For a weekly community newspaper in the Midwest, we have had a pretty good view of this White House. We have seen President Barack Obama, from his earliest campaign days throughout his first year in office and beyond, make an unprecedented effort to connect with the minority media. We also know that, despite his high expectations and rigorous standards for excellence, Obama often has not found the consistently high quality of coverage from the Black Press that he might have hoped to get in return for his outreach efforts.
Unfortunately for this historic experiment in attention and access, the Black Press that found itself suddenly added to White House press lists has been contending with a daunting challenge in its own industry. By now it is a tired story, but it remains just as real: a 24-hour cable news cycle, social media’s rising market share of people’s attention, the flight of advertising from print to digital media, a deep recession that hit everyone hard and has especially hurt the readers and supporters of our publications. To a long list of tough breaks that have been Obama’s fate as POTUS, we must add that, when this nation finally elected a president willing to help the Black Press fly, the Black Press was struggling to move much faster than a crawl.
In this challenging media environment, we are nonetheless elated (and grateful to our colleagues) to find The St. Louis American awarded as the best newspaper in the Black Press trade group, the National Newspaper Publisher’s Association. Last week, Publisher Donald M. Suggs accepted the 2010 John B. Russwurm Award at the annual NNPA convention (the seventh Russwurm Award the paper has received during Suggs’ tenure). Named for the founding editor of our nation’s first black-owned newspaper, this honor reflects the highest cumulative ranking across a wide variety of other award categories. Since The American ranked among the best in categories across all spectra, from advertising to marketing to editorial, this truly is a group award shared by every single person who makes it possible to publish this newspaper every week.
St. Louis does not always properly recognize our own, and this paper has made it our business to sharply criticize, when warranted, many other media outlets in town for their blind loyalties, unnecessary compromises and racially-tinged hatchet jobs. So we do not expect it to be trumpeted very loudly by other media that St. Louis is home to the best black-owned newspaper in the country. But the audience we value most are the individuals who come to us regularly, so if only the people holding this newspaper and scanning this editorial online share with us our distinction, we will be satisfied.
Like the president who afforded this niche of newspapers a new level of respect, the Black Press is beset on all sides by challenges and trials. In this economy, in this media market, the publication that claims to know the future and its place in it is making an empty boast. All we can say is that we will continue to work and struggle hard to stay here in St. Louis in what our peers in the Black Press have told us is a position of national leadership. We love this region and its potential, and we intend to do our best to make sure we remain true to our mission: that we work to ensure the African Americans who call St. Louis home are regarded and treated fairly and are included equally in the opportunities to succeed.
