About Shahrvand-e-Emrooz

Shahrvand-e-Emrooz

Shahrvand-e-Emrooz, meaning Today's Citizen in Persian, was a Persian-language weekly news and political magazine published in Tehran, Iran, between March 2007 and September 2011. Edited by Mohammad Ghoochani and Mohammad Reza Khojasteh Rahimi, it was a reformist publication described as the Persian version of Time magazine. During its short life it published significant interviews with leading figures, was closed down in November 2008 and again in June 2009, resumed publication on 2 July 2011, and was closed for the final time in September 2011. Its history compresses into four and a half years the fortunes of Iran's reformist press in the Ahmadinejad era.

Launch in March 2007

Shahrvand-e-Emrooz was launched in March 2007, with its first issue dated to March 2007. Based in Tehran and published weekly in Persian, it belonged to the category of news magazines and political magazines: a weekly digest and analysis of public affairs rather than a daily newspaper. Mohammad Ghoochani and Mohammad Reza Khojasteh Rahimi served as its editors-in-chief. The description of the magazine as the Persian version of Time captures its ambition: a general-interest news weekly, with strong covers, interviews and analysis, addressed to an educated urban readership interested in politics and society.

The magazine appeared at a difficult moment for reformist publishing. The reform era associated with President Mohammad Khatami, who left office in 2005, had given way under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to tighter control. A new reformist weekly edited by Ghoochani — already one of the best-known reformist editors in the country — was therefore both a publishing venture and a political statement: that the reformist current still had a public voice in print.

Mohammad Ghoochani and the editorship

Mohammad Ghoochani, born in 1976, is an Iranian essayist and journalist who graduated from the University of Tehran in political science and began his career at Jame'eh, the most famous of the daily newspapers that started after Khatami became president in 1997. He served as editor-in-chief of Shargh, one of Iran's most important reformist newspapers, and left Shargh in March 2007 with Mohammad Atrianfar to join Ham-Mihan, another reformist newspaper. His work also included Jame'eh, Asr-e Azadegan and Neshat, and he later edited Etemad Melli and Mardom-e Emrooz. A recurring feature of his career is that the newspapers he edited, including Shargh, Aseman, Ham-Mihan and Etemad Melli, were banned at some point.

Ghoochani's personal history illustrates the risks of reformist editing. He was arrested in 2000 as a writer for the banned pro-reform daily Asr-e Azadegan, and in 2001 he was jailed for 36 days for publishing lies and blasphemy. He was arrested again during the protests of 20 June 2009, while the Etemad Melli newspaper he worked for was closed; he was released in October 2009 after 131 days in solitary confinement and an appearance in the Tehran show trials. That the editor of Shahrvand-e-Emrooz stood at the centre of these events underlines the magazine's place in the reformist movement rather than at its margins.

Profile: a reformist news weekly

Shahrvand-e-Emrooz was a reformist publication. In Iranian press terms, that placed it among the outlets advocating political and social reform within the Islamic Republic, in opposition to conservative newspapers such as Kayhan. As a weekly, it could not compete with dailies on breaking news; its strengths were the cover story, the interview and analytical coverage of the week's politics. Its comparison to Time magazine, recorded in accounts of the magazine, reflects that format: a recognisable cover-led weekly summarising and interpreting national affairs for general readers.

The magazine published significant interviews with leading figures, including Hassan Rouhani in 2008 and Hassan Khomeini, grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, in February 2008. Both interviews were notable choices. Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiator and senior official, later became President of Iran in 2013; Hassan Khomeini is a prominent member of the founder of the Islamic Republic's family. Securing such interviews showed that, despite its reformist identity, the weekly had access to senior figures within the system and was read as a serious forum.

First closure: November 2008

Shahrvand-e-Emrooz was first closed down in November 2008. Reporters Without Borders recorded that the moderate weekly Shahrvand Emrouz was suspended on 5 November 2008 at the behest of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance after publishing four issues in a row with portraits of politicians seen as potential presidential candidates. Wikipedia's account of the magazine records that it was closed when it published a picture of United States President Barack Obama and his daughter on the cover of its 8 November 2008 issue. The suspension came one day after a strong attack on press criticism of the government by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who condemned the premature start of election campaigning in the media, months before the presidential election scheduled for June 2009.

Reporters Without Borders noted that more than thirty media outlets had been censored by the government since the start of 2008, and recalled that Khamenei's previous public attack on the media, in 2000, had signalled the start of a crackdown in which more than two hundred newspapers were suspended. The first closure of Shahrvand-e-Emrooz thus belonged to a wider pre-election tightening, in which a weekly's covers — portraits of potential candidates, and then of the newly elected American president — were enough to end its publication.

Second closure: June 2009 and the election crisis

The weekly was shut down again in June 2009 following the presidential election. The disputed election of June 2009, which returned Ahmadinejad to office, triggered mass protests and a sweeping crackdown on reformist media and politicians. Ghoochani himself was arrested on 20 June 2009. Freedom House's annual reporting on Iran treats the post-2009 period as one in which more than forty newspapers and other publications were forced to close for various lengths of time, amid strict censorship rules, especially where they covered the opposition, women's rights, ethnic issues or other topics the government deemed unacceptable.

For Shahrvand-e-Emrooz, the June 2009 closure interrupted publication for about two years. The magazine's absence during 2009 to 2011 coincides with the most intense period of pressure on the reformist press after the election, when many titles never returned. That Shahrvand-e-Emrooz did return, even briefly, distinguishes it from the many reformist publications that ended permanently in 2009.

Resumption and final closure in 2011

The publication resumed on 2 July 2011. Its return lasted only weeks. In July and August 2011 the weekly ran covers depicting President Ahmadinejad in a satirical light, including a cover in which a collage of the president's face was created using envelopes, and an issue carrying a digital picture that mocked Ahmadinejad and his confidant Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. In September 2011 the magazine was closed down again. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported on 9 September 2011 that in July and August Shahrvand-e Emrooz, a reformist weekly, ran two covers depicting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a satirical light, and that the paper was banned indefinitely under Article 6 of the Iranian Press Law, which prohibits insulting legal or real persons who are lawfully respected, even by means of pictures or caricatures, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

Freedom House recorded that Shahrvand-e Emrooz, described as a weekly reformist news magazine, was shut down in September 2011 for violating press laws after printing articles critical of Ahmadinejad's policies, and that it remained closed during 2012. The reformist daily Rouzegar was closed at the same time. The final issue of Shahrvand-e-Emrooz is dated September 2011, ending a publication history that had begun in March 2007.

Place in the reformist press

Shahrvand-e-Emrooz is remembered as one of the emblematic reformist magazines of its period. Its editors, format and fate were all characteristic: a talented reformist editor-in-chief with a history of banned newspapers; a cover-led weekly modelled on Time; major interviews with figures such as Hassan Rouhani and Hassan Khomeini; and repeated closure by the Ministry of Culture, the Press Court system and press-law provisions against insult. Human rights and press freedom organisations — the Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran — all documented its closures, giving the magazine a documentary footprint larger than many longer-lived titles.

The magazine also forms part of Ghoochani's longer story. Years after Shahrvand-e-Emrooz closed, hardline members of parliament proposed permanently banning journalists connected to shuttered publications, an initiative reported as seeking to ban Ghoochani, by then chief editor of the newly banned Mardom-e Emrooz. The Shargh newspaper responded that journalism is not a professional perk that may be rescinded but an inherent right. The episode shows how the pattern visible in Shahrvand-e-Emrooz — closure of a title, followed by its journalists reassembling under a new title — had itself become a subject of political contention in Iran.

Legacy

Shahrvand-e-Emrooz was published in Tehran in Persian, weekly, from March 2007 to September 2011, under editors Mohammad Ghoochani and Mohammad Reza Khojasteh Rahimi. It was closed in November 2008, closed again in June 2009, resumed on 2 July 2011 and closed finally in September 2011. As the Persian version of Time and a reformist news magazine that interviewed future president Hassan Rouhani, it represents the ambition of Iran's reformist weekly press; as a title banned for its covers of Obama and of Ahmadinejad, it represents that press's vulnerability. Both aspects are preserved in the international record of press freedom in Iran.