About Meridian
Independent daily intelligence on the Gulf and the global stories that shape it.
Meridian is an independent non-profit daily founded in 2015. We publish analysis at the intersection of the Gulf's business, technology, and policy stories, and the global currents that shape them.
Our beat: family offices, mid-market operators, the founders building the next decade of GCC industry, the policy shifts that will define the next government cycle, and the technology stack that the region is increasingly choosing to own outright.
We're independent. No parent media group. No advertiser influence on editorial. We disclose conflicts in pieces where they exist.
What we cover
- Politics. Policy shifts across the GCC and the global decisions that move the region: trade, sanctions, capital flows, regulation.
- Business. Family offices, mid-market operators, deal flow, and the engines of the Gulf economy, read against world markets.
- World. The international stories that land in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait City, and Manama before they reshape the rest of the map.
- Technology. AI, semiconductors, energy infrastructure, and the platform layer the region is now choosing to build and own.
- Opinion. Essays from operators, founders, and editors on what the next decade demands of the Gulf and its partners.
How we work
Every story is reported, written, and edited by named writers. Where we get something wrong, we correct it openly and publicly. Where we have a stake or a conflict, we disclose it. We do not publish anonymous press releases as news.
Meridian publishes daily analysis at the intersection of politics, business, world, technology, and opinion. We use AI tools to organize research notes, compare public documents, check language, and support production workflows; final reporting, framing, and publication decisions remain the responsibility of our editors.
Every published piece is reviewed by a contributing writer before it appears on the site. Our writers operate under pseudonyms; their bylines reflect editorial roles (Senior Editor, Markets Reporter, Technology Correspondent, Opinion Editor, Special Contributor) rather than personal identities. We disclose this because honesty about how we work is itself part of being a serious publication.
Editorial board
The contributing writers credited on the pieces they review and publish. A fuller masthead lives at /masthead.
Anika Patel
Trade and commerce reporter. Former supply-chain consultant who left the deck-building business to write about what actually moves through ports, warehouses, and customs queues.
Diego Arroyo
Opinion Editor
Former speechwriter who switched sides of the podium; essays on institutions, work, and what the next decade demands of both.
Halston Reeve
Halston Reeve is Meridian's daily desk correspondent.
Lena Holloway
Senior Editor, Politics & World
Twenty years on foreign desks, the last eight of them watching the Gulf's quiet rooms rather than its press conferences.
Marcus Okafor
Markets Reporter
Learned pricing in his aunt's Lagos FX bureau before any trading floor, and still trusts the cash flow over the narrative.
Mira Faraj
Covers public services and the operating systems of daily life: the forms, queues, portals, and fee schedules where policy actually meets people.
Priya Chen
Technology Correspondent
Ex-infrastructure engineer who writes about AI and semiconductors by asking the unglamorous question: what does this cost to run?
Rafael Mendez
Energy and trade correspondent. Grew up around ships and still covers the world the way cargo sees it: as routes, contracts, and the price of moving anything anywhere.
Rasha Karim
Rasha Karim covers the Gulf, MENA and South Asia for Souk Weekly.
Sara Qureshi
Special Contributor
Former radio producer who profiles the people building the next economy, and waits out every rehearsed answer.
Theresa Bauer
Business operations columnist. Recovering operations director who writes about unit economics, procurement, and why most business advice fails at the spreadsheet.
Why we exist
Most English-language reporting on the GCC arrives in one of two shapes: press releases recycled by trade titles, or Western-press dispatches written from afar. The first overstates progress; the second misses the texture of how decisions actually get made here. There is a middle ground for independent, regional, English-language daily analysis. That is the space Meridian is built for.
The daily digest
One email each morning summarizes the day's reporting across all five sections. Subscribe from the footer of any page.
Contact
Reach the newsroom at our contact page. We read every message.