In January 2013, Asparez Journalists Club’s daily paper Asparez launched a satellite office in Armenia’s third-largest city, Vanadzor. The paper’s founder and editor Levon Barseghyan says that gradually they’ll make more room for stories from Vanadzor and will attempt to publish news articles comparing Vanadzor with Armenia’s second largest-city, Gyumri. 

“There will be articles about similar issues or sectors — Gyumri-Vanadzor, Shirak-Lori… we’re going to focus more on investigatory, exploratory, and analytical journalism,” he says. 

Hrach Hovhannisyan, one of the six journalists working for Asparez in Vanadzor, says currently, he reads his articles only online, since the paper is as of yet distributed only in Gyumri. Hrach, with anticipation, monitors the number of views of his article online, as well as feedback to his pieces on social networking sites. 

“My piece on singer Anna Avetyan, who was eliminated from The Voice of Armenia [televised song contest], has been viewed 900 times, and there’s an ever-increasing number of comments,” says Hrach excitedly.

Asparez editor Levon Barseghyan says the Vanadzor-themed articles have not yet had an impact on the sale of the paper in Gyumri. Even without them, Asparez is operating at a loss — only 250 out of 300 print copies are sold. “Right now we, the founders, with our own personal funds, are covering the deficit. I believe that one day we will get to a point where we can be self-sustainable,” he says.

Starting from mid-February, the paper will be disseminated also in Vanadzor, Spitak, Alaverdi, and Stepanavan. In Barseghyan’s opinion, “regardless of technological progress, Armenia’s second and third cities will have local daily [print] newspapers.”

Adrine Torosyan, Vanadzor