Campos 247from the central and local governments; informed citizens how to carry
out normal business with government offices; and reported on the func-
tioning of the various regional and local councils.^35 The press’s role as the
provider of several new types of information had the effect of creating and
strengthening horizontal ties across city, homeland, and empire as well as
serving as a bridge between languages, communities, and reading publics.
The press allowed readers to cross geographic and mental divides between
cities, villages, and regional and international borders.
Often through regular columns, the press took it upon itself to relay
news from other cities in Palestine, neighboring provinces in the empire,
the capital in Istanbul, and even (via wire reports as well as letters from
readers) from around the world. A regular column like “From the Capital”
was a staple of local newspaper coverage, and important Ottoman cities
merited regular coverage, as did events in faraway corners of the Ottoman
world. For example, there were prominent reports of famine in Anatolia,
Bedouin revolts in Kerak, updates on secret societies in Crete, Albania,
the Hawran, and Yemen, massacres of Armenians, and of course the wars
in Tripoli (1911) and the Balkans (1912–13). Thanks to the modern wire
services, the Palestinian press and public were literally tapped into major
occurrences around the world, and Palestinians were able to thus envi-
sion their future in the empire in “real time” conjunction with the empire’s
changing contours. In addition, almost all of the newspapers used corre-
spondents in various cities of Palestine, from Gaza in the south to Acre in
the north. Falastin, for example, had a regular column on Palestinian local
news [al-akhbār al-mah.alliyya], as did the Hebrew newspaper ha-Herut
[Freedom]. Al-Munadi [The Crier] newspaper, based in Jerusalem, regu-
larly carried news from southern Palestinian cities like Lydda, Ramallah,
Bethlehem, and Gaza.
mportantly, local newspapers published not only information that I
they thought would be of interest or use to their readers, but also news
that they perceived as vital to the new citizen’s exercise of his rights. While
feature articles on other cities or villages in Palestine aimed to teach read-
ers about a little known part of the country, they also sought to ensure that
readers shared a common base of knowledge and indeed, that they began
to “imagine” a shared set of spaces and identify with shared concerns.
Comparisons were made, differences were pointed out, and lessons were