This is a one-man shop devoted to preserving what’s left of liberalism, if it’s to be there when conservatism—that is, all things regressive and repressive— finally self-destructs. I was born and raised in Lebanon, schooled in the United States, salaried in journalism, and now write editorials and a weekly column for the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida, making me one of the 0.3 Arab-Americans with a column in the mainstream American press. This web site is entirely independent of the newspaper. I welcome contributors, even from the opposition: this is a no-censorship zone (except for dull and poor writing), preaching to the choir is pointless, and progress begins with disagreement. But the usual journalistic standards of accuracy, fairness and prohibitions on libel and defamation very much apply.
2004 Third Place, Commentary, Florida Press Club (large newspapers).
2003 First Place, Editorial Writing, SPJ’s Sunshine State Awards (large newspapers).
2003 Second Place, Editorial Writing, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors.
2003 Third Place, Editorial Writing, Florida Press Club (large newspapers).
2003 Honorable Mention, Commentary, SPJ’s Sunshine State Awards (large newspapers).
2002 First Place, Commentary, Florida Press Club (large newspapers).
2002 First Place, Editorial Writing, Florida Press Club (large newspapers).
2002 Second Place, Editorial Writing, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors.
2001 First Place, Editorial Writing, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors.
2001 First Place, Magazine Writing, Society of Professional Journalists ( South Florida ).
2000 First Place, Commentary, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors.
1999 Second Place, Editorial Writing, Society of Professional Journalists ( South Florida ).
1995-2001 Nominated for five Chairman's awards, New York Times Regional Group.
1995 Third Place, Best Written News Story, West Virginia Press Association.
1995 Third Place, Best Local Government Affairs Reporting, WVPA.
1993 First Place, Best Local Government Affairs Reporting, WVPA.
1992 First Place, Best Written News Story, WVPA.
1992-93 Three awards for Outstanding Editorial Achievement, Thomson Newspapers.
1991 First Place, Best Local Government Affairs Reporting, WVPA.
1991 Third Place, Best Written News Story, WVPA.
1989 Third Place, Enterprising Reporting, West Virginia Press Association.
That's me there with my daughter Sadie, on the banks of the mighty Missouri in Montana a few years ago.
The Daily Byte
V. S. Naipaul Flatters Himself (As He So Often Does)
“That idea of ruin and dereliction, of out-of-placeness, was something I felt about myself, attached to myself: a man from another hemisphere, another background, coming to rest in middle life in the cottage of a half-neglected estate, an estate full of reminders of its Edwardian past, with few connections with the present. An oddity among the estates and big houses of the valley, and I a further oddity in its grounds. I felt unanchored and strange. Everything I saw in those early days, as I took my surroundings in, everything I saw on my daily walk, beside the windbreak or along the wide grassy way, made that feeling more acute. I felt that my presence in that old valley was part of something like an upheaval, a change in the course of the history of the country.”
