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Ani Kasparian

Who is Ani?
Ani Kasparian is an American (USA) ex-CBS affiliate journalist now based in Beirut. She moved to Lebanon in December 2022 to combine her talents and special interests to make change. Here she exercises her expertise and passion for mental health, presenting and communication, and Lebanon fulfill her calling: to heal Lebanon through a 100% grassroots media group she founded, entitled The New Lebanon TV.

Ethnicity
Ani is of Armenian ethnicity and was born and raised in the United States. Her father was born in Beirut and her mother, in the USA. Both are Armenian yet Ani was not spoken to in Armenian as a child, therefore, she grew up as a mono-lingual English speaker. When middle school came, her talent for learning foreign languages was discovered. By high school, Ani was learning seven languages both as an elective in school and on her own.

Journey with Arabic
The first time Ani heard a word of Arabic, she was 18 years old. From then on, she decided to pursue the language, as she felt it would bring her closer to her roots. She fell in love with it and decided to pursue it as a major at university, along with her already advanced Spanish and French. At that time, Arabic was not offered as a major in many U.S. institutions. Therefore, once she graduated high school, she packed up her life and moved halfway across the country to attend DePaul University in Chicago to fulfill her goal: to take her Arabic from zero to advanced-high level on the ACTFL proficiency scale within the four academic undergraduate years. Ani can read, write, speak, and understand both Modern Standard (fus7a) and multiple dialects of Arabic (3amiya). When graduation day came around, she did it.

Decorated Scholar
Of all of the Arabic-speaking countries, Ani has visited the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Lebanon but has spent the most time in Jordan, as she lived there on three separate occasions. Two of the three times were due to her receiving the prestigious Critical Language Scholarship and Fulbright Award, both from the U.S. Department of State. She was bestowed these honors due to her unique and intensive study of Arabic. Ani is a linguist and loved to soak up all of the dialects she could. She would spend hours outside of class memorizing more than 150 Arabic songs, understanding their meanings, memorizing celebrity interviews, reading Arabic news, watching Arabic programs like Ma Fi Mitlo, and even teaching herself how to sing mawawil. Ani realized that most of the content she was watching was Lebanese, giving her a thick Lebanese accent that Arabs loved to laugh with her about. She fell in love with everything Lebanese and from that moment on, every research paper, prompt, or essay she chose to do at university was about a different part of Lebanese life and culture. She has submitted papers on topics from the geopolitics of mapping the Lebanese water crisis to the linguistic diagramming of the Lebanese dialect. After seven years of studying the country, Ani finally was able to visit Lebanon for the first time in 2018 and took advantage of every tour she could to travel to all parts of the country. In two weeks she was able to reach ten of the twenty-six districts (cazas/aqdiya) in Lebanon. Being there made her feel a sense of indescribable peace. She knew at that moment that she was meant to come back.

International Recognition
TV stations in the Arab world quickly took notice. MBC did a special, Al-Arabiya had her on their morning show, Sabah Al-Arabiya, Al-Aan TV had her on as a special guest for National Arabic Language Day, Roya TV hosted her on the country's #1 nightly show "Caravan", radio stations invited her to speak... everyone wanted to meet "the American girl who learned Arabic... and could sing in it too". For a full list of these interviews, you can check out Ani's media YouTube channel here.

Path to Journalism
Ani's journey to becoming the media figure she is today was not the typical path. Unlike most journalists in their childhood, she never remembers wanting to be one as a kid. American news bored her, constantly seeing a stream of the same, terrifying or boring stories recycled continually, and most poignantly, never giving enough time to issues outside of American ones. It was when she came to Jordan for the second time during her Fulbright year did she realize her passion for media. Finally, there was an example for comprehensive world news, all in one newscast. Not to mention the beauty of the basis that Arab news is, or what Ani calls "an art form", of which is reciting the news in Modern Standard Arabic and all of the grammatical knowledge one must know to succeed in it. Arab media was it for her.

Training
What Ani did next is one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of stories you'll hear. For those unaware, Modern Standard Arabic is not spoken, only written, and is a bit archaic like Shakespearian English. Every educated Arab in any Arabic speaking country can understand it, but if you use it in conversation, you will be laughed at. Ani knew this was an essential part of mastering the language but found difficulty knowing where to practice it. Determined to enhance her skills in Modern Standard, Ani thought, "Where can you see Fus7a (Modern Standard) living in modern-day society?" Then it came to her: the newsroom. While teaching English part time in Jordan as a Fulbright scholar, Ani was left with free time. To fill it, some scholars did Arabic lessons, some joined a choir, some did a hobby... Ani did all of these, plus, convincing the entire country that she was going to be the first non-native Arabic speaking newscaster on Arabic TV. And they believed her. Knocking on the doors of every radio and TV station she could, she landed three internships throughout the year and asked for intensive media training including how to produce a newscast and recite it with native-level fluency (yes including teshkil, pronunciation, and breathwork). With a media coach she found at one of her internships, she was able to delve further into her craft. Ani became known not to be found without her newscast of the week, a piece of paper in hand, reading her moujaz to every taxi driver, friend, colleague, or teacher that would listen.

Career
Upon moving back to the United States, Ani was determined to enter the media scene as a paid employee. Ani moved again for the seventh time in five years to pursue her Master's in journalism at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. She graduated with a 4.0 and accomplished her dream of receiving a job offer right out of university at none other than Al-Hurra TV. There she created content with the U.S. Unit about American feature stories... all in Arabic. She was the only non-native speaker there. When time came for the mandatory Arabic voice tests for the news, the test that is notorious for sometimes not even accepting native speakers, Ani did the impossible. She passed, allowing her to be the newest Arabic news voice for Al-Hurra TV.

CBS
Producing at Al-Hurra was a dream, but what Ani truly wanted was to be in front of the camera. She had just created a reel reporting the news in four languages when one day CBS news came knocking on the door. An affiliate station in the Midwest right near her university-native city of Chicago was calling to offer her a position that usually takes around three years of on-air experience to get: an on air reporter and anchor. She accepted. This time, she didn't tell anyone. She packed up her entire life and drove a U-Haul truck 14 hours alone from D.C. to Indiana to start the next chapter. Her family found out by  her surprising them upon arrival on a FaceTime call.

Lebanon
Working at a small station meant long hours and short staffing, but this also allowed for Ani to be able to learn to do it all... and she did. Ani in less than nine months, Ani produced 165 stories, shot (no cameramen), edited (no editors), wrote scripts, and even coded them into the program that puts the news on the teleprompter for the anchor. Sometimes Ani would be called in to anchor after a 12 hour day and would then do her own hair and makeup and run to the studio. Many days Ani would come home at 2 a.m. Ani loved journalism but found it frustrating and unfair to the communities she cared about when stories she knew were of importance weren't able to be told due to time constraints or short staffing. To fulfill this void, Ani asked her boss later in the year if she could start a podcast. To her surprise, he said yes. That's when The New Lebanon was born.

The New Lebanon
It was election season in Lebanon and Ani was determined to learn about all of the new faces recently shared that would be running. She found it unfair that people who wanted to make a change had to announce their running for parliament on such short notice and wanted to give them a platform to speak on their issues. She therefore decided they would be the first guests on her new show, The New Lebanon. In only a week and a half, she was able to amass thirteen parliamentary candidates to speak on her platform. With each episode, we got to learn more about the parliamentary candidates on a personal level rather than just on policy. Ani always wanted the show to have a deeper element to it. She wanted to show people that we are essentially all the same. We have shared experiences, traumas, and joy. She hoped this message could be the first step to dissipate the hate and distrust she saw so prevalently between the different religions, political parties, and socioeconomic statuses between the Lebanese. Her episodes did exactly that. Some parliament candidates talked about the tragedies of losing family members, the traumas of doing homework while bullets blazed over their homes during the civil war, or the guilt of balancing motherhood, your job, and a political campaign. The show was a success and started gaining a following. Now The New Lebanon Show has grown to include a variety of experts that aim to enhance the Lebanese understanding of themselves and help them reach their goals all within the confines of their own sometimes glorious sometimes frustrating country.

The Move to Lebanon
From the start, Ani believed in the importance of access to information. So many mental health resources were in English or French, but not enough was offered in Arabic. She decided to make the show 100% in Arabic for those purposes: a daring choice for a non-native but she believes this: "Even if I make mistakes, being perfect is not what's important. What's important is my guests' answers because I'm here trying to shine a light on them and their brilliance. I want to show Lebanese that even with so many people leaving Lebanon, their country is not lost. There are thousands of incredible people working to restore Lebanon's dignity and are a symbol themselves of how Lebanon is still filled with intelligent, competent, and passionate people ready to make a change in themselves and in the country. Ani wants to keep the hope alive because she sees it, and hopes she can help others to see it too. "When we become the best version of ourselves, the country will follow suit. That is the mission of The New Lebanon TV."

If you are inspired by this story and want to contribute to Ani's project, you can donate by clicking the button below. 100% of the donations go toward sustaining this free media outlet with no political or religious affiliation. We don't even accept investors. Just donations! We do this to remain sensitive to the Lebanese issue of mistrust and want to prove that you can count on media in Lebanon again. Therefore, we truly rely on your donations to keep going! For the price of one cup of coffee per MONTH you can help us do just that.