“No serious newspaper will survive in Iraq today unless the security situation improves. Advertisers aren’t interested. Locals can’t afford to spend much on a newspaper. As a newspaper owner, you’re in trouble,” said Mark Gordon-James, 25, the former finance director of the BAGHDAD BULLETIN, the English language newspaper that has gone belly-up. Established by a team of mainly young, adventurous British expatriates straight after the war, the paper showed early promise. Little did the team predict the persistent operational hazards – power outages to street crime – that would thwart growth from the beginning. All eventually kept advertisers at bay. “Our mistake was to assume that Iraq would be better off three to five months after the war,” said Gordon-James who estimated losses at $20,000 and who argued that if there had been a genuine effort by the coalition to inject money into Iraq and get reconstruction underway, Iraq would
