Aljazeera Publishing
Aljazeera Publishing was formed in 1992 in London to produce content for expatriate Persian Gulf residents living in the United Kingdom. The publishing was disbanded in April 2011 after the sale of its main assets to regional media organizations including Al Jazeera Media Network, Noor Media and MBC.
Despite the similarity in names, Aljazeera Publishing has no relations nor affiliation with the Qatari state media conglomerate Al Jazeera Media Network.
Al Jazeera Magazine
Aljazeera Publishing first published a monthly magazine in 1992 called Al Jazeera Al Arabia. From its start to 1993 the magazine was published by Shiite opposition groups exiled in London. Since then it has adopted a shortened version of the name as simply Al Jazeera Magazine.The shortening of the title occurred after an external investment by a Saudi Arabian investment company. Al Jazeera Publishing was highly critical of the Saudi Arabian government’s human rights records and published a number of critical reports in 1993, 1994 and 1995.
These human rights reports raised Al Jazeera Al Arabia’s profile on the Middle East stage. Extracts of such reports were used in a Human Rights Watch report as published in 1993, as well as the Islamic Research and Information Center.
Since 1996 no more anti Saudi Arabian stories appeared in any of Al Jazeera Publishing titles, rather the attention appeared to have turned against the Qatari ruling family with a string of hostile articles such as "Egypt arrests Qatari prince over illegal car race", "Qatari prince convicted of abusing girls", "First church in Muslim Qatar risks backlash" and "Qatar finances sports centre in Israel".
History of ''Al Jazeera Magazine''
Until March 2011, aljazeera.com was an English language website for Al Jazeera Magazine, which was unrelated to the Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English; the latter operated websites in both Arabic and English. It was also unrelated to Al Jazirah Newspaper of Saudi Arabia. According to Alexa, there were fewer visitors to aljazeera.com in comparison to aljazeera.net. The former website was operated by Aljazeera Publishing, described as an "independent media organisation."Domain name dispute
In 2005, the Al Jazeera Media Network owner of Al Jazeera English attempted to obtain the aljazeera.com domain name but failed.In the Administrative Panel Decision, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center found the TV Channel to have brought the proceedings in bad faith and found it had abused the administrative proceedings.
As of 2006, Aljazeera.com wrote on their About page:
Views presented by Aljazeera.com are frequently misattributed to the Al Jazeera TV channel, including one case in which The Times criticised the channel in its leader column based on material published on Aljazeera.com, for which the newspaper later apologised. The magazine's editorial slant appears markedly different than that of the Al Jazeera TV channel, with the former far more critical of U.S. and Israeli policy than the latter.
In April 2011, the domain aljazeera.com directed to Al Jazeera English, and the domain ownership as listed on WHOIS records was updated from AlJazeera Publishing to Al Jazeera Media Network. At the time of the purchase, a simple page stated "Moving to Doha", leading to certain long-time readers initially suspecting a hack of the website. No public details regarding the purchase of the domain has been made public by either parties.