Saturday, August 16, 2008
Slow News Is No News
You mean that African American Newspapers were late in getting out the news on Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes? I’m shocked!!! Sike! Really I’m not surprised at all. TV One’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention is titled “The After Party”. Black News has gone by the way of the Do Do Bird. If it was not for African American web sites (i.e. AOL Black Voices), and Black bloggers we wouldn’t have any news regarding black folks. Some of these “Old Guard” African American newspapers are behind the times. How does a news organization not have people working on the weekend? That is the equivalent of CNN working a four day week. Some African American newspapers did not have anything about their deaths in print. African American newspapers can’t just use a rewrite of an Associated Press story and call it reporting. They have to be proactive instead of reactive if they want to stay relevant. The African American news organizations in question were in the hometowns of Hayes and Mac. It is sad that they could not receive better treatment from their own folks. When Bud Billiken (a mythical character) gets more coverage than a comedic icon you know it’s truly a sad day.
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I will say this. When I got back to Chicago (after this internship), it was much to my chagrin that the Chicago Defender had moved to a four (or was it five) day a week paper to a weekly news paper.
So, of course they'd be late publishing the death of Bernie Mac. Secondly, the Bud Billiken parade was a parade that was started by the Chicago Defender back in the day. Seriously, the Bud Billiken parade is the absolute high point on their calendar year--everything else is secondary. Although, to my knowledge they're not over the parade anymore and haven't been for some time.
I think the lack of coverage in the black newspapers comes from crappy leadership during the the 70s and 80s that effectively drove down subscriptions and readership numbers. And so now that the Sun-Times on average is a 60-75 page newspaper during the week, down from a mostly 100 or more page paper is really a result of the fact that people go online to read their news--or else we're watching it on TV and calling it a day.
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