Greetings, world. I’ve been in Armenia for slightly over a month, although it feels much longer than that. Every day is an adventure, good or bad. Every day the heat gets more unbearable than the day before, but the nights are burning here, too, with love and laughter until the morning hours. Time moves strangely here and so does life. Trying to remember every experience and express it with words is becoming increasingly difficult, although I am making updates on my Tumblr when I can. A roundup of stories I’ve been working on, until next time:

• Improving Traffic Safety in Armenia

• Armenia: Animal Activists Demand End to Stray Dog Killings

• Intersections: A Place Best Understood Up Close

• Intersections: The Challenge of Returning Home

• Yerevan Activists Promote Humane Solution to Stray Dog Crisis

• Intersections: Rings of a Heritage’s Tree Trunk

• The Big Picture: Armenia’s Vernissage in Mobile

• The Yerevan Street Shoe Project

• LGBTs still facing discrimination in Armenia

• Armenia: Debating Sexual Abuse Against Women

• Choose Life: Activism Against Suicide

The following is bits and pieces of an article that was found in Anna Politkovskaya’s computer after her death and is addressed to readers abroad. Politkovskaya was an investigative journalist in Russia that was shot and killed at point blank range in the elevator of her apartment building. It is from the book, “Is Journalism Worth Dying For: Final Dispatches.” I read the book on a flight from Los Angeles to London and decided to include here this excerpt, because her passion and determination inspire me more than I can explain on a Tumblr post.

via peacekids.net

What Am I Guilty Of?

“Koverny,” a Russian clown whose job in the olden days was to keep the audience laughing while the circus arena was changed between acts. If he failed to make them laugh, the ladies and gentlemen booed him and the management sacked him.

Almost the entire present generation of Russian journalists, and those sections of the mass media which have survived to date, are clowns of this kind, a Big Top of kovernys who job is to keep the public entertained and, if they do write about anything serious, then merely to tell everyone how wonderful the Pyramid of Power is in all its manifestations.

Journalists and television presenters have taken enthusiastically to their new role in the Big Top. The battle for the right to convey impartial information, rather than act as servants of the Presidential Administration, is already a thing of the past. An atmosphere of intellectual and moral stagnation prevails in the profession to which I too belong, and it has to be said that most of my fellow journalists are not greatly troubled by this reversion from journalism to propagandising on behalf of the powers that be. They openly admit that they are fed information about enemies by members of the Presidential Administration, and are told what to cover and what to steer clear of.

What happens to journalists who don’t want to perform in the Big Top? They become pariahs. I am not exaggerating.

I loathe the current ideology which divides people into those who are “on side,” “not on side,” or even “on the wrong side.” If a journalist is on side, she or he will receive awards and honors, and perhaps be invited to become a Deputy in the Duma. Invited, mind, not elected.

Today a journalist who is not on side is an outcast. I have never sought my present pariah status and it makes me feel like a beached dolphin. I am no political infighter.

I will not go into the other joys of the path I have chosen: the poisoning, the arrests, the menacing by email and over the Internet, the telephoned death threats. The main thing is to get on with my job, to describe the life I see, to receive visitors every day in our newspaper’s offices who have nowhere else to bring their troubles, because the Kremlin finds their stories off-message. The only place they can be aired is in our newspaper, Novaya gazeta.

What am I guilty of? I have merely reported what I witnessed, nothing but the truth.
”
- Anna Politkovskaya, Is Journalism Worth Dying For?

I picked up a Moscow Times paper on my way for a 6 hour stop in Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow in December and read an article titled “Guns Aimed at Journalists Are Aimed At Us All” by Nadezhda Azhgikhina not realizing what a long lasting impression it would have on me. That thin print edition survived a week in Armenia in my luggage, another eight hour stop in Moscow and a very long plane ride back home to Los Angeles, all for the sake of an article that very eloquently explained the tragic situation for the intrepid journalists of Russia.

I occasionally go back to it and re-read it. A few weeks ago, I spotted “Is Journalism Worth Dying For,” by Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist that was shot at point blank range and murdered in 2006. Politkovskaya worked for the famous Novaya Gazeta paper, who has seen five of its journalists murdered in the last 10 years. I’m very much looking forward to devouring this book.

Today, a link on my Twitter feed appeared from the Center of Investigative Reporting in California about how many journalism students in the Russia are turning to entertainment journalism in an effort to not get killed.

This was documented in a 25 minute series called “Killing the Messenger” which I urge you to watch if journalism interests you. There’s also a segment highlighting Novaya Gazeta. Journalist Elena Milashina, who Politkovskaya took under her wing when she was there is featured. She recently wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal – “The High Price of Journalism in Putin’s Russia.”

“I am exhausted from the funerals, and I am frightened for my friends, my colleagues and myself,” she wrote. “This horrifying chain of murders will not be broken until the perpetrators-those who pulled the trigger and especially those behind the killings-are brought to justice. And we can hardly hope for a proper investigation while Vladimir Putin holds the reins of power.”

See “Killing the Messenger” below:

A glimpse of my pale hand and recorder with Jack Kevorkian

Last Saturday,  the famous, or perhaps infamous Dr. Jack Kevorkian was scheduled to speak at UCLA’s Royce Hall in front of a sold out audience. The night was coordinated by UCLA’s Armenian Student Association and the Armenian American Medical Society and was the first time that “Dr. Death” made an appearance for Armenian fans, many of whom lined up anxiously outside the hall waiting for him. I was invited to cover the event, which lasted around two hours and as people piled out, a journalistic switch went off in my head and I darted for the stage.  After haggling with security who wouldn’t let me near him, I flagged down his attorney, gave him my card, then somehow got access backstage to an impromptu press conference. Once there, I got a chance to ask Dr. Kevorkian two questions. Alongside a line of television crews, I was left in a euphoric state after he gave the longest and most thoughtful answers to me.

While I’ve down played the details of this encounter and the events that came before so that I don’t sound like completely like a baffling buffoon, it was definitely an exciting night.  Every single time I go out to file a report, it makes me realize why I decided to become a journalist in the first place. There is nothing better than that rush that propels you forward, that moment that you’re sweating head to toe but you don’t care because something, some greater force that you can’t control or explain is making your legs move or your voice heard at the spur of the moment – completely unplanned.

You don’t think, you don’t analyze, you don’t ask for someone’s opinion, or wait around to see what happens. Fear or anxiety are nowhere to be found. You charge forward and you just do. That is what journalism is all about and that’s why there’s nothing else in this world that could make me as happy as it does.

In case you’d like to read an account of the night:

Jack Kevorkian Connects with Armenian Fans at Sold Out Show

Burak Kara/Getty Images

Hrant Dink was murdered the year I graduated. Shot at point blank range in Istanbul by a young nationalist because he was a journalist who was interested in progress and changing the system. I didn’t know him personally and only learned about him months before he was killed, but I felt as if I had lost one of my own, and I had.

Dink, his work, his views and everything he stood for has had a profound impact on me over the years. His courage and unfaltering determination, his ability to look at things from all perspectives, his strength to stand up, often alone, for something – it’s all given me the courage to keep pushing forward. He is someone I draw strength from, someone who has continually been an inspiration in my own writing, someone I am proud of to have shared a culture and a profession with.

And yet the image of Mr. Dink, face down on the street, covered by a white blanket, with the soles of his shoes upright gives me chills. This is not how I want to remember him. Why do we do this to the people who care the most about humanity? A journalist murdered by a misguided youth – that’s not the way Mr. Dink should have gone.

Remembering him isn’t enough. If he is to be honored, there needs to be progress, or else we’ve failed.

Four years later, not much has changed, but here’s to hoping that it might.

“I challenge the accepted version of history because I do not write about things in black and white. People here are used to black and white; that’s why they are astonished that there are other shades, too.” – H.D

A few links to what I’ve written about him are below:

Bridges Hrant Dink Built: A Conversation with Jirair Libaridian

Then, Now and Later: The Legacy of Hrant Dink

A few links to recent must read articles about him:

Mouardian: No One is Hrant Dink: 96 Years of Solitude, and 4 Years of the Same

1915 and the Unsolved Murder of Hrant Dink

In Memoriam: I Fear Hrant Dink’s Name is Becoming a Trademark

My last post sounded cryptic, I know, but recent revelations needed some time to soak in the crevices of my life before I could type them out.

The gist of it, in the most simplest of terms, is that I quit my job. In media. In a bad economy. Please cue the firing squad.

For three years, I worked as an editor for  a new media site, copy editing, fact-checking and manhandling a bevy of freelance writers. Some of my proudest work appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a few Hearst newspapers.

After hours, I freelanced for local and national publications, adding 20 hours to a 40 hour work week. Then, I decided that it wasn’t enough. Along came 20 more hours of sweat and tears put into my own publication.

And so I went along, with my days bleeding into each other, until that funny little thing that all journalists possess took over me: intrepidity.

The fear of no work and therefore no money in a bad market was gone. The need for stability disappeared. Everything I had known for years, from high school to college, to this job, became clear: I am a journalist. I live and breathe headlines and nut graphs and slideshows. Nothing excites me more than a good article. I am at my  happiest when I’m chasing a story. I am journalism and journalism is me, for better or for worse.

So, I handed my notice, left my salary and a truly amazing group of people to venture into the unknown, where the ratio of journalists to jobs is shocking. May the force be with me, I know.

Here I am, in a knitted bobble hat and sweats, sipping on Iranian tea (Sadaf, if you’re curious) in my KCRW mug, on my first official day without a salary. I turned in a story, starting work on another and gave my dog a bath, but mostly, I outlined on a piece of paper I stole from the printer my POA, or plan of action, if you will. Story ideas, trips abroad, grants, fellowships, you name it, I’ve written it down. Much of the page is taken up my outlets I want (need, must) write for, including the Guardian, Global Post, EurasiaNet, California Watch and the Los Angeles Times (hello, is it me you’re looking for? yes, yes it is.)

Why did I do this?

Because I still believe.

I believe in journalism. I believe in it maybe to a fault. When you believe, nothing else seems to matter.

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, in a month or a year from now, but I do know this: I am going to give this industry everything I’ve got, because it can’t be removed from my core. And if you love something enough that it fills your core, pursue, pursue, pursue. The hard work has to pay off. It just has to. Fear and courage run on a thinly veiled line, so choose wisely.

2011 is going to be an adventure filled with pitches, bylines, self-discovery, love, highs, lows, travel and the pursuit of happiness. I leave you with this quote:

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive – Howard Thurman

Love, The Human Journalist, newly minted enterprise, investigative and international reporter.

Two articles published in one week and another one completely funded make this girl a happy journalist.

It seems as though I’ve been on an animal beat for the last few months. I pitched a story on three dogs that were left at a foreclosed home which  ended up in the Los Angeles Times (!!!) blog section, and have been interviewing sources on the street dog situation in Armenia for a while. This week, another story I pitched, on a pet store that replaced its designer breeds with adoptable dogs from a nearby shelter was in the Business section of the Glendale News-Press. And of course, my Spot.us pitch is about L.A.’s struggles with its No-Kill goals.

It’s gratifying covering animal issues, especially because they are the members of our society who don’t really have a voice and when you write about their struggles, the abuses of their rights as part of this Earth or the human policies that decide their fate, you feel like you’re at the very least, giving them a place in the conversation.

It’s exactly the same way I feel about human rights (and international)  reporting and investigative journalism and it took me a long time to solidify my feelings on what moves me in the world of writing. Let me explain.  When you first get out of journalism school, you’re like a new-born calf. You don’t really know how to stand up, you’re hungry and all you can really say is, “I’M HERE, EVERYONE!” You’re thrust into a vicious world where you realize that many times, it’s not about what you know, but who you know. Your industry becomes volatile. Your emails that you spend hours on  don’t even get looked at, much less replied to. If you’re like me, where you graduated with old school values and taught yourself new school techniques, you still feel that the only thing that can validate you is seeing your name in print in the Los Angeles Times or New York Times, or [insert impenetrable time-tested publication here]. So you kind of start to try everything, to see what’s going to fit. In this industry, you have to be adaptable, willing to take risks, and above all in my opinion, have the passion and ambition to move forward no matter what.

It is truly an uphill battle. The fear and self-doubt alone can crush you. Believe me, I’ve been on this roller coaster. But when you find what you truly want to write about, how you want to spend your time on Earth, what contributions you’d like to make to society, everything else seems clear – not any easier, just clear.