creation development economic development and culture a we call it the black press of america coming up it's black press month black pressed week we'll talk about that on this program also pleased to have a guest partner for this program my colleague tom guitar tom guitar is the publisher and president of him sharlie a twin cities based paper that search the african african american community i go to do is to talk about of the role of the black press both current issues and business considerations what it means to so as the information conduit for the development of our people and our community what's important in the news of late it was the story of tara terrorism and the question of racism we've got a unique experience in relationship with those things in this country is associated in my mind with the experience of african people north african people  the question of jihad the question of somali what they call somebody or or or they calling it islamic terror and those are what it phrases i want to get into that in this program but as african americans africans in the west we have our own story our only experience our history with the notion of terror so dr benjamin showed us first of all thank you for being here and in this week's insight news you're talking about twenty evils racism and kind of black publishers black owned business people we need to control much more of the commerce that goes on in our community now on the issue of terrorism and racism certainly black americans and black people all over the world know something about both of these not just terminologies but impact on the quality of life turret just didn't start it since nine eleven  expression of turmoil in the world and certainly one would say that the use of violence the use of physical force to subjugate whole peoples using violence for economic exploitation as well christianity to subdue people violently and to me i think you get people to be faithful not by subjecting them to inquisitions not by subjecting them to murder not subjecting them to burnin  most americans i think have amnesia we seem to forget it that the world has been conflicted with the reality of racial discrimination and racism and the economics of racism and the use of terror to enforce the fall of the ology of white supremacy big statement and so as you look at the african american community in the immigrant community in indiscriminate taking of life to achieve political objectives to achieve a military objective that's why we have crimes against nature even in the new conventions of war there are certain things even in war you are not allowed to do and to me i think that the whole dialogue of the mainstream media is bias sometimes it's a historical it was very political and i think that you're right and that is why  the black press and press in the african diaspora has to not just give the antidote to just kind of poison but the reality of the truth i'm in favor of transparency and i think that sin is not  for myself i'm a christian but the end can you know is predominantly christian but the section i grew up in the city i grew up in is called mombasa and that the second largest city in kenya is the predominant religion the islam source all we know how to quit exist with each other without many issues so we know that the slab is quitting does not mean terrorism but the existing climate right now especially you know make last week there was the ship you know the mall of america at the with al shabab encouraging people to go attack it as a whole group of actors right now in hollywood never got a job since they were black ball because they were considered common bringing us up this cause after the fall of the soviet union people in the west they had to come up extremism and again their invention is actually so and it's amazing how after a period of years even decades all of a sudden this creeps into mainstream media lexa colleges yes and i think that again that is why we need a more objective a more truthful press and i think is so wrong for the somalian american community in the united states to be targeted based own their friends of of existence one out controlling do response of the majority population is always to put everybody in the same brain and i think that particular but the demographics now changing in america the so called browning of america it's going to be interesting to see how particularly in the united states of america where and that's why the debate now about immigration you see they want to hold up that it's really not the issue of immigration this issue is america going to be a multiracial multi lingual multi cultural democracy for everyone or are going to be an exclusive sort  of democracy only for a few based on how much you able to accumulate in terms of material wealth that's the question and that should be a shuttle for the oligarchy actually absolutely delusion to say that there is a stable or permanent middle class because reality don't communicate you know rather than saying you know as inept and as rex maybe slavery is wrong maybe we should treat these people better these are human beings these are not property so yes there is an overreaction by people who are not from the middle east there's an overreaction from people who are not from africa there's an overreaction to people of color and that is why what the united nations recently did by having a decade from two thousand and fifteen to two thousand and twenty five the decade of african people of african descent is so important not only for people that were sent before people who are not african descent they need to have a greater deeper appreciation of the struggle to sacrifice their human misery that has been imposed on millions and millions and millions of people for a long long trying to realign the posture in the world in which we live and so i think that this is a timely debate and i'm hoping that african americans and african people in general not just sit on the before liberation you know when to come back and talk more about the decade for people of african descent the vein for that the theme i think is recognition justice and development yes powerful ideas and the idea of focusing the energy of the world particularly of the african diaspora on those ideas for a period of ten years i think it's important i know macfarlane this is conversations with on the core of my guest dr benjamin f shavers j president and c e o of the in p a national newspaper publishers association we call it the black press of america and my colleague and co host today brother tom guitar the president and publisher of him shelley and  guitar is the president and publisher of the shelley he's also the chairman of our minnesota collaboration we call it the minnesota multicultural media consortium and so  to talk about the need for us to work together on the value of what we bring as communications professionals not only to our people but to the world dr shout shavers maybe give our listeners a story or a brief methodist episcopal church and before then it was called a free africa society they had a togetherness so to the credit of johnston stack and others seventy five years ago the national interview and the wisdom was we are stronger if we work together we form this trade association because even back then seventy five years ago it was it was a similar situation to today where in analysis about black america was being propagated by the mainstream press to the detriment of black people and that's why in the very beginning the black press became the voice of black america to me that's part of been a human being you have to express yourself and a lot of the self expression of black america is documented to the written word to the photographer into the things that we focus on even how we cover sports is different than the mainstream sport press on a cultural of our community so i think today in two thousand and fifteen there is more need for the black press in america than it was seventy five years ago and so we mentor so i'm asking all of our newspapers to make sure you have a printer make sure you have young people coming in to learn how to put people together to learn the value of reading to learn the value of self expression and i think we have to journalists lay out people all of the things they've done now with the digital component you know a lot of our young people now they get their reality on their device so we're encouraging a number of newspapers to make sure you have an electronic newspaper i went to area businesses asking them to buy advertising when these paper sort of got a newspaper that serving north minneapolis which is the black community were delivering ten thousand copies door to door to neighbors and businesses and as often as not a big company would look at me and smile and kind of laugh and say i gave in church on sunday get out of here and so i wrote this that they viewed my small paper my small business as a charity not as a business and they said they already gave because they support united way or something else like that but more importantly the viewed our community as an arena of philanthropy not as an arena of economic enterprise so that was the challenge in my response of that time to time was to reach out to you at the time but other publishers and we created this group called the minnesota minority media coalition which  into the minnesota multicultural media consortium that you are the chair of and our philosophy was that we do more together than we can alone and i went back to the thing companies and said look i'm not here on my own behalf alone i'm here on behalf of three hundred thousand black people asian people latino people and native americans is that a number you can deal with it's not ten thousand and the answer was yes we can do business and we got business so that was the important thing how do we amalgamate create collaboration's the allow us to deliver something that's manageable that's tangible to the marketplace that we define and more as important to me this is a question of practicing collaboration figuring out ways the thing i said in that article was that the nature of technology has changed  broad philosophy understanding back then the advertiser would say i'm a mass media marketer i want to put my books where get the biggest bang for the buck therefore i buy ads in the star tribune seven hundred thousand you know circulation and not inside news ten thousand circulation right what's happened though is with digital technology the market is going after what they call hyper local reach they want to reach people as close to where that person is as he or she can be reached you mention the digital right so hyper local means that people aggregate themselves around particular interest ideas geographies culture that is a place where you can capture their business their attention and their revenue so understanding that's been created by the new digital capabilities has meant that niche meant ship is the order of the day and guess what the black press we have a niche masters we have the most of them as i just want to quantify the marketplace n p a did a study with nielsen and we were able to document that black americans spend in excess of one point two trillion dollars every twelve months in the united states economy so this is not charity this is business and we have to realign the business relationship between corporate america and black americans forty three million now who spend one point two trillion dollars and so the aggregation of our press in our associations means that we can leverage how those companies advertise i think for the major companies wal mart target c is macy's all these companies including local views and reality of this constituency so to me right now there's an imbalance in the market and way these corporations spend advertising dollars these are really the way they get the revenue from the one i want a business relationship i'm not necessarily philanthropic although we do have a in n p a foundation and we do want some of those sort of profit dollars to go to our n p a foundation but on the business side we need to talk straight business a relationship that can help improve those bottom lines but also to have sustainability to press to national and bugs time to let me ask you how you decided to come to business you were a corporate executive internet days the web wasn't as well established as it was in the early ninety's for but they used to be linked in by an online community that will share east africa news so i was i of him shelley and dr benjamin shaver jr president and c e o of national newspaper publishers association tom that's a great segue because when we come back i want to talk to you and dr shave us about the and our future are our business business in my view has to be at the core of all that we do in seeking to develop our potential and our macfarlane i promised and i'm delivering what i call a robust conversation my guest dr benjamin if shavers jr president and c e o of in the national newspaper publishers association we call it the black press of america and my co host today my partner and colleague here in twin cities tom guitar president and publisher of him shelley you know we created here the minnesota multicultural media consortium we just finished  minnesota the key is partnership and so tom and dr ben how do we really take this partnering this collaborating to the next level so that we can really number one recognize and exploit  strategic alliances partnerships developing associations but we need to collaborate in the business and we need to get this is so very important a lot of times we complain about what other groups they come to uni states for you know they have one business in a block they have the whole block we have to not just be consumers we have to be produces and we world the decade of people of african descent now we have to translate so it's just not something symbolic i want to see the rise of people of african descent been in charge of the businesses in the community the press the banks the retail and then we come up with our own creativity we've proven that god has blessed us we with athletics and creativity but now we have then we talk about how to expand i want the black publishers in the caribbean you from jamaica from brazil from africa from all over the world we need a global working together with the entrepreneurship at the center of it time the relationship between africans on the continent and africans in north america and south america mcgreevey and africans in europe and in asia has to be or emerge as the an arena of practical the imperative that the mandate has to be that we create more contact and sustain contact out of that context comes natural contracts exactly  building a relationship and we should have a relationship with one another be our black history month when you have a relation a lifelong relationship that means a bill like allow businesses  to go back to the point that we talk about business sometimes people have a too narrow a view the health care of our community is a business the education of our community is a business and our buyers talk about colleges universities science and technology and engineering all these things we have to excel in and this is why the black press reason my brother sullivan was able to do so well with the opportunity installation center california where they have this man i'll call the taste of soul almost half a million people so there are there's even we have the network and i could just if time permits i could go down a long list what we're doing in north carolina with the black publishers association in minot others states i'm excited that's why actually i saw this job because i see the black press the publishers as been the front line of the freedom fight and struggle for black people in the still fighting for the advertising dollars in an equitable fashion to the point of view nobody can discount that well it's close talking about the advertising dollars that's really important what does the black consumer understand as the relationship between his or her purchasing power and institutions like the black press do we have to educate our people number one so that they understand the power they possess or do we have to do our business differently so that we ensure that we can provide the kind of service that will produce the financial returns that we're looking for as business owners i think  approach press absolutely we have to raise the level of awareness in the black community the continuing importance of the black press in america absolutely secondly we have to form   condom in now is a global economy and we have to reassert our place in the global economy as the black press black businesses and i think that if we do those three things that sequence  we will make considerable progress doing this ten year observation of the united nations they're courageous and the decade people of african descent time what do you see for africa in the next ten twenty years for both consolidation of power in black people say and the emergence of viable economies cooperation between nations and ultimately the relationship between the perreault both supporting and being supported by africa which other yeah i mean this might sound cliche you know you've been hearing mostly from mainstream media but to some extent they do have a point sometimes you've been hearing that africa rising all over the pattern of collaboration in joint ventures global partnerships right now we should be exporting products that are made by black people in this region of the united states to conversation to kill mcfarlane as promised a robust conversation my guest dr benjamin as she was junior he's president and c e o of in p a national newspaper publishers association we call it the black press of america and