FULL OPINION PIECE

The Black Press Is Dead. Get Over It | Black Agenda Report.

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

When will the black press get as excited enough over mass incarceration, the epidemic of solitary confinement, the plague of urban school closings and privatizations, over gentrification and joblessness as they are about reality TV and what Michelle is wearing? Are you holding your breath? It might be time to let it go….

The Black Press Is Dead. Get Over It

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

When you think of the black press, what persons and institutions come to mind? Frederick Douglass? Ida B. Wells? The old Chicago Daily Defender and Pittsburg Courier? Today’s NNPA and the National Association of Black Journalists? Tavis Smiley on PBS, brought to you by Wal-Mart and Bank of America? CNN’s Roland Martin?

“Much of black media really is awful,” observed former Capitol Hill staffer Yvette Carnell of BreakingBrown.com, on Facebook only yesterday “so let’s put them on blast, shall we…”, and linked to a page of representative snippets.

If anything, Ms. Carnell is too kind. Arguably, the black press has been dead a long, long time now. Most black reporters work for white-oriented, corporate-owned outlets. What used to be “the black conversation” is now locked down and mediated by Sony, CBS-Viacom, Clear Channel, and the like. Broadcasters, even black ones, no longer, or in some cases never have regarded Black America as a polity, with its own traditions, values and aspirations.