The Sentinel is no longer a dependable chronicler of the black community. Any resident who is seeking a sense of his community will not be any more enlightened by the time he reaches the back page of the Sentinel.
Shorn of its credibility, it wanders aimlessly through South Central every Thursday.
Graphically, it is acceptable, but the content is amateurish, vague, dense, rambling, borderline coherent. The number of misspelled words embarrass me as a reader.
Were They Better in 1950s?
In the bad old segregation days of fifty years ago, this country produced outstanding black newspapers. Ironically, sadly, the heyday for many may have ended when integration became more widespread. And then the yahoos stole the keys to the presses. Effectively, they scribbled in crayon across the front pages of what used to be respectable sheets, such as the Sentinel.
I don’t know how few black newspapers have recovered from the yahoo takeover. The Sentinel has not.
Seven years ago, when I was completing a term with the late Baltimore Press, I was invited to interview for the editor’s position at the Baltimore Afro-American.
I was, and am, intrigued by the possibilities.
The timing, however, was not right. I was planning to leave town and come back home. We could have had fun together, though, jabbing in the ribs the drab, bigoted, doddering, smoke-blowing Baltimore Sun, an East Coast version of the talent-challenged Los Angeles Times.
Political agendas aside, the main mission of an ethnic or community newspaper should be to accurately, objectively — without fear or favor — and aggressively report the spectrum of developments within its coverage area.
Where Is the Storytelling?
Political beliefs can be either side of the middle aisle — when properly labeled. But the news stories must be reported with balance, with authority, with clarity, and interestingly, which is not the case these days with the Los Angeles Sentinel.
None of its journalists tells stories.
If there is copyediting, I would be surprised.
The lead story in this week’s edition (McDonald’s Accused of Fraudulent Practices at LAX) is so convolutedly written, riddled with typographical and grammatical errors, that it is impenetrable.
Someone who has just blown into Los Angeles and read the issues of the last three weeks would have no idea what the problems are, what the issues are, what the story lines are in one of the most important black communities in the world.
Since it is neither illegal nor immoral to publish a newspaper that drastically underserves, and in some cases misleads, its readers, we shall tap our toes until a competitor surfaces.
Two weeks ago, when the lead story on Page One was about the Georgia Congresswoman who accused a Capitol Hill cop of mistreating her — turns out she was fibbing and later apologized — the Sentinel behaved abysmally toward its readers.
Without a stick of evidence in hand, the Sentinel headline read: Black Congresswoman Victim of Racial Profiling.
The story is signed by the Assistant Managing Editor. By the end, we know all of his opinions on the case even though this purported to be a news story.
I do not see enterprise stories in any edition.
For the past month, the hottest story in America has been illegal immigration.
From everything I have read, those few blacks who have commented are ambivalent about what their community’s role is or what it should be, if any.
Why hasn’t a spate of stories been assigned on this electric subject?
Do parents and children have competing views?
Where are the black preachers? What are they telling their congregants?
How much influence do they have on a subject that is not perceived to be a specifically black one?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions.
Neither, unfortunately, do the deprived readers of the Los Angeles Sentinel.