demands changed and the public ceased to use such platforms to get their news. The following sections present some aspects of Al Jazeera’s varied and specialised experiences in the digital world. a) AlJazeera.net: Leadership on the Arab Level AlJazeera.net was the network’s first online platform and support in its digital project on the web. The website testing phase began in mid-May 2000 and culminated with the official launch on 1 January 2001 with news content that stood on two key pillars: 1. The website would be Al Jazeera’s news platform, covering its news work as its “electronic face” (1) , or the electronic carrier on which the channel’s news and programmes (text, then audio with video later on) are published. It is a process similar to media documentation work and provides an electronic media documentation service of the chan- nel’s activities to the public, and allows users to retrieve all its content at any time they want, however they want, using any means they want. 2. AlJazeera.net would have the identity of a comprehensive news source that would be separate from being the channel’s “electronic face”. It would be independent on how it gathers and produces news, while accommodating ongoing digital environment transformations by responding to new media and internet user needs. This part of the identity would also account for the foundations of digital writing for comprehensive news channels as it relates to content requirements, drafting techniques, multimedia presentation, hypertext, user interactions and other parameters. In terms of the establishment of AlJazeera.net, which tied it to the Al Jazeera channel and later made it a part of the network, its news phi- losophy was a part of the larger network’s editorial policy, upholding
(1) Abdul Hakeem Ahmaine, The Role of Electronic Arabic Media in Facing the Ummah’s Challenges, A Study of the Palestine Issue and Palestinian Division: AlJazeera.net as an Exam- ple (Cairo: Dar al-Kalima for Publishing and Distribution, 2012), p. 130.
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