All the glory (shock and awe) that is Volume 1, Issue 1

Well, the paper is out. I woke up this morning and went downstairs to find a stack in my hotel lobby. While the registration is a bit off, it's pretty fab.

Everyone at the office is really proud of it. I feel like I've just given birth.

Last night I wound up at our new production shed to see it motoring off the presses and into the hands of hundreds of little Pakistani men. That was, by far, the most incredible and shocking sight I've seen here (so far, anyway). Watch the video I shot of it. Total human assembly line.

I kept saying under my breath, "There's a machine that does all of that!"

Here's a few photos of the presses. (Someone forgot to take her camera to the launch party at Emirates Palace which was just before.)

Sitting on a stack of my section: arts&life


Page editor Tracey Lazos, myself and arts&life writer Peter Baker


Lots and lots of towers


Lots of ink-stained hands

While I'm planning on sending out "hard copies" of the paper to a few of you (Mom, Dad, TNT peeps).. the rest of you should get hi-tech and see it online. That's right, you can READ the paper as it appears printed. Pretty freaking cool. Make sure to check out Friday's edition of The Review (this being the intellectual "think" piece section). The cover illustration/design is mine.

Some exciting and true facts:
-The entire paper is full color.
-The sections I'm in charge of designing (Arts & Life and The Review) are a minimum of 16 pages.
-Our pages are a HUGE 12 X 21" and are more of a white (less newspaper) paper. The Review is printed on GLOSSY WHITE PAPER!
-My section runs a feature called Oasis which publishes Sunday-Thursday. The feature is the double truck of arts&life and can be anything from Taxi Cab interiors to... well, you'll see : )
-Our paper was designed by Lucie Lacava.
-We have around 40 foreign correspondents, 20 people or so on the photo team, 80-plus reporters and tons of editors. You may notice how most of our content is not wire. This is why.

I'm very curious to hear what people think about it...so please feel free to chime in! Does it feel/look different than what you'd expect? What do you think of the content? Design? Photography? Reviews on it have already been popping up around the Web. You can read one HERE.