From Black Press to Black Media

The next speaker in this AoIR 2018 session is Miya Williams Fayne, whose focus is on the shift from the black press to broader black media. Early black press were mainly abolitionist newspapers, and were officially recognised by the National Newspapers Association. Today many black media are online and have diversified their areas of focus, and Miya conducted interviews with a number of the editors and operators of such media organisations.

The interviewees have a range of terms that categorise their outlets, including especially black press and black media, which are used largely interchangeably; some respondents distinguished between these terms and used black press mainly for legacy outlets, however – the distinction here is by medium, and press is then only used for print media.

But the use of black media overshadows the emphasis on journalism: black media contains aspects other than journalism in the narrow sense; it contains blogs, gossip sites, entertainment publications, and other only marginally journalistic media sites. This also represents a fragmentation of the black media space, however; for instance, not all of these outlets have a specific racial ideology or related political aims.

On the other hand, this increased diversity is also a sign of the strength of black media, and allows for a greater range of voices to be heard, on a broader number of topics than before. From this perspective, entertainment and gossip are a valid part of black media, and more conversational content is included in this conceptualisation of black media. As a result, this more inclusive term is being embraced to an increasing extent.