About Business Express (Delovoy Express)

Business Express (Delovoy Express)

Business Express, published in Russian under the title Delovoy Express, is a business weekly newspaper based in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. It covers Armenian economic and business affairs for a Russian-reading business audience. Its editor-in-chief in the documented period of its history was Eduard Naghdalian, whose name also appears in English sources as Edward Naghdalyan and Eduard Nagdalian. The weekly is one of a small group of Russian-language newspapers that have been published in Armenia since independence, and it is documented in the Armenian press record primarily through three kinds of sources: the Yerevan Press Club newspaper archive, which preserved its issues, a court case in 2003 and 2004 over an interview it published, and a media ethics judgment in February 2010 arising from an advertising dispute. A fourth source, the Eurasia Partnership Foundation's media distribution programme, recorded the paper's commercial strategy in the mid-2000s in unusual detail.

The verified public record for Business Express is thin compared with that for Armenia's major political dailies. No verified founding date, circulation figure, ownership record or staff list was found, and no reliable evidence was found to establish whether the weekly is still published in print today. This profile therefore states only what can be documented and identifies openly where the record ends.

Identity, Language and Place in the Armenian Press

Media Landscapes, the European Journalism Training Association's country profile of Armenia, lists Business Express among the Russian-language newspapers published in the republic since the attainment of independence, alongside the Republic of Armenia in its Russian edition, Golos Armenii and Novoye Vremya. It describes Russian-language newspapers in Armenia as mainly distributed in the capital, with their main consumers being senior citizens and representatives of the Soviet intelligentsia. That general description captures the market position of the Russian-language press as a whole, but Business Express had a more specific intended readership than a general Russian-language title: as a business weekly, it sought executives, officials, foreign business travellers and potential investors interested in Armenian economic developments, a positioning documented in its own editor's account of its distribution strategy.

Russian retains an important role in Armenian business and in dealings with other post-Soviet states. A Russian-language business weekly in Yerevan therefore addressed readers who followed Armenian company, banking, competition and investment news as part of a wider Russian-language business information world. The Yerevan Press Club's Armenian Press Archive listed Delovoy Express as a weekly whose issues had been stored and updated since March 2000. That is the earliest firm date in its documented record: it establishes that the weekly existed by March 2000, but does not by itself prove it was founded in that year.

Editorial Leadership

The only senior editorial figure for Business Express documented in the sources consulted is its editor-in-chief, Eduard Naghdalian. He appears in that role consistently across independent sources over nearly a decade: in March 2004, explaining the weekly's position in the court case over the abridged interview described below; in the Eurasia Partnership Foundation's media distribution reporting of the mid-2000s, describing the paper's sales strategy in the first person; and in February 2010, as the appellant who brought a complaint about his own paper to Armenia's Media Ethics Observatory. That continuity is itself informative. Armenian newspapers of this period were typically identified closely with a single long-serving editor, whose decisions on editing, advertising and distribution defined the title, and the record for Business Express fits that pattern.

Coverage and Readership

The Eurasia Partnership Foundation described Delovoy Express, in Naghdalian's own summary, as a newspaper that covers economic issues. The two documented disputes involving the paper confirm that description from different angles. The 2003 interview at the centre of its court case was with a member of the State Commission on Protection of Economic Competition, the Armenian competition authority, a subject squarely within economic policy and business regulation. The 2009 advertising article at the centre of its ethics case concerned international trade and travel between Yerevan and Beijing, presented as a commercial promotion. Business regulation, competition, trade and investment are therefore not inferred topics for this weekly; they are the topics on which its documented record actually turns.

Its intended readers were defined by its distribution choices. Naghdalian said he wanted potential readers and advertisers to find Delovoy Express everywhere, and specifically that the paper should be displayed at the airport, where foreign business travellers would find it and read up on economic developments in Armenia or potential investments. That is the strategy of a title selling a concentrated business audience to advertisers as much as selling copies to readers.

Distribution and the Armenian Newspaper Market

Distribution was the central commercial problem for Armenian newspapers in the 2000s, and the Eurasia Partnership Foundation's Media Distribution Programme existed precisely because of it. The programme's reporting describes newspapers facing particular distribution and subscription challenges in rural communities: it was hard to convince rural residents to buy newspapers, many rural residents were unaware of the types of newspapers available, and would-be subscription sellers in villages were at times offered a sack of potatoes or a piece of cheese instead of the amount requested, in the recollection of a distribution company representative quoted by the foundation. In response, the distribution company Blitz Media opened sales points in rural communities. For Delovoy Express specifically, Blitz Media recommended the airport display strategy described above, and Naghdalian credited that strategy with helping him sell more papers.

Those details should be read against the structural economics of Armenian print: cover prices of about 100 drams that did not cover prime costs of 140 to 150 drams, scarce commercial advertising and heavy dependence on sponsors. In such a market a specialised weekly needed identifiable points of sale where its readers passed, institutional readers and advertisers who valued its audience. No circulation figure for the weekly was published in any source consulted, so the success of its strategy can be reported only in the editor's own terms, that it helped sell more papers.

The Bakhshian Interview Case, 2003 to 2004

The most fully reported episode in the weekly's history is the court case brought by Artashes Bakhshian, a member of the Republic of Armenia State Commission on Protection of Economic Competition, against Delovoy Express. The conflict began with the weekly's issue number 39, dated 25 September to 2 October 2003, which published an interview with Bakhshian. According to Naghdalian's account, reported by the Yerevan Press Club and by Caucasian Knot in March 2004, the interview was very extensive and its content, in his word, shocking. The article was therefore abridged and provided with editorial comments before publication.

Bakhshian then telephoned the editorial office and declared that the content of the interview had been distorted as a result of the editorial interference. The parties did not reach agreement, and Bakhshian applied to the court with a claim to oblige the weekly to publish the interview in full. Naghdalian stated that the editorial office was willing to meet that requirement, but only through a court decision. Legal proceedings began on 15 March 2004 at the court of first instance of the Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun communities of Yerevan. At the first session, the court suggested that the parties reconcile and gave them time to consider that course. The sources consulted record the opening of the proceedings and the positions of both sides, but do not record a final judgment in the case, and this profile does not invent one. The episode remains valuable evidence in itself: it shows a business weekly interviewing a serving competition official on the record, exercising substantial editorial intervention on grounds of length and content, and then defending that intervention as a matter for judicial determination rather than private settlement, a stance that illustrates both the confidence and the legal exposure of Armenian print editors in the period.

The Media Ethics Observatory Case, 2009 to 2010

The second documented episode shows the weekly on the other side of a complaint procedure. In February 2010 the Media Ethics Observatory, Armenia's media self-regulation body, issued an extract of its judgment on the appeal of the chief editor of Delovoy Express, Eduard Naghdalian. Naghdalian had asked the Observatory for an expert judgment on a complaint submitted to the weekly by Mr Vardanian, director of D.E.L.V LLC. According to Vardanian, an advertising article titled Sophia-Yerevan-Beijing, published in Delovoy Express on 8 December 2009, contained a number of untrue expressions discrediting his company. He demanded that the article be removed from the weekly's website and that a corrective advertisement be published.

The Observatory concluded that, under Article 23 of the Law on Advertisement, the advertising medium is not responsible for advertising content, so Vardanian's demands on Delovoy Express were groundless and could be addressed to the advertiser, with the advertiser as defendant under Article 19 of the Civil Code. At the same time, on the principle of equal opportunities for advertisers in the Code of Conduct of Media Representatives, the complainant was entitled to publish an advertisement in Delovoy Express in the same volume, place and terms, and on its website, as the disputed piece. The judgment confirms that by December 2009 the weekly maintained a website, even though no website address for the paper is recorded in the data for this profile, and shows its editor using self-regulation proactively to resolve an advertiser's complaint.

Russian-Language Business Journalism in Armenia

Business Express can only be understood within the small ecology of Russian-language publishing in post-Soviet Armenia. Media Landscapes notes that a number of Russian-language newspapers have been published since independence, that they are mainly distributed in the capital, and that their main consumers are senior citizens and representatives of the Soviet intelligentsia. For a political or general newspaper, that readership profile implies a gradually ageing audience. For a business weekly, Russian had an additional function: it was the working language of much post-Soviet commerce, banking correspondence and regional trade, and the language in which an Armenian economic story could also be read by partners and investors elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Naghdalian's airport strategy points in exactly that direction, toward the mobile Russian-reading business traveller rather than only toward a settled domestic readership.

What the Record Does and Does Not Show

An honest profile of Business Express must end by separating the documented from the unknown. Documented are: its existence as a Russian-language business weekly in Yerevan by March 2000; its coverage of economic issues; the editorship of Eduard Naghdalian in 2003 to 2004, in the mid-2000s distribution programme and in 2010; its airport-centred sales strategy and participation in efforts to expand newspaper distribution; its 2003 interview with a competition official that led to court proceedings in March 2004; its publication of the disputed advertising article on 8 December 2009 and the Media Ethics Observatory judgment of February 2010 in its favour on the question of responsibility for advertising content; and the existence of a weekly website by late 2009.

Not documented are: a founding date or founder beyond the archive evidence above; any circulation or readership figure; ownership and financing; a staff list beyond the editor-in-chief; and the weekly's later history and present status, including whether or when it ceased publication. Researchers needing the later history should consult the Yerevan Press Club archive holdings for Delovoy Express and Armenian and Russian-language sources directly.

Place in Armenian Media

Business Express matters for three reasons, all supported by the documented record. It represents specialised economic journalism in a market dominated by political newspapers; it represents Russian-language publishing in Yerevan beyond the well-known political titles, aimed at commercial and professional readerships; and its episodes illustrate how Armenian print worked in the 2000s: an editor abridging an interview with a regulator and accepting a court case over it, an editor seeking a self-regulatory ruling on an advertiser's complaint, and an editor selling a business paper at an airport because ordinary distribution economics did not work. On that evidence, limited but concrete, it earns its place as Yerevan's documented Russian-language business weekly of the 2000s.