It is customary for us at L’Orient-Le Jour to announce to our readers any major change that is taking place within our team. After all, this newspaper is our readers’ newspaper.
Michel Helou has passed the baton to Fouad Khoury Helou, who joined the group at the beginning of the year. He will serve as our team’s new executive director.
Over the past six years, Michel Helou has run the newspaper with great passion. He successfully supported its digital transformation and its switch to a subscription model. He was also the driving force behind the launch of L’Orient-Le Jour’s English version, L’Orient Today.
Today, however, Michel has decided to go into politics, stepping down from his post as executive director to avoid any conflict of interest, and to devote himself fully to his new mission. He will, however, not completely be leaving the L’Orient-Le Jour Group, as he will remain a member of the board of directors and advisor to the chairperson.
To replace Michel, the board decided to appoint Fouad Khoury Helou.
Our readers already know him for his economic analysis articles that have been published regularly in Le Commerce du Levant and L’Orient-Le Jour.
Fouad authored three books: America and the Middle East (Hermann, 2015); Globalization: The Death of a Utopia (Calmann-Lévy, 2017); and The Collapse of the Arab-Islamic World (Hermann, 2018), which cover both economic globalization and regional geopolitics.
His professional experience in various industries has led him to work in diverse roles, both in Lebanon and in the Gulf countries — a profile that allows him to handle intellectual production and management at the same time.
This change is part of our continuity.
I will remain in my post as the group’s chairperson and CEO. Meanwhile, Elie Fayad and Emilie Sueur will continue to act as c0-editors-in-chief, assisted by Anthony Samrani as deputy editor-in-chief. Nicole Karkour has been leading the marketing team since the summer and is part of our steering committee managing the newspaper’s operations.
Also within our group, our English-language “start-up” publication is now led by two deputy managing editors, Abby Sewell and Niamh Fleming-Farell, with a dedicated editorial team of 12 journalists and translators, who work under the supervision of L’Orient-Le Jour’s editors in chief.
With this, the L’Orient-Le Jour Group now counts among its ranks a total of 85 employees, including more than 50 journalists, from diverse cultural backgrounds, with guaranteed gender parity, notably in management positions.
We are keen on pumping new blood into our newspaper while maintaining its identity and the expertise of our editorial teams, led by seasoned managers.
We continue to invest in our editorial staff: We have recently set up an investigation unit — an ambitious yet necessary mission in the Lebanese context, given the lack of transparency and the absence of accountability.
While fact-checking is at the basis of our journalistic work, our message, as objective as it can be, is not neutral. We continue to uphold the defense of our values: freedom, democracy, sovereignty and tolerance. L’Orient-Le Jour must remain a space where debates are sparked, and we are committed to publishing a diversity of opinion pieces. Lebanon cannot be rebuilt without listening to everyone.
All of this would not have been possible without the remarkable determination of our teams, editorial staff and administration, despite the extremely difficult circumstances and hardships plaguing the country.
It would not have been possible without you, our dear readers, who believe in our mission and contribute to the production of quality journalism.
We look forward to sharing with you our annual report in January in order to keep you fully informed of the development of our activity, our results and ambitions for the future.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and happy holidays, and we thank you for your trust.
Nayla de Freige
Chairperson and CEO
This letter was originally published in French, read it here.