‘My two cents’. That is the title of a column the Enterprise-Journal created last year. Now, speaking directly to you, Jack Ryan, editor to editor, I say: shame on you!

As the managing editor for your newspaper, you have the right to layout and publish your newspaper as you see fit. I am not challenging this right. Why would I? We layout and publish our newspaper as we see fit.

Ninety to ninety-five percent of what we print in the Mississippi Tribune each week, you will not find in your newspaper. Our newspaper is an African American newspaper, written, published, managed and owned by Black people. Your newspaper is like a lot of the daily newspapers in America, written, published, managed and owned by white people, and written from a white point of view.

I am writing this to make sure that you and your primary readers understand this. The Black community has always understood this. You control it. You write it. It is your story. From you it is “his-story” (history).

So, when you chose to publish that column in your newspaper, you were doing what you have a right to do. But, your ‘My two cents’ column is nothing more than a place where you can allow your readers to express their opinions and make public statements without accountability.

Remember, most of the statements and opinions in your column come directly from your newspaper online blog responses from your website. And, no one is required to identify themselves. They are able to speak freely and bravely without anyone knowing their names or where they live.

What cowards!!!!

And that includes you Jack Ryan.

You’ve created a way for you and some of your friends, as well as people who are not friends of yours, to say whatever they like without any repurcussions. So, we are only left with you to hold responsible for so many of the hateful and ignorant rantings of some of your readers that YOU SELECT each week to appear in your column that is not even worth two ce... [Read More]

I had planned on writing about news and events that may impact the local community at a state or national level over the next several months. However, I have found a topic that I feel requires me to lend my observations and opinions here locally and immediately: Editor Jack Ryan and The Enterprise-Journal.

And I have so much to say to you, as a respresentative of the Black community down here in Southwest Misssissippi. This is going to take a lot of newspaper issues to get it all out. So, let me start with an introductory letter:
Shame on you.

You have an award winning newspaper that I have a great deal of respect for and I am a subscriber of. But you are treating me and people like me with the same contempt that your predecesors demonstrated to Black people.

And, why wouldn’t you? You’ve never been faced with Black people in control of local government, or even having our own newspaper to add “balance” to what has been a consistently unbalance news media.
Your news reporting and editorial naturally have and continue to have a white point of view that has been forced down the throat of the Black community.

No more. We must balance this out. There are many viewpoints in the deep South. And there are many different interests. The interest of the poor, of the wealthy, of the educated, of the sports fan, of women and of men, of Blacks and whites. Everything is okay when those interest do not conflict with each other. But what happens when one interest is regularly enforced over another?

For example, what happens when the interests and preferences of white people are placed before Black people? History has demonstrated that the interests of Black people are often ignored, discarded or watered down when our interest conflicts with the viewpoint, preferences and activities of white people. At times, it is almost like we, i.e., Black people are invisible in this country and especially in Pike county. Even when Blacks are in positi... [Read More]