About Aravot

Aravot

Aravot is a daily newspaper based in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Its name means Morning in Armenian, and it has been published since the early years of Armenian independence. The newspaper is widely described as a leading liberal and politically independent daily, a reputation it has carried through more than three decades of Armenia's post-Soviet history. It publishes in Armenian, while its website also offers material in Russian and English, extending its readership beyond Armenia's borders to the large Armenian diaspora and to international observers of Armenian affairs.

Aravot occupies a distinctive place in the Armenian press. Unlike many Armenian newspapers that have functioned as the organ of a political party or the voice of a single owner with an explicit political project, Aravot has presented itself as a forum in which different points of view can appear side by side. That self-image has not spared it from criticism, pressure or direct confrontation with successive governments. On the contrary, its history includes a period in which security forces prevented it from publishing at all, and a recent dispute in which the government ordered it to leave the Yerevan offices it had occupied since its founding.

Founding and First Years

The first issue of Aravot was published on 2 August 1994. At that time its editor-in-chief was Ignat Mamyan. In December 1994, Aram Abrahamyan replaced Mamyan as editor-in-chief, beginning a tenure that has defined the newspaper ever since. Sources differ on who should be credited as the founder of the newspaper. Some accounts name Abrahamyan himself, others point to Vano Siradeghyan, the controversial interior minister of the period, while still others refer more generally to the editorial staff as a collective founder. The Media Ownership Monitor Armenia records that the first issue appeared in 1994, although the publishing company, Aravot Oratert LLC, was officially registered only several years later, in 1999, and that Abrahamyan founded the aravot.am website in the same year.

Aravot was born into a media environment in rapid transformation. Armenia had become independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, and the state monopoly on publishing had collapsed. New private newspapers appeared quickly, often with small staffs, limited resources and strong opinions. Aravot established itself in that crowded and volatile market and, unusually for the period, survived. Its headquarters have been in Yerevan throughout its existence, for most of that time in the Press Building on Arshakunyats Avenue, a Soviet-era tower constructed to house the republic's newspapers and magazines.

Editorial Leadership

Aram Abrahamyan has been editor-in-chief since December 1994 and is recorded as the founder and full owner of Aravot Oratert LLC. Born on 17 February 1960 in Yerevan, Abrahamyan came to journalism from an academic and musical background. He studied in the music department of the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory from 1978 to 1983, taught singing in the village of Ddmashen in the Gegharkunik region, and then worked from 1986 to 1991 as a researcher and scientific secretary at the Institute of Arts of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences. He entered media work as editor-in-chief of the A1+ studio in 1991-1992 and served from 1992 to 1994 as press secretary to Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Armenia's first president.

Abrahamyan's career has extended well beyond the newspaper. He hosted the Horizon news programme on Shant TV from 2011 to 2021, presented the Artkanon series on Armenian Public Television from 2014 to 2016, and since September 2021 has hosted the A-politic programme series on Factor TV. Within the newspaper itself, his signed Editor's Column is a central feature. A Yerevan Press Club study of editorial practice in Armenian media counted twenty of Abrahamyan's columns in a single monitored month, February, with additional analysis pieces signed by him or by Emma Gabrielyan on foreign and international politics. Garik Melkonyan has served as director of the newspaper since 1 April 2014, and Anna Israelyan has been listed as the website editor.

Political Stance and Editorial Identity

Aravot is generally characterised as liberal and independent. Sources generally agree that in its early years it was supportive of President Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his Pan-Armenian National Movement, although it gave space to different points of view. Abrahamyan himself denied in a 2004 interview that he was close to Ter-Petrosyan and his government, remarking that the former government's own attitude toward Aravot was anything but positive. That exchange captures the newspaper's persistent claim: proximity to power at one moment has not translated into obedience to it.

The newspaper was highly critical of the government of President Robert Kocharyan, who held office from 1998 to 2008. During the 2003 presidential election, monitoring found that Aravot devoted a large share of its coverage to the incumbent president with an overwhelmingly negative tone. It was also critical of President Serzh Sargsyan, who came to power after the disputed 2008 election. During the 2013 presidential election Abrahamyan publicly endorsed the liberal former prime minister Hrant Bagratyan, while stating clearly that this was his personal opinion and not the position of the newspaper. In a 2014 interview he stated that the newspaper's ultimate goal is to create a mild and tolerant atmosphere in Armenian society, a formulation that has become closely associated with the paper's editorial identity.

The 2008 Publication Ban

The most serious interruption in Aravot's history came after the presidential election of February 2008 and the violent dispersal of opposition protests on 1 March 2008, in which ten people died. A state of emergency was declared, and under the emergency decree Aravot was prevented by security forces from being published. Its website was also blocked during that period. Publication resumed only on 21 March, when the state of emergency and the de facto media blackout were lifted. The episode remains one of the clearest examples in independent Armenia of a newspaper being stopped by direct state action rather than by economic or legal pressure, and it is a fixed reference point in accounts of Armenian press freedom.

Coverage and Content

Aravot covers Armenian politics, government, society, the economy, foreign affairs and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, alongside culture and public life. Its mixture of news reporting, analysis and signed commentary reflects the structure of the Armenian daily press, in which the editor's voice is unusually prominent. The Yerevan Press Club research on open editorials found Aravot to be among the Armenian outlets making heaviest use of the signed editorial column as a genre, with Abrahamyan's column appearing at a near-daily rhythm. The newspaper has also published sustained analytical series, including a 2011 series examining the applications of the winners of Armenia's digital broadcast licensing competitions, based on documents obtained from the National Commission on Television and Radio.

Reporters from Aravot have been recognised for work on freedom of information. Hripsime Jebejian of Aravot was named in 2006 as the most consistent reporter on freedom of information issues and the most active user of Armenia's Law on Freedom of Information, in the annual awards organised by the Freedom of Information Center. Abrahamyan himself was the first prize-winner of an award established by Armenian journalist organisations in connection with World Press Freedom Day in 2006.

Print, Circulation and the Armenian Newspaper Market

Verified, comparable circulation data for Armenian newspapers is limited, and figures for Aravot should be read with care. Reference listings have reproduced circulation figures attributed to the newspaper for 1999, 2003 and 2018 that rise across those years, but Armenian print circulation in general is small by international standards, distribution outside Yerevan is limited, and no independent audit bureau publishes regular certified sales for the market. What can be stated with confidence is that Aravot has remained one of the most recognisable newspaper brands in Armenia across three decades in which many competitors have closed, and that its influence has rested more on its standing among political and journalistic readers in Yerevan than on mass sales.

Digital Publishing

The aravot.am website was founded in 1999, making Aravot an early mover among Armenian newspapers online. The site publishes in Armenian, Russian and English. The English and Russian editions have made Aravot a reference source for diaspora readers, foreign embassies, researchers and international media following Armenia. The website was blocked alongside the print edition during the March 2008 state of emergency, a reminder that in Armenia's media history the suppression of a newspaper has at times extended across both its formats at once. In the years since, as in the rest of the Armenian market, the website has become the edition most readers encounter daily, while the print newspaper continues for its established readership.

The Press Building Eviction Dispute

In 2025 Aravot became involved in a public dispute with the Armenian government over its offices. The newspaper had leased space in Yerevan's Press Building ever since its founding in 1994, under arrangements under which former governments allowed media outlets to rent state-owned space at largely symbolic prices. In late June 2025 a government agency refused to extend the most recent lease, first signed in 2013, and issued an eviction order. The State Property Management Committee stated that all Press Building offices would in future be rented only at market rates, and on 28 July it rejected the paper's request to remain temporarily until it found new premises. Aravot wrote publicly that, as far as it knew, it was currently the only entity told to vacate the premises within a short period of time. The reporting on the dispute was carried by RFE/RL's Armenian service and republished internationally, and the case was widely read as a test of the relationship between the post-2018 government and an independent newspaper that had also criticised its predecessors.

Place in Armenian Media

Aravot's significance is best understood against the structure of Armenian media. Television has historically been the most tightly controlled sector, print the freest but smallest, and online media the most contested. Within print, Aravot has been one of the few titles to maintain a continuous identity, a continuous editor and a claim to independence across the presidencies of Ter-Petrosyan, Kocharyan, Sargsyan and the government that followed the 2018 Velvet Revolution. Academic and monitoring literature on Armenia returns to Aravot repeatedly: as an election-coverage case, as an example of the signed editorial tradition, as a participant in media self-regulation debates, and as an outlet that experimented with an ombudsman position before financial difficulties ended the experiment. Few Armenian newspapers can be traced through the documentary record in the same continuous way.

Assessment

Aravot is not Armenia's largest media outlet, and it has never claimed the confrontational role that some opposition newspapers adopted as their identity. Its importance lies in longevity and in a particular editorial proposition: that a newspaper can hold a liberal outlook, publish opposing views, criticise every government in turn, and survive. The record supports much of that proposition, while also showing its costs, from the 2008 ban to the loss of its historic offices. For readers seeking to understand how independent print journalism has functioned in Armenia since 1994, Aravot remains one of the essential titles to follow, in print in Yerevan and in three languages online.