Benedict College President Dr. Roslyn Clark-Artis is a great ambassador for the school. She also great at marketing. Her signature phrase is “The Best of BC.” Under her administration, every news release and correspondence the college puts out promotes “The Best of Benedict College.”
Last week, a woman stopped by the office to pick up some newspapers. She praised us for our work in the community. She said that what she liked the most was the fact that we showcase the best of the Black community.
I realized that we are also “The Best of BC” – except in our case, BC stands for “Black Community.” Our mission has always been to cover the news of interest to our community. A major part of that mission is to do the job the mainstream media won’t do – cover our success stories and victories. As I have stated in the past, the mainstream media only considers Black folks to be newsworthy if we fall into one of three categories: victims, perpetrators or protestors. Other than that, we might as well be invisible.
As the woman who stopped by the office noted, because of us, the people in our community and the great things that they do are visible. She thanked us for it, and asked if there was anything she could do to help.
We have been getting that question a lot lately. Many people are acutely aware of the recent struggles in the newspaper industry. Just last week, a newspaper in Spartanburg County announced that it was closing it doors after being in business for over a century. Locally, The State Newspaper is only printing three days a week. Over the past decade, at least three Black newspapers have stopped publishing in South Carolina.
Despite the bad news, I believe that there will always been a place in America for Black-owned newspapers. As the women stated, we provide a service that people cannot get anywhere else. And unlike online news, print provides a level of credibility and permanence that is unmatched. Information on websites can be deleted or modified at whim. Ink and paper are permanent.
How can you help? Our newspaper has always been free to our readers, so we depend entirely on advertising, subscriptions and donations to survive. Please ask your friends and family to purchase advertising to promote their businesses and events. Our advertising is very affordable.
List your events and sell tickets to your events
on Carolina Box Office. It’s locally-owned and better than other websites such as Event-Brite. As an added bonus, we will also promote your events online and in print.
If you want the paper mailed to you every week, purchase a subscription. In addition, purchase a subscription for friends and relatives who live out of town and want to keep up with what is going on in our community. We are going to have to increase the subscription price due to the U.S. Post Office’s second increase in postage prices in 2024, but we will do everything we can to keep it affordable.
And if you would like to make a donation, visit our websites CarolinaPanorama. com or Lowcountry-Panorama.com. Click on the Donations link in the menu bar. Any size donation will help. As my father used to say, “Every little bit helps.” (Note: You can also mail us a donation to P.O. Box 11205, Columbia, SC 29211-1205)
In addition, encourage your churches and community organizations to email their news releases and announcements to us. We put our newspapers in at least 300- 400 churches every week, but less than ten percent of those churches send us news releases on a regular basis. We do not charge to publish church announcements.
I recently heard someone say “The struggle is real!” I can certainly relate to that. I work about 75 hours a week to keep the newspapers afloat. We are running two weekly newspapers and websites in cities over 100 miles apart – and trying to launch a third – with a staff of three full-time people. Thank God we have the occasional assistance of friends, family and volunteers. Without their help, we would not have made it through 3 8 { \mathrm { y } } ears.
Our mission is a labor of love. We look forward to serving our community for the next 38 years. With your help, we will continue our mission to bring you “Positive News for a Positive Community.” Or to paraphrase Dr. Clark-Artis, “The Best of the Black Community.”
Thank you in advance from the Panorama family.
