By Jordan Meadows
Staff Writer
Another pillar of the Black Press has fallen.
In February, the Richmond Free Press announced it would cease publication after 34 years, sending shockwaves through Virginia’s Black political, civic, and business communities. Founded in 1992 by Jean Patterson Boone and her late husband Raymond H. Boone Sr., the free weekly had long served as a watchdog, community bulletin, and cultural record for Richmond’s Black residents.
Its closure follows the recent shutdown of The Skanner in Oregon, which folded after more than 50 years in operation. Both publications cited declining advertising revenue, a hostile political and economic climate, and mounting digital challenges that failed to replace lost print dollars.
Their demise is not isolated. It is part of a troubling national pattern, one hitting Black-owned newspapers especially hard.
“The Black newspaper exists, and thousands of people are reading it,” said Paul Jervay, son of Paul Jervay Sr. and longtime publisher of The Carolinian. “So when you make a statement in a Black newspaper, thousands of Black folks are privy to what you just said. And if it’s a movement—civil rights movement—it’s even more magnified. None of that happens without it.”
The Black Press has long been a stabilizing and defiant force in American life. It began in 1827 with Freedom’s Journal in New York, created to counter racist coverage in white-owned newspapers and to advocate for abolition and Black citizenship. After the Civil War, as newly freed African Americans claimed literacy and a political voice, Black newspapers proliferated across the South and beyond.
In North Carolina, that growth was especially pronounced: by the 1880s and 1890s, more than 30 African American newspapers had launched in the state. They shifted their focus from slavery to religion, politics, education, literature, and civic life, reporting the news through the eyes of Black journalists for Black readers. These publications documented Reconstruction, exposed racial violence, championed civil rights legislation, and preserved the everyday milestones of community life.
“Not only does it show what the community is thinking, but when you deal with someone like Jesse Jackson—a national icon—you don’t have that figure without a Black newspaper,” Jervay said. “You can position a national figure in such a manner with a Black newspaper that Americans have to recognize it. Because they feel that thousands of Black folks are behind that individual. It’s not just Jesse Jackson; it’s the national Black community.”
North Carolina has long been home to some of the nation’s most enduring Black newspapers, including The Star of Zion, established in 1876 and still in production today; The Carolina Times; The Carolinian; Carolina Peacemaker; The Charlotte Post; and the Winston-Salem Chronicle. Historically Black colleges and universities across the state also produced campus newspapers.
Yet since the COVID-19 pandemic, the losses have accelerated. In 2020, after the death of publisher Kenneth Edmonds, The Carolina Times ceased publication after 93 years, reducing Durham’s legacy Black-owned newspapers from two to one. In Wilmington, The Wilmington Journal stopped printing in 2021 following the death of longtime editor Mary Alice Jervay Thatch. The Journal’s roots stretch back to 1927 and are deeply tied to the aftermath of the 1898 white supremacist coup in Wilmington, when a racist mob destroyed The Daily Record, then billed as the only Black daily newspaper in the world.
Today, only about 10 Black media outlets—print, digital, and radio—serve the entire state of North Carolina, according to UNC’s Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media.
Nationally, the crisis is even more stark: 136 newspapers closed in the past year alone. Since 2005, the United States has lost nearly 3,500 newspapers and more than 270,000 newspaper jobs. Daily newspaper circulation has fallen from 50–60 million at the turn of the century to just over 15 million today. Roughly 50 million Americans now live in “news deserts,” areas with little to no reliable local news coverage.
According to leaders within the National Newspaper Publishers Association, more than 200 of its 250 member outlets are currently in financial distress. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Black newspapers experienced a brief surge in corporate and philanthropic support tied to diversity pledges. But by 2025, much of that momentum had faded. A 2024 U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that small disadvantaged businesses received just 14% of $14.9 billion in federal advertising spending, with Black-owned media receiving the smallest portion of that limited share.
When a Black newspaper closes, it’s not just the paper that disappears. It’s a record of Black civic life. It’s fewer reporters pressing officials on housing inequities, school funding, and voting rights. It’s fewer archives preserving the everyday history of neighborhoods, churches, fraternities, sororities, and small businesses.
In Durham, entrepreneur Cary Wheelous launched Hayti, a Black-owned news and podcast app designed to aggregate content from Black publishers worldwide and bring Black media into the digital age. Nationally, more than 300 local news startups have launched in the past five years. Yet most are concentrated in metro areas, leaving rural and historically underserved Black communities vulnerable.
Jervay also highlighted the need for a multi-platform strategy to strengthen Black media.
“Right here in this community, we don’t have a Black television station. Your generation needs to go over there (to the local HBCU) and say, ‘I want the key. I want nothing else. I just want the key,” he said. “You create a media megaforce and then the other side has to respect that. And with that respect, you begin to get some of the things you need as a people to move forward.”
