[7][8] Hamid Ghuyarfi was the editor-in-chief of Al Yaum until 1981 when he was dismissed due to his criticism against the Saudi government.
[7] Being a native paper of the Eastern Province Al Yaum critically covered negative living conditions of local people in the region before the Qatif uprising in 1979.
[3] It also covers regional news, sports events, and social issues that are of interest to the readers in Saudi Arabia and Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
[4] Although the paper focuses on the local news and mainly serves the Eastern province,[13] it is distributed across the Persian Gulf region.
[9] In May of the same year the paper was suspended by the Saudi government due to the fact that its literary supplement became popular among the progressive and leftist young writers who were close to the Communist Party in Saudi Arabia and the Socialist Action Party in the Arabian Peninsula (Hizb alʿamal al-ishtiraki fi al-jazira al-ʿarabiyya).