BLACK NEWSPAPERS BUILD WEB SITES

By: Karim Mostafa Publishers Group Hopes To Get 50 Papers Online


The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), made up of 200 weekly newspapers targeting African-American communities, has launched an initiative to get 50 member papers online by the end of summer. The effort is being supported with a $125,000 grant from UPS.

The group already has a central Web site -- BlackPressUSA.com -- where articles are available to the public. This site will also be used to exchange articles among NNPA member newspapers.

"With this, we've cracked the code for African-American newspapers to exchange national stories in real-time," said Ben Jealous, executive director of NNPA. "Most of the NNPA members are the little guy, often out there in the corners of the country where real news is happening. Now there's a venue to distribute those stories [that aren't covered by the mainstream press]. We're really excited about that."

For now, the stories will only be available for publication by other NNPA members, but Jealous foresees a time when the content will be available to other media outlets. NNPA says it may become a syndicate for stories about black America.

There may be a demand for such a service. "I've been obsessed with having a 'black AP' since I was in college," said Omar Wasow, executive director at BlackPlanet.com, an online community for African Americans that isn't affiliated with NNPA. Wasow cited film critic Armand White's work as an example of good editorial content worthy of syndicating throughout the network.

Baltimore Times' Associate Publisher Anthony McCarthy said, "BlackPressUSA.com is an outstanding outlet for some terrific writers and columnists who work in the black press." McCarthy also hopes that the site attracts people who are not traditional readers of the black press but who are technologically-savvy, such as college students and business people, in order to introduce them to the original content.

BlackPressUSA.com had its genesis in a conversation that took place last July between Jealous; Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute; and John J. Oliver Jr., chief executive of the Washington and Baltimore Afro-American newspapers. Jealous said that as the Republican and Democratic Conventions for the 2000 election approached, the three men were "bemoaning the fact that the black press wouldn't get information pertaining to the African-American community to readers as the conference was going on." So they took the matter into their own hands and launched BlackPressUSA.com.

In just two and a half weeks prior to the conventions, BlackPressUSA.com was built and launched in time to produce real-time news coverage at the events. The response was immediate with both corporations and unions, especially black labor unions, pledging their support to such an endeavor.

Since then, Jealous wanted to find a way to make BlackPressUSA.com a continuous source of real-time news for African Americans. That's where the weekly newspapers that make up the black press come into play.

Only 20 of the 200 members of NNPA had Web sites that were up-to-date, said Jealous. Barriers to entry for these weekly newspapers, according to Jealous, included the high cost of getting a site started as well as the added expense of training people to use complex technology.

With those barriers in mind, Jealous started looking six months ago for a software company that could build a Web publishing system for a fraction of the usual cost. That's where Adam Dennis came in. Dennis, currently president of Xchange Interactive Group, got started on his technology company in the basement of the Baltimore Times. Joy Bramble, publisher of the Times, connected the dots and put Jealous in touch with Dennis.

The resulting enterprise is the BlackPressUSA Network that utilizes software designed and built by Dennis' company. Dennis has built a news management tool that allows NNPA members to build sites by easily picking and choosing the templates they want. They essentially get the ability to create a customized site out of a matrix that provides 600 possible options, said Dennis.

"What impressed me about the strategy was that they're offering one set of tools to newspapers," said BlackPlanet.com's Wasow. He commended the BlackPressUSA project for finding a cost-effective way for black newspapers to get online.

A major part of the BlackPressUSA Network will be both the classified and banner advertising space that NNPA will be responsible for selling. The NNPA already sells advertising for the print editions of its 200 members, so the sales staff will soon start offering the online option as well. However, Jealous said that will come down the road since the first goal is to get the Web sites started.

Although the initiative has just started, NNPA is getting very close to getting the first 10 papers online. As for the other 150 NNPA newspapers, some of them aren't convinced that going online is worth all the effort, but they're watching closely.



Karim Mostafa (kmostafa@editorandpublisher.com) is associate editor for E&P Online.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.