Starting out as a weekly newspaper, its first issue was a four-page news bulletin reporting on such concerns as the cotton exchange, the port and commercial activity in Alexandria. During the next four and a half years, it moved to Cairo, became a daily, and expanded to ten pages as it began to cover the full gamut of public affairs, from politics to culture, and from economics to literature.
As it progressed, Al-Ahram developed a distinctive journalistic creed rooted in accuracy of reporting and a restrained, balanced style. It even developed a unique voice, so much so that, when you read any news item appearing in it, even without seeing the newspaper’s banner, you could immediately tell it was from Al-Ahram.
When I first joined the newspaper in 1970 as a foreign affairs reporter, the section editor was the distinguished journalist George Aziz. He would meticulously review every news item I drafted, based on wire-service dispatches or other sources, marking corrections and substitutions with his red pen. When he handed it back to me to rewrite, he would tell me to fully grasp the changes he had made, so that he would not have to make the same corrections again. Every major newspaper in the world has what is known as a stylebook: a printed guide to the publication’s rules of usage, formatting, and standards. Al-Ahram’s guide, however, was not printed; we acquired it through practical experience.
Not that we forewent the attempt to produce a printed guide. In the early 1970s, Al-Ahram editor-in-chief Mohammed Hassanein Heikal asked Ahmed Nafie, the elder brother of Ibrahim Nafie and one of the key figures in Al-Ahram at the time, to compile a stylebook for the staff. As I shared an office with Ahmed Nafie on the fourth floor, I had the opportunity to follow his progress on this task. However, before long, some fierce political winds swept through the institution, uprooting Heikal from his position. As the paper entered a new phase, it struggled against its new leadership to preserve its distinctive character.
Then Ahmed Nafie passed away, and the guide never saw the light of day.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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