prologue

....and Boghos Kupelian takes a swig of the Armenian brandy and congratulates the three dozen young Armenians gathered on the second-floor office of the former Atwater Village, California, warehouse that has served as the temporary office of the West Coast Bureau of the Armenian Reporter.

The occasion is a visit from our editor Vincent Lima from Yerevan. I have invited the sixty-plus active contributors to the Reporter to come, meet up, chat, and enjoy lahmejune and boregs and tahn from Sassoun Bakery . . . and brandy. The latter was the idea of Boghos’s son Roger Kupelian. As I walk from one friendly face to another, it dawns on me that not only have we just finished producing the first year of an exceptionally interesting, avant-garde Armenian newspaper, but we have actually engaged young Armenians to participate in something uniquely Armenian.

Thanks to the leadership of the newspaper’s owner and the support of our growing circle of subscribers and advertisers, we have reached out to Armenians who may have never been part of the community and may have had no reason to get involved with the community.

What we have done is perhaps engage more Armenians, giving a pivotal role to some of our most talented artists, writers, journalists, photographers, and supporters.

They came one-by-one at the beginning, being drawn to a newspaper, and then they have come in twos then tens.

These young Armenians have become an active part of this weekly dialogue about all things Armenian. We have made them our storytellers, the creators of culture, introducing them to other like-minded Armenians, and created a bridge to our new and collective Armenian identity – one we were suddenly even more proud of.

The second realization at our party, in an unremarkable warehouse in an unremarkable part of Los Angeles, is that most of these young people are writers, communicators, some with double degrees from absurdly tough writing programs to get into. They are mainstream journalists, but none of them have ever had a chance to do what they are doing in this new Armenian media before.

As we enter the second year of the new Armenian Reporter, it’s amazing to think that in addition to keeping our readers informed and up to date with news from Armenia and news relevant to Armenia, Armenians, and our diaspora communities, we have recreated old ties and forged new ties with the sons and daughters of the Armenian people – not only the contributors to these pages, but those talented souls we write about week in and week out. Their involvement has produced a virtual, living museum, a place to see the art and meet the artist.

We look forward to a second year of successes and your involvement.

-- paul chaderjian