(ThySistas.com) Ladies we must rally to support our writers and publications. It was so disheartening to know that Ebony Magazine has decided not to pay their writers. It’s also sad that they didn’t move on the accusations of non-payment until they heard it from a white writer. Ebony is no longer black owned, and it doesn’t care about its writers but so many of us read Ebony. Now more than ever we must come together to pool our resources as a people. It’s important to place our money in the hands of businesses that not only profit from our culture and news…but will value our voice.
Many of the magazines that were created for our people by us no longer belong to us. Ebony, Jet and Essence no longer belong to us, 
but we continue to contribute to their sales. It’s time to empower black owned publications that may be smaller, but could use our support. This is just one area by which we see our buying power manipulated out of our hands.
Many sisters were unaware that blacks no longer owned these publications, nor that black writers and editors were being mistreated. This is beyond unacceptable. We must get to a point whereby we are tired of providing capital for white people because they can use what we have built laced in our culture and we continue to support the house. Grant it we acknowledge that we must also come together so that our businesses are not in a situation whereby they must be sold off to a non-black. Please know this isn’t a racist position as other cultures keep their markets within their family and communities.
For those of us sisters that are writers we may need to consider what the goal of our work will be. Honestly, some of us would have thought writing for Ebony was a breakthrough not knowing we’d have to fight for our money. Maybe we should also consider writing for our own publications, and those owned by blacks. Some will argue the pay isn’t good, and blacks get over on each other. That’s what the propaganda machine in this country wants us to believe so we would never build the wealth in our own community. If we were to come together as a people and support smaller publications as a reader base they would grow, and in turn can pay their writers more.
It’s time to send a message as consumers that our people and culture matter and won’t be taken for granted. In addition to supporting black owned magazines we should also consider black owned newspapers. We need more publications that represent the voices of our people, whereby we can partake of quality journalism written by us. Find black magazines and news that resonates with you and share it with other sisters in the community. We must take ownership of our culture and news outlets.
Staff Writer; Christian Starr
May connect with this sister over at Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/christian.pierre.9809 and also Twitter; http://twitter.com/MrzZeta.