You think the Gulf has it bad?

Perspective is a wonderful thing. A newspaper in Turkey is losing advertisers, partly due to the economic downturn, but also due to fear of a shadowy, Mafia-like organisation that stands accused of engineering a vast, right-wing conspiracy across the country, according to this report in The National.

In comparison to assassination lists and political intrigue, suddenly the loss of some property advertising doesn't seem so bad.

The National is very good at these big, in-depth stories - which is why, again, it was rather a shame to see the paper tow the Abu Dhabi Is Fabulous line quite so blatantly.

At least it writes in English, though, as opposed to certain other papers, as a Dubai Media Observer commenter noted.

I believe one is publicly horse-whipped at the Daily Mail for that sort of Atrocity Against Language.

March of 37,000 unemployed journos

Ulp. That's torn it.

Up until now, the received wisdom, especially on Dubai Media Observer, is that if you're working in the Middle East as a journalist, you're crap.

Or at least weird, suffering from a breakdown, or actually enjoying life in the Sandlands - which probably makes you a congenital arsehole, in the eyes of the naysayers.

Now, according to the report linked above, you won't be crap - just desperate.

All those layed off hacks are searching for work - any work, anywhere. And as a region that a) has a reasonable English-language media sector, and b) is still hiring, many highly-trained US journalists are making their way over here (and UK ones can't be far behind, but probably not on the same scale).

For the rest of us, this is good news and bad. Good, because it's likely the region is going to get its game raised, whether it likes it or not. Bad, because the days of nonchalantly job hopping once a year, and upping one's salary every time, will be of the past.

I for one welcome our new Yankee overlords - anything that improves the overall quality of the media in the region has to be A Good Thing.

And one interesting possible side-effect is that when all these hacks get visits, or go back home, or move back to the US for good, they will take with them a much more realistic view of the Middle East, for better or worse.

Who knows - maybe this will even filter down a little bit?

Peace and understanding through an economic depression - whoever would have thought?

SITE NEWS: As you may have noticed, it's nearly Christmas, which means I'm off for a break. There'll still be new stuff appearing on AdNation, but it will be back to normal service come the start of January.

Toodle-pip.