Ebony scores Obama interview

Black media has scored a major coup with Ebony Magazine landing the first extensive post-election print interview with President-Elect Barack Obama for its January issue, which hits the newsstands on Tuesday. The venerable Chicago-based monthly is pulling out all the stops with the interview, wrapping it around a collector’s edition-type cover that features a picture of Obama and the headline “Mr. President.” The magazine also names Obama its “Person of the Year.”

Bryan Monroe, vice president and editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines, said Ebony got the interview through its extensive coverage of Obama’s campaign and through endless hours of negotiation with campaign officials. “It was a lot of communication, a lot of back and forth,” Monroe said. “We started a couple of weeks before the election.”

Monroe said he wasn’t sure the interview and photo shoot was going to happen until it actually did on Nov. 13 in Chicago. He said Obama giving an exclusive to a black-oriented publication “shows that the black press is more relevant than ever, more critical than ever.”

“The stories we tell are more important as our readers want to connect with this (historic) moment,” he said. “The stories that we tell and the prism that we tell them through are critical.”

Black-owned publications weren’t a constant presence at the White House during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. But given the record number of new black voters and the keen interest among readers in Barack and Michelle Obama, Ebony and other black media outlets say they intend to aggressively cover 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when the president moves in.

--Bill Douglas