Playing It Cool

As rioting broke out in Negro slums this summer, no publications expressed more dismay than Negro newspapers. "Madness of the first degree," said the Houston Forward Times. "The work of depraved minds who are too sick to know better." The Chicago Daily Defender has launched a contest for the best advice on how to "Keep a Cool Summer." Even the paper's switchboard operators are instructed to answer: "Keep a cool summer, hello."

Such moderation is characteristic of the Negro press, which takes a dim view of Black Power hotheads. For the Negro press addresses itself to the Negro community as a whole, which is overwhelmingly antiriot. Along with their coverage of issues like housing, jobs and schools, the Negro papers report in conscientious detail the everyday undramatic events of community life--giving the publications a reassuring kind of small-town solidity.

Militancy--within Bounds. When the big dailies began to cover civil rights in earnest a few years back, some journalists thought Negro papers would have to fold. Instead, 39 new Negro weeklies and semiweeklies have been started in the past 2? years, bringing the total number of papers to 171. Many are making a profit. There are only two dailies: the aggressive Chicago Defender (circ. 32,000) and the conservative Atlanta Daily World (circ. 20,000). The New York Amsterdam News (72,400) and Detroit's Michigan Chronicle (48,300) are the largest weeklies and among the best.

The papers are full of names, names, names. Heroes of the moment--Thurgood Marshall or the first Negro astronaut--rare played up, but so are ordinary people. The papers are running a lot of stories about Negro servicemen in Viet Nam (few of the papers oppose the U. S. involvement). "They can return with or without the Medal of Honor," says Chicago Defender Reporter Betty Washington. "We don't care. They're our people." When Amsterdam News Education Reporter Sara Slack writes up some child's achievement in school, she often mentions the occupation of the child's parents: janitor, domestic, whatever. "We let the Negro child know," she says, "that he doesn't have to come from a family of doctors or lawyers to succeed in life."

While stressing the old-fashioned American success story, the papers have not ignored the new militancy that is sweeping much of the Negro community. And sometimes their reporters can do a better job than white journalists. Chicago's white dailies had attempted stories on the city's Negro slums, but the Defender's Betty Washington was able to produce a much better account after going to live in the slums for several weeks. Charges of police brutality --the most frequent complaint--are commonplace on Page One. And militancy--within bounds--seems to pay off. By concentrating on civil rights, the bouncy In Sepia Dallas has raised circulation from 5,000 to an estimated 22,500 in three years; by contrast, the bland Dallas Express has slipped from 9,000 to 4,900. Sensitive to the growing pride in race, the papers are using the word Negro much less than before; the Amsterdam News has banned it altogether in favor of Afro-American. "Our emphasis is on self-determination within the black community," says Nigerian-born Simon Anekwe, who writes a column on Africa for the News.

The general level of makeup and writing is lower than that of white dailies. The Negro papers often take a jocular view of crime. A columnist for the Amsterdam News called "Mr. 125 Street" offers typical items :"Goldie Reed fled after his chin was creased while he was having a discussion with his wife. . . . Florence Smith of the Bronx and Ann Jackson of Brooklyn met in Harlem, and Jackson's neck was sliced." Such self-stereotyping repels many well-educated Negroes. "It hurts to read these papers," says a Negro student at Dallas' Bishop College, "because it makes me aware of how much farther some of us still have to go."

Siphoned Staffers. The papers have a tough time finding qualified journalists--or keeping them. For this reason, white staffers are still to be found on Negro papers. Some editors look for promising high school students, then help pay their way through college, in the hope that they will join the paper after graduation. Even if they do, they are unlikely to stay. The white dailies, public relations firms and the Federal Government siphon off the best Negro journalists and leave the papers sorely understaffed. The Atlanta Inquirer in seven years has had eight different editors. "As long as I've been in this business," says Chicago Defender Publisher John Sengstacke, "I've been running a training school."

Nevertheless, Sengstacke is so confident of the future that last October he bought the eight ailing Pittsburgh Courier weeklies. This fall, he plans to make the local reporting of each of his papers available to all the others and rely much less on the wire services.

"When Stokely Carmichael screams about negatives," says Houston Forward Times Publisher Julius Carter, "we don't bite our tongues and remain silent. We emphasize the positive. We aim our criticism at the Negro community, and this is why Carmichael calls us the 'Backward Times.' We do this because we know that not only must the white community change, but we have to change also."

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