InternationalResolved: Armenians have plenty to say
Published: Friday December 26, 2008
It's time for our annual New Year's resolutions.
We want to start with a thank you. A package arrived in the mail about a month ago. It contained over a dozen photographs from 20 years earlier, each with a carefully prepared caption. It included a report read to a physicians' conference back then, and other items from the 1988 earthquake. Dr. Vartiter Kotcholosian Hovannisian had gone through a lot of trouble to respond to our request for memories from the earthquake and our communities' response to it.
Others, like Beth Rustigian Broussalian, Rubina Peroomian, and Sylvie Tertzakian, had done likewise.
Thank you.
We see it as our job to tell your stories, dear readers. And we know of no better way than to solicit your help.
Sometimes you send us your stories in the form of a news release. Sometimes our correspondents track you down because you have made news. Sometimes our reporters approach you just because you are there: an Armenian-American voter outside a polling booth, a parent at an Armenian children's event, a participant in an Armenian street fair.
We want to hear your voice and tell your story. And our first new year's resolution is to keep asking for your help.
High standards
Last year and the year before in this space, we resolved to set a high standard for ourselves, to have high expectations of our community, to be constructive, to appreciate good work, and to reach out to our readers. We also resolved to develop an Internet presence that meets your information needs in an efficient and accessible manner.
Looking back, we believe we have kept our promises to ourselves and to you. We know we can do much more.
Here's what we said last year: With our own worldwide team of professionals, and drawing on the resources of CS Media, the premier Armenian media group, we will bring you, our readers, a first-class newspaper every week.
We reiterate that resolution this year and go a step further: you won't have to wait a week to get our latest stories.
With our Internet tools - above all our website, reporter.am - we are able to bring stories to you as soon as we report them. In 2008, readers were able to follow the Armenia-Turkey soccer match live on our website. Some other fast-developing stories were updated a few times a day. We will build on that experience in 2009, careful to maintain our track record of reliable, thoughtful coverage.
When we started our weekly Arts & Culture section, we felt confident that the Armenian cultural scene and the involvement of Armenians in the arts would provide us with plenty of stories to tell. After 94 dynamic issues, we still have new stories to share with readers every week. That is a wonderful testament to the vitality of our artistic community. We will continue to build that section of the paper.
Our enhanced coverage of community life has allowed you to see yourself, your relatives, and your friends in the paper more often. We resolve to work harder to cover the issues that weigh on your mind: challenges and opportunities faced in schools, in community centers, and beyond, by the young, by working folks, by older Armenians, by women and men, by recent immigrants and those long established.
We are proud of our first-hand coverage of developments in our nation's capital. As the new administration comes into office, and the new Congress is sworn in, we will be there to watch, to report, and to bring you thoughtful analysis, along with practical calls to action.
Likewise, we are pleased to be able to bring you first-hand coverage of developments in the homeland. We will continue to try to balance coverage of politics and arts with stories about the lives and work of ordinary folks in various parts of Armenia and Karabakh.
Have high expectations, appreciate good work, and be constructive
The Armenian-American community in the early 21st century has the human and material resources to excel at whatever it chooses to do. We again resolve to set our sights high, and to hold our community to high standards.
As we do so, we will be on the lookout for worthy initiatives: across the United States and beyond, Armenian groups - small and large, long established and newly formed - as well as individuals are implementing great projects. We will give them their due in these pages.
Where expectations are high, there will be disappointments and shortcomings. We will not shy away from reporting and drawing attention to problems. Our commitment, however, is to verify our facts, to report in a respectful manner, and to be constructive.
Don't forget to write
With so many wonderful people in our communities, producing a newspaper can be a most enjoyable challenge. We resolve again to organize our work so we can be in our communities as much as possible. (And that includes our online communities. Many of us spend as much time exchanging views with friends thousands of miles away as we do talking to our neighbors.)
Finally, as was the case last year, we have a resolution for you: tell us your stories. Write to the editors of the Armenian Reporter. Or, if you prefer, pick up your camera and tell us your story by video, or in pictures.
Let us know what's on your mind, and what you and your fellow Armenians are up to. Let us know what you think about the issues we cover, the issues we ought to cover, and the way we cover them. And let us know some of your resolutions.
