black media. abolition of slavery and women’s voting rights led to the rise of early alternative...
TRANSCRIPT
Black Media
Abolition of slavery and women’s voting rights led to the rise of early
alternative newspapers
First Black newspaper: Freedom’s Journal was founded in New York City in 1827
That same year, New York abolished slavery.
Founders: Rev. Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm, freedmen
Freedom’s Journal lasted only 2 years. Russwurm (right) used the paper to promote an early back to Africa movement, and it lost favor. He then migrated to Liberia.
Frederick Douglass was a journalist
He founded The North Star in 1847, the most influential Af-Am pre-Civil War publication
After the Civil war, there was an enormous burst of energy, a desire to communicate, a desire to connect,
with black people establishing newspapers in any town, even tiny ones.” – Phyl Garland
Between 1827-1861, there were more than 2 dozen black newspapers established. The Reconstruction was a “golden age” for African American journalists
Ida B. Wells, co-owner & editor of Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, late 19th
century
Between 1876 and 1919, at least 3,000 black men were murdered by white lynch mobs. Wells, a crusading journalist, put her life at risk to bring the story to light.
Plessy vs Ferguson, 1896
Impact on the black press? Sparked the black media to cover the new separate but (un)equal law of the land.
Chicago Defender, founded in 1905 as “the world’s greatest weekly”
Circulation of 100,000 ballooned to 500,000 readers. The paper was distributed in the South, encouraging black men and women to go North where there was work in factories in big cities.
The Defender covered the Red Summer, 1919. Riots broke out in large cities after white men returned from the
war and found their jobs taken by black men
In heyday, black press = 2,700 newspapers, magazines and
quarterly journals
What has happened to black newspapers? Now fewer than 200
Crisis Magazine, founded in 1910
Launched by W.E.B. Du Bois, as
mouthpiece of the NAACP
• It will record important happenings and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect the Negro-American.
• Secondly, it will be a review of opinion and literature, recording briefly books, articles, and important expressions of opinion in the white and colored press on the race problem.
• Thirdly, it will publish a few short articles.
• Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals.
• Circulation increased from 1,000 copies to 100,000 by 1918
Jessie Redmon Fauset, literary editor of The Crisis in the 1920s
Literary magazine of
Harlem Renaissance
Featured Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and other artistic luminaries
Social issues and crusades
The magazine lives on and online
The Negro Digest, founded in 1942 by
John Johnson, patterned after
Reader’s Digest
Ebony, founded in 1945
John Johnson used his mother’s furniture as collateral for a loan after no one – black or white – fund his idea to create an Af-Am “Life” magazine.
Ebony Mission StatementEbony celebrated African
American life and culture by depicting the achievements of black Americans. It honored black identity by portraying black life, refuting stereotypes, and inspiring readers to overcome racial and other barriers to success.
Jet Magazine,
1951
John Johnson wanted weekly “jet-fast” news in response to rapid societal change.
Jet also offered serious coverage of early Civil Rights movement
Essence Magazine,
1970grew from
50,000 to 1.6 million in its
heyday
Magazine as born at the height of black power and women’s liberation movements.
Trends in black publishingWhen mainstream publishing sneezes, black newspapers and magazine catch pneumonia
Jet, R.I.P. June 2014
Circulation, dropping
Not the only game in town
Celebrities have options – and so do readers.
Oprah, the queen
of all media, creates
competition for black
publications
Economics of Magazines
• Cover Price: $3.99 an issue
• Subscription: $12.99 a year discounted
• Full page 4-color ad: about $121,000 for one month
• essence.com: free
Analog Dollars vs Digital Dimes
The death of print….. At all media, ethnic and mainstream, advertising migrates to less expensive online sites.
The Fight for Eyeballs
Challenge of Black Media• How do you critically cover issues in the
community? (Bill Cosby! Clarence Thomas?)
• White ownership, Essence, BET, Black voices,
• Politics vs economics (Nelly, Essence Music festival?)
• Multi-culturalism & interracial marriage
• The career as black journalist – where to put your talent
Community and Ethnic Media: future of print
37 % of New York’s population = foreign born. The combined circulation of these 18 dailies exceeds 500,000. (By contrast, the New York Daily News delivers about 270,000 papers to the city’s five boroughs.)
For Thursday: Read the history of The Paper