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STATE OF THE BLACK PRESS 2004
NNPA stares into a setting sun
 

When the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) convenes in Washington, D. C. to observe Black Press Week (March 24-26, 2004), ideally 200 African American publishers will gather to celebrate the 177th birthday of The Freedom Journal, the United States’s first Black newspaper. The publisher’s will no doubt put on a happy face. Especially when they attend “The Newsmaker of the Year Luncheon,” that will be held at the Washington Press Club on March 26, in the Washington Terrace Hotel, as they have for the past 62-years.
But, in wake of the economic and staffing woes-- bedeviling the Black newspaper industry--the festive ambiance will be a façade, inasmuch as the rapidly declining Black newspaper industry is staring into a setting sun, which certainly precludes any hope of a brighter future. For sure, one might beg to differ with that pessimistic assessment when they read, “The National Newspaper Publishers Association, also known as the Black Press of America, is a 62-year-old federation of more than 200 Black community newspapers from across the United States. Since World War II, it has also served as the industry's news service, a position that it has held without peer or competitor since the Associated Negro Press dissolved by 1970.”
Then again, when one knows the history of Black newspapers, he or she fully understands why the demise of Black newspapers is a real and present danger. Compare if you dare, Black newspapers that existed in the past, to those struggling to survive today. Barbara K. Henritze listed in her book (“Bibliographic Checklist of African American Newspapers”) a total of 5, 539 newspapers that have been owned, published and edited by African Americans and have been identified in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Need we expound further on the rise and decline of Black newspapers? or Vilma Raskin Potter’s book (A Reference Guide to Afro-American Publications & Editors 1827-1946), gives insight into why it is essential that Black newspapers survive.

Surely there’s a cause for the devastating impact on Black newspapers that have become an endangered species? Insight is found in an article (”A Separate World”), that’s found on California Newsreel’s online study guide reveals: “Mainstream papers depended on department stores and large advertising accounts for much of their revenue, but white-owned businesses were usually not interested in advertising to black consumers. As a result, most black newspapers operated on shoestring budgets and all of them depended on circulation rather than advertising for the majority of their income. At the same time, (black) newspapers devoted themselves to countering the degrading images of African Americans commonly found in the mainstream press.”

If the foregoing text gives one cause to pause and ponder how African- American News & Issues (that distributes over 300, 000 free copies to over 5, 000 sites in five major Texas cities weekly), has not only survived, but thrived for nine years, with few ads and no revenue from circulation, you can find the answer in Bud’s Eyeview and We Must Understand on the editorial page. Meanwhile, times have changed drastically since affirmative action and civil rights bills put more money into Black consumer’s pockets. Thus, Black publishers fully realize that when 2004 corporate America refuses to support politically incorrect Black newspapers-- especially those who report all news without fear or favor—its more about politics than economics.
Unfortunately NNPA’s younger, “bottom line” leadership have a problem with the kind strong editorials from an uncompromised Black perspective, insofar as they feel it isn’t good business to bite the hands that feed us. However, compromise isn’t an option Black newspapers that flourished under the leadership of Dorothy Leavell, who brought in people like Mins. Louis Farrakhan and Percy Sutton as keynote speakers at NNPA Conventions. She was ousted in a coup lead by (see Roy for guys name), thus, the organization has begun to distort its true mission. As a result the all mighty buck has divided and confused “show us the advertising money” publishers and old school editorial watchers on the wall for Black America. Score another one for the all mighty buck.

Even so, Black publishers face an even bigger, more basic, problem that no amount of advertising revenue can solve, insofar as it is personal and unique to the Black press. There are nice ways to explain why Black America’s best and brightest young journalist are more likely to work for a White newspaper, for less money, than work for a Black newspaper. However, from a prevailing Black perspective, that sad phenomenon is the result of our slave indoctrination to believe that “White man’s ice is colder.” And the problem is exacerbated, according to a University of Georgia survey, because Black journalists want to be seen and heard on radio, or TV. If, however, they have to start at a newspaper, they prefer a mainstream daily.
The surveys indicates that only 750 minority print journalism majors graduated in 1997, the most recent year for which data is available, along with about 4,450 non-minority print major graduates. A greater proportion of minorities are enrolled in broadcast studies than in print journalism. Only 13.1 percent of the 1996-97 minority graduates were print journalism majors, compared to 17.2 percent of the non-minorities. Some 35.4 percent of the minority grads were broadcast majors, compared to 22 percent of the non-minorities. Overall, the best students in terms of grade point and test-score averages still choose print journalism. The data indicates that 24.2 percent of minority grads (all majors) in 1997 sought jobs at newspapers, compared to 19.9% of whites.”

“And the data show that six months after graduation 18.9 percent of the minorities who sought work at daily newspapers had not found jobs, while 6.4 percent of the non-minorities who sought work with daily newspapers had not found jobs. At least a part of the explanation is the lower proportion of minority job seekers who majored in print journalism, had internships, or worked on their college newspapers.” The American Society of Newspaper Editors offer a different spin on the same shortage of young, Black journalist to defend charges of discrimination in their newsrooms. Even so, the National Association of Black Journalist (NABJ) that was founded by 44 men and women on December 12, 1975, in Washington, D.C. hurts Black newspapers the most.

The NABJ’s mission is preparing the few Black journalists available to integrate the mainstream media. It is small wonder why the 200 remaining Black newspapers are an endangered species that’s staring into a setting sun—when the largest organization of journalists of color in the world (with 3,300 members in one of the dozens of professional and student chapters that serve black journalists nationwide)-- is “still rising pickaninnys for the plantation.” And that, sadly, is the State of the Black Press in 2004 America.