The Armenian Weekly: A community-sustaining oasis in a near-news desert

Special Issue: 90 — Informing, Connecting, Inspiring
The Armenian Weekly, October 2024

When was the last time you perused a mainstream news medium and found well-grounded, reliable content about Armenia, Artsakh or your local Armenian-American community? In my experience, the answer is: almost never.

Celebrating the Armenian Weekly’s milestone 90th birthday allows us to reflect on the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s (ARF) foresight in establishing this English-language newspaper and the achievements of a storied publication that consistently punches above its weight class. However, equal time is needed to consider the Weekly’s long-term viability and the role it plays in the world of Armenian-American communities east of the Mississippi River — and beyond.

In the ever-fractured world of American mainstream media, ethnic newspapers like the Weekly play an increasingly important and often outsize role in the lives of readers — subscribers and free content users alike. The thirst for stories covering Armenia, Artsakh and our local communities cannot be quenched without a reliable local Armenian news outlet.

If you’ve heard the term “news desert,” you know that it describes geographic areas that have lost the daily or weekly news and information vehicles that local folks rely on for informed civic engagement and democracy building. However, “news desert” also describes the information vacuum that ethnic communities experience when overlooked by their local mainstream media.

“Local news outlets certainly cover a local community, but they don’t necessarily cover or serve all communities within that geography,” said El Tímpano founder Madeleine Bair in the 2020 University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media report News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive? In the same report, La Noticia publisher Hilda Gurdian added, “In the best case we are undercovered. In the worst case, we are ignored.”

We know that the Boston Globe, New York Times, Newark Star-Ledger, Detroit News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post, Worcester Telegram, Providence Journal, Lowell Sun and other mainstream outlets serving locations where large numbers of eastern region U.S. Armenian-Americans reside do not regularly or reliably report on international, national and local Armenian-themed content in their profit-driven, expensive, sometimes declining and largely inaccessible spaces. Where would one turn to find information centering our eastern region U.S. communities without the Weekly’s vetted and curated content about the ARF and its family of organizations, other political and civic entities, allies and opponents, the Armenian Apostolic and other Armenian churches, schools, nonprofits, the arts, business, sports, personal endeavors and achievements and political activism and engagement? How would we fare in our majority non-Armenian environment if the ideas that flow through the Weekly into our eastern region communities stopped?

As already noted, many benefit from consuming the wide variety of rich content the Weekly makes available for free on its website and social media platforms. Like the mainstream media, the Weekly and other ethnic media outlets need to make money to keep the enterprise going by working hard to build subscriber bases and long-term advertising relationships. But mainstream media’s difficulties with generating ad revenue and non-subscriber conversions are shared by ethnic media, including the Weekly.

Because creating a news oasis in a near-news desert isn’t cheap, ethnic newspapers and their related media use multi-pronged approaches to keep the lights on and the content flowing, including offering creative advertising packages, pursuing grants from relevant nonprofits, holding fundraisers, seeking sustaining donations and trimming costs at brick-and-mortar offices. The Weekly is no different, and the Hairenik Association uses each of these income-generating strategies so that it can continue to produce its beloved legacy papers, including the 125-year-young Hairenik Weekly and the new Hairenik Media channel, as continuing community investments.

So, dear reader, while it is right and good to observe the Weekly’s milestone anniversary, we must also use this occasion to rededicate ourselves to supporting the Weekly and her sister entities’ community-sustaining work so that many more birthdays and milestones can be celebrated. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in a diasporan desert without the oasis that holds and shares stories of the places we built, nurture and cherish.