“The Beat” of the Black Press: An Exploratory Analysis of Black Newspapers and Their Podcasts

As newspaper readership trends shifted from paper to online/digital, several Black Press newspapers acquired websites. While this acquisition blurred the lines between ownership and management, the digital Black Press still contains pertinent and relevant content. Like the Black Press, podcasting is conceptualized as a participatory and engaging media process that has proven to be a viable avenue for news consumption, suggesting that it could be integral to the Black Press. This paper takes a constructivist grounded theory approach to investigate how four Black newspapers’ podcasts represent the goals of the Black Press. Our research showed that content across all three podcasts reported on stories that centered Black people, highlighted issues pertinent to Black audiences, and encouraged community action, thus aligning with the goals of the Black Press. While traditional and new media are often put at odds with each other, this study contributes to research on the Black Press by exploring a form of new media to not replace, but rather, to evolve the Black Press itself and find new ways for it to reach and expand its audiences.