By Danielle C. Belton
The Black Informant recently published a post critical of the "Black Press" in the complaints of black owned and operated publications upset over issues of access surrounding both the president and things like the memorial service for Michael Jackson.
Many black media outlets, reporters and editors have been outspoken when they feel that they are being slighted, but have been extra vocal about perceived slights when they involve fellow African-Americans. Case in point -- the president.
After the first black president completed his first prime-time press conference, the black press was red hot.The Black Informant points out that this attitude permeates whether discussing problems with advertising revenue or competing with bloggers. But rather than complain that these issues are because of race, TBI argues this has much more to do with their low circulation numbers, an over-reliance on a dying medium and their own unwillingness to embrace technology.
“We were window dressing,” said Hazel Edney, a reporter with the National Newspaper Publishers Association, also known as the Black Press of America. “We were nothing more than window dressing.”
But we at The Retort want to ask: Do older black publications deserve a pass simply based on skin tone alone? As TBI points out, these publications have lower circulation and aren't tech savvy. It's not to the advantage of many to work with them to get the word out if they can bend the ear of a much larger publications. Rather than caterwaul, shouldn't black newspapers be upgrading to compete in today's environment?The Black press has stubbornly been relying too much on print media in an age where publications are moving online for survival. I have repeatedly made pleas to the Black press to reconsider this antiquated way of doing business to no avail.
All of this has less to do with race and more to do with low readership in the general print media market. Why would Obama treat the Black press like a large US paper or television network?
These newspapers still serve a need, but they could be far more influential online than clinging to their present, more expensive formats. Newspapers are needed, but so is a black online journalistic presence and if more black journalists are online with news sites and blogs that would increase the number of substantial, investigative pieces that deal directly with the black experience and other, under-reported minority issues. Rather than whine over access, shouldn't they be making themselves more accessible to us?
1 comments:
I've got to disagree. First off with the statement that newspapers are moving online "for survival." Newspapers moved editorial content online because other newspapers moved online -- newspapers are like teenage boys in that regard: if the cool guy in school (i.e. The NYT) does something, all the pipsqueaks want to do it, too. Online ad sales, robust for about a year about two years ago, are diminishing faster than print ad sales are.
The Black press has to their credit largely resisted this approach. Whereas it might be in the Chicago Tribune's interest to have a strong online presence so they can beat their chests about how people in Boise are reading the Trib, black papers are hyper-local. The less accessible you make your newspaper to people beyond your borders, the more incentive locals have to pick it up and gaze at those sweet, sweet print ads that still represent the bulk of newspaper revenue. As a result, black newspapers around the country -- they also tend to have lower overhead, smaller offices, fewer paid staff, etc -- are doing quite well compared to their mainstream counterparts.
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