From the curator’s desk at Middle East News for the Perplexed!

Middle East News for the Perplexed has reached a milestone by having over a 100,000 viewers! For those who might not be familiar with MENFTP, this is a news junkie magazine for people who want to take a deeper look at Middle Eastern issues. Whether you have an ax grind or an ongoing interest for the middle and what people across the political spectrum are saying, I hope you’ll feel at home here at MENFTP. Welcome!

Seeing as how we’ve had over 2.5 million flips, and from getting a sense of the people doing the flipping, I see some fantastic trends!  Most people based on their name, the occasional “like” and occasional comment are flipping articles that are more interesting and thoughtful than merely affirmative of their own point of view. It’s exciting to see that our readers are looking to read something challenging and informative. Our average reader on Flipboard is an active reader rather than passively ingesting what is provided. Flipboard readers engage information, analyze information, evaluate information and share information. My reading time is much more productive thanks to curation, and I am very heartened to curate content for a thoughtful, engaged crowd.  

Middle East News for the Perplexed’s curation endeavors to provide a very thorough and balanced variety of topics and sources. And along the way we’ve expanded what it means to be a curated magazine. By bringing together very disparate sources from think tank journals to blogs to editorial pieces the world over, we have helped eliminate tiers in content as well as the economic class barrier between types of content. At one time, a person would need a really good newsstand and a really good library to partially achieve on a weekly basis what is achieved here by MENFTP every day.  Although active for less than a year, other magazines have pursued a similar path on Middle East topics, some more narrowly focused and others as expansive -- I cheer them all on!

MENFTP started with me simply putting my expanding reading list into a magazine, which I found more convenient than going through RSS feeds. Then I figured why not make that magazine public? If technology has done anything for us over the last 20 years, it is has improved personal productivity such as our reading time. But it is still daunting to find articles on a series of issues that surround the Middle East including Israel, the Houthi takeover of Yemen, the rise of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Shia – Sunni conflict, the slow rise of Kurdistan, revolution and counterrevolution in Egypt, and then still have time to read them.  The promise of curation services and Flipboard is that wide and exhaustive selection of materials can be assembled, readers can find their preferred sources from that and still benefit from the convenience of a magazine like MENFTP to get a genuine 360 degrees of thought on a challenging yet critically important set of topics. I’ve looked at services similar to Flipboard, including services purchased by Flipboard, and I am deeply appreciative of Flipboard giving us “magmakers” the opportunity to create the specialized magazine we readers like to read! I also want to thank Flipboard for citing “Middle East News For The Perplexed” in #MagesWeLove: Staff Picks Edition! It’s lovely to be in the company of Bionic City and Superflat as well the other great magazines cited, wow!

The limitations of a Middle Eastern news magazines published in English are varied and numerous. Many countries publish news in English to satisfy the needs of a local expat population, to provide a forum for elites where skeptical opinion can be slightly more blunt, to have an easily quoted venue on the world stage for a particular point of view, or even to disseminate propaganda and misinformation. I believe it is important for people and peoples to know what each other is saying, what governments are saying, and that more informed people are more nuanced and thoughtful in their points of view on anything, even on the Middle East. A person can give thoughtful consideration to a point of view that one finds distasteful, even odious and be improved by being more sensitive and a more informed advocate. This magazine does not exist to change minds but to expand knowledge and perspective. However, what a news sources says in English will never be what it says in Arabic, Hebrew or Kurdish yet it will represent what is willing to be said to the English-speaking world and that does have some meaning, sometimes very limited meaning and other times very important meaning.  MENFTP also curates leading opinion from a variety of columnists, think tanks and blogs which can add perspective. And seeing those three elements side by side with all their contradictions and regional priorities really makes even a few minutes of reading deeply informative in a way the finest newspapers and journals cannot accomplish on their own.

I want to acknowledge and thank the many content producers from The Arab News, The Daily Star, The Jerusalem Post, Al-Monitor, Asharq Al-Awsat, Israel Hayom, Israellycool, Rantings of a SandMonkey, Elder Of Ziyon, Council on Foreign Relations, Gloria Center, Saban Center, Rand, Begin-Sadat Center and many, many others far too numerous to list for their content, the many flipboard magmakers that have embraced this magazine and reflipped our content, and Flipboard for giving us a great product that makes this possible.

Over the next year Middle East News for the Perplexed will continue to break new ground in procuring content and finding new ways to reach more readers. But far more importantly MENFTP will keep Middle East issues outflanked with our regional and opinion pieces from all sides.  

If you find yourself without a smart phone or a tablet and need your Middle East News fix, stop by http://newsperplexed.com/!

Sincerely,

Marc Dubey

Curator