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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 26, 2011)
Interview Troy Johnson: Assessing the State of the Black Press T roy Johnson is the president of AALBC.com, LLC, (The African American Literature Book Club), whose main property is the website AALBC.com, for which Troy is the founder and webmaster. The site was officially launched in March of 1998 and has grown to become the largest and most fre- quently visited site dedicated to books and film by or about people of African Descent. Here, he talks about both the challenges and rewards of running AALBC.com kam williams: Hi Troy, thanks for the interview. troy Johnson: No problem, Kam, it is my pleasure to have this opportunity. Thank you. c eleBritY i nterView by Kam Williams mortar stores, and physical books, are numbered. This may sound counter-intuitive, but the closing of Borders actually hurts my busi- ness, in much the same way that the closing of independent black bookstores did. Sure, on a superfi- helped generate excitement and sales for our books across the nation. The better-run stores established relation- ships with the community and local businesses. They purchased advertising in our publications. This ben- efits the entire industry, publishers, authors, readers and even other booksellers. When these groups thrive, so does AALBC.com. ‘This may sound counter- intuitive, but the closing of Borders actually hurts my business’ kw: Do you see the recent closing of Borders Bookstores as a sign of the demise of brick-and-mor- tar operations and hard copy books? How does this development affect your business? tJ: Those changes are really reflective of more profound and fundamental shifts that are greatly impacting the entire book indus- try. But I don’t think the closing of Borders or the rise of eBooks is sign that the days of brick-and- cial level, one can say there are less competitors in the market- place and that will drive more peo- ple online to learn about new books and that that helps sites like AALBC.com. However, on a deeper level, Borders was actually a big seller of black books. They kw: How are African- American-oriented websites far- ing nowadays? tJ: Kam, it is a challenging time for the vast majority of our websites. I think we should make a distinction between different types of African-American-oriented websites. First, there are the large corporate entities like AOL’s Huffington Post/Black Voices whose primary mandate is to max- imize shareholder’s wealth. Then there are the mostly independent entities who also have a profit motive, but are driven by a more conscious mission. Sites like AALBC.com, The Network Journal, Black Star News and the other entities who regularly pub- lish your content are part of this mix. As a result of these two dif- ferent goals, the content produced by the large corporate entities focuses more on scandal, celebri- ty, and superficial pop-culture. That content is more popular and easier to produce and is therefore more profitable. The content pro- duced by sites like AALBC.com is less sensational which makes keeping the associated sites prof- itable much more challenging. In fact, even Google favors the larger entities, making things even more difficult. kw: Can you elaborate more about Google’s impact? tJ: Consider this: for most sites, the largest source of new traffic comes in through people who discover the site through search engines. The lion’s share of this traffic comes from Google. As a result, Google is effectively a gatekeeper who controls access to your website through their ranking of your website in their search results. Over the past year, I observed Google start to do some really strange things with their search results that have not only adverse- ly impacted my website’s traffic, but the very nature of the web itself. Google search results skew to very large corporate websites that are publishing less valuable, usually more scandalous con- tent. This was not always the case with Google. At least the search engine Bing doesn’t do this cur- rently. Here are two examples: if you were to do a search for Terry McMillan on Google, you will find in the top five search results a site containing two sentences talk- ing about Terry accusing Will and Jada Smith of pimping their kids, and another site discussing the details of Terry’s divorce. My site, which has published original book reviews, a video of Terry reading from a then-unpublished manu- script, a list of all of her published novels and more, only appears on the second page. Which content do you think should rank higher? Read the rest online at www.theskanner.com Week on the Web Candlelight Vigil in Dawson Park Gives Powerful Message: Nobody Should Die For Love…in Northwest News BOOK REVIEW: ‘Is Marriage for White People?’ Black women should marry out- side their comfort zone, says Stanford professor….in Entertainment Education Expert Augusta Mann: Black Students Need the Five R’s—Ritual, rhythm, recitation, repetition and rela- tionships are all vital….in Northwest News Where’s the Outrage Over N****rhead Ranch? Jesse Jackson Jr. says White politi- cians are exploiting America’s weak- ness on race…in Opinion Lewis and Clark Professor Andrae Brown Talks Snitching, Violence and the Legacy of Slavery — If you can depro- gram a child soldier from Congo, why can’t we depro- gram violent youth?...in Northwest News www. The Skanner.com has the latest news from Portland and beyond, on your mobile or your desktop, it’s your go-to place for the news you won’t see in mainstream publications. It’s your community. It’s The Skanner. october 26, 2011 The Seattle Skanner page 5
