Why We Still Need a Black-Led Press

A Black face inside somebody else’s newsroom is not the same as Black people owning the institution, setting the agenda, and keeping the receipts.

Kin Nation,

Let me say something plainly that may upset people who confuse visibility with power:

A Black face on television is not the same as a Black-led press.

A Black reporter getting hired by a major news organization is progress. A Black anchor sitting behind a national desk matters. Black journalists, producers, editors, photographers, and commentators have fought hard to enter rooms that were built to keep us out.

But being allowed into the room is not the same as owning the room.

Representation may influence who delivers the story. Ownership helps determine which stories get assigned, which questions get asked, whose comfort gets protected, what gets buried, and whether the newsroom will still care after the national cameras leave.

That distinction is why we still need a Black-led press.

We built our own press because the truth required it

In 1827, Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm founded Freedom’s Journal, the first Black-owned and operated newspaper in the United States.

Their reason was direct:

“We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.”

Nearly two hundred years later, that sentence still tells the story.

The Black press did not emerge because our ancestors wanted their own little diversity section. They built newspapers because the White press routinely ignored Black life, distorted Black people, defended slavery, excused racial violence, and treated us as objects to be described instead of human beings capable of speaking for ourselves.

Frederick Douglass used The North Star to fight slavery.

Ida B. Wells used journalism to expose the truth about lynching when much of the nation’s press repeated the lies used to justify it.

The Chicago Defender helped Black Southerners understand the possibilities of the Great Migration.

The Pittsburgh Courier launched the Double V campaign, demanding victory against fascism overseas and racism at home.

Ebony and Jet documented Black America when mainstream magazines either caricatured us or acted as if we did not exist. When Jet published the images of Emmett Till, it forced America to confront what racism had done to a child.

The Black press has never been a side project.

It has been movement infrastructure.

Black visibility is not Black ownership

Today, we can see more Black people across television, digital media, podcasts, streaming platforms, and social media.

That visibility matters—but visibility can create a dangerous illusion.

It can make us believe that because Black people appear on the screen, Black communities now control the story.

We do not.

A Black journalist can still have their pitch rejected.

A Black editor can still be overruled.

A Black correspondent can be sent to cover our pain after the shooting, the protest, or the scandal—but denied the time and resources needed to investigate the policies that created the conditions.

A company can celebrate Black History Month in February and cut its Black reporters in March.

A platform can profit from Black culture while an algorithm decides whether Black-owned media gets to reach the audience it built.

A seat is not a deed.

Access is not ownership.

And representation without decision-making power can become decoration.

Black-led does not mean Black-controlled propaganda

Now, let me make the other side of this argument just as clear.

A Black-led press should not exist to flatter every Black politician, protect every Black institution, promote every Black business, or excuse wrongdoing because the person doing it looks like us.

That is not journalism. That is public relations wearing kente cloth.

Kin+ does not exist to tell Black people that we are right about everything.

It exists to tell the truth about what is happening to us, around us, for us—and sometimes because of us.

A serious Black press must be willing to question the mayor, the governor, the police chief, the school board, the pastor, the nonprofit executive, the business owner, and the community leader.

If public money is moving, we should follow it.

If somebody is making decisions that affect our neighborhoods, we should name them.

If a Black institution is serving the people, we should document it.

If it is failing the people, we should document that too.

We do not need a Black press that lies for Black people.

We need one that refuses to lie about Black people—and refuses to lie to Black people.

Black Columbus knows what happens when the newsroom goes quiet

This is not an abstract conversation for me.

Black Columbus once had press institutions dedicated to recording our lives and watching local power.

The Columbus Call & Post served this city from 1962 to 1995. The Columbus Post carried that work from 1995 to 2015. Earlier publications—including The Ohio State News—also documented Black life in this city and across Ohio.

Then the daily habit of a dedicated Black Columbus newsroom went quiet.

But City Council kept voting.

The Statehouse kept passing legislation.

The courts kept making decisions.

Police cases kept happening.

School boards kept shaping the futures of Black children.

Developers kept moving into Black neighborhoods.

Public contracts kept being awarded.

Budgets kept revealing what government considered important—and who it considered expendable.

The decisions did not stop because the Black press weakened.

The decisions simply became harder for our people to track.

Kin+ exists because that gap is unacceptable.

Kin+ is not being built to chase every headline

We are building Kin+ to become an independent Black newsroom and public-trust institution rooted in Black Columbus and connected to Black America.

That means we will report the breaking story—but we will also explain the system underneath it.

We will cover politics, but we will not reduce politics to elections and personalities.

We will cover Black businesses, but paid visibility will never purchase favorable journalism.

We will report our pain without turning Black trauma into engagement bait.

We will document Black culture, joy, invention, leadership, work, family, faith, and ordinary life—not just the moments when something terrible happens to us.

And we will keep asking the questions that define our work:

Who is getting paid?

Who is getting played?

Who is building?

And who is being forced to pay the cost?

That is what a Black-led press can do when its relationship is with the people instead of a political party, corporate owner, wealthy gatekeeper, or algorithm.

The Black press cannot survive on compliments

Here comes the grown-folks part of the conversation.

Everybody says they support independent Black media.

But Black media cannot operate on likes, reposts, compliments, and crisis traffic.

Journalism costs money.

Records cost money. Equipment costs money. Technology costs money. Travel costs money. Reporting takes time. Investigations take even more time. Building an institution capable of serving our people every day requires more than applause when we publish something powerful.

It requires ownership-minded support.

That is why KinFam matters.

KinFam is not a tip jar. It is the paid community helping keep Kin+ independent, Black-owned, and accountable to the people it was built to serve.

You can join for $12.99 a month or $129 a year. Those ready to help lay the foundation at a higher level can enter the KinFam Founders Circle for $500 a year.

Membership will never buy favorable coverage, silence, or protection.

It funds the independence required to tell the truth.

The receipts are free to read.

The newsroom is not free to run.

We still need to plead our own cause

We still need a Black-led press because other people are still trying to define us.

We still need it because policies affecting Black communities are still written without Black communities in the room.

We still need it because national attention is temporary, but local consequences are not.

We still need it because Black children deserve to see their communities documented as more than danger zones.

We still need it because our businesses, institutions, elders, organizers, artists, workers, families, and neighborhoods deserve a permanent record.

We still need it because power behaves differently when it knows somebody is watching.

And we still need it because Black America should never have to depend entirely on somebody else’s newsroom to decide whether our truth is worth publishing.

The Black press is not nostalgia.

It is not a diversity initiative.

It is not a content vertical.

It is infrastructure.

That is what we are building with Kin+.

If you believe our people deserve a newsroom that does not wait for permission, read the work, share it with your people, and become KinFam.

We have pleaded our own cause for nearly two hundred years.

Now it is time to own the institution carrying it forward.

Welcome home.

— DaVante’ Goins
Founder & CEO, Kin Worldwide
Founder, Kin+