You probably know that Armenia was the first country in Europe to convert to Christianity. Did you know it was the last country in Europe to shoot dead protestors in the street?

This environment – a highly educated, diasporic population facing a harsh political situation – is a Petri dish for news outlets. Maybe that’s why Armenia has much more websites per user than other countries in the region, despite a very low internet penetration (see graph); a sign of intense online activity.

I met with 4 online media professionals in Yerevan last week, who hopefully gave me a not-too-blurry picture of the state of online news in Armenia. The city is home to half a dozen serious online news operations. Haykazn Ghahriyan at Lragir.am and  Liana Sayadyan at Hetq.am talked to me about their experiences.

Online copies of print operations

Lragir, started in 2005, reaches 12,000 visitors daily; while Hetq (meaning the trace), launched in 2001, manages 3,000. In both cases, between 50% and 60% of the visits comes from outside Armenia, for their audience is found in the Diaspora and in international institutions alike.

Both Lragir and Hetq went online to continue an offline effort. Lragir originally was a daily newspaper closed down by the government in 1998. Haykazn decided to go online as it was the only option he could afford. Same story at Hetq. What started as an investigative magazine for the A1+ opposition channel mutated into an online-only venture after the channel was closed down. These projects are merely print operations copied online.

Both operations hope to restart their offline products as soon as they get the cash needed. The web seems to be considered as a temporary exile from the real thing, although opinions are starting to change. Lragir, for instance, will unveil a new design for its rather clunky-looking website this month. At Hetq, online is taken more and more seriously.

In November, Hetq gave up its weekly formula and launched a new, continuously updated website. The idea for the change popped up last spring, when Armenia was shackled by massive (and deadly) protests. Then, Hetq’s newsroom realized that online allowed for real-time publishing. And they liked the idea.

What’s more, Hetq just launched its own Twitter account. Although it only has 3 followers, it shows that the newsroom is getting used to living online. In the end, Liana admitted that a return to TV “wasn’t a very alive idea,” all the more as Hetq has found its niche in the Armenian media landscape. Its articles are often talked about in newspapers and TV and it developed a reputation of neutrality it could not have obtained, had it been linked to a bigger operation (since all bigger media are either pro- or anti-government).

But the lack of online skills among journalists and editors results in poorly performing operations. Whereas the leading blogger typically reaches 1/50^th of a leading news website’s audience in Western markets, Armenian websites only weight 10 times the super bloggers (approximately 10,000 daily visitors against 1,500 for a big blog).

No ad money in a politicians’ economy

Lragir burns €36,000 a year. Hetq spent €90,000 in 2007. Up to 70% of these expenses are covered by grants, coming from the OSCE, the Norwegian embassy or USAID. The remaining part comes from advertising.

Although the advertising market doesn’t seem as dry as it is in neighboring Georgia, websites have a hard time convincing advertisers to put banners on their sites.

The first hurdle comes from the Soviet mentality of many Armenian execs. They have a hard time understanding advertising; don’t even think of explaining to them oh-so-new concepts such as CPM, CPC or pageviews.

But mostly, the problem lies in the almost total politicization of the Armenian economy. Companies and parties are intermingled in such ways that advertising responds to political needs before business ones. If you’re a media that hasn’t been vetted by the government, your hopes of tapping into the national companies’ ad budgets are very, very small.

Only international players can advertise on opposition websites. Russia’s MTS (cell phones) or HSBC, for instance, regularly fund Hetq and Lragir.

The only viable, non-grant solution would consist in inviting a patron on board. But that would imply selling out to political interests and none of the journalists I have met are ready for this.

At Hetq, Liana told me that her role of grant-seeker ate up almost all of her time. If a full-time position brings in €60,000 a year, how much would a salesperson make? This kind of calculation is already being thought of. All things considered, grants could well be uneconomical.

Hetq also explored new ways of funding. The site made a call to its readers, asking them for support. Did it work? The voluntary subscriptions amount to $300 a year. That’s 0.3% of the total operating expenses.

No cash for the pure-players

What seems to be a gloomy online landscape surprisingly hosts what could have been a blueprint for all news websites. With a few others, Samvel Martirosyan started a forum, Open Armenia, in 2004. It stemmed from a dispute within another, older one. A topic on Nagorno-Karabakh evolved into a full-fledged confrontation between jingoistic users and less nationalistic ones. The latter group, 70 people or so, subsequently left the forum and gathered around Open Armenia.

The discussion restarted there. High-ranking officials, journalists, analysts and Diaspora Armenians gathered around a team of admins who decided to make the decision process as open as possible. “All in all, it is a social network based on a forum platform”, Samvel says.

According to Samvel, Open Armenia produced real journalism. For one thing, the platform spread press releases that would then be picked up by mainstream media outlets. More importantly, Open Armenia’s users working mostly in high-office position, the site was able to publish insider information, à la Wikileaks. It also invited public figures to discuss with users, in what resembled collective interviews.

What I find most interesting lies in Open Armenia’s commitment to move the country forward. On one instance in 2005, the site’s administrators spotted a critical statement from Azerbaijani Foreign Minister about Karabakh. 2 days later, Armenia still hadn’t replied. Open Armenia called the Foreign Ministry press office, who told them they were silent because the minister was on a trip. “How did you find about the Azerbaijani statement?” they asked. “On the internet,” Open Armenia replied. “Wow, you can get news on there?” After a while, all mainstream media were talking about the government’s inability to read foreign news. Open Armenia produced real information (the government isn’t able to use new technologies) and had a real impact (the government is put to shame). In other words, journalism.

At the end of 2005, Open Armenia decided to add a news website to its forum, so as to add rock-hard facts to the discussions. Experts were invited – and paid – to write articles. The money came from a forum user who provided the cash and the platform needed. After a while, the project had to be stopped, the benefactor having run out of cash. (Advertising was tried but the Armenian market was nowhere close to providing enough revenue to cover operating expenses, at the time).

Some new media pundits are pushing today for news operations organized around a social network of users complemented by experts and journalists. That’s Jeff Jarvis’ press sphere, in action on French news websites such as Rue89 or Le Post. Well, this existed in Armenia almost 5 years ago. It shows that, if it were not for a lack of money and a lack of people able to spot innovative projects, online entrepreneurs in sidelined countries would have a lot to teach their Western counterparts