Publishers of Black press pivot to survive – NBC4 Washington

Small businesses around the country are feeling anxious as they track the impact of changes from the new administration. That includes leaders with one revered industry that’s been around for almost 200 years: the Black press.
Every time machines roll — and the news of the week is published by The Washington Informer — it costs money, from the newsprint paper to the ink itself.
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“I’m worried right now, I am,” said Denise Rolark Barnes, owner and publisher of the Informer. “And as I talk to my fellow publishers around the country, they’re all worried.”
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Salaries and the day-to-day cost of doing business have always weighed on Barnes, a second-generation owner of the Informer.
“My daddy used to say, you know, circulation is the lifeblood of every newspaper, but advertising is the necessary evil,” Barnes told the News4 I-Team. “We cannot survive without revenue.”
Investigations by the News4 I-Team
More than 60 years ago, her dad, Calvin Rolark, started the paper. She took it over in 1994 when he passed, keeping up the tradition of amplifying often-untold stories of Black Americans in D.C.
“The Black press has always been that vehicle, other than the Bible, that Black people use to … I guess, find some direction,” Barnes said.
Born out of a strong history of Black journalism, she said, that began in 1827 — 40 years before the end of enslavement in America.
While Barnes has seen challenges before, she said this is the most uncertain time for her paper. That includes potential cost increase due to tariffs, since much of their publishing tools come from other countries.
And right now, advertising dollars are drying up after the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion by the Trump administration, which she said has scared off prior supporters.
“They’re still spending money but they’re not spending money with anything that is anyway connected with DEI,” she told the News4 I-Team.
“When it comes to these advertising budgets, we’re in that budget,” Barnes said. “We’re the DEI bucket.”
Civil rights activist and former NAACP President Ben Chavis is CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which represents Black-owned newspapers across the country.
“It’s not only racial discrimination; it’s economic discrimination,” Chavis said. “And it makes our ability to survive even tougher.”
“We have 250 African American-owned newspapers in the National Newspaper Publishers Association,” he said. “And of those 250, over 200 of them are struggling financially.”
Chavis said in 2021, after the death of George Floyd, many of those publications became a focal point for philanthropic and corporate dollars, allowing them to increase staff and grow coverage. But he said now the trend has reversed.
“Minority-owned, Black-owned, African American-owned has become a term that is disappearing in the industry. Because anything that is race specific, under the Trump administration, that justifies companies not doing business with you,” Chavis said.
That includes the federal government with small businesses owned by people of color and women historically getting a smaller share of federal advertising contracts, Chavis said.
“The biggest advertiser in America was the federal government,” said Chavis.
According to a 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, small, disadvantaged businesses only got 14% of the $14.9 billion spent by the federal government on advertising for various agency services, resources and recruitments, with the smallest percentage going to Black-owned businesses.
He worries about what the future holds.
“Midyear of 2025, next year of 2026, 2027, a lot of our newspapers would not be in existence if the current climate does not change,” Chavis said.
“Whenever there’s progress, there is backlash,” said Alphonso David, president of the Global Black Economic Forum, which advocates for Black and marginalized communities. “We’ve seen it in our history, decade after decade after decade.”
He said the administration’s rollback of DEI has confused some advertisers.
“There’s an executive order that references illegal DEI. There is no such thing,” he said. “It’s not defined in the executive order, and it certainly is a misnomer, because diversity, equity and inclusion is certainly legal. No laws have changed.”
His advice to the businesses is to pivot and think outside the box, like expanding overseas or diversifying what they do.
“If they focus only on one part of their business or one specific industry, they run the risk of confronting significant obstacles,” he said.
How to do that is something even the largest newspapers in our nation are grappling with along with the smaller ones, like The Washington Informer.
“We’re either gonna sink or swim,” Barnes said. “And so for the swimmers, what are your ideas? And then, how do we manifest these things? How do we make them happen?”
And when the I-Team asked her if there will always be a need for the Black press, she responded, “Yes. There’s still a need for Black voices, a place where Black voices can be amplified — the concerns, the dreams, the aspirations, the accomplishments, the challenges.”
News4 reached out to the White House for any comment on the concerns raised by publishers. While they didn’t respond specifically to that question, a spokesperson wrote back: “President Trump promised to bring prosperity back to Main Street with an America First agenda that benefits every small business. In addition to slashing regulations and lowering energy costs, the Administration is focused on passing The One, Big, Beautiful Bill to unleash unprecedented growth for small businesses with a permanent 23% small business tax deduction and full expensing of equipment investments.”
Reported by Tracee Wilkins, produced by Rick Yarborough, shot by Carlos Olazagasti and Steve Jones, and edited by Steve Jones.