Qatari media: new forms

This is a big story in Arab journalism.  A columnist for As-Safir, Sati` Nur Ad-Din (I challenge you to stay awake while reading his articles), left the paper and started a new media site, titled Al-Mudun.  It states its mission as representing the "Arab civil current".  But I and others knew that the site was founded by the Qatari government and it was clear from the beginning.  But he topped himself this week when he wrote an article praising the Qatari Emir for (the rumor of) surrendering power to his son and hailing that as the true democratic meaning of the Arab spring. The article was full of grammatical mistakes and its timing created an uproar in Arab social media for the pathetic fealty to oil and gas regimes and the staff of the site went on strike--as if they did not know about the Qatari funding of the site prior to the publication of the column but they had to act shocked (like that scene in Casablanca) for public appearances sake.