My humble submission for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize

Our editor-at-large reviews his year in columns and finds his triumphs abound

December 20, 2024, 6:09 PM

It's a tough gig, but Frank Kane wrote about 70,000 for AGBI this year covering everything from Cops to cars — It's a tough gig, but Frank Kane covered everything from Cops to cars for AGBI this year

I just totted it up and over the past 12 months I have written something like 70,000 words in my regular columns for AGBI.

Quite a lot of words, that – a shortish novel, or maybe a slim volume of my soon-to-be-published memoirs which will ultimately stretch to (perhaps) 10 volumes, depending on longevity.

Re-reading some of the oeuvres over the past couple of days, there are some triumphs, and some minor disappointments.

I won’t dwell here on the latter – that is for next week when I will review my last year’s predictions for 2024. Spoiler alert: I am not about to change my name to Nostradamus.

But the triumphs are, in my own humble reckoning, legion. Here are some of the stories I believe should earn me a Pulitzer nomination in 2025:

The Russians

Coverage this year was a continuation of my work in 2022 and 2023, when I invented the term “Marinagrad” for the nice part of Dubai where I live and which has been colonised by Russian emigrés since the invasion of Ukraine. Despite what you might read elsewhere, I can report from the field they are not all going back to the motherland, and in fact are about to have a major impact on the Marina with the imminent opening of District 8 – a full-on late-night karaoke club in this genteel quarter. You will hear more about this in 2025.

Climate change

With two Cop events in the near-abroad (Baku and Riyadh), a lot of my time was spent thinking about the pressing issue of global warming, before ultimately deciding I had been right all along: it is too urgent an issue to be left to environmentalists and Guardian readers (indeed, writers), and has to be addressed by the global energy industry. Fortunately, the big energy brains of the Arabian Gulf are already on the case, the UAE and Saudi Arabia in particular, so we should be in safe hands – as long as the simplicities of the Western eco-warriors are ditched forthwith.

Trump derangement syndrome

This has been a traumatic year for anybody who thought, like me, that Donald Trump was a clear and present danger to the US and the world. For us the November election was a disaster of seismic proportions. But since then I have taken my cue from all the CEOs of big US companies who clearly thought the same until November 5, but who now believe President Trump will be an economic liberator who will usher in a new era of American greatness. (Warning: this view is subject to change.)

Dubai’s cost-of-living crisis

OK, maybe I cannot take sole credit for identifying this as a challenge for the emirate – several other whining, moaning hacks also complained about the soaring cost of living in Dubai in the course of 2024. But I do claim unique exposure to the phenomenon, as witnessed in my whinges about my 85 percent rent rise, school fee increases, Uber charges and traffic congestion – and the reimposition of the 30 percent municipality tax on alcohol.

Dubai bling

The flipside to the soaring cost of living is that Dubai has become an even more fascinating and exciting place to live and work – and I have tried to give it full coverage. New swanky restaurant reviews, on-the-ground reconnaissance of the flesh-pots of the DIFC and other pleasure domes, test-drives of Rolls-Royces and Ferraris – these took up a fair amount of my time in 2024. I think it’s about time I was recognised for the unflinching self-sacrifice that goes into this painstaking work. It’s tough, but somebody has to do it.

Saudi Arabia

My home-from-home in the Gulf, the kingdom has, if anything, accelerated the pace of social and cultural change under Vision 2030, as has been confirmed during my many visits to Riyadh this year. Even before the recent opening of the city’s metro, I found travel around the Saudi capital had got immeasurably better – mainly because I finally bit the bullet and used a dedicated chauffeur service in my daily schedule there. It’s amazing how much better you can appreciate the subtle shifts in the city’s cultural ecosystem from the back of a wi-fi enabled Yukon.

If that treasure trove of journalistic triumphs doesn’t grab the attention of the judges at Columbia University in New York, I don’t know what will.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia