Dayo Olopade delivers a retrospective of the black press, particularly the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis, which was once both an incredible outlet for news and literary content, edited by the brilliant W.E.B DuBois and featuring writers like Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer. I’d like to suggest imagining a black, activist version of The Atlantic, but even that really isn’t an accurate comparison.
The reality of a post-segregation world is that the best and brightest no longer have to write for a magazine like The Crisis, and mainstream media outlets no longer outright ignore everything that’s happening in the black community. The NAACP has failed thus far to bring itself into the internet age. The NAACP has only just started the process of publishing the magazine’s content online, likely because the new president, Ben Jealous, is an old newspaper guy, having been the managing editor of The Jackson Advocate and president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, an organization of black newspapers. Obviously there’s a long way to go for The Crisis to become relevant again.
But there’s still an appetite for black media, especially on the internet. Black blogs have blown up in the past few years, first during the Shaquanda Cotton, Genarlow Wilson and Jena Six incidents, and even more so during the presidential election. Looking at Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ blog, or the rise of The Root shows that there remains a space for black media even in our alleged post-racial paradise. The challenge for The Crisis is finding its place in the new paradigm.
— A. Serwer