There are many challenges in the newspaper industry in general and in the Black Press in particular, but there are also opportunities. This is a stressful but exciting time to be engaged in this work. So we are gratified to see our efforts recognized by the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). This weekend in Nashville, The American was awarded Publication of the Year for our class (the largest newspaper class), along with four other first place awards that run the gamut of editorial content: Best News Story, Best Business Section, Best Entertainment Section and Best Use of Photographs. Competing in a field of 92 black-owned newspapers across the nation, we took first, second or third place in more than half of the 15 award categories. This makes the ninth time in the past 18 years that The American has been awarded the equivalent of best newspaper by the NNPA.
This newspaper is foremost a collective effort by a small staff, and we benefit from a tremendous amount of participation from our community of readers. Though staff members did the work recognized by the awards in the individual categories, we estimate that 40 percent of our editorial content – opinion pieces, inspirational messages, celebrations, reunions, letters and more – is reader-generated. Community newspapers such as ours were relying on reader input long before the concept of “citizen journalist” became adopted in the mainstream. We fervently hope that everyone who has had their work published in any section of our newspaper realizes that we share this national recognition with you.
Thinking more deeply about our mission, in fact, we owe everything we do to our community. Everything we do here is done with the intention to live up to the high expectations of our community, and we are proud to provide you with some of the critical information our people need, such as health and financial literacy, education news, reports on public policy and success stories. We also recognize the need to entertain you and to stay current with society news, both in the local club scene and among national celebrities. We have a very special regard and respect for our community. When our peers recognize us for excellence, we feel, what they are recognizing is our commitment to the community that enables our efforts.
However, like the parent who can not hear his child praised enough, we admit to being somewhat disappointed to have placed second, rather than first, for Digital Excellence, a category of critical importance to the future of our industry and this publication. Not to diminish the victory of the Pittsburgh Courier or to suggest its new website launch did not deserve its first place recognition, but we would place our digital publishing – on stlamerican.com, in our free E-edition, via our mobile application and on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) – alongside the digital products of any publication in the NNPA.
We continually seek to improve our print product, just last week adding a superb upgrade in the quality of our printing and this week adding a new insert, USA Weekend magazine. But we recognize that media become more digital, mobile and social every day, and if we are going to serve our audience in the future as effectively as we do today, we will need to reach you digitally as well as in print. We encourage our print readers to discover us in this new media. And we promise to be here – and there – to serve you long into the future. Thanks!
