Mainstream to Ethnic Media – A New Career Direction

New America Media, News Feature, Kenneth J. Cooper, Posted: Aug 08, 2007

Editor’s Note: A steady stream of mainstream journalists are moving to, and in some cases moving back to, ethnic media. Despite pay cuts, they have opportunities to fulfill a passion they were unable to in mainstream media, reports NAM contributor Kenneth J. Cooper. Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize winner and freelance journalist based in Boston.

Howard Manly walked away from his op-ed column in the Boston Herald, a tabloid daily, and into the executive editor's office at the Bay State Banner, a black weekly in the city with less than a quarter of the Herald's circulation of 230,000.

Evelyn Hernández had worked for Newsday, the Miami Herald and Fort Worth Star Telegram, but decided against returning to a mainstream newspaper after a stint in academia. Instead, she took over as opinion page editor and editorial writer at El Diario/La Prensa, a Spanish-language daily in New York City.

In recent years, a noticeable number of veteran African-American and Latino journalists like Manly and Hernández have made an unusual mid-career transition, leaving behind general-interest media for newspapers, magazines, websites and broadcast outlets oriented to their racial or ethnic groups. Some younger journalists who haven't gotten much traction at mainstream media are also making the switch.

Journalists say they made the move to fulfill a passion for providing journalism tailored to their minority group, assume supervisory roles that were unavailable to them in mainstream outlets and contribute to strengthening ethnic media that are traditionally short on financial and professional resources.

The Latino community seems to have led the movement back to ethnic media. The American Journalism Review (AJR) reported the trend in a 2001 article under the dubious headline, "Bilingual Defectors," wording that suggested refugees from mainstream media had somehow abandoned a natural affiliation. Hernández had joined El Diario/La Prensa earlier that year. Unlike general interest outlets, Spanish-language media are growing along with their target population, creating new job opportunities.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a handful of African American journalists trickled to black-oriented media, although many later returned to mainstream publications. The trend appears to be accelerating since cutbacks and buyouts started in 2001 at metropolitan dailies.

The migration burst into wider notice this summer when Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, became editorial director of Ebony and Jet, venerable magazines based in Chicago. Monroe faced losing his job as a vice president when Knight-Ridder was bought by The McClatchy Company. He quickly hired Sylvester Monroe (no relation) as a senior editor of Ebony, a veteran of Time and Newsweek who had been Sunday/national editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution until the paper cut back its national coverage.

There is a touch of historical irony in that black journalists trained at white-owned newspapers are taking their talents to the black press.-- When race riots and the Kerner Commission report prompted white newspaper owners to open up their newsrooms in the 1960s, many raided black weeklies.

Besides the Banner in Boston, the Chicago Defender and Amsterdam News in New York City have recently hired editors who built their careers at mainstream dailies.

"It's exciting to see all this talent returning to the black press," says George Curry, editor of the news service of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which circulates to black-owned papers. Curry himself is a veteran of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Tribune.

Manly and Hernández share similar explanations for their moves.

"My center of gravity is black people, issues of social justice and human rights," says Manly, who has also worked for Newsweek and the Boston Globe. "When you work for general interest newspapers, their interest in focusing on that particular issue is limited--unless there is a race riot."

Manly maintains he didn't sacrifice any freedom of expression in giving up an op-ed column at a daily, an opportunity that many minority journalists seek, fruitlessly. "I can write whatever I want now," he says.

"For me," Hernández says, "it was really the opportunity to do the things I wanted to do when I went into journalism, which was to provide journalism and information to a community that really needed it and wasn't getting it from the mainstream media."

Hernández, currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, says unlike in mainstream newsrooms she doesn't need to "spend a lot of time explaining why stories that are affecting our communities are stories."

Joining Hernández, the former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at El Diario/La Prensa, in 2005, was Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, who served as the deputy editor of Time's Latin America edition.He remains executive editor of the daily, which has a circulation of 50,000.

The AJR article identified other Latino journalists who have moved from a Los Angeles TV station that broadcasts in English to one that airs programs in Spanish, from CBS to the Telemundo network and from mainstream dailies to People en Español.

There does not appear to be a similar trend among Native American and Asian journalists. One Asian journalist, Upendra Mishra, who worked for the Boston Business Journal, Asia Business Journal and United Press International, formed his own media company in 1996. The Mishra Group, outside of Boston in Waltham, Mass., publishes India New England and IndUS Business Journal.

Sree Sreenivasan, a founder of the South Asian Journalists Association, says low pay and professional standards preclude many members in mainstream media from going to work for Indian-oriented or "desi" media.

"If I could find a way to do journalism about the desi community at the highest level of professionalism, I would do it," says Sreenivasan, dean of students at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Hernández says the financial sacrifice was worth it. "I did take a pay cut, not from academia, but from my journalism jobs," she says. "You balance it with an opportunity to be in a position of influence and to make a difference. That's the payoff."

Manly says significant perks--a vehicle and housing--make it possible for him to work for a small weekly in a city with a high cost of living.

Curry says black newspaper publishers, notorious for offering low pay, are changing their ways. "More of them realize they have to pay for the talent," he says.

Hernández says she applied her mainstream training to standardize and professionalize the opinion pages of El Diario/La Prensa. A separate op-ed page was created, the pool of regular columnists was expanded and an editorial was published every day, in Spanish and English, to make the paper's opinions accessible to New York's decision makers.

Manly says he has broadened the Bay State Banner's coverage to not only reflect the socioeconomic range of the city's African Americans, but also to reach for readers among other residents of color and "people of consciousness." The front page was redesigned to have a cleaner look. He has also created a monthly health section sponsored by local health insurance providers.

"I think the variety of stories that they bring has improved," says Kalimah Redd Knight, a public relations specialist for Simmons College in Boston. "The thing I appreciate about it is the stories aren't 'black stories,' they're news stories."

For Manly, working for the black press may be continuing a family tradition. He is researching whether Alex Manly, who edited the Wilmington (N.C.) Journal in the late 1890s, was his great-great grandfather or other relation.

This article was originally published in the Maynard Journal of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education

Related Articles:
Study Says Ethnic Media Booms

Ethnic Media Joins Media Monopoly Debate





Page 1 of 1

Printable Version Return to Normal Version Send Page to Friend Subscribe to NAM Newsletters