By Stephen MagagniniThe Sacramento Observer
During the last couple of weeks, two of America’s most revered Black newspapers — the Portland Skanner and the Richmond Free Press — have folded after many years of serving their communities.
Each publications cited the political and financial local weather, together with mounting digital challenges, as income declined past restoration. The Skanner closed after 50 years. The Free Press shut down after 34.
“The issue is promoting has dried up,” Free Press Writer Jean Boone instructed The OBSERVER. “And the aura and affect of our nationwide politics is such that firms have ceased to take critically or care in regards to the Black group.”
Boone stated company advertisers now not see worth in investing in Black media.
“Their view is Black shoppers will purchase anyway,” she stated. “I’ve had folks in gross sales instructed, ‘They’ll come and purchase a automobile anyway.’”
Boone based the Virginia-based paper in 1992 together with her late husband, Raymond H. Boone Sr. She stated racism continues to form company decision-making.
“Racism is alive and effectively on this nation and certainly in Richmond,” Boone stated. “DEI — the so-called new phrases for affirmative motion — have permeated the decision-making tables of company America, and as such we have now been left on the reducing room ground.”
The Free Press was a free weekly sustained by promoting. It revealed each Thursday.
“We imagine there needs to be no barrier for folks getting the knowledge they want and wish,” Boone stated.
Two main promoting businesses ultimately moved away from the paper.
“Their incentive is to work with large-revenue newspapers, for instance The New York Instances, the place they get extra of a payment for advert placement than they might with a ‘little pip-squeak weekly,’ as my husband known as us,” she stated.
At instances, the paper waited months to be paid for advertisements. In the meantime, digital readership failed to exchange misplaced print income.
“Lots of people born within the late twentieth century don’t need to learn their information on-line,” Boone stated. “They’re old school. They need a print newspaper.”
The paper operated what Boone described as an “underground distribution middle,” inserting containers all through town the place readers would take copies — typically distributing extras themselves.
Launching a Black newspaper in Richmond — the previous capital of the Confederacy — was by no means straightforward, Boone stated.
“That aura looms very (closely) on this metropolis,” she stated, referencing the paper’s efforts to push for the elimination of Accomplice statues from Monument Avenue. Regardless of threats and vandalism, the publication endured.
By the early 2000s, the Free Press had constructed a weekly circulation of almost 35,000, reaching an estimated 120,000 readers.
Boone known as her late husband “a consummate journalist and the lead participant on this drama.” Earlier than co-founding the paper, Raymond Boone labored at his hometown newspaper in Suffolk, Virginia, and later taught journalism at Howard College.
Boone stated her household is taking time to regroup whereas navigating well being challenges.
“Given the well being issues of all our folks, we have now to take a deep breath and care for ourselves,” she stated. “It took every thing we needed to get up to now.”
Nonetheless, she expressed satisfaction in what the paper constructed.
“We had been in a position to do that for 34 years,” Boone stated, “and have individuals who have labored with us for the reason that starting.”
An identical wrestle In Portland
The Portland Skanner confronted most of the similar monetary pressures.
Bernie V. Foster and his spouse, Bobbie Dore’ Foster, based the Skanner in 1975 to “problem folks to form a greater future” and amplify the voices of underserved Black neighborhoods. The paper reported on racism in housing, well being care and policing, addressed public coverage and arranged group occasions. Many younger Black and allied journalists launched their careers there.
In 1989, the Skanner led the marketing campaign to rename Portland’s Union Avenue as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, gathering greater than 4,000 signatures.
Its circulation peaked at roughly 95,000 within the Nineties. The Fosters later established the Skanner Basis, which offered scholarships and group awards. The Oregon Historic Society acknowledged them as “historical past makers,” and group leaders described the Skanner as a “civic establishment.”
However digital disruption reshaped the enterprise mannequin.
“Placing out a newspaper within the Pacific Northwest has modified dramatically, and Black newspapers are not any completely different,” Foster, 85, instructed The OBSERVER. “On-line is for a brand new era. We’re in a digital age. We’re getting data sooner.”
Two years in the past, the Skanner generated 1 million digital hits per week, he stated. However competitors intensified.
“All the large web corporations acquired wind of it and borrowed a few of our expertise,” Foster stated. Site visitors dropped to 250,000 hits a month. “And I didn’t make cash on-line the best way I did the outdated method.”
With synthetic intelligence accelerating change, he added, “Nobody is aware of the place it’s going.”
The Skanner went absolutely digital in 2023. Foster credited Sacramento OBSERVER founder Dr. William H. Lee with serving to him “study what newspapers had been all about.”
“We all know we left the Pacific Northwest a bit of higher than we did 50 years in the past,” he stated.
Although the newspaper has closed, the Fosters usually are not stepping away from entrepreneurship. Subsequent month, they plan to open a store at Portland Worldwide Airport promoting information and items.
“We’d come again as a information entity,” Foster stated. “You are able to do numerous issues in the event you put sufficient eyeballs on it. The outdated mannequin is out the window.”
Bobbie Dore’ Foster instructed KOIN 6 Information that advertisers more and more favor social media platforms over newspapers. She stated the Skanner leaves behind “a Black-owned enterprise that has served the group by sharing tales which might be vital to them, highlighting their achievements and providing very important data that demanded consideration and motion.”
A nationwide disaster
Greater than 200 African American-owned group newspapers stay lively in the US, in keeping with the Nationwide Newspaper Publishers Affiliation, or NNPA. In 2027, the Black Press will mark the two hundredth anniversary of the nation’s first Black newspaper.
Nonetheless, leaders warn that closures like these in Richmond and Portland sign deeper instability.
Onyx Impression, a nonprofit analysis and digital innovation hub centered on Black communities, criticized the shutdowns.
“That is heartbreaking,” stated Esosa Osa, founder and CEO of Onyx Impression. “The lack of two legacy Black papers in the identical month is totally unacceptable. These are establishments which have carried our historical past and checked energy when no one else would.”
On Feb. 6, the group introduced a $500,000 dedication to Black-owned media retailers, together with the NNPA. The funding settlement, made amid continued advertiser retrenchment round variety initiatives, is geared toward strengthening digital infrastructure, increasing viewers attain and enhancing long-term sustainability for legacy Black publications.
In 2025, Onyx Impression partnered with The OBSERVER and 6 different Black newspapers to collaborate with digital creators and speed up their transition on-line.
Osa described the closures as a part of a broader nationwide disaster.
“Black retailers which have sustained our communities for many years are being starved of promoting and institutional assist,” she stated. “When Black papers disappear, your complete data ecosystem shifts. Corruption will get simpler. Disinformation will get louder.”
She stated the shift to digital platforms has intensified the problem.
“People get the overwhelming majority of knowledge from what they see on-line,” Osa stated. “There’s a elementary want to extend the attain and viewers of Black information retailers.”
Synthetic intelligence and search platforms, she added, are additional reshaping how audiences discover data — and the place promoting {dollars} stream.
“The philanthropic sector typically nonetheless treats Black media as a particular undertaking slightly than a core democratic construction,” Osa stated. “We’re not seeing a collapse of demand for Black information. We’re seeing a collapse of who’s keen to fund it.”
“You’ll be able to’t pull advertisements and anticipate Black papers to run on fumes,” she added.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This text was initially revealed by The Sacramento OBSERVER.
OBSERVER copy editor Larry Hicks contributed to this story.
