The California Courier 50 years old

PanARMENIAN.Net - The California Courier, the oldest independent English-language Armenian newspaper in the United States, is 50 years old this year, the newspaper's Publisher Harut Sassounian announced.



In 1958, two young men in Fresno - George Mason (Elmassian) and Reese Cleghorn - had the foresight to publish an English-language newspaper, so that those unfamiliar with their native tongue could stay in touch with community news.



Cleghorn went on to become Professor and Dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Mason continued publishing the Courier with his popular weekly opinion column titled, "This and That" and wrote amusing Armenian wisecracks under the rubric "Uncle Hadji" and "Dear Dickran."



After moving to Los Angeles and becoming a prominent stock broker, Mason employed a succession of part-time editors and stringers. The most colorful personality to run the paper was a Japanese-American by the name of Seico Hanashiro, who worked at the Fresno post office during the day and published the Courier from his garage in his spare time. In the process, Seico knew more about the Armenian community than did most Armenians.



In 1983, Mason hired as full time editor of the Courier a young man by the name of Harut Sassounian, who subsequently became the publisher of the newspaper and moved it from Fresno to Glendale.