Armenia

The beat I’ve chosen for this semester is Armenia. My parents and I moved from there 8 years ago, and since then I’ve struggled to connect with the diaspora here. There is barely any conversation around Armenia, what’s going on in the country, and what’s going on with the diaspora in New York, but there is a community here regardless, and I want to familiarize myself with it and write things that will be specifically for the Armenians in New York. In terms of the stuff actually going on in the country, I want to deliver some much needed reporting on the Nagorno Karabakh/Artsakh conflict. At the height of the conflict in 2020, there were Armenian protests all over New York demanding for more media coverage. The feeling of knowing that tomorrow your country could disappear off the map and nobody around you would bat an eye is absolutely nauseating, and that feeling is what drives me to pursue this topic. Of course there’s other things to be reported on in Armenia, but I think amongst the concerning lack of coverage of the war, this is what I am most interested in exploring this semester.