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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 42. The Negro Press - 4. The Controls of the Negro Press
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922 An American Dilemma
of Negro papers take a ^^radical” stand. The same is becoming true on the
issue of labor unionism. The fact that most persons in the upper class are
dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the economic welfare of the masses
for their livelihood tends to bend the political opinions of the Negro upper
class toward economic ^^radicalism.”
Park, in his study of the immigrant press, pointed out: ^Tn many cases
the advertisements reveal the organization of the immigrant community
more fully than dpes the rest of the paper,”^^ and the same is true also of
the Negro paper. The main observation about the advertising in the Negro
press is that there is so little of it. And there does not seem to be much of
a trend toward an increase.® In the almost complete absence of much ordi-
nary commercial advertising, the ads for "hair-straighteners,” “skin-bleach-
ers,” and other cosmetics, patent medicines, dream books and “occults”
become the more conspicuous.^*^ They often include half or more of all
advertising in a Negro paper.
The paucity of advertising, of course, makes the economy of a Negro
newspaper precarious.^ It cannot keep the copy price too high, either, if it
wants a substantial circulation. These factors explain why some Negro
papers are so weak economically. It is often pointed out by Negro news-
papermen that the paucity of advertising at least has one good effect,
that the Negro press becomes freer from any outside controls. It depends
more exclusively on its readers. There is undoubtedly some truth in this.
On the other hand, the weak economy of the average Negro newspaper
must make it easier to buy it for little money, if anybody cares to. There is
gossip in the Negro communities about how one or another Negro paper
has “sold out for an ad.” It is significant that small Negro newspapers often
start up in Northern cities just before an important election and disappear
after the election is over.^^
* Fleming reports from the 1 940 meeting of the Negro Newspaper Publishers’ Asso-
ciation in Chicago:
“At the recent meeting , . . publisher after publisher reported his paper’s losing fight to
get advertising for soap, dental cream and chain grocery stores—and even now such copy
is for the most part scant and infrequent, while there are even beer and whiskey concerns
which turn down every suggestion to advertise in Negro papers.
“Department store copy is absent because so many such stores are not anxious to have
any, or any large numbers of, Negroes trying on hats, shoes and clothing} or they believe
Negroes with capacity to buy will read their advertisement in the daily. New automobiles
are missing because the industry does not believe that the Negroes are able to buy a new
car. Other advertisers do not use any weekly paper whatever and see no difference between
the white weekly and the Negro paper. In still other instances there are some dailies which
so thoroughly cover the Negro community that advertisers can be convinced that advertising
in the Negro paper is a needless duplication.” {Op, cit,^ p. VI rz).
*’The economic weakness of Negro newspapers is partly reflected in their large death
rate. Detweiler (Frederick G. Detweiler, The Negro Press in the United States [1922], p.
24) points out that of 288 periodicals existing in 19x0, only 163 remained in 1921, and
only 59 of these went back to 1900.
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