About Us

In 1826, a group of free Black men gathered at the New York home of M. Boston Crummell. Their task was to figure out a way to improve the quality of life for other Black people. They decided that the best approach would be to start a newspaper. A year later, they launched Freedom’s Journal, the first Black-owned newspaper in American history. 

“We wish to plead our own cause,” the newspaper declared in the inaugural issue. “Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the public been deceived by misrepresentations in things which concern us dearly.” 

Nearly 200 years later, a group of five Black men met in a Westside office and reached the same conclusion. Too long has the mainstream media misrepresented the things that concern the Westside dearly. We wish to plead our own cause. 

The Culture is a series of conversations and working meetings among this group, which includes: 

• Morris Reed, the CEO of Westside Health Authority 
• Karl Brinson, the president of the Chicago Westside Branch NAACP
• Bernard Clay, executive director of Introspect Youth Services
• Frank Latin, the executive director of the Westside Media Project 
• Michael Romain, the publisher of Village Free Press and communications director for Westside Health Authority 

Like Freedom’s Journal, the Culture is designed to enhance the media ecosystem on the city’s Westside and be a conduit for Westsiders to tell their own narratives and plead their own causes. 

The Culture is also a vehicle for community members to learn about critical resources, trending careers, job opportunities and social services offered by a range of Westside institutions, particularly WHA’s Good Neighbor Campaign. 

We hope that this publication helps counter widely held misperceptions about the Westside that are dominant in mainstream media outlets and local media outlets that aren’t inclusive of Westside perspectives. 

As the name suggests, the Culture is not a newspaper in the strict sense; it’s something more. That more, that beyond is reflected in the drum symbol that’s in our logo. 

European or western news dates to the medieval period in the 1400s, when a commercial news market “was the prerogative of political elites.” Despite its relative democratization, western news has continued to be the prerogative of political elites. 

Instead of looking to western news and it’s mythic ideal of objectivity as a model, The Culture locates our news and narrative framework in the concept of the talking drums of sub-Saharan Africa. 

Those drums allowed community members to communicate elaborate messages (their “news”) over long distances through drum beats. At one point, they were among the world’s fastest and most efficient mode of communicating, and they were forms of communication “owned and controlled” by community members working collectively for a common cause. Those drums were rooted not in the profit motive, but in people. 

Like the talking drums of sub-Saharan Africa, The Culture will be grounded in the Westside’s multiethnic, class-diverse community; and yet rooted in African-oriented ways of knowing and seeing ourselves: our unique speech, our traditions, our dances, our art, etc. 

We hope you’ll see yourselves in this community endeavor, so please reach out to us.