So CNN fired Octavia Nasr for a tweet praising Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah on the 4th of July, the same day of his death.

Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot.. #Lebanon

So, a CNN editor/anchor using her CNN Twitter account (OctaviaNasrCNN) is telling the world that she respects a leader of a group that is on the terrorist list (in the United States at least). That's right, where CNN is based.

I am not really interested in getting into a debate about whether Hizbullah is actually terrorist or not. I find this to be completely irrelevant. The simple matter of fact is: Someone used a handle with an organization's name on it to express an opinion that is clearly against every fiber of what is CNN.

So, why are people 'outraged' and 'disgusted'? In all seriousness, I have no clue. I think as usual, people like to be angry around here. If anyone should be angry it should be Octavia for doing something very stupid. She should have known better.

As for CNN, I believe they have every right to terminate her on the spot. In fact, I would be very surprised if they didn't. Don't work for someone who thinks your idol is a terrorist and then be surprised when they hit you back when you announce it. That's just stupid.

Yahoo's acquisition of Maktoob posed an interesting challenge to Google, whose approach has been slow and calculated. The truth of the matter is, there are millions of Arabic-speaking Internet users who are not interested in English-based content. So, Yahoo bought their way in.

Google appears to have gone their own way and decided to build their own base. The Egyptian Egabat (egabat.google.com) is the answer. As a product, it is completely uninteresting. It offers nothing that is new or exciting, except that it is an Arabic-only product. In fact, it's so Arabic it's Egyptian.

Now I understand that Google recruits a lot of their Middle East staff from Egypt, but the Egyptian branding of their first Arabic-only product is curious, to put it mildly. It is either Google doesn't understand the region or that their staff are taking this as an opportunity to highlight Egypt's importance in the region.

The Saudi's response to YouTube's indiscretionsNaqaTube. The website is essentially a YouTube filter as the videos are all hosted ON YouTube.

Saudi Jeans questions the viability of business models that focus on such niches, given the recent Yahoo! acquisition of Maktoob. The answer is: Absolutely.

There is beyond any doubt a large audience who are very interested in religious offerings. I think it is perhaps one of the most untapped markets, given how profit and religion mixing puts one in a gray area. Let's face it, religion sells.

According to an online consumer survey by Nielson, people trust people. There are no surprises there, but it is interesting that consumers are also willing to trust reviews posted online by 'people' (who could possible be corporate). After all, if the Israelis are doing it, who is to say corporations aren't?

Even more astonishing is the percentage of people who totally or somewhat trust editorial content in newspapers. This number, globally is 69% whereas it is 84% for the UAE. I think it is mostly astonishing because we often forget that most people who are not in the media industry rarely get a glimpse of what really goes on before a news article appears before their very own eyes.

The National is carrying a story on how twitter is yet to lure the Middle East. In his piece, Tom Gara (@tomgara) claims that Twitter will never make it in the Middle East due to a number of reasons, mostly social and cultural.

In today's (July 21, 2009) Al Watan daily from Qatar, there was an op-ed piece by Raji Amer. In it, he blasts PR companies for being unprofessional. His main gripe? Press releases that are not well written, forcing him to rewrite them. He says, essentially doing their job for them.

Carrying on with our street signs theme, du comes to the rescue. There have been some talk and speculations on the origins of the beheard.ae campaign. It was obviously a du campaign, as it remained consistent with their branding and design.

The question that was often asked was, what is the purpose of this campaign? Well, apparently they are hoping to get statistics from the answers they get to explain how they listened to their audience.

I would have hoped that they want to listen because the last time we did a report on the telecom industry, du's performance was embarrassing. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

For example:

72% of you said you were spending more and getting less.

WoW Recharge Card
We've been listening

Seriously? It is one thing to fail at providing a basic level of acceptable service and a whole other to ask questions and make them fit into products that already exist! That is just absolutely crazy!

It is obvious that du and whoever is leading these campaigns have very little respect for their target audience.

As the days go by, the picture gets clearer. Forecasts are not predicting any sunshine in the near future. This is going to be one hell of a tough year to get through.

Once can already feel the results in the amount of advertising in newspapers and magazines. You can look at how McNabb fondly provides Gulf News' weight with every reference. Property Weekly used to look like a phone book, now reduced to what I can only call 'normal'.

We are already finding out about magazines shutting down. We have had an excess of those, so it is time for the small and ineffective to be gone. Not to be mean, but most will not be missed. Editorials now will make or break a magazine. You can see how brave editorials have become when compared with last year's. It's almost like you're looking at a completely different market. You have to take risks. It's no longer optional.

Another scary sign is the rise of advertorials. You've seen those. You take up a full page ad, followed by an editorial piece by the advertiser. It's almost like magazines are running out of content and/or people that they are simply selling space on their pages, offering little to no content of their own. Desperate? You betcha! Will it work? I seriously doubt it. I would put 0 weight on any advertorial. Readers are not looking to buy anything. So, unless you are offering advice on how they can cut costs, you're wasting your time.

We are going to be seeing a lot of people go, a lot of titles vanish. A few will be missed, but for most, I say, it's about time. We need to have a cleaner and leaner industry to work with.

Yes, we finally have Campaign ME back. We no longer have to wait for Communicate's monthly run to read about our own industry. Don't get me wrong, Communiate is not necessarily a bad magazine, but it is stale. Come to think of it, it is more like an afterthought.

Campaign ME was great when it was with ITP. Most of us in the media industry missed it and were happy to see it back. Then came along MediaWeek. I was surprised to see Ashley Rees as publisher, but if anyone could pull it off, Ashley would be it.

We continue to give Campaign our UAE Press Coverage Index, as we have done with Campaign when they were an ITP publication.