Florida Sentinel Bulletin - Where are You?

In todays Florida Sentinel Bulletin, columnist Sherna Blair Rich writes about the "power of the press" and "yellow journalism" and how instead of news media "giving us the facts" they "shape our views with distortions and lies" and sensationalism. She notes that "Black America finds herself misled, misinformed and misrepresented" and "represented in no way, shape form or fashion in this country".

Unfortunately, the Sentinel Bulletin itself fails to provide opportunities to better get its opinions and perspectives out to the community. They lack an effective web presence. They have a website but it only provides coverage of the paper's 6 cover stories, death notices and a church directory. There is no archive of past stories. More importantly the commentary by Rudolph Harris, Iris Holton, the Sole-Man, Randolph Kinsey, Leon Crews, Sherna Blair Rich and the paper's editorials is nowhere on the web. This commentary evaporates once the paper is read and thrown away.

I understand that a web presence costs money. And that a paper would be afraid of losing paid readers if the content were available free on the internet. However my web presence with Blogger does not cost me anything and in fact via the Google Adsense program (a token amount) and Amazon.com (nothing so far) I actually earn cash from the ads on the site. The Tampa Tribune and the St. Pete Times both are able to successfully have online editions, and I'm sure paid for by the advertising on their sites.

I think an better online presence might actually get them more hard copy readers, perhaps more readers outside of their demographic. Certainly the Sole-Man's commentary a few weeks ago that Adolf Hitler would be right at home with Ronda Storms would have gotten a lot of more people's attention if it were on the web. Some readers would have come back to see what other things are being said by Sentinel Bulletin and maybe some would buy a copy of the paper when they see it in the store or mini mart.

So, at least they should have a blog of their editorials and commentary incorporated in their website. Of note is that my prior article about the Sentinel Bulletin is number 5 on a Yahoo search. It ought to be number 500 because their own articles would be in front of it.

This also applies to La Gaceta.

For an old interesting article about local black media see Tampa Bay's Black-Owned Media