You mean I no longer have to rely on Charles Johnson and Michelle Malkin for my news on Middle Eastern affairs?

Mark Lynch of Abu Aardvark has just rolled out a new Middle Eastern “blog-journal,” Qahwa Sada (which evidently means “black coffee”). Lynch explains the premise:

Why a new blog-journal by Middle East experts? Because Middle East studies specialists have a phenomenal amount of quality knowledge about the Arab and Islamic world: deep knowledge about the history of the region, detailed empirical knowledge of political and social trends, sophisticated theoretical insights into their meaning. Many are out there in the region, seeing things happen and talking to people over a sustained period of time. But they often have trouble getting that knowledge out into the public realm. Part of the problem is that there just aren’t nearly enough of the right kind of outlets. Academic journals are not well suited to getting information and analysis out to a wide public, and many have yet to adapt to the internet era. Blogs are wonderful, but not everyone wants one or has the time to run one. The op-ed pages are a crapshoot. MERIP and the Arab Reform Bulletin can’t do it all on their own. That means that debate is too often dominated by people with, shall we say, a less empirically rich or theoretically sophisticated understanding of the region.

I’m particularly excited about this. Abu Aardvark is a daily read for me, and Lynch (whom I’ve never met) seems like a swell fellow in addition to offering really smart observations on media, politics and society in the Middle East.

I will note, however, that it took exactly one post before a commenter — the first commenter ever at Qahwa Sada— descended into a thinly-veiled attack on Juan Cole. Which I suppose only underscores why this project is needed in the first place.