E-Mail This Article to a Friend Black and white The New York Times Company’s plan for a free African-American weekly in Florida makes many see red BY MARK JURKOWITZ
	Meanwhile, back at the Globe ... To Boston’s arts-and-entertainment communities, they were two of the Boston Globe’s more visible and powerful arts critics. Inside 135 Morrissey Boulevard, they had long and mixed legacies as strong personalities who could present management challenges. Now, amid allegations that they violated Globe standards, Jim Sullivan and Christine Temin are gone. (All parties, including Globe editor Marty Baron and Living/Arts editor Fiona Luis, declined to comment.) Sullivan, who started as a Globe freelancer in 1979 and has been on staff for 17 years, was best known as a rock critic and a habitué of the local nightlife. "He was like the Johnny Rotten of the Globe," said one colleague. "This guy was a marquee name for many years." In recent years, Sullivan’s role at the paper was reduced as he moved from music to gossip to the Calendar section and ultimately to the new Sidekick supplement. Last month, he was placed on indefinite suspension, reportedly for a number of reasons that included publicly denigrating Sidekick and accepting gifts or favors. Sullivan is negotiating a formal exit from the paper and is not expected to return. After spending time as a freelancer, Temin became a Globe staffer in 1983 and served primarily as a dance and art critic. She cut a wide swath in Boston’s arts community and was reputedly willing to brandish the power of her position. Temin angrily resigned last month, reportedly after Globe editors asked her about a complaint they received that she had violated company policy on travel expenses. Observers say several lessons could be gleaned from the Sullivan and Temin sagas. One is the evolution of the Globe from a writer’s paper to more of an editor’s paper, with management less willing to indulge the quirks, whims, and in this case, alleged misdeeds of staffers. The exit of two veteran graying writers may have also reinforced the sense among the staff that the paper is not only placing a premium on younger readers these days, but on younger journalists as well. Inside the newsroom, the departures have generated a complex swirl of emotions. There’s probably more visceral sympathy for Sullivan, who was more popular among his colleagues than Temin was. There’s some unease about how the two were treated, but also an acknowledgement that both made mistakes and provided fodder for their critics. "An impartial person would side with the Globe," said one source at the paper. "People feel that the two of them were milking the system."

Bay State Banner publisher Mel Miller, whose weekly paper has served Boston’s minority community for four decades, is not by temperament a bomb thrower or an inflammatory-quote machine.

But when it comes to the subject of the Gainesville Guardian — the Florida weekly targeted to minority readers that will be launched on August 24 by the New York Times Company — Miller doesn’t mince words.

In a recent Banner editorial on the subject, he criticized the "journalistic carpetbaggers" trying to tap into the African-American advertising market and declared that "only the black press can be entrusted to unravel [complex racial] issues and advocate unequivocally for the interests of African-Americans."

In an interview, Miller expresses doubt that the Times Company has either the "ability" or "willingness" to produce a viable product for the minority community. "The black press," he warns sternly, "is not a community newspaper like the Arlington Advocate and the Wellesley Townsman."

With the newspaper industry frantically searching for new readers and revenues, certain segments of the ethnic press have become popular targets in recent years. From Knight Ridder’s Vietnamese newspaper in San Jose to Gannett’s Hispanic publication in Phoenix, major media companies are scrambling to plant a flag in the growing ethnic marketplace. That strategy appears vindicated by a June survey conducted for New California Media, an association of more than 700 ethnic-media organizations, which concluded that 29 million adults in the US prefer their own ethnic news sources to the mainstream press.

But the Times’ decision to launch a free-distribution 10,000-circulation weekly for an African-American readership is risky and controversial on several counts.

Despite their increasing interest in diverse audiences, mainstream media companies have made very few efforts thus far to create products to reach the black community. And as Miller’s comments clearly suggest, the venture inflames passions and raises some thorny racial issues about who is best suited to publish a black-oriented paper.

"I would certainly say that [the Times Company] would have a large hill to climb because they’re coming from the outside," says Bryan Monroe, an assistant president of news at Knight Ridder and president of the National Association of Black Journalists. "Their default setting will be viewed as outsiders.... I think ultimately, voices are most authentic when they come from ourselves instead of through someone else."

WHITE-OWNED, BLACK-STAFFED

The New York Times already publishes a daily paper in Gainesville, Florida, the 47,000-circulation Gainesville Sun, which will serve as a major resource and the headquarters of the Gainesville Guardian. Most Guardians will be distributed free of charge, with delivery targeted to homes, businesses, and African-American churches. Copies will also be available in news boxes in East Gainesville.

"It will have its own staff and infrastructure, but coming from the Gainesville Sun, it will have benefits from that association," says Times Company spokesman Toby Usnik. "We realized through market research that East Gainesville was an underserved area by the Gainesville Sun." The target audience, he says, is "largely African-American, but it’s a community paper."

According to Usnik, the Guardian budget calls for five full-time employees, and thus far, the paper has hired an editor, one full-time general-assignment reporter, and an advertising salesperson. The editor is Charlotte Roy, a former managing editor of the black-owned Atlanta Daily World and a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists. (In response to a request for an interview with Roy, Usnik said she was not available to comment for this story.)

In June, New California Media surveyed nearly 1900 African-American, Asian-American, Arab-American, Native American, and Hispanic adults, and concluded that 80 percent of these populations consumed some form of ethnic media on a regular basis.

In the 2005 version of its annual State of the News Media survey, the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported numbers from the Latino Print Network indicating that from 2000 to 2003, ad revenue for Spanish-language newspapers increased by more than $250 million. According to Latino Print Network stats cited by the study, mainstream media organizations now own almost 50 Hispanic publications, with a combined circulation of nearly three million. The New York Times Co. has already started its own Spanish-language weekly, Visión Latina, in Lakeland, Florida.

In an era of dramatic media consolidation, the Times Co. has been branching out aggressively, establishing a huge presence in New England with the purchase of the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Last year, it acquired a 49 percent interest in the Metro, Boston’s free daily commuter tabloid, which is a favorite of the much-coveted young reader who never acquired the daily-newspaper habit.

The company also publishes 15 regional dailies located predominantly in the Southeastern United States — and from that group, it has spun off a series of city magazines and weekly newspapers, including Visión Latina.