Lebanon was collapsing. Its currency had lost 90% of its value. The government was trying to cancel elections. Newspapers were being shut down by political pressure. The country had no president for two years. An entire generation of Lebanese students had never been taught their own history.
Most newspapers report what is happening. AnNahar, Lebanon’s leading Arabic-language daily, decided that reporting was not enough. Over four years, working with Impact BBDO Dubai and Beirut, the paper produced four campaigns that did not describe Lebanon’s political collapse, they acted on it. The body of work won the D&AD White Pencil in 2026 under the title Active Journalism, the most prestigious individual award D&AD gives, and generated 35% revenue growth for the paper in the process.
The Elections Edition: Sacrificing a Print Run to Save a Vote
February 2, 2022. For the first time in AnNahar’s 88-year publishing history, the paper did not print. Lebanese readers walked to newsstands and found empty racks with a single message: “The ink and paper intended for today’s edition has been sent towards the printing of voting ballots for the 2022 election.”
The context: Lebanon was in economic freefall, its currency having lost 90% of its value. The country’s ruling political class, facing a national election that threatened to unseat them, had been publicly citing shortages of ink and paper as a reason to postpone or cancel voting. The excuse was widely understood as obstruction. AnNahar and Impact BBDO removed it. Every gram of paper and every millilitre of ink saved by not printing that day’s edition was trucked to the government’s printing associates and donated for ballot production. Enough was donated to cover the entire voting population of Lebanon.
The non-existent edition went viral. Competing newspapers, private organisations, recycling companies, and election candidates joined the movement, donating their own paper and ink. The online edition published that day became the highest-read in AnNahar’s history. The government stopped citing the shortage as a reason to cancel the election. The vote went ahead.
Newspapers Inside the Newspaper: Giving Space to the Silenced
On December 12, 2022, on the death anniversary of former AnNahar editor-in-chief Gebran Tueni, who was assassinated in a car bombing in 2005, AnNahar published an edition unlike any in its 90-year history. Each spread inside the daily edition was a different Lebanese newspaper that had ceased publishing in the previous two decades, shut down by political pressure, economic failure, or intimidation.
Six extinct publications were brought back for one day: Al Anouar, The Daily Star, Al Hayat, As Safir, Al Mostaqbal, and Al Bayraq. Their original journalists were invited to write again and publish the news of that day within AnNahar’s pages. AnNahar dedicated its own space to publications whose voices had been silenced, giving them one more edition to speak freely.
Editor-in-chief Nayla Tueni framed the action directly: “For AnNahar it is not enough to just say that we support freedom of the press. We have to prove it. And what better way to do that than to bring back to life some of the publications that were silenced, and to give them one more chance to speak freely.”
The New President: Building Lebanon’s Government From Its Own Journalism
By April 2024, Lebanon had been without a sitting president for two years. Fourteen consecutive parliamentary sessions had failed to produce an election. The political deadlock had paralysed the government and stripped the state of its capacity to function.
AnNahar and Impact BBDO, working with New York-based AI company Addition, built a solution. More than 30,000 AnNahar editions dating back to the 1930s were scanned, translated, and processed through a custom optical character recognition system built specifically to read Arabic-language newspapers. The resulting dataset, 90 years of impartial Lebanese journalism, was used to train a Large Language Model. The product was the world’s first AI designed to perform presidential duties: OurPresident.ai.
The AI President was unveiled in a live broadcast by Nayla Tueni on April 9, 2024. It answered questions on political, legal, and governmental matters in Arabic and English. Its answers were shaped entirely by Lebanon’s own journalistic record, not by partisan instruction or political allegiance. The campaign’s copy described the proposition plainly: “Unlike transient human leaders driven by corruption, power, and greed, the AI President embodies transparency, integrity, and utilitarianism.”
Within days, OurPresident.ai generated over 100,000 interactions. AnNahar subscriptions rose 28%. Web traffic jumped 30%. The AI President’s print edition, where it addressed the Lebanese population directly, was the most-read in the paper’s history. The campaign generated more than $25 million in earned media. Government officials began using the tool to consult on policy and directives.
The Untaught History Edition: Publishing What Schools Refused to Teach
In November 2025, timed to Lebanese Independence Day, AnNahar published a fourth landmark edition. For decades, Lebanon had no unified, agreed-upon history curriculum covering the period following independence in 1943. Political disputes, sectarian sensitivities, and deliberate obstruction had kept a complete account of the country’s modern history out of school textbooks across multiple generations. Lebanese students were taught fragments, each shaped by the political community of the school they attended.
AnNahar compiled the missing chapters, the events, conflicts, turning points, and transformations that had never appeared in any official curriculum, and printed them as a single documented edition. The issue went directly to Lebanese schools, was displayed as building-wrap billboards across the country, and was hand-delivered to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Education, members of parliament, and key political and cultural figures. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam received the edition and publicly described it as a significant national step. Ministers voiced support for an official unified history volume. The campaign won a Bronze Clio at the 2026 Clio Awards.
Tueni described the edition’s purpose without equivocation: “We have always said that Lebanon cannot move forward without confronting its past. Today, we are putting that past in print for all to see. If history books fail to teach our children, An-Nahar will do so.”
What Active Journalism Actually Is
The D&AD White Pencil is not given to campaigns. It is given to work that demonstrates sustained creative commitment to a social cause over time. AnNahar’s four campaigns were submitted as a unified body of work under the platform title Active Journalism, a strategic philosophy in which the newspaper moved from reporting events to catalysing them.
The paper did not cover the voting crisis. It resolved it by donating its own production materials. It did not write about press freedom. It restored it by giving extinct publications their pages back. It did not criticise the political vacuum. It filled it with 90 years of its own journalism, rebuilt into a functioning instrument of governance. It did not condemn the failure to teach history. It published the history itself.
Ali Rez, Chief Creative Officer for the MENAP region at Impact BBDO, described the collaboration’s core principle: “AnNahar wasn’t just a newspaper; it was Lebanon’s living memory.” The campaigns were the proof.
Campaign Name: Active Journalism (The Elections Edition / Newspapers Inside the Newspaper / The New President / The Untaught History Edition)
Agency Name: Impact BBDO Dubai and Beirut / AI Partner: Addition New York (The New President)
Brand Name: AnNahar Newspaper
Location: Lebanon; campaign distributed globally
