Royal Yerushalayim Dispatch
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | Kalian Media Group |
| Publisher | Kalian Media Group |
| Editor-in-chief | Solomon Kalian |
| Managing editors | Mordechai Levy Avshalom Ben-Asher |
| Founded | 1721 |
| Political alignment | Non-partisan (News reporting) Right-wing (Editorial board) |
| Language | Modern Hebrew, Allamunnic Anglic (primary) Standard Latin, Yiddish, and others (secondary) |
| Headquarters | Yerushalayim, Yisrael |
| Circulation | ~450,000 copies weekdays ~725,000 copies weekends (July 2018 est.) |
The Royal Yerushalayim Dispatch, often shortened to the Dispatch, is a major broadsheet newspaper in Yisrael. With an estimated circulation of 450,000 copies a day (including 201,000 online paid subscriptions), it is the nation's largest news print publication.
The Dispatch primarily covers Yisraeli news ranging from politics, to economics, social and cultural issues, and sports reporting. Its name derives from Yerushalayim, the capital city of Yisrael. The print version has won the Ben-Ami Prize over thirty times since the 1970s. It has a strong reputation as objective and even-handed in its coverage of the news and analysis. It is considered the premier news content provider in the Kingdom of Yisrael that offers reports through print, televised, online, and radio news services.
With more than 400 staff members around the world that operate 10 bureaus in the Kingdom and 36 internationally, the Dispatch is able to provide news from nearly anywhere on the planet, whether domestic, regional, or international.
Because of its relatively strict adherence to objectivity, even-handedness, and impartiality, the Dispatch has developed a sterling reputation as a news organization servicing both Yisrael and the wider world as both a credible and trustworthy news outlet.
The newspaper is well-regarded across the Western Monarchies as a newspaper of record; however, in the informal Communist and Socialist bloc, many governments and institutions in countries such as Tsurushima, Valgtea, Jhengtsang, as well as others view the paper skeptically, from viewing it as a mouthpiece of the Yisraeli government to simply dismissing the media outlet as ideologically-opposed to their interests and values.
Dispatch reporters have at time had trouble accessing the leftist bloc countries, especially during geopolitical crises, though the paper's journalists have been banned en mass from Valgtea, the Skaldafen Confederation, and Keuland, and routinely have problems accessing Mutul, Thraysia, Juwari, Tulura, and since late 2019-2020, Gran Aligonia.
History
The Dispatch received its name from the dispatches sent out from the capital in the 17th and 18th centuries. Yehuda HaLevy, the spymaster in the early part of the reign of the King Moshe I, came up with the idea of creating a newspaper controlled by the royal state, that would have a monopoly on distributing news across the kingdom, from his time in Sydalon in the early 1710s, where he witnessed the use of the broadsheet newspaper to great effect among the popular masses to the Latin state's point-of-view. He combined this with the system of military dispatches to units of the Shomrim units stationed across the kingdom, particularly at the frontiers. Together, the royal-controlled paper would give the government's point of view and would be distributed quickly and efficiently by courier to all the major population centers and frontier posts. He named this the "Royal Yerushalayim Dispatch," which would remain its name to the present day.
The newspaper was founded in 1721. By the 1780s, the paper had journalists deployed across the region, covering events in Ascalzar and Sydalon as well as the litany of wars and political intrigue across southern and western Belisaria.
After the fall of the absolute monarchy in the 1919 Revolution, the ascendant Constitutional Liberal leadership moved to decentralize power from the monarchy, including privatizing the Dispatch from a state-media outlet to a private one.
Throughout the West Scipian Wars of the 1920s-1960s, the paper continued to operate uninterrupted, largely due to the presence of foreign investors, as the paper had, by the late 19th century, cultivated a following among Belisarian elites for events in Yisrael and Scipia. After a series of unflattering articles, General David Azoulay threatened to nationalize the paper in early 1942 under the Autocracy regime. However, the editor-in-chief at the time, Isaac Kolman, relented and tacked a more pro-regime position. During the last few months of the Year of Blood, the newspaper staff fled Yisrael and operated in self-exile for safety concerns in Loweport, Arthurista, after both the Leftists and Azoulayists sought to shut down the paper and kill its editors during fierce fighting in the capital.
After the Yarden Accords in the early 1970s, the paper's foreign-domestic consortium owners put it up for sale. There was a bidding war between the domestic Yisraeli firm the Kalian Media Group and the Latin conglomerate Verruscosi Holdings. After a two-month bidding war, the KMG won out and bought the paper. KMG modernized and, according to some critics, "politicized," the national headline newspaper.
Circulation
According to the 2020 Global Media Tracking Index, the Dispatch maintains over a 450,000 daily weekday circulation (about 30% of which is online-only) and a 725,000 daily weekend circulation, making the paper the largest and most-circulated newspaper in the country.
The paper is the only Yisraeli paper to have a significant foreign audience: at least 50,000 print and 80,000 online subscribers are located outside of Yisrael, with heavy concentrations in Arthurista, Perateia, and Sydalon. Subscriber feedback indicates some of this constituency are the foreign political-business classes in countries with close ties to Yisrael, while the other group are ethnic Jews in countries with large Jewish diasporic populations who want to follow newsworthy events in their ethno-religious homeland.
Political leaning
The newspaper's editorial board was largely centrist-to-center-left in the 1950s through the mid-70s in the years after the Year of Blood; however, this changed under the KMG management, who installed a sharp-witted right-wing editorial staff. The paper usually endorses mainstream Royalist Conservative candidates.
Although the paper is a private media outlet, it has been described as having a modest "tilt" towards the state. Regimes hostile to Yisrael such as Valgtea, Jhengtsang, or Keuland (who maintain their own state-run media) have accused the Dispatch of being a "mouthpiece" of the government; however, media analysts generally dispute this and argue that the paper's management is, while committed to accurate and trustworthy news collection and distribution, structurally oriented towards a sympathetic view of the government, particularly in light of the post-Yarden Accords extremist Christian terror campaign against Yisrael both inside and outside of the country, creating a more patriotic environment to be aligned with, rather than opposed, to the government's preferred view.
Gran Aligonian interim leader Leuter Sion has in particularly criticized and mocked the Dispatch as "in the government's pocket" during the ongoing 2019-2020 Gran Aligonian crisis, as part of a general "war of words" against President Yitzchok Katz, the Hezekian Reaction, and Yisrael's participation in GA public life.