Catching people's interest

It's fascinating which stories catch people's attention.

The latest example is Johann Hari's piece in The Independent - another in the increasing number of articles called 'dark side of Dubai'. Not only is Johann's article being quoted or reprinted around the world, the blogosphere is buzzing with it too.

I commented on the article on Tuesday and the traffic to 'Life in Dubai' has trebled, the majority of the additional visitors arriving at that posting.

Not since my piece on Andy and the Redundancy Porsche has one of my postings attracted so much interest.

Yesterday the New York Times Freakanomics column reported on and linked to The Independent's article, and they also link to 'Life in Dubai' saying: "It’s the dark side of Dubai, though at least one Dubai-based blogger thinks the piece is overkill."

It's obviously attracted their readers' interest because several hundred of them so far have hit the link to come here. A random check tells me they're from all over the world - throughout the US and Europe, from Canada, across Asia, the sub-Continent, even Dubai.

(Welcome NYT readers, I read your paper every day so it's nice to have you here too).

I'm also getting more visitors than usual arriving onto that posting from sites such as Dubizzle, where it's also attracting many more comments than my other posts.

From Los Angeles, Xeni Jardin posts Johann's article on on BoingBoing, which is also attracting a lot of comments, and an anonymous commenter says "Another counterpoint to this article:" followed by a link to my posting. Visitors are starting to arrive from that too.

Blogging from Norway, Paul Chaffey talks about and links to the article. He also links to my post about it and, again, that's attracting visitors.

I suppose the activity reflects a number of things. The interest there is in Dubai all around the world. The fascination people have with bad news stories. The popularity of the current bash-Dubai bandwagon. The tall poppy syndrome.

As a passing thought, I'm pleased that commentators are not only linking to the original story but are also linking to pages which are critical of it, such as mine in which I wrote about the pre-determined bias of the article and its sloppy journalism.

Whatever the story, we need to be aware of both sides of it. With that thought you may be interested in other sides of the story relating to Johann's article, and to the equally well-reported BBC Panorama programme on construction labour camps.

Sultan Al Qassimi says his words were "taken out of context and butchered" in the article. That he was wearing a 'Ralph Lauren shirt' was a figment of the writer's imagination he says, a small detail but it does suggest embellishment for effect.

You can read his response in here, in Arabian Business.

I'd also be interested to hear from friends of the Canadian Karen who according to the first section of the article has been living in her Range Rover in a car park for several months. Or from these people or their friends: 'All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars'.

It would be nice to verify the claims, to find out the full story, establish the truth.


Then there was the BBC programme about the way workers are treated by Arabtec, one of our larger construction companies. The CEO has also been in Arabian Business disputing the allegations. That rebuttal you can read here.

Your reaction may well be 'well he would say that wouldn't he'. So who do you believe? I suppose the truth may be somewhere in the middle, as it so often is.