The problem
When the 2011 pro-democracy demonstrations erupted, Syria’s state-owned media covered up abuses and hid the news Syrians most needed. In the Damascus suburb of Daraya, activists with almost no journalism experience decided the gap had to be filled from the street itself.
How it works
Enab Baladi (“grapes of my country,” after Daraya’s vineyards) published its first edition in January 2012 — a rudimentary leaflet documenting security-force abuses, printed on a home printer and distributed secretly by volunteers. It has printed almost every Sunday since, evolving into a professional nonprofit outlet: a weekly newspaper, Arabic and English websites, video production and an investigative journalism unit. After regime forces destroyed its Daraya office and equipment, the team rebuilt in exile — printing in Turkey and shipping copies into northern Syria (Aleppo, Latakia and Idlib countrysides) and to refugees, while the digital edition reaches hundreds of thousands.
Pain points
A two-week publishing stoppage after the 2012 Daraya massacre; physical distribution across front lines; a readership fragmented between inside Syria, the region and global exile; and constant financial and physical pressure on independent reporters.
Business model
Nonprofit civic media sustained by democracy and press-freedom funders — a partner of the US National Endowment for Democracy — distributing print free and monetising attention and trust digitally rather than through cover prices or regime advertising.
Challenges
Surviving the destruction of its home office; operating from exile without losing access to sources inside Syria; donor dependence in a crowded humanitarian funding landscape; and reporting without bias amid extreme polarization, as editor-in-chief Jawad Sharbaji stresses.
Funding
- No commercial rounds: structured as a 501(c)(3)-recognised nonprofit media organization backed by institutional democracy and media-development grants, including partnership support from the National Endowment for Democracy.
- Scale marker: one million print copies reached since launch, per the outlet’s own portfolio page (2022).
Latest — November 2022
On 1 November 2022 the National Endowment for Democracy marked Enab Baladi’s 10th anniversary — a decade of uninterrupted weekly reporting from Daraya’s home printers to a cross-border print and digital operation reaching millions of Syrians.