This article originally appeared in the Florida Courier
For corporate media owners, especially those who purchase with bank loans, it’s tough out there. The traditional American media industry – newspapers, radio stations, even television – are under financial strain as never before, primarily as a consequence of the power of the Internet.
The result: Daily newspapers are slashing costs in ways that were unthinkable years ago just to stay alive. Archrivals like the Miami Herald and Fort Lauderdale’s Sun-Sentinel are distributing each other’s newspaper. The St. Petersburg Times and the Miami Herald have consolidated their Tallahassee bureaus instead of each paper having its own set of reporters.
Newspapers shutting down
Media owners of newspaper and TV newsrooms are firing reporters, sending them off into early retirement, or consolidating jobs by requiring them to write stories for newspaper, radio and TV news and the Internet at the same time. Some newspapers such as the daily Capitol Times in Madison, Wis., and the nonprofit Christian Science Monitor, are completely online and no longer are printed.
Free Internet sites such as Craigslist have replaced newspaper classified ads. Auto advertising, the lifeblood of many daily newspapers, has virtually disappeared due to the auto industry’s troubles. Daily newspapers that can’t cut costs enough, like the 140-year-old San Francisco Chronicle and Denver’s 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News, are up for sale. If there’s no buyer, the papers will be shut down.
Radio advertising never recovered from the economic turmoil following the 9/11 terror attacks. The Internet, bad network programming and a vanishing prime-time audience has even affected the 900-pound gorilla of telecommunications, network television, with ad sales decreasing by double digits since 2007.
When an industry catches a cold, Black entrepreneurs in that industry catch pneumonia. Black media owners nationwide feel the pain in their industry. But those who gathered in Orlando see opportunity in the industry chaos. They believe the principles of Kwanzaa – including Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) and Kuumba (Creativity) – will help them thrive in the toughest economic environment in recent history of media ownership.
Not the first effort
A previous generation of Florida’s Black newspaper owners founded the Southeast Black Publishers Association in 1979. It included owners of Black newspapers in Orlando, St. Petersburg, Daytona Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Pensacola, Miami and Jacksonville, among other places.
“All of Florida’s Black newspapers were in the same organization, which was an achievement in itself,” said longtime political columnist Lucius Gantt. He was the association’s last president. The organization became inactive in 2002.
“The association also included other media professionals – such as people in ad agencies and public relations firms – who did business with Black newspapers,” Gantt mused.
“All the publishers had a financial stake in the organization. Its main purpose was to generate revenue for the newspapers, to share technical advice, and to network with each other.”
Largest group in the country
Eventually, the association became the largest statewide group of Black publishers in America, primarily because of the large numbers of Black newspapers in Florida. Many of the publishers were strong community activists such as the Miami Times’ Garth Reeves, the Daytona Times/Florida Courier’s Charles W. Cherry, Sr., the Jacksonville Free Press’ former owner Ike Williams, and the Pensacola Voice’s Les Humphrey.
“When people were in trouble, Black newspapers were the first people they went to,” Gantt explained. “Almost every publisher in the association had a history of being a strong advocate in communities even before they started their newspapers. Cherry, Sr. was affiliated with the NAACP, and Humphrey was with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”
Gantt says the association began a slow but steady decline. “There was a schism between male and female publishers. There were fights over who was responsible for bringing in ad revenue. There were bad personal relationships that got in the way of doing business. The organization didn’t recruit youthful newspaper entrepreneurs. Most of the active members aged, got ill, died, and were never replaced.”
Two successors
In 2005, Fort Lauderdale Westside Gazette publisher Bobby Henry formed a new organization, the Florida Association of Black-Owned Media, Inc., as a successor to the Southeast Black Publishers Association. Henry is a second-generation newspaper owner.
In 2006, a loose group of Black newspaper, radio and magazine owners began another group, the Flor
ida Black-Owned Media Coalition, to protest the lack of political advertising being spent in Black-owned media in the 2006 statewide and congressional elections.
Those protest efforts continued through the 2008 elections, in which Black newspapers and radio stations ran ads protesting the relatively few dollars allocated by the Florida Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee for get-out-the-vote efforts in Florida’s Black communities.
They accused Democrats of not fully supporting then-candidate Barack Obama in Florida, a battleground state. Their protests went national, with a story in Time magazine and national coverage on Fox News Channel. Eventually, Black media owners decided that the state was too small for two separate organizations. They met in Orlando last week to map their collective futures.
Quality and accountability
The new organization, yet to be named, will have an expanded ownership base. It will include Black-owned newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, and Internet news sites. Black writers, radio hosts, photographers and talent working in Black-owned media outlets as well as companies that do business with Black-owned media owners may become affiliated members.
Florida Courier publisher Charles W. Cherry II facilitated the Orlando meeting. He says that the group will incorporate the successes and learn from the failures of the Southeast Black Publishers Association. “Creditability and accountability are critically important,” Cherry said.
“Finances must be transparent. Leadership must be diverse. Media members must have to undergo some type of third-party audit so that circulation, listenership, and readership claims can be independently verified. We must all improve the quality of our media outlets. We’ve got to share content, information, costs and best practices.”
Over time, the group intends to build formal relationships with Florida’s media institutes and business trade groups, Gov. Charlie Crist’s office, various Florida statewide departments, the state Republican and Democratic parties, Black elected officials, the state NAACP and Florida’s four Historically Black Colleges and Universities, among other entities.
The first task is to develop a comprehensive list of Black media owners, Cherry explained. Another key issue: consolidating their collective expertise in reaching Black audiences.
Black audiences devalued
“So many advertising agencies and their clients don’t understand how to reach Black Floridians. They have no statistical or demographic research. They throw a couple of dollars into a short, poorly designed ad campaign in a few Black newspapers and say, ‘It didn’t work, so therefore Black-owned media doesn’t reach them.’ Meantime, millions of dollars will be spent to push a product or service through ‘mainstream’ media to non-Blacks. If the ad campaign fails, no big deal.
“Advertisers and ad agencies must understand that Black media and Black consumers have value. They can’t reach Black Floridians on the cheap. Florida Black media owners have three generations of experience and credibility in our communities. We use it to advocate in and for Black communities throughout the state. We can also use it to serve advertisers. Eventually, we may develop our own ad agency to get the job done efficiently and effectively for clients that many ad agencies don’t serve well.”
‘Plead our own cause’
Roosevelt Wilson is publisher of Tallahassee’s 34-year-old Capital Outlook. He says Black media outlets must continue to do what they did when Freedom’s Journal, the first Black-owned newspaper, was formed in New York City in 1827. “John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish (Freedom’s Journal’s founders) said, ‘We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us’ on the front page of their first newspaper,” Wilson told the group. “If we don’t stand up and be strong for ourselves and for the Black community, we may as well shut all our newspapers down.”
The future is digital
Keith Longmore owns the Pine Hills News and the West Orlando News, two Black newspapers that are completely online. He’s excited about the future and is working with Central Florida Advocate publisher Kevin Seraaj to establish a robust online presence for the new organization.
“This (the new organization) will allow Black newspapers to reinvent themselves,” he exclaimed. “We all have unique content in our newspapers. It will give us greater credibility when we collaborate with each other across platforms – newspapers, radio, TV and Internet – to co-create something new.
“Florida is as big as a small country. We can’t work by ourselves anymore. For example, we can take a stand on a statewide issue like disparate treatment in the educational system. We can print stories and editorials in our newspapers and magazines and their web sites, broadcast live audio over our radio stations and their streaming web sites, broadcast video on our TV stations and their web sites, upload stories, audio and video to our Black-owned media group web site, and send text messages and e-mail blasts informing people of the issues and urging them to take action.
“In the near future, Black publishers will have greater impact statewide on issues of importance to the Black community. Collaboration and technology is the future,” Longmore said.
