By Jaden Perry<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aboard Air Force Two, surrounded by journalists from big and small publications, the founder of The Black Wall Street Times, Nehemiah Frank, reminisced on how far he had come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was just looking out the window and thinking about my ancestors, thinking about journalists who had come before me, thinking about people who had died during the [Tulsa] Massacre,\u201d Frank said, recalling his coverage of Harris\u2019 2024 presidential campaign. \u201cI carried all of that with me when I was on that plane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
News publications focused on the Black community represent just a sliver of the industry. Frank\u2019s website is one of nearly 500 other Black-owned news organizations in the country. The Black press is confronting many of the same pressures battering the broader media industry, including declining advertising revenue and the shift to digital publishing. Because of government-sponsored anti-DEI campaigns, attacks on the press and a quickly evolving digital medium, many Black publications have shrunk or completely shuttered under the pressure. But the ones that survive continue a nearly 200-year-old mission: covering communities and stories they say larger news organizations overlook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAmerica doesn\u2019t have a full accounting of herself without the pages of the historic Black press,\u201d said Nicole Carr, an assistant journalism professor at Morehouse College. \u201cEven into today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Historically, Carr explained, Black publications have always been under pressure to survive, but they\u2019ve always been resilient. When white distributors in the South refused to carry the Chicago Defender, publisher Robert Sengstacke Abbott relied on Black railroad porters to distribute the paper to Southern readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The civil rights movement brought new challenges. In the 1960s, several Black outlets lost talent to mainstream media companies that promised bigger audiences and opportunities. But Black media never fell completely silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBlack-owned news media is in both a very strong position, but at the same token, no longer a necessity,\u201d Atlanta Voice Editor-in-Chief Donnell Suggs said, referencing how Black publications are no longer the only ones covering the Black community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, he argued that there are stories within Black America that white-owned publications aren\u2019t tapping into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is one of the few places you still get a feature story on a student going to college, or a small business owner, or a black politician without it being scandalous,\u201d Suggs said. \u201cYou still need a place to be able to show you real news and real stories, and that’s what a Black-owned publication is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A legacy of trust<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a 2024 Pew Research Center poll<\/a>, just over half of Black Americans believe U.S. news media was designed to hold them back. And nearly 90% of Black Americans say they encounter inaccurate news about Black people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Proprietors of Black media outlets say those feelings of distrust may apply to legacy news media, but it seems to be the opposite for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the biggest advantages of The Atlanta Voice is accessibility to the paper. As a local, Black-serving paper, Suggs said, readers have easier access to reporters and can better rely on the paper to tell their stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhereas with these big conglomerate-owned newspapers, you might not ever set foot in the building, let alone talk to somebody that can answer your questions,\u201d Suggs said. \u201cYou can do that with a local newspaper. You can do that with a black newspaper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frank agrees. In Tulsa, everyone knows The Black Wall Street Times, according to Frank, seeing it as a form of \u201cjournalistic activism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think we have the trust of the people. I feel like we have way more community trust at the local level and at the state level, and maybe you know even nationally within the Black community,\u201d Frank said. \u201cThe families come to us, you know, when there are stories that need to be reported.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A descendant of survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Frank noticed a gap in coverage in Tulsa \u2014 one being the misconception that the Tulsa Race Massacre was a riot, rather than a calculated attack that led to hundreds of Black Tulsa residents killed at the hands of white mobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was just a lot of things that were happening to our community, and the narrative was only being published by white media, and so that was the reason why I decided to start the Black Wall Street Times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A new financial threat<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n At its peak, The Black Wall Street Times employed four full-time reporters. Today, it has two, along with a handful of freelancers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At their peak, four full-time reporters wrote for the paper. Then President Trump returned to office, armed with an anti-DEI platform that crippled minority-serving organizations and local news media. The Black Wall Street Times was part of the collateral, losing advertising dollars and forcing the paper to shrink to two reporters and a handful of freelancers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a digital publication, Frank\u2019s paper is still able to reach readers despite the limited staff. The same can\u2019t be said for other historically Black-owned publications that are struggling to make the switch to digital. Dion Raboin noticed this issue and founded The Black Press, an organization that helps legacy Black-owned newspapers make a strong transition into the digital space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of anti-DEI rhetoric, the organizations that once funded legacy Black media began to divest. To make up for the loss in profit, Raboin said, Black publications turned to the digital space for more exposure. The problem was they didn\u2019t know how. That\u2019s when the light bulb first lit in Raboin\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think the most valuable resource to have right now is trust,\u201d Raboin, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, said. \u201cAnd the legacy Black publishers, unlike a lot of the kind of corporate-owned or white-owned media, has not lost that trust. They’ve just kind of lost relevance or recognition among audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So to rebuild that recognition, Raboin founded The Black Press in 2025. As a one-man team, Raboin acts as a middleman between digital resources and publishers. And although he runs a for-profit organization, he leverages funders to make services cost-free for publishers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLegacy Black publishers, I should say, have the opportunity to use technology to grow,\u201d he said. \u201cWhereas a lot of these corporate-owned and white-owned media publications are having to use technology to shrink.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adapting to survive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Vania Andr\u00e9, co-owner and editor-in-chief of The Haitian Times, has been leveraging that digital space for over a decade. Founded in 1999 by her predecessor, the New York-based publication covers the Haitian diaspora. The paper\u2019s mission reaches back to the first Black publication in historical records, Freedom\u2019s Journal, which hired a reporter out of Haiti to offset the skewed narrative of the French.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe [needed] our own news apparatus to tell our own stories, highlight our own struggles, and just everything and and and in between,\u201d Andr\u00e9 said. \u201cAnd so that was really the genesis of the Haitian Times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before taking over, Andr\u00e9 served as the publication\u2019s tech officer. Learning WordPress and audience analytics, she helped pull The Haitian Times into the digital space. Today, Andr\u00e9 says the publication\u2019s readership continues to grow as migrating Haitians feel the desire to remain connected to the rest of the diaspora. And because her team is still small \u2014 with a handful of freelancers and reporters in Haiti and the U.S. \u2014 Andr\u00e9 uses AI to boost productivity in her publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd so, if it wasn’t for you know the democratization of all these digital tools and like allowing people to be able to do more with less, we wouldn’t be where we are now,\u201d Andr\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Black press continues to weather the storm of today\u2019s turbulent times, Carr said she\u2019s preparing her students for the future of media \u2014 one where Black ownership of its stories is a necessity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve absolutely been here before, and we\u2019ve absolutely continued to do the work despite the conditions of the institutions, because the work has to be done,\u201d Carr said. \u201cThe memory has to be kept, the archive has to be made. 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