Where are the Black voices in my hometown newspaper that tell 'our' stories?
‘Neither contests nor games, gizmos, and gadgets, clickbait, slick marketing, or even the promise of ‘Sun-Times swag’ can supplant the draw of a newspaper that simply produces good journalism.’
“The media report and write from the standpoint of a white man's world. The ills of the ghetto, the difficulties of life there, the Negro's burning sense of grievance, are seldom conveyed. Slights and indignities are part of the Negro's daily life, and many of them come from what he now calls the "white press"— a press that repeatedly, if unconsciously, reflects the biases, the paternalism, the in difference of white America. This may be understandable, but it is not excusable in an institution that has the mission to inform and educate the whole of our society.” –Kerner Report, 1968
By John W. Fountain
CHICAGO, 2023—“You could be our next guest columnist… Calling all writers!” The letter in my email inbox last week read, advertising a new contest now open to readers of the Chicago Sun-Times. I laughed out loud. It sounded to me something like, “American Idol for newspapers.” Or would that be “Times Idol”? Or maybe “The Voice – Sun-Times”? Or how about “Chicago’s Got Talent?”
Whatever you wanna call it, it doesn’t pass the journalism smell test for a Big-City newspaper that in the year 2023, last I checked, had no Black male journalists as columnists. A newspaper that seems to be in search of opinion filler for cheap in its newly launched journalistic variety show aimed at courting or at least appeasing some readers, and giving the people more of what the paper thinks they want.
“Let us know your predictions for culture, lifestyle or community issues in an imaginative column based on the theme, ‘Moving Forward,’” the contest’s description and rules read.
Ok, so maybe there’s nothing wrong with a little bait. Except this all seems a little contrary to the true mission and role of a free press in a democratic society—and a poor attempt at creating more diversity in the thin shell of a newspaper I retrieve each morning from the end of my driveway.
Maybe it is not such a trivial pursuit. Perhaps I am too harsh. Or perhaps I am too suspect of a newspaper that had no Black opinion writer's voice on display on King Day. No Black voice on Tyre Nichols. And few Black people on staff.
This in a city of nearly 800,000 African Americans, and where journalism by Black journalists at the Sun-Times has come to be nearly MIA. A city where the mayor is Black, the police chief, the Cook County state’s attorney is Black, chief judge and county board president, not to mention the Illinois attorney general.
Chi-Town. Black Mecca. This is Harold Washington’s Chicago. Transplant home of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Home to Thomas A. Dorsey and the birthplace of Gospel music. Midwest metropolis settled by a Black man, Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable. Home and burial site of Emmett Till, headquarters of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, home to Rainbow/PUSH and the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Ida B. Wells and once temporary home to Dr. King who moved here to call attention to the plight of the poor. Chicago. Adopted home of Barack Obama, the first Black president of the United States.
Ain’t it funny how in this city, with its history of Black prominence and presence still, there are currently few, if any, local Black commentators’ voices present in the mainstream press to chronicle, critique and place in cultural context our still unfolding story?
No Vernon Jarrett. No Warner Saunders. No Leanita McClain. No Lu Palmer. No Roi Ottley. No John W. Fountain.
“What’s at stake is the telling of our stories as Black folk by reporters Black like us who are sensitive to the spectrum of life that exists within Black culture.”
The absence of Black voices in Chicago’s major newspapers is glaring. And this undercuts any professed commitment to, or semblance of, diversity in the newspaper, particularly in a city where the perpetual toxic soup of racism, political cronyism, elitism, homicidal fury and violence have created a complex crisis in Black and brown communities. We should hear from experienced Black journalists trained and seasoned in the profession and sensitized to the stories, issues and lives of Black people who dwell on the other side of the tracks.
The absence of Black journalists reflects a problem industry wide, according to analysts and observers.
“In 1979, the American Society of News Editors pledged that, by the year 2000, the percentage of racial and ethnic minorities in newsrooms would match that of the population at large,” Gabriel Arana wrote in a story published in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2018.
The story further makes the case for diversity, stating that racial and ethnic minorities are projected by the year 2045 to exceed the number of whites in America.
“For news organizations, a lack of diversity is a matter of social fairness and of relevance. …Ultimately, the value of diversity to journalism is not about skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or social class. It’s about the stories people can tell.”
I contend that diversity needs to be not just “People of Color” but people who are Black. For this isn’t about filling a quota. It’s about voice—Black voice—authentic and unfettered.
Moreover, what’s at stake is journalism. What’s at stake is the telling of our stories as Black folk by reporters Black like us who are sensitive to the spectrum of life that exists within Black culture. Black writers and reporters whose storytelling defies stereotypical, too often knee-jerk journalism about Black life that gets served up daily and that often does more harm than good. At stake is the telling of the stories of Black love, life, laughter and normalcy that would help paint a fairer, more complex and more human portrait of Black folk in the totality of who we are rather than one filtered through the lens of a jaded press.
“We should hear from experienced Black journalists trained and cured in the profession and sensitized to the stories, issues and lives of Black people who dwell on the other side of the tracks.”
And I believe that here in my hometown we should expect more from both of Chicago's two flagship daily newspapers, especially the Sun-Times (long deemed to be the one of the two dailies that Black folks read most). It is a newspaper celebrating 75 years but that now feels like it may be headed in a troubling and trivial direction.
The wider newspaper industry is buzzing with a current campaign to give the readers more of what they say they want. As if facts, ideas, news, and fine, interesting and insightful stories written by journalists are no longer sufficient. We should hear from readers. But are the traditional “letters to the editor” and submissions to the editor no longer an ample vehicle for readers’ written opinions and feedback?
In the good ole days, readers’ letters were submitted to the opinions editor for consideration rather than solicited from contests judged by “staff and community members.”
Neither contests nor games, gizmos, and gadgets, clickbait, slick marketing, or even the promise of "Sun-Times swag” can supplant the draw of a newspaper that simply produces good journalism with no reliance on marketing gimmicks plus $250 cash prize to 12 “winners” for their guest column.
It's a little cheaper than paying for the work of real journalists, I guess. Except citizens’ journaling isn't journalism. In other words, because I can unclog my toilet doesn’t make me a plumber.
Respect and appreciation seem to continue to wane for those of us who chose to become journalists—who poured blood, sweat and tears and years of training and money into perfecting the craft we hold so dear. Indeed, in the news industry, the walls between advertising/marketing and editorial have now crumbled. And old-head journalists, like myself, nowadays seem expendable to some of the mainstream institutions where we once practiced our craft.
‘I speak because I care deeply about the current state and the future of journalism. And I am at least free to speak whereas some of those good journalists left behind, still on the inside, cannot.’
Let's allow the readers "weigh in on what's next..." they say.
But what about journalism? What about bona fide newspaper writers who have dedicated a life and career to the tenets and practice of journalism. Not for money or to win some cute contest and to be decorated as flavor or columnist of the month. But because they believe that journalism matters and that us journalists are critical to that sacred call to uphold the Fourth Estate.
This is not a case of sour grapes. I am a freed Black journalist, self-liberated from a lifetime of working on one mainstream plantation or another, and running like hell to get to Freedom Land. I am free to speak perhaps more freely than I have ever been. So I speak. Because I care deeply about the current state and the future of journalism. And I am at least free to speak freely, whereas some of those good journalists left behind, and still on the inside, cannot.
Since voluntarily ending my tenure as a freelance columnist at the Sun-Times, I have started a Substack (grateful for those loyal readers who have followed me to a new online home for my work); and a multimedia storytelling and mentoring not-for-profit called FountainWorks. I have also increased my writing for the Chicago Crusader, an 82-year-old African-American newspaper, where my column regularly appears in print and online, as will forthcoming special projects. And where Dorothy Leavell, the Crusader’s esteemed publisher, welcomed my work with open arms, and with the promise to let my stories run the way I write them—every single word.
Still, as a reader and longtime subscriber, I find the Sun-Times’ new apparent direction a bit troubling. As a reader, I want journalism. Not contests. Not fluff. Not “Sun-Times Idol.”
I want to pick up the newspaper in my driveway and read stories that matter to my life, and also to the lives of people who live beyond the Gold Coast on what I call the “Cold Coast”—hyper-segregated, poor Black and brown neighborhoods. I want to see on the front page serious stories for serious times. Not the recent page-one story about five women in a Berwyn birthing center "expecting babies on their own." Inside, maybe. But on page one?
I want to see stories that defy the usual media perpetuated stereotype of young Black men ensnared by fatalism and pathology on display in the recent page-one story about the reported $100,000 bounty on the head of FBG Duck, a Chicago rapper murdered in 2020 in a brazen daylight shooting on the city’s Gold Coast. I wonder how many of Chicago’s readers asked for that story.
Sooner or later, however, it might not matter.
“If this paper gets any thinner, it’s gonna be a brochure,” my wife remarked the other day.
Indeed as I pull the Sun-Times from its plastic sleeve after retrieving it from my driveway, I also can’t help but also notice how thin the paper is these days. How devoid it is of news I can use. How glaringly absent it is of the faces of columnists who look like me and whose voices and perspectives speak to me about issues that afflict Black folks, or that capture and tell our stories with craft and authenticity from the inside.
I also can’t help but notice that the contests or gimmicks just seem to keep coming. And how the journalism and seasoned voices it used to have increasingly seem to be lacking.
It reminds me that I still have unfinished business with the Sun-Times: To cancel my paid subscription. At least perhaps until the Sun-Times reminds me once again of the newspaper it used to be.
#JusticeForJelaniDay
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
