Ann Friedman has a great column today dealing with “niche” websites devoted to women, but she digresses briefly into a discussion of publications directed at particular racial demographics:

The proliferation of woman-centric sites raises the sorts of questions that keep a feminist editor up at night. If Slate saw a demand for more content about women, why didn’t it start publishing more articles for and by women on its main site? The decision to devote micro-sites to groups that aren’t white men — The Root for black readers, Double X for women readers — implies that Slate recognizes the need for more coverage that caters to women and people of color. But it doesn’t want that coverage mucking up its main product.

There are a number of distinctions to be made here. Publications that market themselves towards a particular gender, towards “women” in general are usually universalizing and reinforcing a particular notion of white, upper middle-class womanhood or in the case of a magazine like Esquire, manhood. The same can be said of some black publications, such as Ebony or Essence. At the same time I think there’s a qualitative difference between these, and publications that are marketing themselves towards a particular cultural community such as feminists or politically engaged black folks.

There’s a difference between the failure of mainstream publications to give the necessary coverage to “women’s issues” and the demand for niche cultural publications like The Root. I’d would like to see more black perspectives and more coverage of black issues in mainstream publications, those ultimately aren’t going to meet the demand for in-depth coverage of black issues. Nor would more gender balance in the mainstream media meet the demand for feminist content. As long as communities within communities exist, there will be a demand for these publications. In some ways, I think we could use more “niche” publications that are openly niche, rather than ones that purport to represent an entire group of people all on their own, since those are inherently reductive. I’d like to see more publications dedicated to black subcultures, and I wouldn’t see that as ghettoizing. I’d see it as meeting a demand. 

I also don’t believe that Slate wanted to “ghettoize” it’s black coverage, since stories from The Root are often featured on its homepage–rather I think they recognized that there was a void in black media that wasn’t being filled. And really, it still isn’t.

— A. Serwer