How it started
History
The first issue of Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) was published on 8 March 1957.
MEED's founder was Elizabeth Collard, who later became an adviser to UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson on Middle East affairs and an associate of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan. She also helped to establish the Council for the Advancement of Arab British Understanding (CAABU).
With two part-time secretarial assistants, MEED was produced on a hand-cranked Ronco printing machine. Every Friday evening, friends and relatives would help staple and stuff envelopes with the 12-page newsletter. Lacking editorial resources, the Middle East Economic Digest was a compilation from newspapers and other reports. Newspapers were flown in weekly from Cairo and Beirut, translated and condensed.
By the time MEED was acquired by Emap in 1986, it had a staff of 20 full-time journalists and 12 researchers and newsroom assistants to cover Middle Eastern business and project news. In 2006 Emap Middle East also acquired business website AME Info.
In May 2002, MEED announced it would launch a trade delegation visit to Iran. MEED stated that top government officials and agencies had participated in the Tehran meetings.
From Wikipedia’s article on MEED, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2