselves and many of the ideas we draw, getting inspiration from our own language. The Ministry of Culture recently encouraged us to hold a workshop at Katara. Thirty people came, most of them were women.

We produced a graphic novel which is a mixture of our culture and history, full of myths about demons. We have several demonic characters that eat children in our culture. So we built a story from this. The novel took a year to produce.

Sometimes we get resistance to the ideas we express. Once I drew a cartoon of women driving, which was in the style of a horror movie poster. A lot of ladies hated it. But I was just expressing a point of view.

We use cartoons with humour and irony to get our message across because a lot of people ignore traditional messages. We need to modernise our thinking and we want to challenge old world views – like the idea of women staying at home, or not having their own job – through our work.

The hardest thing I do is for the newspaper (Al Raya). Every day you have to come up with a new idea. Each page takes 4-5 hours to create. If you don’t have the concept in mind, it takes even longer. Routine prevents ideas from coming, so change is good.

I love the work of Hayao Miyazaki. He directed Spirited Away. And I’ve seen each one of his movies. Each one is a masterpiece. I went to Japan in 2009 just to learn about this culture and was amazed by what I saw, especially seeing an old man reading Manga on the subway.

I have the shadow of childhood following me. I watch cartoons and buys comics. I still like old cartoons like Sesame Street and I am really interested in Manga and Japanese comics and culture. I think, maybe, I am still a child.

For the next interview in this series Rashid recommends we talk to Fatmas Alnesf from the Al Jazeera Children’s Channel.

Understanding traditional media online in the Middle East

   Friday 12 April 2013, 12:23

Damian Radcliffe is internet and society manager for ictQATAR, a Qatar regulator. He previously worked for the BBC, Ofcom and the charity CSV. Twitter: @damianradcliffe

 Forbes Middle East recently published its third annual list of the biggest online media channels in the region. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is dominated by established offline media from the largest countries in the region (see list). But at the same time recent data about tablet usage – and the attitudes of Arab youth towards traditional media sources – highlights some of the challenges these services face in growing their online operations.

ATTN: My new Twitter handle is @damianradcliffeIf you follow me, then no change is necessary. @mrdamian76 will point to my new handle too.

— Damian Radcliffe (@damianradcliffe) April 16, 2013

After nearly 6,000 tweets figure I should use a more grown up Twitter handle. Discovered I’ve owned the unused @damianradcliffe since 2008!

— Damian Radcliffe (@damianradcliffe) April 16, 2013

This was the first time I’d been involved in such a project, and it was interesting not just to test the new kit (which was lightweight in kg terms only) but also to see first hand the guerrilla marketing methods used by the team to promote their new products.

In terms of my own involvement, after a slightly delayed start (due to my LIFEBOOK being held up in customs) I then got the opportunity to undertake – and write up – about a series of solo and team tasks. I’m grateful to my fellow Insiders for embracing me into their community (several of whom also kindly reached out via LinkedIn) and to those who shared tasks with me such as Bilal and Kapil.

If there’s a next time I hope to get more involved from the off – all the participants have such rich and exciting lives. I need to check out Chryssa‘s radio show for starters – although I may have to brush up on my Finnish first!

Several months on, I’m still using the LIFEBOOK and still impressed by how light and small the machine is. It’s about half the weight of the other laptops we have. Here’s a few pics from my Pure Elegance task which shows just how thin it really is. Either that, or I need to get a smaller chopping board (and phone)!

Exhibit A: As thin as a chopping board

Exhibit B: a fraction thicker than my smartphone

I’m on Twitter. I’m on Facebook. How else do I know what’s going on?  

Well, if you’re a tech lover, then this is where TFour.me comes in. They talk about tech matters in the Middle East.

Hence the .me?  

Yes, hence the .me. They talk about entertainment, social networks, digital trends, that kind of thing. Oh, and they advertise tech jobs too.

Excellent. I will keep that in mind.  

You should. They also write about start-ups, any one of which could be the ‘next big thing’, and they were the media sponsor for an Internet Society event in Qatar. This involved live blogging, interviews, that kind of thing.

Cool. Actually, I’ve got an idea for a start-up.  

Not now.

OK. Who inspired them? Anyone I know?  

Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, and Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.

Hey, I actually have heard of them. Well, their sites anyway!  

That’s a start.

Thanks! But hold on a minute, isn’t there loads of tech content already in the media?

Well, there is. But much of it is syndicated, and not necessarily relevant to the region. Or they write about a topic, but do one-off posts with no follow-up. These guys plan to follow people – and track developments, – over time.

Do they get a lot of traffic?  

They have page views of 7k+ per month, but you can expect that to go up since they’ve just signed up with MSN Arabia to syndicate their content.

That’s pretty cool.  

They think so. And I’m inclined to agree.

How else are they growing the business? I am taking notes here…  

The jobs section is growing, so that’s one source. Then after that a lot is just networking; actively showing their presence at various digital tech events happening in the region and signing relationships with technology providers.

Any big funders?  

Not yet, but they’re keen to explore an investment from an organisation/person who understands the online space.

The final frontier?  

Not exactly. But investors in the MiddleEast are often new to this arena. Some of the biggest investments done in the region are by external investments funds/companies who probably understand the online business better.

Thobe or not Thobe, that is the question.

I’m not quite sure that works Mr Shakespeare, but you have nailed one of the reasons why BYLENS was set up.

I have?

You have. The difference between a Qatari thobe and Emirati thobe is huge. Most companies in Qatar use similar photos in their ads and you can tell that the model is not Qatari.

Does this matter?

Well, if you’re a Qatari business you probably want to give the correct image of Qatar and Qatari people. Most online photo libraries use Emirati models.

I did not know that.

Well, you do now.

There must be loads of other people doing this kind of thing.

Apparently not.  Whilst other sites like iStockphoto, Shutterstock, Arabian Eye and Corbis Images exist, their focus is different. In our field there aren’t that many competitors, we currently have a huge stock of photos that are ready for sale, and we can also customise a photo shoot if the client requests it.

So there is a real gap in the market?

Yes, but that wasn’t the only reason we set up our own business. People choose to become entrepreneurs for many reasons. We were unsatisfied working for someone else. We had a desire to be our own bosses and lead our own company.

I bet it’s tough at the top though?

It can be. The greatest fear we had when starting our business was the instability of it all. The lack of revenue and not knowing whether we could make ends meet.

Sounds tough.

No doubt. Hard work aside, our solution was a simple one. We surrounded ourselves with people who would support us whether our business succeeded or failed. This gave us the room to build a business without worrying about what our peers were thinking.

Friends, they’ll be there for you. Even when the rain starts to fall.

Well, that doesn’t happen that often in Qatar, but I get your drift.

What other challenges did you face?

Finding people who would model, getting approvals from different locations, getting property release forms signed, and then spreading the word so that people would buy their photos.

Sounds exhausting! So how is BYLENS doing?

We have 25 returning customers and 11,193 followers on Twitter.

Not bad. What next?

We’re not short of ambition, that’s for sure. We are looking at expanding into international markets and franchising. If we have a successful business and can develop a system that ensures that others can duplicate our success, franchising may be the fast track for growing our business.

Watch out Donald Trump!

Inspired by an interview with Razan Suleiman, Founder and CEO of BYLENS.

The book is edited by Gillian Youngs, from the University of Brighton, and to whom I’m in debt for the great support she gave me during my first foray into academic writing.

My involvement was very last minute, and involved much midnight oil being burned, but I am very happy with the result.

The book is part of the series: Routledge Research in Political Communication.