Chicago Defender

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Chicago Defender
The Chicago Defender announces President Harry S. Truman's order in 1948 desegregating the United States Armed Forces.
Type
Format

Owner
Founded	May 5, 1905
Headquarters

Website: http://www.chicagodefender.com/index.cfm

The Chicago Defender was the United States’ largest and most influential black weekly newspaper by the beginning of World War I^[1]. The Defender was founded on May 5, 1905 by Robert S. Abbott with an investment of 25 cents and a press run of 300 copies. The first issues, which were created on the kitchen table of his landlord’s apartment, were four-page, six-column handbills and filled with news gathered by Abbott, as well as clippings from other, more established newspapers.

By 1910, Abbott was in a position to hire a full time employee and the Defender began to attain a national reputation. Using the yellow journalism techniques from other papers, the Defender began to attack racial injustice. The paper’s circulation was helped by Pullman porters and entertainers who distributed the newspaper south of the Mason-Dixon line.^[2] By 1917, more than two-thirds of the paper’s readership was outside of Chicago. It was the first black paper with a circulation over 100,000 and it is believed that as many as half a million people read the newspaper each week.

In the late teens, the Defender campaigned for blacks to migrate from the South to the North and was highly successful, tripling Chicago’s black population in just three years from 1916-1918^[2]. The Defender also attracted the writing talents of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.

John H. Sengstacke took over the paper in 1940. On February 6, 1956, the Defender became a daily paper and changed its name to the Chicago Daily Defender. When Sengstacke died in 1997, the Defender fell on hard times due to estate taxes. The paper has been close to being sold several times, but in each case, Sengstacke’s family has prevented the sale. From May 1997 to January 2004 the newspaper experienced a steady decline in market share and advertisers. Control of the Chicago Defender and the Sengstacke Newspaper chain was solidified in January 2003 after being acquired by Realtimes. Realtimes is led by group of Detroit businessmen and Thomas S. Picou, a nephew of John Sengstacke.

After a rocky start in 2003, Realtimes hired turnaround specialist Dr. Clarence Nixon, Jr. of CNC Group, LLC in 2004. Nixon was challenged to establish a new model of journalism, while seeking to obtain long term profitability for five newspapers in four major U.S. Markets. Dr. Nixon's initial focus was to improve newspaper quality, content, sales, and business operations within the Chicago Defender. His efforts yielded improvements in business operations including newspaper quality, content, sales revenue, and circulation while establishing a new multi-media based business model. The company realized a 25% reduction in costs while revenue was increased by 20% in 2004.

[edit] References

^ Streitmatter, Rodger (2001). Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 141-158. ISBN 0231122497.
^ ^a ^b