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Archive for African-American news media
July 29, 2010 at 3:57 pm · Filed under African-American news media, black news media, community reporting that matters
We were talking about the stories that could be written about North Lawndale and Isaac Lewis reeled off one idea after another.
Stories about health and the economy and what’s happened to the community. Stories about now and then. Stories that lift people up and stories that give you a sense of what needs to be done.
Shameka Robinson, our intern with Isaac’s North Lawndale Community News, wanted to do all of them too.
I thought about brainstorming with Isaac when I came across this discouraging report on the mainstream news media’s coverage of African-Americans.
The report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reached this conclusion after a long term study:
“As a group, African Americans attracted relatively little attention in the U.S. mainstream news media during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency — and what coverage there was tended to focus more on specific episodes than on examining how broader issues and trends affected the lives of blacks generally”
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1676/media-coverage-african-american-issues-first-year-obama-presidency
It explains further:
The study finds that 9% of the coverage of the nation’s first black president and his administration during Obama’s first year in office had some race angle to it. Here, too, this coverage was largely tied to specific incidents or controversies rather than to broader issues and themes.
These findings come from an examination of more than 67,000 national news stories that appeared between Feb. 16, 2009 and Feb. 15, 2010 in different mainstream media outlets, including newspapers, cable and network television, radio, and news websites.
Just 643 of those stories, 1.9% of the total newshole examined by the study, related in a significant way to African Americans in the U.S.1 (To be considered a “significant” part of a given story, 25% of the content of that story must be about a demographic group and its race/ethnicity). However, this was more coverage than was given in the s same time period to two other minority groups — Hispanics (1.3%) and Asian Americans (0.2%). As a percentage African Americans make up 12.9% of the U.S. population.“
This has been a difficult and complex year for many black Americans. The economy has swallowed millions of jobs and taken away thousands of homes, virtually the only source of wealth for many blacks. Crime consumes a large part of the worries in many black communities. And so do concerns whether the schools that serve black children will collapse under the weight of shrunken budgets.
Where were these stories?
Apparently, they didn’t show up in the mainstream media.
“The storylines that generated the most press attention on African Americans were driven primarily by black figures who made news. In its coverage of race, in other words, the press largely responded to breaking news during the year studied rather than exploring the state of African Americans or developing African-American angles around events or issues in the news.”
So what does that mean?
That we live in separate worlds as ever before? That the black news media has to work harder to tell the story it knows so well. But if it does, if it churns out compelling, important news, will it matter if it is only read by its audience?
What do you think? Talk to me.
Steve@newstips.org
December 10, 2009 at 6:00 pm · Filed under African-American news media
A veteran police officer, now retired, ambles across the stage to accept an award for his service to his community.
A roar of cheers fills the room.
People are standing beside their tables and applauding. A number of his church members are on hand.
Up come the couple who have put their faith in their community years ago when white flight set in.
Rather than flee, they stayed and built a fine arts academy for black youths from the West Side and nearby suburbs. Again, people stand and cheer.
And there is the locate state senator, whose list of deeds draws another long, rousing applause.
These were some of the folks recently honored at the first annual fundraiser for the West Suburban Journal, a weekly paper that didn’t six years ago. But here it is, holding its first gala fundraiser and the money will go for its intern and scholarship program.
I am taken back and it is not just from the vibes in the dining room.
So, here is a paper growing in a time when others are disappearing. A paper serving a large sprawl of black communities on Chicago’s West Side that gets into the act, talking about what’s happening and gets attention for doing it.
As the night goes on, the story is told slowly how L. Nicole Trottie, the publisher and everything else for the paper, began with an idea and found support and advice and built up an organization around volunteers and interns and slowly one employee after another, and, according to the Illinois Press Association, became the first black female publisher of a weekly newspaper in Illinois.
Nicole’s dream, as someone said, has surely come true.
Stephen
October 14, 2009 at 1:01 pm · Filed under African-American news media, community reporting that matters
So what do you do next after you talk about violence in your community?
Richard Muhammad, editor of the Final Call, is looking to present stories that tell about ways that communities have faced the problem and found some solutions. And then the stories will link to organizations and resources on the web.
Here’s a fine story his paper did that laid out what has happened across the country when it comes to fighting violence in the black community. What makes it a better story is that it puts the problem into a larger context; that it helps the reader frame their own questions and that it moves the story ahead to what can be done.
http://tinyurl.com/y9tf92f
Stephen
October 1, 2009 at 3:39 pm · Filed under African-American news media
If there is any story that can’t be ignored, it is the housing crisis. And this is a crisis that undermines the black community more than any other because so much is linked to the importance of owning a home.
Low housing prices are a major reason for income inequality for blacks.
The costs of upkeep of houses in older communities is a major burden on black homeowners, and another factor in the inequality.
This report by the Woodstock Institute is a good start for some reporting. It’s point is that there there is a higher level of unsold vacant homes; that homes are resold are lower rates in the black community and that the sales take longer. I can imagine stories describing streets and individual realities I can see a map of what’s happening and something explaining in detailing, again, why this housing crisis has been so extra painful for Chicago’s black community.
Here’s an excerpt:
“In Chicago, communities of color are shouldering the brunt of the foreclosure crisis,” says Woodstock Institute Vice President Geoff Smith. “Interventions targeted at these communities, such as keeping borrowers in their homes and properties in continuous productive use, can potentially limit the impact of concentrated foreclosures and help stabilize communities.”
And here is a link to the report:
http://tinyurl.com/yd267q9
Steve
September 22, 2009 at 7:02 pm · Filed under African-American news media, darn good writing
The afternoon of April 19,1995 an editor at the Chicago Tribune called me over and told me to get on a plane and get to Oklahoma City as soon as possible. There was an explosion. Many were dead. A pseudo expert on cable television had already theorized that it had to be Arabs and since I speak Arabic I was on my way there.
In the next few hours, the anger spread across parts of Oklahoma City and Arabs or anyone who looked like an Arab felt it. The next morning I heard their stories but not long after I wrote another story saying that the police had arrested the bomber and he wasn’t an Arab, but a crazed man who would fit into any crowd walking down most streets in the U.S. It was too late to rescind the pain and stereotyping though.
I thought about this when I came across this column by Lou Ransom. I stopped and read it over. This is good writing, good thinking, good insight to who we are and what we sometimes forget or unconsciously file away as not so important. It is the kind writing that brings a newspaper alive: clear and powerful sentences and a vision that captures you because it is so darn perceptive you swallow up every word because you feel like they have grabbed you by your hand and are leading you to place you want to understand.
His theme was the lack of civility that lurks in some of us who “don’t need a passport” and “won’t get stopped at the border.” The lack of civility that so worries some of us today.
Here is a part of his column that ran on Sept. 16,
Steve
“But the most insidious aspect of McVeigh’s dastardly terrorism (until 9/11 the most terrible terrorist attack on U.S. soil), was that he wasn’t a Muslim, wasn’t an Arab, wasn’t a foreigner, wasn’t a communist, wasn’t part of the radical left, wasn’t a member of the ACLU, wasn’t Jewish, or Black, or Hispanic or Asian. There could be no racial profiling to find people like McVeigh, those who thought that America needed to be taught a lesson by “patriots” like him. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why he could drive a truck filled with homemade explosives right up to the building, get out, and walk away. He didn’t “look” suspicious, because he looked just like all the other white American men walking around in Oklahoma City.
Lou Ransom
June 25, 2009 at 1:37 pm · Filed under African-American news media, darn good writing
The first thing each week when the Defender arrives I read Lou Ransom’s column but this week my eyes hit on the one by Earl Ofari Hutchinson and they stayed there.
It was about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
And when I was done this is what I said.
I said to myself that this is good writing, good thinking and a good thing I saw it because the words were nailed in, nailed in so strong they pulled you along, and because it reminded me that this kind of writing comes from people who love words and know how to use them, people who care about ideas and what they can do to people and a community and from a paper that serves its community and that’s what the Defender does.
Read it and tell me what you think.
April 2, 2009 at 4:35 pm · Filed under African-American news media, Comedy
Before the laugh, first comes the smile. It sprawls and grows and then becomes the laugh, throaty and deep, and then the laugh settles back into a smile.
Toure Muhammad is laying out his vision for the nation’s one and only black satirical publication. Something that will be funny and critical, something hip and on the edge, an entertainment guide to black Chicago, and a place where, when people go online or when they pick up the paper edition, they will feel at home and at ease.
It will be like sitting around with friends or family over some bean soup, and that’s what he calls it, his Bean Soup Times. But as he explains this all, he also slips in a joke so fast you didn’t know it was coming. Like, “Did you hear about all the young Kenyans who are headed for Kansas?”
Back to his dream which he actually has been working on for some time.
Eight years ago he sent an e-mail to friends and that became a website and that became a printed publication too. The Bean Soup Times made people laugh but then he had other work to do. So, it took a snooze. But now he is back at it with a head full of plans.
If you know anything about him you might wonder where the humor fits in with all of his work and sometimes people do ask him that.
Afterall, he did start out as a reporter for The Final Call, and then worked for the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice here in Chicago and then worked for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Chicago and until very recently was a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush.
“I’ve always been a little silly,” he explains.
