The BV Insider: Behind the Walls of Black Enterprise
By Frank McCoy, AOL BlackVoices columnist
In 1970, a magazine arrived in my dad's real estate firm in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. Black Enterprise (BE) was the name and its mission statement read: "Lacking capital, managerial and technical knowledge, and crippled by prejudice, the minority businessman has been effectively kept out of the American marketplace. We want to help change this."Earl G. Graves Sr., founder, CEO, and chairman of BE had insight. He believed that covering black business news would inspire and educate would-be entrepreneurs, executives and investors. When BE was launched 35 years ago, there were about 100,000 black-owned businesses in the United States, perhaps a couple hundred black corporate executives, and an unrecorded number of black investors. The Census Bureau’s most recent numbers, from 1997, report that there are about 800,000 black-owned businesses with about $100 billion in annual revenues. There are also at least 17 black CEOs of major companies and thousands of black executives. And the 2004 Ariel Schwab Black Investor Survey says that 68 percent of black households earning more than $50,000 invested in stocks.
Graves Sr., founder, CEO, and chairman of BE, and his three sons, Earl Jr., John, and Michael, all of whom work for BE, can’t take credit for these gains. But in 2003, Earl G. Graves Ltd., BE's parent company, had $55 million in revenues; a success that mirrored the news it covered.
But what does BE do and how does it do it?
First, some full disclosure. From 1989 until 1996, I was either a BE senior or contributing editor. I have neither written nor edited for BE since that time.
The commitment to a positive take on black achievement begins in BE’s lobby; business casual will never have a place there. Since 1970, Graves Sr., a graduate of Morgan State University, set the tone. Dress slacks, jackets, and ties are required and many male staffers wear suits. Women affect a similar professional style. BE style remains consistent in an era when many firms are tightening dress codes.
Graves quickly fed a hunger in the black community for business stories with familiar faces. And, although he needed investors to start BE, it was in the black financially by the 10th issue. Today, the privately-held firm has about 500,000 subscribers and readership in the millions.
In BE's first decade, Graves exploited the racism of the white press as it mostly ignored black business news. Later, white publications became competitors after "mainstream" advertisers sought new revenue in minority communities. It is no coincidence that Latinos are now the flavor of the century. Prior to BE, only black newspapers and Ebony magazine consistently reported on black business people and their work. But while their interest was genuine, it was not the serious beat coverage the topic needed. Now most business publications cover aspects of BE's niche and their ad managers compete for sales.
Unfortunately, as Graves Sr. has often said, ad sales personnel have often heard ridiculous spiels from white ad execs. They pronounce -- without any empirical backing -- that blacks do not eat, drink, wear, drive, or buy certain products. That, Graves has said, is when a BE sales person has to hold her ire and become an educator.
BE's editorial staff has its own challenges. How do you balance content in a magazine read by wanna-bes and BusinessWeek subscribers? One answer is to create special packages that spotlight the most influential or powerful blacks on Wall Street, or in sports, law, or a host of other industries. There is also a regular special on the top black female execs.
If imitation is the best form of flattery, Fortune magazine lavishes it on BE when it publishes its "Most Powerful Black Executives" issue periodically. In other areas, Graves might be thankful that other publications still don’t get it. For example in the early 1990s, when I created BE’s Investor Roundtable, a semi-annual feature article, most of the black investment and mutual fund managers I invited to talk about stocks were still invisible to mainstream media. (See BlackVoices on Mellody Hobson.)
The same cannot be said for BE's annual June issue. Each year, it is the only place to learn how black-owned companies, banks, asset managers, car dealerships, ad agencies, insurance companies. and private equity firms fared in the previous year. Plus, the BE Board of Economists provides analysis on the fiscal state of African-America. In response, mainstream media strip mines the issue for sources and analysis.
Finally, BE is a tough place to work. It is true that the Graves, much to the surprise of outsiders, maintain a wall between their advertising and editorial divisions and try not to interfere in editorial's article selection but, they are also demanding, impatient, and insistent -- much like the Forbes family is at its privately-held magazine and the senior management is at The Wall Street Journal or Fortune. At BE, the editorial team, many of whom have served the magazine for more than a decade, are proud of its rigorous integrity and still committed to the mission statement.
My late father, an entrepreneur who subscribed to and enjoyed BE for more than 20 years, would agree that Black Enterprise readers deserve nothing less.
About the Author
Frank McCoy is a writer living in the Washington metro area.
April 4, 2005