InternationalABC News’ Lara Setrakian: 21st-century all-platform journalist
Based in Dubai, Setrakian covers the Gulf states and beyond
Published: Thursday January 22, 2009
Lara Setrakian.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates - You've seen her on the ABC evening news, on Good Morning America, and on the round-the-clock ABC News Now cable-satellite-Internet network. You've heard her voice on ABC News Radio, and you've read her bylines from Beirut, Tehran, and cities of the United Arab Emirates, where she resides and works.
"Nowadays they say, Dubai, Mumbai, Shanghai, or bye-bye. That's the line. This is where the growth is. This is where the money is. It's different and it's fast-paced, and they know they have some sense of what they want." She explains to me the enigma of Dubai as we sit feet away from the Starbucks at the Dubai Marina.
"And you see other cities in the Gulf trying to create for themselves the same effect. They're not trying to copy Dubai. They're trying to do it their way. Qatar and Doha, Abu Dhabi is trying to do it. Everyone is trying to ramp up. They don't want to let this oil boom pass by. It's already on the way, with oil prices dropping. But the first time around, the 70s, there is a sense here that was a bit of a missed opportunity. So they're not going to miss it again. That's the sense. They're looking to invest. They're looking to build free zones. They want to make the most of what they have. It's really a fascinating time to be here."
It's a fascinating time, and she's a fascinating woman - the chronicler of the times, the people, world events, and history.
Lara Setrakian is on the job 24-7 as an all-platform journalist, a one-woman news bureau in Dubai, filing reports on air, on the web, and on cable.
Her stories range from the financial impact of OPEC decisions on Americans to the intriguing murder of an Arab starlet, from modern technology crossing paths with Ramadan and the calls to prayer via SMS texting to the hidden $3 billion-worth cache of art treasures under lock and key in the basement of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
These are a few of the stories reported for the past year from the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East by this 21st-century reporter-journalist, who grew up under the guidance of her father, attorney Berge Setrakian, president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). Now this daughter of the Armenian community in New York travels the world, representing one of the best-known American news networks, ABC.
"I know I'm extraordinarily lucky, and all you can do is try to be worthy of the opportunity. You have to be," she tells the Armenian Reporter. "A great line I'm obsessed with from this book I read: seize opportunity and anything that looks like opportunity. And that's what you do out here."
Yerevan, the homeland
It's the summer of 2006, and I meet Lara in the lobby of the seven-story Armenia TV building in Davitashen, a district of Yerevan. We compare notes about our employment dates at ABC News and realize we missed one another by only a few months. She had started as an off-air reporter with the Law and Justice Unit shortly after I had left my position as a writer-producer for World News Now and World News This Morning.
Armenians, like us, from all over the world have gathered for the third Armenia-Diaspora Conference in 2006. Lara is in Yerevan from New York, and she'll be serving on the media panel. I'm covering the conference for my new employer, Armenia TV, and her father has requested that we show her the Armenia TV facilities and operations.
I lead the tour, and Lara is in awe of how sophisticated broadcasters in Yerevan have become in such a short amount of time. She takes time out from her busy schedule to tape a half-hour chat show with me and talks about catching the journalism bug, the blessings she has had in her life, and all the possibilities that lie ahead for any Armenian-American interested in pursuing a career in the news business.
A few months later, she e-mails her friends and media contacts announcing her departure for Dubai, where she will be the first of a new class of ABC News network journalists.
Dubai, the "Star Wars Cantina"
We meet at the Dubai Marina. It's October 2008, and Lara is about to mark her first anniversary of her new position - a job she landed at the young age of 25. We sit in the shadows of giant glass-and-steel skyscrapers on land that a few years ago did not exist.
The city is one giant construction zone, the site of 5,000 projects going up simultaneously. It's a city Lara calls "the Star Wars Cantina."
"In my first article I called it ‘Miami with Minarets' and ‘the Star Wars Cantina,'" she says. "You see every type of person coming through here. Every class, every race, every socioeconomic grouping, and it's fascinating. And unlike other cities, especially in the Middle East, there is equality in that there's a meritocracy in place, in the macro sense. And it's also true that nearly everyone coming here, I imagine, virtually everyone coming here, has a better opportunity on the horizon than they had at home."
Lara explains her perspective of Dubai being the new land of opportunity with the story of a security guard in her building who was armed with a resume and a dream.
"He's from Cameroon, the security guard, and he's looking for something in hospitality," she says. "He asked a friend of mine, who was just walking around, and gave my friend the C.V. It was a C.V. with a business objective. It wasn't the best English, but he's there to rise."
Lara says, just like the security guard from Cameroon, there's a flood of people - professionals, investors, and bankers - coming to the shores of Dubai from the West, the East, the North, and the South. These are people who believe Dubai is where the opportunities are and where the action is. And to make room for these investors, these tourists, residents, and entrepreneurs, to make new investment opportunities, the Emirates are building up and building out.
