Journalism can be a polarizing industry. Stories can play on our emotions and fears, featuring clear villains and protagonists vie for our attention and our eyeballs. It's not to say those stories aren't true. But often, the reality behind them isn't so black and white. In fact, just about anywhere you look, there tends to be quite a bit of grey area. And that grey area is the space I think we need to be spending more time in, which is why this month, I invited Baku-born journalist and researcher, Emil Sanamyan, to the show. Emil is the former Washington Bureau editor of the now-defunct newspaper, The Armenian Reporter. In this episode, we explore some of the grey areas of Armenian politics and culture.

Stephen Kurkjian is a red-blooded and Red Sox-loving native of Dorchester, blessed with the gift of gab and a hearty appetite for a good story. Those last two things he made a career out of at a little paper called The Boston Globe, where he worked for nearly 50 years as a reporter and won 3 Pulitzers. But Boston is, if anything, a tribal city, and Kurkjian has always felt a certain privilege at being a member of one particular tribe: the Armenian Diaspora. In our latest podcast, former editor Karine Vann sits down with him to talk about growing up Armenian in Boston, his career at the Globe, and the role of journalism in shaping our communities and world views.

In this pilot episode, recorded in May of 2018 shortly after Armenia's nationwide revolution, the Weekly’s assistant editor, Karine Vann, interviews political analyst Irina Ghaplanyan, author of the recent book, Post-Soviet Armenia: The New National Elite and the New National Narrative. The interview covers a number of topics, including the evolution of Armenia’s political elite from independence until now; insight into what kinds of factors made the April 2018 Velvet Revolution possible; the role of media in the protests; and suggestions on how to bridge the divides between journalism in the Diaspora and Armenia.