Media in our country mainly operates for the local market; that is, for local Armenians familiar with the Armenia context. And though the newsfeed is translated in other languages, in many cases the quality of the translated pieces is not great, and the target audience, vague.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, audiences inside and outside the country have different insights, and often the mechanical translation doesn\u2019t help those outside Armenia understand the nuances of a situation. Usually, when the emphasis is on a local audience, the issue of translating the content in other languages becomes secondary, more so an advantage over optics, and not a much-needed bridge. <\/p>\n
The site ArmeniaNow.com, which shut down last year, in a sense was this bridge \u2014 for those searching for impartial but not official information about Armenia.<\/p>\n
The scarcity of English-language pieces in some cases is offset by active online users proficient in English, who try on both blogs and social media to make Armenia\u2019s voice heard in the world and ensure information circulates in international media.<\/p>\n
One of these people is American University of Armenia (AUA) lecturer Maria Titizian, upon whose initiative the online magazine EVN Report<\/a> was created recently. The magazine will publish pieces exclusively in English and exclusively about Armenia and Artsakh.<\/p>\n The idea for creating this platform emerged during the days of the April War<\/a>, when the world\u2019s attention was on Armenia, and there was a noticeable lack of information.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ministry of Foreign Affairs was silent, and the minister was not in Armenia. The only source was the defense ministry spokesperson, who was disseminating official news releases \u2014 and in Facebook, at that. There were official statements several times a day, which I translated and shared on social media, since I saw that there just wasn\u2019t news in English,\u201d says Titizian.<\/p>\n During those days, the number of her followers on Facebook and Twitter grew by several thousand. \u201cMany wrote that they understand what\u2019s happening in Armenia and Artsakh by going to my page or reading my blog. Even more so, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nagorno-Karabakh was publishing my translations on its official website.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, many international media, BBC, Al Jazeera, and so on, who were searching for information sources, contacted informed and English-speaking online users.<\/p>\n \u201cThe same thing happened in the case of the Sasna Dzrer [Daredevils of Sassoun]. Again I began to share information on Twitter, Facebook; I was even forced to tell the Al Jazeera journalist that she couldn\u2019t call me at night and ask for comments. It became clear that it wouldn\u2019t be possible to fill the information gap this way, and we needed an English-language platform. Otherwise, it turned out that we weren\u2019t speaking with the world, but beating our chests, we communicate only with each other,\u201d says Titizian, who has been living in Armenia for 16 years and, she says, is here for the long haul, burning all the bridges and accepting that this is her place.<\/p>\n Contributors and Finances<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n EVNReport.com is the brainchild of several supporters, has a board of directors, two main employees, and various contributors. It will operate in the format of an online magazine, publishing five to six pieces weekly on various topics of public interest.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have the means to get news to people every day, like a daily paper. To tell you the truth, there\u2019s no need for that. What we\u2019re missing more are analyses written in English, more in-depth articles and discussions, which will help readers understand the contradictory situation [here]. In Armenia, it seems there are no \u2018middle colors\u2019: everything is either black or white. We figured that perhaps measured pieces written in English will raise the level of discourse,\u201d says Titizian, who is the chief editor of the platform.<\/p>\n She places importance on not only the issue of language, but also culture and the structure of pieces. And in covering any current topic, they are going to try not to be extreme.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must also show that there\u2019s good too, while at the same time being free of rose-colored glasses and not present life as, say, the Public Television of Armenia does. I\u2019ve always behaved this way, and some thought it was a lack of position. There must be a balance. If we write only about the bad things, we\u2019ll deprive people outside the country of the glimmer of hope. Meanwhile, people return to Armenia because they see possibilities here. And the possibility of building, first of all.\u201d<\/p>\n Titizian tries to encourage her friends, friends of friends, and AUA lecturers to write. The goal is to create both a good business model and a useful platform. <\/p>\n In general, all media platforms have two main issues: contributors and finances.<\/p>\n The financial issue of this newly created platform is still undetermined. \u201cIt\u2019s somewhat funny, but I told the contributors that their first pieces have to be unpaid. If they want, also the second, the third, the fifth\u2026 I audaciously tried to take the first steps this way. And I\u2019m very happy and grateful that no contributor has refused us to date. Of course, we hope that we will be able to pay contributors living in Armenia a honorarium that\u2019s a little bit higher than market price,\u201d says Titizian.<\/p>\n EVN Report didn\u2019t want to go the crowdfunding route, though, in Titizian\u2019s opinion, if during the Four-Day April War every user seeking English-language news paid a meager sum, they would have a large financial reserve now.<\/p>\n The platform\u2019s board of directors decided that they should initially enter the market modestly, and only then think about expanding and fundraising. The platform now operates with the financial assistance of board members, then they\u2019ll urge the diaspora to invest.<\/p>\n Titizian regrets that the culture of subscription is not popular among Armenia\u2019s media, though it\u2019s the best but also most difficult way to communicate with the audience.<\/p>\n \u201cThe day the site launched, there was news that Artur Sargsyan [the Bread Bringer] had died<\/a>. We thought, we hesitated, about what to do. And Arto Vaun very quickly wrote a piece<\/a>, which received many views. That is, we showed that we\u2019re entering the field, understanding very well what\u2019s happening around us and we\u2019re ready to respond quickly,\u201d says Titizian.<\/p>\n And she reminds us that we\u2019re in a region today that can catch fire at any moment, and the world\u2019s attention will be directed towards us. And it\u2019s important that Armenia\u2019s perspective on contradictory reality be heard in the world.<\/p>\n Nune Hakhverdyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Media in our country mainly operates for the local market; that is, for local Armenians familiar with the Armenia context. And though the newsfeed is translated in other languages, in many cases the quality of the translated pieces is not great, and the target audience, vague. Ultimately, audiences inside and outside the country have different Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsroom","author_posts-nune-hakhverdyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}