Ana Kasparian

Thursday, February 29, 2024

An Armenian-American political commentator, university instructor, and writer. She is best known for co-hosting and producing the online news show The Young Turks. She began working as a fill-in producer for The Young Turks in 2007, and, as of 2012, co-host of the main show and host of The Point on the TYT Network. She also appeared on the television version of the show that aired on Current TV.

Journalism

Kasparian said that seeing journalist Barbara Walters on 20/20 inspired her to get into journalism. After getting her Bachelor of Arts, Journalism (BAJ) at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) she became an assistant producer with CBS Radio news stations in Los Angeles, first with KFWB and then KNX. She said that she was lucky to be hired immediately after graduating, but did not like working for CBS Radio because mainstream media is "not fun" due to the "robotic work environment" where she couldn't say what she wanted on air or do stories that were important to her. She enrolled in a master's degree program as a "way out" of media. She has also worked with AOL News, YouTube, TidalTv and On Point.

After becoming a fill-in host in April 2007, Kasparian became the producer and co-host with Cenk Uygur of the progressive talk radio on Sirius XM Satellite Radio and internet show/TV show The Young Turks. She was at first skeptical of her new work environment as an Armenian saying: "The Young Turks is a strange name," but after working there the name was explained to her as: "it essentially means rebels. People who rebel against societal expectations." She liked working at The Young Turks enough that she decided to stay in media. In fact, she was supposed to leave after two weeks but said she "kind of refused." She was first hired on to do marketing but "weaseled" her way into doing on-air segments. Kasparian described what she like about working at TYT: "What I loved about the show was that it was unscripted. It was raw. It was just completely unfiltered." In a Forbes interview she also stated that she can't pretend to be a "robot that's always neutral." She needs to state her opinion and sometimes "aggressively so" and TYT allowed her to do that.

She posits that young people are interested in news, but "they see network anchors as simply folks who read tele-prompters." This is why she believes young people are attracted to online media because there are less tele-prompters and people are more genuine. She co-hosted TYT University, a show focused on issues faced by university students that ran from March 15, 2011 to December 31, 2014, where she first hosted with Jayar Jackson and then John Iadarola. TYT University then turned into a show called "Think Tank" debuting on January 1, 2015 with different hosts and different topics but aimed at the same demographic. The show is now hosted by John Iadarola and Hannah Cranston.She was the main host of another TYT Network show, The Point, which was a panel style show with a weekly round up of news stories. Common co-hosts on The Point included: political commentator Dave Rubin, science communicator Cara Santa Maria, American actor Hank Chen, and American football player Drew Carter. However, this show came to a close by releasing its last episode on January 5, 2016. She became a part-time journalist and op-ed writer at The Raw Story news outlet in May 2015. Kasparian appeared on "Take Part Live" several times in 2014, sometimes as a guest and sometimes as a co-host.

Academia

Kasparian became a lecturer (i.e. instructor) at California State University, Northridge and began teaching journalism in August 2013. She describes herself as a personable teacher and says that she likes to speak "with" her students, not "at" them. She prefers to see herself as the students' friend as well as their educator. However, she had a hard time becoming accustomed to avoiding expletive language, due to the casual environment she was used to from working at The Young Turks.

First Name:*
Last Name:*
E-mail:*
Password:*
Confirm password:*

Please enter your email to recover your password
E-mail:*

Login Form

Registration Form

Ana Kasparian

Journalism

Academia