administrative standpoint. Management was based on the centrality of decisions made by Al Jazeera’s Director General to those responsible for each of the hierarchical levels directly reporting to him. Decisions were typically announced verbally, and then written and circulated (1) . Administration during that time was comprised of two units for salaries and wages, and financial operations were manually performed using a daily ledger, Excel and Word. At that time, Al Jazeera had a few hundred employees spread across the newsroom, administration, finances, engineering, technology and operations. During this period, the first building block of the financial affairs department emerged be- fore going through several development phases. The system of finan- cial administration remained flexible and simple, with the introduction of some reforms brought on by the network’s new situation, including its expansion and new offices established in Arab and Western cities (Baghdad, Amman, Washington D.C., Moscow, Kuwait, Kabul, Sa- na’a, Paris, Cairo, Jakarta, Mogadishu, Beijing, Islamabad, Ramallah and Gaza) as well as the launch of its two websites, Aljazeera.net and Aljazeera.com. By the end of the foundational stage, Al Jazeera’s organisational policies and processes had become the norm. The tasks linked to the organisation’s operations broadened to include more individuals. This dictated Al Jazeera’s expansion and an increase in the number of its em- ployees, which simultaneously increased the operational, administra- tive, financial and legal burdens of the organisation. This first group of Al Jazeera employees shared an overall spirit of cohesive unity during this developmental phase. It is important to note that Al Jazeera’s in- stitutional development was usually coupled with internal discussions, which were the mechanism that helped advance editorial and adminis- trative development. One of those leadership discussions was on some of the editorial policies for the Arabic and English websites, and wheth- er it was better for them to report to one administration or two separate ones. This discussion ended with the appointment of two administrative units because both audiences were different in terms of their interests and experiences. At the end of this first institutional development stage
(1) Khadija Benguenna, personal interview, Doha, January 2021.
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