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American newspapers might be struggling, but 2009 was a good year for the Chicago Citizen.

William Garth Sr., publisher and CEO of the Chicago Citizen Newspapers Group, said it was a banner year for the black-owned chain of weeklies in the Midwest.

“This has been one of the more successful years,” he said. “Maybe that’s because (President) Obama is from Chicago.”
Garth was in Charlotte last week for the National Newspapers Publishers Association’s Mid-Winter Conference, which brought black publishers together to talk business.

“We discussed circulation, which is the most important thing I think; as well as advertising, sales and how to increase your dollars,” said Garth, an NNPA member for 30 years.

The NNPA also gave publishers the chance to discuss the 2010 Census.

NNPA Chairman Danny Bakewell, also the publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel, says the U.S. Census Bureau could miss an opportunity to avoid a travesty by not using black newspapers to get the word out.

“In the 2000 Census, we were undercounted by 2 percent,” Bakewell said. “We believe that we are on the cusp of being given a devastating blow by the 2010 Census of being undercounted in a way like we have never been undercounted before in the history of America.”

Census chief operating officer Arnold Jackson said in an earlier interview that although the last Census in 2000 had an under-count of less than one-half percent overall, he believes masses of people have gone uncounted in the past because of a lack of returned data. According to his agency, fewer than 60 percent of African-Americans returned their 2000 Census questionnaire compared to 77.5 percent of whites.
Garth says the economy has affected everybody, including the black press.

“Most papers are having problems,” he said. “If the economy hit big branches and if you make money off those branches you will have to cut back too. It’s not just newspapers, it’s just the economy went bad and that is worldwide.”

Although readership has improved at The Charlotte Post, Publisher Gerald Johnson says advertising dollars have declined. Average monthly page views of the publication’s website, for example, jumped to 2.3 million in 2009 from 2 million the previous year.

The Post has been an NNPA member since 1988.

“Looking at what is beginning to shape up for 2010, I’m very optimistic about the year,” he said. “We have embraced the Internet as one of our main sources of reaching our community and included the social network segment because that too is expanding our readership base.”

Pharoh Martin of the NNPA News Service contributed to this article.
 

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