With great sadness and disappointment, “Mideast Dig: Dispatches from the Media Wasteland” officially closed in March 2025. (And MideastDig.com is no longer accessible online or by subscription.)

However, an Archive of its deeply-reported investigative stories [2016-2018] has been preserved and can be read here.    So… please Dig in.

The investigative media outlet (it began life as The Mideast Reporter in 2014) had been idle and gathering dust since 2018 due to a lack of financial support. As the old saw goes, we had enough moral support to open a factory!

The corporate board of Mideast Dig, Inc. (in formation) consisted of myself and Maer Roshan, the distinguished magazine editor and entrepreneur.

We had huge ambitions, as is clear in the “About Mideast Dig” section—as well as in the prestigious, diverse and once-growing “Masthead” section.  To download both documents from the defunct website, click here.

Aside from myself and Maer, many accomplished individuals came aboard “the Dig” in various capacities. They included Contributing Editors James Kirchick and Ben-Dror Yemini; and Senior Reporter-Researcher Millie Dent.

Our Advisory Board consisted of Floyd Abrams, First Amendment attorney (and founder of the Abrams Institute For Freedom of Expression at Yale Law School); author and feminist Susan Brownmiller; radio host and author Jim Campbell; Palestinian human rights pioneer Bassem Eid; retired editor and journalism ethics expert Gene Foreman; journalist and media analyst Tom Gross; journalist and former White House official Lawrence J. Haas; the founder-president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser; journalist and 100Reporters founder Diana Jean Schemo; Israeli author and journalist Lilac Sigan; and pastor Dumisani Washington, founder of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel.

Additional guidance and professional services were provided by Rhonda Barad (Development); William Skody (Accountant); and Ishan Sharma (Technology).

Mideast Dig was an independent, nonprofit [IRS 501-C-3] news organization with a mission to stop the downward spiral in journalism standards on the Israeli-Palestinian and other Middle East conflicts, and a variety of related topics. Among those subjects, as we said in 2016, would have been in-depth probes on the financing of global terrorism; Islamic extremism; organized crime; Middle East banks involved in money laundering; and the boycott-Israel movement.

We firmly believed that for any real and sustainable reform to happen in any industry—be it law, finance, media or any field—it can only come from within that profession, from seasoned professionals.

As our Homepage had announced: “Imagine a global, independent investigative news outfit that gets it right about Israel and the entire Middle East. One that actually knows how to dig for the facts in the region — and refuses to pull its punches. Imagine Mideast Dig: Dispatches from the Media Wasteland.”

The archive’s 17 articles [combined now into 14] include the following:  

OPEN LETTER TO NYU’s PRESIDENT: Why The American Studies Assn.’s Israel Boycott Makes Me Ashamed To Be An Alumnus

FIT TO PRINT?: The Fishy Business of the New York Times in Iran

PEACE THROUGH PROFITS: Inside The Quiet Tech Ventures That Are Reshaping The Israeli-Palestinian World

Is Reuters’ Jerusalem Bureau Chief Luke Baker Biased Against Israel?:  TEN QUESTIONS for Gene Foreman: Ethics Textbook Author

NEWS FLASH: Jews Are ‘Apes And Pigs.’ So Why is Egypt’s Morsi the Elephant in America’s Newsrooms?   [Parts 1, 2 and 3]

HADIDISM: Does Peter Baker of the New York Times have a Diaa Hadid Problem [Parts 1 and 2]

THE MEDIA INTIFADA:  Bad Math, Ugly Truths about the New York Times in Israel-Hamas War

If the critical need for Mideast Dig could be encapsulated in one quote, it might be what Ben Rhodes—the former White House deputy security advisor for strategic communications—conceded in 2016 about how U.S. journalists are often handled by Washington. He cited Moscow and Cairo as examples of cities where journalists who “literally know nothing” ask the White House to explain to them what’s going on inside those regions. He could just as accurately have added Jerusalem, or any number of other Middle Eastern cities.

As Rhodes said:

“We [The White House] created an echo chamber [to build support for the Iran nuclear deal]… They [journalists] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say… All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”