As a pillar of democracy, the Black press deserves more from philanthropy.
Philanthropy cannot claim to care about narrative power and then remain silent as the institutions that produce it collapse.
Last month, I attended the 2026 Harambee Conference hosted by ABFE in San Francisco. One of the plenaries I really enjoyed listening to was about the power of Black media and how public information is both critical to our daily lives and shapes how we remember our history. Further, the session explored what it means to invest in journalism, how narrative power builds Black power, and how philanthropy can fund this work holistically.
Barriers to traditional mainstream mass news media run deep, including the prioritization of commercial interests, the control of news values by corporate and political elites, and censorship—all of which go beyond what philanthropy alone can fix. These are the same obstacles that led to the emergence of the Black press.
Still, philanthropy can play a significant role in removing them. A 2023 report from Media Impact Funders highlights a substantial rise in philanthropic funding for American journalism over the past several years, with over half of funders increasing their grants and a growing share targeting communities of color. Given that the narratives we consume drive social, cultural, and political change in our communities, the importance of that investment cannot be overstated.
Per cultural and political sociologist Robert N. Jacobs, fundamental to a free, functioning democratic society is freedom of the press. The press has established a global civil society that influences public debates on common issues, and its consumers serve as a strong platform for shaping public opinion on societal matters. The Black press has played a crucial role in this by challenging dominant stereotypes and narratives about the Black experience and bringing to light stories that might otherwise go unheard.
For those reasons, there should be an even stronger priority for supporting the work of Black journalists and outlets, especially in this moment, when the Black Press is experiencing a critical financial crisis. Publishers are estimating an 80% decline in revenue. This decline is mainly due to widespread opposition to DEI efforts and heavy newsprint tariffs, which are straining the budgets of over 200 Black-owned newspapers nationwide.
Philanthropy cannot claim to care about narrative power and then remain silent as the institutions that produce it collapse. It has the resources to close that gap.
The Black Press As Community-Controlled Infrastructure
To understand what’s at stake for the Black press, you have to start with its origin. Since 1827, the Black press has provided an independent, culturally authentic, and accurate voice for Black communities while advocating for civil rights, social justice, and equality. It highlights stories neglected by mainstream media, which has historically been influenced by power structures that mainly serve white audiences. The Black press challenges this imbalance, serving as an educational and unifying force against racial injustice. Funding that work is one of the most tangible actions philanthropy can take to help preserve it.
As the United States marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence this July, the Black press is also approaching its own 200th anniversary next year. With the founding of Freedom’s Journal, the first African American-owned newspaper in the U.S., its inaugural editorial declared: “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.” Almost 200 years later, the work of pleading our own cause still continues.
The Black press exists because mainstream media often fails to accurately tell Black stories. For example, the 1968 Kerner Commission Report showed news outlets failed to portray race relations properly, lacking understanding of Black culture, thought, or history. Decades later, across academia and social institutions, several studies have revealed that Black people are still shown as more threatening and as suspects rather than victims in news media. The misrepresentation and erasure persist, with Black life being reduced to danger and defiance, while broader, more complex realities are ignored.
To combat this, the Black press has served as, and continues to serve as, a counternarrative. As Alicia Bell of the Racial Equity and Journalism Fund described at Harambee, it is “community-controlled infrastructure.” The Black press serves as a crucial source of information that communities rely on to stay informed, meeting a need that white-led media outlets have consistently failed to address. That infrastructure, which this moment cannot afford to lose, is struggling to survive.
A Legacy At Risk
Erasing history is how you maintain power and control. So, it’s no surprise that the Black press is at risk. The main difference now is the institutional authority behind it and the coordinated speed at which it’s happening. From dismantling DEI efforts to erasing Black history from public lands and attempts to end federal funding for public media, these coordinated efforts aim to reshape the official narrative of this country’s history and its key historical (and contemporary) figures. The Trump administration believes that controlling the narrative means controlling the outcome, and they’re not entirely mistaken.
But the Black press has consistently recognized this reality. When mainstream newspapers covered the 1919 Red Summer as isolated riots rather than a coordinated wave of white racial violence, the Chicago Defender presented a counternarrative that didn’t blame black people for the violence, unlike white-led outlets. Jet magazine first published Emmett Till’s open casket, “a move that historians say started the organized modern civil rights movement.” When mainstream outlets like Fox News led with George Floyd’s criminal record and footage of burning buildings, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a coalition of more than 200 Black-owned newspapers, from the New York Beacon to the Dallas Examiner, took it upon themselves to tell the fuller story about Floyd’s murder and the tipping point of the Black Lives Matter movement. They documented the grief, the demands, the families, and the people marching across the globe. Without them, that record would not exist.
And today, outlets like The Root, Capital B, TheGrio, and local Black press institutions are ensuring that state-sanctioned whitewashing doesn’t blatantly rewrite our history.
Nevertheless, the Black press faces this responsibility despite a flawed revenue model and an industry that continues to lose jobs and outlets.
Funders can do more to support journalism by providing sufficient financial support. At Harambee, Bell also stated that as little as $200 million annually could fully fund all newsrooms led by Black, Indigenous, Latina, Asian, and Arab communities in the U.S. This amount represents just 0.03% of the country’s total charitable donations each year. To put that into perspective, that’s also only 0.04% of annual venture capital investments, less than the valuation of a single NFL team, and less than ten hours of Pentagon spending.
Despite that very small percentage of the country’s total annual charitable donations, two to three BIPOC-led newsrooms close each week, according to Bell.
On Funding Journalism
Aside from Trump and his regime, Big Tech has gutted the economic foundation the Black press depended on. Platforms like Google and Meta dominate the digital advertising market that once sustained local newsrooms, while simultaneously training audiences to expect free content. This makes subscription models nearly impossible to sustain. At this critical moment, funders cannot be neutral on this issue. Every Black newsroom that closes takes with it the opportunity to challenge harmful, dominant narratives that circulate the public sphere, and leaves more room for those narratives to fill the spaces. This further emphasizes why the Black press matters right now. Who gets to shape our narratives and tell our stories? Us, or the same institutions that have tried to erase our existence since America’s founding?
The work being done by Black press institutions is extraordinary. The Sacramento Observer expanded to Stockton, spending six months doing community listening before writing a single story. Reporting from MLK50 about Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare and debt collection in Tennessee has led to the forgiveness of $11.9 million in hospital debt for community members. The Jackson Advocate reported so persistently on the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, that the EPA moved toward intervention. Outlier Media in Detroit helped homeowners recover $5.9 million that the state had seized during the foreclosure crisis.
These stories flex the power of the Black press, created by newsrooms currently facing funding shortages, understaffing, and burnout. Yet they continue to show up and share the stories our communities need to know.
Additional research from ABFE and Candid reaffirms that while foundation funding for Black-led organizations increased post-2020, the proportion of these organizations that actually received grants did not grow in proportion. Although funding became more visible, access to it largely remained stagnant. As philanthropy cuts back on race-specific investments amid political pressures, Black press organizations are disproportionately bearing this reduction.
Larry Lee, President of The Sacramento Observer, expressed something at Harambee that I keep coming back to:
“No matter what your number one priority is…your number two priority should be funding journalism. Because you can be committed to Black maternal health, you can be committed to economic justice, you can be committed to all these issues, but if you’re not funding the organizations that are helping to tell that story, you’re doing a disservice to the work that you do.”
He’s correct. Narrative power is only as strong as its infrastructure. That means having newsrooms with reporters, editors, and publishers, along with sustainable financial support. It also requires that editorial decisions remain in the hands of Black journalists and storytellers, free from the influence of advertisers or government entities that have a stake in controlling the story.
A Legacy Worth Preserving
As the country prepares to celebrate 250 years of a “democracy” that has historically and systematically excluded Black people, and as the Trump administration attempts to erase our history, the Black press must endure in its role of speaking truth to power, by any means necessary.
America250 will flood the media landscape with celebratory content about the founders of this “democracy,” the same founders who profited from slavery while ironically drafting a document about freedom and independence. The Black press will tell a different story, one about who was left out of that founding, who built this country without credit, and who is still fighting for its promise of freedom and justice for all. That counternarrative only survives if the Black press does. This means fully investing in it, not investing incrementally or after another research report that confirms what we already know.
If philanthropy refuses to fund the Black press now, the dominant narratives will win by default, and we will have helped make that happen.
The Black press has been advocating for itself for nearly 200 years. At the very least, we should treat that legacy as something worth preserving and protecting.
Social preview image context and source: A member of the Chicago Defender staff shows a copy of the newspaper to students crowded around a table during Career Day, held at an unidentified school in Chicago, late 20th century. The newspaper headline reads, “Blacks To Move Up.” From The Abbott Sengstacke Family Papers/Robert Abbott Sengstacke via Getty Images.