UPS Helping NNPA to Close the 'Digital Media Divide'
- by June 8, 2001
The NNPA plans to roll out the sites and demonstrate their capabilities at its national convention June 13 - 17 at the Atlanta Hilton and Towers hotel in Atlanta.
Last month at a breakfast program in Washington, the NNPA, which represents more than 200 African-American newspapers across the country, unveiled plans to develop the sites for its member newspapers. The plan calls for 10 newspapers to go online immediately, and up to 50 online by the end of this summer, with the remaining 150 online by spring 2003.
UPS has committed the initial $125,000 necessary to bring the first 50 papers online. The BlackPressUSA Network is a project of the NNPA Foundation's Black Press Institute.
The first 10 sites include the Amsterdam News, New York City; the Birmingham Times, Atlanta Voice, The Westside Gazette, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; The Jacksonville Advocate, Jacksonville, Fla.; Windy City Word, Chicago; City News, Newark, N.J.; Baltimore Times, The Toledo Journal, Toledo, Ohio, and the Buckeye Review, Youngstown, Ohio.
Additional newspapers have been tapped to go online once the first 10 sites are launched. They include the Houston Defender, Oakland Post, Oakland, Calif.; Milwaukee Times Weekly, and the Afro American Newspaper, Baltimore.
Ben Jealous, executive director of the NNPA Foundation, said having the papers online broadens their ability to disseminate news about African Americans over the Internet.
"It also increases our online news publishing capabilities and helps us solidify our message," he said.
Evern Cooper, executive director of The UPS Foundation and UPS vice president, said some UPS funding also will be used for training newspaper staffs to continuously update and maintain the sites.
"UPS would like to congratulate the NNPA on this historic transition into a new era of the Black Press," Cooper said. "I know this initiative will have a positive effect on the education of students by making community newspapers accessible to new generations of readers."
NNPA President John J. Oliver said with more than 200 news publications in more than 100 communities in 38 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, NNPA publications generate valuable information that cannot be found elsewhere.
"This initiative will help to unify the African-American press, and strengthen our ability to communicate to the world," said Oliver, publisher of the Baltimore and Washington Afro-American newspapers.
"Going online affords us the opportunity to bridge the digital media divide and provide Black newspapers with cutting edge, affordable and easy-to-use online publishing technology," he said. "That's why it's imperative for us to become stronger and better at linking up these unified voices that address African-American communities every week."
Under the program, the XIGroup will construct and host the Black PressUSA Network Web site and develop a number of templates for use by NNPA member papers. Local papers will be able to customize their sites and develop content relevant to their communities. Papers within the network will able to share content with one another, in addition to receiving feeds from the NNPA and its news distribution services.
