Armenian Paper Modernizes, but Keeps Links With the Past

When George Mason drove into Fresno to start an English-language weekly newspaper for Armenians in 1959, there were about 50,000 Armenians in California. They were mostly fruit farmers who had lived for a generation or more in California. And they wanted a way to keep in touch with a culture whose language they had mostly forgotten.

Today, Mason is a Beverly Hills financier and the Courier is based in Glendale. His paper’s original editor, Reese Cleghorn, is dean of the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and the modest paper they founded in the back of a gas station is the state’s oldest Armenian newspaper.

It is virtually unknown outside the Armenian-American community, but among its readers--immigrants and children of immigrants--it is a link to the simpler Armenian life style of a generation ago and a fiercely independent political journal that tackles the problems of the Southern California Armenian community today.

It has survived, Armenian scholars say, by adapting to the times.

Recently, a group of California Armenians toasted the Courier at a lavish $500-a-plate banquet, with Gov. George Deukmejian as guest speaker.

The Courier, now owned by a young Armenian from Syria, Harut Sassounian, has 3,000 subscribers and an estimated readership three times that. It has offices in an Armenian-owned building in Glendale, a city whose population is about one-fourth Armenian.

It circulates in 35 states and 20 foreign countries. Its subscribers, an affluent, worldly group, include Deukmejian and former California Court of Appeal Justice Richard Amerian. It is owned and edited by a Columbia University graduate who writes articles about U.S. refugee policy, and it takes controversial stands that often get its readership hopping mad.

“The amazing thing about the Courier is the extent to which it has mirrored the community’s growth of self-confidence,” said Salpi Ghazarian, director of the West Coast office of the Zoryan Institute, a nonprofit Armenian educational foundation. “It started out as a small little weekly and has grown to a point where there is more discussion of political and social issues that are difficult and controversial. This is a crisis time for Armenians and the Courier is one of the few papers dealing with that.”

The Armenian-American community, with a Southern California population of more than 250,000 and thousands more arriving every month, is swiftly changing. The Courier is read by leaders of many of the Armenian organizations that serve the refugees and by many of the organizations still coping with the aftermath of December’s earthquake in Soviet Armenia.

The Courier began responding to some of those concerns a few years ago, under the leadership of Sassounian, the paper’s editor since 1983. The paper has become lively, political and a good deal more liberal than many of its readers, but so far it has retained the loyalty of its founders and longtime subscribers.

Robert Shamlian, an Armenian banker who lives in Glendale, has been a Courier subscriber since the beginning. He kept his subscription after Sassounian and his wife, Irene, took over, and doesn’t mind the way the paper has changed.

“Usually I don’t agree with Harut’s point of view; he’s a little bit more liberal than I,” Shamlian said. “But it’s nice to have a contrasting point of view. It opens up your thoughts.”

There are at least five Armenian newspapers in Los Angeles today and about a dozen more around the country. Several publish in English and several based in Boston are older than the Courier.

But the Courier is one of only three papers published in English not affiliated with one of the Armenian political parties. Its motto is “The Newspaper for All Armenians.”

Sassounian bought the weekly from Mason in 1986, three years after taking over as editor. From the first, he insisted on moving the paper to Los Angeles, the heart of Armenian life in the United States. Once a money loser, the paper has increased its advertising by almost 75% and turns enough of a profit to support Sassounian and his wife. Sassounian has done it by working late at night and on weekends and learning about journalism through common sense.

Sassounian is Syrian by birth and political by temperament. He has a master’s degree in business from Pepperdine University and one from Columbia University in international relations. He speaks Armenian, Arabic, English and French.

Sassounian is one of the more recent arrivals among Armenians who derisively call people such as Mason and the Fresno community his paper served “shish kebab” Armenians--suggesting that their interest in their homeland’s culture ends with a skewer of meat.

The Courier under Sassounian concerns itself intimately with Armenian culture. He reviews events and political lectures, travels to Washington and New York to interview Armenian leaders there, and has written about international issues such as arms talks, Soviet glasnost , the age-old conflict between Armenians and Turks, and the recent heated ethnic protests in Soviet Armenia.