St. Louis Metro Sentinel:

Now that two (2) major national conventions are out of the way, the city’s convention office has issued an open letter to the community and increased its minority staffers. Many contribute the actions of community leader Anthony Shahid for his public actions. Shortly before the National Black Baptist Convention started in St. Louis, Mr. Shahid marched on the city’ s convention center and demonstrated against the center and mayor’s office for their lack of minorities in positions of authority and lack of numbers. Also, when the National Urban League held its convention in St. Louis, shortly behind the church convention, again Mr. Shahid sent strong letters of communication to the CVC, mayor’s office, national director for the Urban League and others that things had not gotten better with the CVC. (Pictured below is Bro. Anthony Shahid demonstrating at the CVC.)

As a result of bringing to the attention of the mayor and CVC, the CVC hired more minorities and spent over $10,000 with area Black newspapers in full-page color advertisements, with an open letter to the residents of the city and region that they were doing better with minorities. This open letter, one hopes, is a starting point for more minority involvement in more jobs, more minority conventions and advertising with the minority media.

One side issue is a column written by Post Dispatch Columnist, Sylvester Brown, which is puzzling. Brown is a former publisher of a Black newspaper that went out of business for lack of advertising and most publications that go out of business are because of that.
It would appear that Brown after being in the newspaper business would understand that without advertising, you have no readership and subsequently, you go out the backdoor and turnout the lights. Brown’s recent column about Shahid and his demonstrations against the CVC, would appear to support that the methods used by Shahid and his supporters were not effective. His column was entitled….“Protest, Promises, Inaction…Again.”

His column suggests that the efforts of Shahid fell upon hollow promises, but what has happen at the CVC, is historic. Tourism is a billion dollar business. The national conventions by the Baptist Church and Urban League brought over $20 million to this city and region. And, for the most part, that $20 million economic impact was not felt by minorities. Thus, Brown should be a supporter of the demonstrations by Shahid and if these demonstrations had come earlier, Brown may still be in business. The CVC has not historically been advertising friendly to the true Black Press of this region. The St. Louis American is not considered a true Black Newspaper, because sources say that it may be Black owned, but certainly it is not Black operated and the advertising revenues are not owned by the newspaper. Thus, when you talk about advertising revenues that should be equally shared in the marketplace by the Black Press, the American Newspaper creates an unfair or unleveled playing field. But, this is America and the major media for years has been approaching certain Black Publishers to enter the lucrative Black markets that have consumers with disposable incomes that major corporations would
like to reach.

Related:

“The Unions Are Killing Us.”

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