By Stephen Magagnini
Over the last couple of weeks, two of America’s most respected Black newspapers — the Portland Skanner and the Richmond Free Press — have folded after decades of serving their communities.
Both publications cited the political and economic climate, along with mounting digital challenges, as revenue declined beyond recovery. The Skanner closed after 50 years. The Free Press shut down after 34.
“The problem is advertising has dried up,” Free Press Publisher Jean Boone told The OBSERVER. “And the aura and influence of our national politics is such that corporations have ceased to take seriously or care about the Black community.”
Boone said corporate advertisers no longer see value in investing in Black media.
“Their view is Black consumers will buy anyway,” she said. “I’ve had people in sales told, ‘They’ll come and buy a car anyway.’”
Boone founded the Virginia-based paper in 1992 with her late husband, Raymond H. Boone Sr. She said racism continues to shape corporate decision-making.
“Racism is alive and well in this country and indeed in Richmond,” Boone said. “DEI — the so-called new words for affirmative action — have permeated the decision-making tables of corporate America, and as such we have been left on the cutting room floor.”
The Free Press was a free weekly sustained by advertising. It published every Thursday.
“We believe there should be no barrier for people getting the information they need and want,” Boone said.
Two major advertising agencies eventually moved away from the paper.
“Their incentive is to work with large-revenue newspapers, for example The New York Times, where they get more of a fee for ad placement than they would with a ‘little pip-squeak weekly,’ as my husband called us,” she said.
At times, the paper waited months to be paid for ads. Meanwhile, digital readership failed to replace lost print revenue.
“A lot of people born in the late 20th century don’t want to read their news online,” Boone said. “They’re old-fashioned. They want a print newspaper.”
The paper operated what Boone described as an “underground distribution center,” placing boxes throughout the city where readers would take copies — often distributing extras themselves.
Launching a Black newspaper in Richmond — the former capital of the Confederacy — was never easy, Boone said.
“That aura looms very (heavily) in this city,” she said, referencing the paper’s efforts to push for the removal of Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. Despite threats and vandalism, the publication endured.
By the early 2000s, the Free Press had built a weekly circulation of nearly 35,000, reaching an estimated 120,000 readers.