
While some folks are hollering 'let them die', I have a problem with that knee jerk shortsighted view of the situation, even though I have mixed emotions about it.
As a historian, I don't like the idea of losing EBONY and JET, much less contemplating a world without its needed voice. As many of you did, I perused the older issues of EBONY and JET at my grandparents house growing up and I spent hours perusing those issues and reading the history that unfolded before my eyes. I also chuckled at some of the back in the day ads that served as a time capsule for the period.

Thanks to the late visionary John H. Johnson, these magazines since 1945 have been covering our stories, our people and our history when white owned magazines would barely touch our communities, much less tell our stories in a balanced way.

Our history would have less documentation, especially in the 70's when it seemed that every time you turned around there was another African-American breaking new ground or we had another 'First Black' making history.
And tell the truth, many of you already have copies of the issues of EBONY and JET relating to the historic 2008 election of President Obama, the inauguration and the historic Obama administration.

Fashion Fair Cosmetics and its success clued white owned makeup companies into the fact there was a large customer base they weren't meeting the needs of.
But on the other hand both those magazines have been behind the curve for a while in terms of developments inside the AA GLBT/SGL community, something I've long complained about on TransGriot.
It's sad for example, when Isis got more love in white owned magazines than she did in our iconic Black ones (and ESSENCE falls in that category as well).

But my support comes with a condition and an ultimatum. I want EBONY and JET to do a better job of covering the entire African-American community. News of our community just doesn't begin and end in middle class African-American communities. There needs to be a serious effort toward inclusive coverage of the entire spectrum of the AA community.
Because as someone who grew up around Black radio and knows the power of Black owned media, it's easier to tell your story when you own the printing press, the television show and the radio station as opposed to depending upon someone else with built in biases to honestly tell the story of your people for you.
1 comment:
Monica,
You said people saying "Let the magazine die" is a knee jerk reaction, but then you went on to prove why that is not the case. Reggie and I were in the grocery store having this very conversation last night. You are correct, Ebony and Jet covered a great deal of our history and everyone's grandparents has copies of those issues and probably still have subscriptions. But in the last 10 years have these two magazines been relevant in any way?
As we discussed the fate of Johnson publication's babies I looked at it and other magazines in the check out line, their all so thin. Magazines are suffering all over and when the dust clears it will be those with the ability to move with the times that will be standing tall.
Reggie (a writer) has a friend on the staff at Ebony online. The last editor came in about 2 years ago and decided they needed to focus on their print rather than the online...well that editor is gone now. These magazines have not changed their business model in 50-60 years and honestly most of the stories i get from them i can get on TMZ (they have Chris brown and Rihanna on the cover this moth of Jet)
I dont expect a black magazine to discuss GLBT issues because blacks dont discuss those things. i also no longer subscribe to the idea of keeping something or supporting something just because it's black or gay or big and tall or any other label that id's me when the product is substandard.
Not knee jerk at all, just not held hostage by color.
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