Karoun A. Demirjian is a multimedia international journalist and freelance reporter at the Washington Post covering defense and foreign policy and was previously a correspondent based in the Post's bureau in Moscow. She has worked in Jordan, Russia, Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Germany. She has converted her history interest and her writing and photography interests into a career in journalism, but she is also a professional classical soprano, and a competent amateur pianist and guitarist. She is fluent in Armenian and English, and conversational in Russian, German, Arabic, and Spanish.
Education
Karoun grew up just outside Boston and studied piano and voice in a musical home. She practiced voice, sometimes with herself as an accompanist, and learned to join singing classical, religious, and jazz/blues vocal and instrumental music. She was a church soloist at St. Stephen’s Church Armenian Apostolic Church of Watertown, Massachusetts, where her mother, Karen Demirjian, was a long-time choir member and assistant organist. She completed her two degrees in history and international law in the Boston area. In college at Harvard and Tufts, she worked as a classical disk jockey and migrated into reporting the news. She sang in Harvard College Opera for several years and was its Treasurer during her senior year, and she was a contributing writer for the Harvard Crimson in 2003. Within a few months, she won a first internship and producing job at National Public Radio’s All Things Considered; she stayed there for three years, from 2003–2006.
Immediately after graduation from the Fletcher School, Demirjian freelanced and wrote for The Christian Science Monitor. She worked for the Congressional Quarterly from 2008–2009, then at the United Nations, co-authoring reports on peacekeeping operations, disaster relief and emerging democracies, before she committed to her journalistic career. In 2010, she was a stringer in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for the Associated Press. She then covered Capitol Hill for Congressional Quarterly and the Chicago Tribune, and also worked at the Tribune as a Metro reporter covering crime, the courts, and community news. As the Las Vegas Sun's only Washington correspondent, she reported on the White House, the federal courts, and Senate Majority LeaderHarry Reid and the Nevada congressional delegation through two election cycles, and on national debates about energy, the economy, housing, defense, and immigration. In 2014 and for a year, Karoun Demirjian joined The Washington Post's bureau as a correspondent in Moscow, Russia while also working for NPR as a freelance reporter. Since 2015, she has been a freelance reporter covering defense and foreign policy for The Washington Post. She also can be irregular but often seen as an analyst for CNN and CNN International.
Awards
Her articles either won or came in as runner up for the Washington Press Club Foundation’s David Lynch memorial award for best regional coverage of Congress in 2012, 2013, and 2014, and her video packages have appeared on the paper’s prize-winning website. She has received numerous fellowships, including a Fulbright Fellowship in Jordan, a Paul Miller Fellowship from the National Press Foundation, an Alfa Fellowship in Russia, and an Arthur F. Burns Fellowship in Germany and a Scripps Immigration Fellowship – each from the International Center for Journalists, and has served on the board of directors of the national Regional Reporters Association.
