Lara Bitar is an independent media worker based in Beirut, Lebanon, an editorial consultant with extensive experience across publishing platforms — and the founder and editor of The Public Source, a magazine of long-form journalism.
As founding editor, she established the magazine’s vision — grounded in leftist politics and critical inquiry — and sets its editorial direction and tone, guiding long-form and investigative work from inception to publication.
As founding editor, Bitar established the magazine’s vision — defining its political commitments, editorial tone, and intellectual scope.
Bitar’s media practice is founded on a deep sense of place, a geographical imperative, which centers marginalized communities and connects their struggles to broader frameworks.
Over the past decade, she took on different editorial leadership roles in digital, broadcast, and print journalism. Her former professional engagements include producing the Peabody Award-winning Middle East news show Mosaic News at Link TV in San Francisco, and leading editorial teams at the digital freedoms organization SMEX and the online publication Al-Akhbar English.
Bitar contributes reports on social movements and civil unrest to grassroots media projects in the US and Lebanon and writes for regional and feminist publications. Committed to labor struggles and radicalizing the local press, Bitar is organizer of a Beirut-based media collective for independent and freelance journalists.
To varying degrees, her current work focuses on reshaping the future of the (local) press, politicizing labor, and organizing freelancers. Her research interests include archives of/as resistance and the role of protest memory.
Lara J. Bitar 