Barack Obama’s election as president is generating major changes in the nation’s Black press, ushering in a series of firsts that editors say will reshape print, Internet, radio and television coverage aimed at Black audiences.
Essence, the top-selling magazine among Black women, will have a full-time White House reporter for the first time. Ebony magazine will add a White House reporter, either full time or as needed. Its sister publication, Jet magazine, will have a weekly two-page Washington report in every issue. BET is scrapping its usual program of videos and sitcoms for a four-hour live broadcast of Obama’s swearing-in. BET did the same thing for both party conventions last summer, and on Election Day. TV One will do the same, airing 21 hours of inauguration coverage throughout the day.
The moves mark a return to a time when the Black press, particularly magazines, was newsier. Jet first published photos of the battered and swollen body of Emmett Till in 1955, sparking outrage and galvanizing a still-young civil rights movement.
What took so long? Katrina happened under Bush, Rwanda happened under Clinton. If more reporters of color were there, maybe those issues would have gained more attention. The addition of Black reporters could mean more focus on the urban agenda, failing schools, crime, job loss, poor health care.
The latest issue of Essence, which reaches 8.5 million readers a month, has two different covers, Barack on one and Michelle on the other, and features famous Black Americans, reflecting on the moment. Ebony named a person of the year for the first time in its 63-year history, dedicating its entire January issue to the president-elect. The Obama watch section is one of the most popular features on the Essence website. For Ebony, the nation’s oldest Black magazine with a monthly readership of 12 million, the coverage paid off — the Chicago-based magazine landed Obama’s first post-election interview.
But all the coverage won’t and can’t be like that. Black folks will be interested in education, unemployment, AIDS, housing, health, crime, etc. The unemployment rate in our community is double the national average. And 95 percent of black children go to public schools. These are the kinds of things Black people are going to be interested in seeing improvements in.
Maybe the Black media is returning to the time when something that was happening in our community, it hit the Black press long before it hit the mainstream. The newsier turn in the Black media is due, at least in part, to the Black brain drain from mainstream publications because of massive industry buyouts and layoffs. And Black publications like Ebony and Essence have reaped the rewards, landing reporters and editors from such top newspapers as the Baltimore Sun, Newsday and the Boston Globe and such organizations as the former Knight Ridder chain.
BET, which will host an inaugural ball for the first time in the network’s history, ran 10 hours of Election Night coverage and reached 10.7 million viewers, topping CNBC’s coverage. Correspondents, who were spread out in cities across the country, had a responsibility to give the information but also say what it felt like and what it meant to our community. They were our storytellers and not just reporters.
BET has long been criticized for running too many booty-shaking music videos, but is in the process of expanding its news coverage beyond the current 25 hours a month. TV one offers more middle of the road programming, but is not offered in all areas of the country. Don’t expect “Meet the Press” or a nightly news-style broadcast from either yet.
But the Black media realizes that Black people are demanding change and accountability and they want to know what’s happening and they want people who they trust to break it down and help them understand it.
