Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2001 A textual analysis comparing the content of "Black Enterprise," "Forbes," and "Fortune" magazines and the message each presents to its readers Karen M. Rowley Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Rowley, Karen M., "A textual analysis comparing the content of "Black Enterprise," "Forbes," and "Fortune" magazines and the message each presents to its readers" (2001). LSU Master's Theses. 1744. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/1744 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS COMPARING THE CONTENT OF “BLACK ENTERPRISE,” “FORBES,” AND “FORTUNE” MAGAZINES AND THE MESSAGE EACH PRESENTS TO ITS READERS A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Mass Communication in The Manship School of Mass Communication by Karen M. Rowley B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1981 December 2001 Acknowledgements There are several people without whose help and support I could not have finished this project. First, and foremost, I want to thank my thesis committee chairman, Dr. David Kurpius. It's safe to say that without his understanding, encouragement, and prodding, this project likely would not have been completed. In particular, just when it seemed as if the whole thing would have to be scrapped, he was there to help put it back on track. Our discussions were always lively, and I learned far more than I ever thought I would. I am grateful for his time and effort and patience. I'd also like to thank my friend, colleague, and former boss, Paulette Senior. Her willingness to let me tailor my work schedule to fit class times and thesis demands made it possible to undertake the master's program in the first place. My father, Dr. Charles M. Rowley, was a big part of this as well. He was the one who first encouraged me to pursue a master's degree. And finally, I'd like to thank a very special friend—Ed Anderson. In all the time it took to finish this project, he never complained, and he was always there to be a sounding board, a cheerleader, or a gentle nag. That meant the world to me. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………….…… ii Abstract ………………………………………………………………………….. iv Introduction .……………………………………………………………………… 1 Literature Review ………………………………………………………………… 4 Methodology …………………………………………………………………..... 18 Results ………………………………………………………………………...… 21 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………...…. 30 References .…………………………………………………………………….... 33 Appendix A: Categories of Stories .…………………………………………..… 38 Appendix B: Category Definitions ……….…………………………………..… 39 Appendix C: Black Wealth Initiative — Declaration of Financial Empowerment ………………………………………….40 Vita ..………………………………………………………………………….…. 41 iii Abstract A study of Forbes, Fortune, and Black Enterprise magazines finds that the two mainstream business publications—Forbes and Fortune—provide virtually no coverage of Blacks and the black business community, thereby helping to perpetuate the white-dominated view of society that places minorities in general—and Blacks in particular—outside the norm. Black Enterprise, on the other hand, continues in the long tradition of the black press, providing an alternative view of society through its focus on the black business community. iv Introduction “Economic power is the key to success in a capitalistic society. Business is the means to that power. African Americans can play this game and we can win at it.” —Earl G. Graves, owner and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine From the time the first slave ships brought their African cargo to this country, Blacks have been a component of the economic system but shut out of its benefits. Not only were they not allowed to participate in any meaningful way for centuries, but also as a consequence they have lagged behind in acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to develop a strong entrepreneurial class. It’s an important point because it is the development of an entrepreneurial class that allows a community to accumulate assets, or wealth, which in turn give it the power to take part fully in society. Wilson (1980) noted this when he pointed out that a small white economic elite originally created slavery in this country as a means to accumulate wealth and, thereby, control over government, society, and non-slaveholding whites. Some 20 years later, Oliver and Shapiro (1995) found that systematic societal and governmental practices over the preceding four centuries had resulted in Blacks being denied the opportunity to accumulate wealth. Among the examples they cited was the fact that today’s Baby Boomers stand to inherit collectively $7 trillion when their parents’ generation dies. For black Boomers, the story is different. Their parents and grandparents have few, if any, assets to pass along because they were prevented for so long from accumulating any. The chief reason for this, of course, is slavery. Slavery essentially destroyed the link between effort and reward for Blacks; that is, no matter how hard he worked, a slave knew that his life would never improve. It was a realization that remained unchanged by the Emancipation. After the Civil War, most Blacks and poor Whites in the South became sharecroppers when the plantation owners portioned out their land. But even here, the contrasts between white and black were sharp. “White sharecroppers tended to work the smaller holdings of less arable hilly areas and to produce a greater variety of crops. Most Blacks worked on large cotton-growing estates under the supervision of white planters and their overseers” (Green and Pryde 1997, 4). As with slavery, the sharecropper system offered little incentive for effort, particularly for Blacks. And the difference in treatment between white and black sharecroppers—the discrimination—simply continued the pattern, as Green and Pryde described. “One of the most crippling effects of racial discrimination was to sever effort from accomplishment, investment from reward. First as slaves and then as poorly paid sharecroppers and laborers, many Blacks learned that for any given level of effort, the reward was identical, little or none. Prohibited by law from competing with Whites for economic resources, sharecroppers and wage laborers who worked very hard could not reasonably expect to be better off than those who worked very little. When, regardless of the amount of invested effort, economic reward remains constant or absent, few people expend more than is necessary to survive from day to day. In this kind of world, the world in which many Blacks lived most of their lives, economic culture was not organized around hard work, investment, and risk” (1997, 171). With little knowledge therefore of how a capitalist society functioned, 1 and even less chance to acquire such knowledge, Blacks had no opportunity to participate fully. In those few instances in which Blacks set up their own businesses, the companies were small and concentrated in the retail and personal services sectors—both areas prone to failure. In addition, black business owners were hampered because they could not obtain adequate financing from white-owned banks, nor could they compete with white-owned firms in terms of prices, product selection and advertising campaigns (Landry 1987). Bates (1993) writes that, for the first sixty years of the twentieth century, small business ownership was not a route to upward mobility for Blacks. Not only did white attitudes and laws hem in black business owners, but they were also only able to start up businesses that either catered to fellow Blacks or that handled menial tasks for Whites. These traditional black firms tended to be small with high failure rates, and they created few jobs. Bates attributes this to their owners’ lack of education and business skills and the fact that they had little capital to invest in their businesses. This was not a new conclusion. In their book, Green and Pryde (1997) cited Myrdal’s findings in his 1944 landmark work, The American Dilemma. “However pressing the social and economic problems of black Americans, entrepreneurship was not perceived by either policymakers or the black community as providing a significant part of proposed solutions” (1997, 21). Nearly 40 years after Myrdal’s work, little had changed. By 1980, only 1.75 percent of Blacks, compared to 5.02 percent of Whites, owned their own businesses (Green and Pryde 1997). However, beginning with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the implementation of Title VII, the social atmosphere began to change, albeit slowly. For the first time, Blacks had legal access to public facilities, schools, and jobs. Between 1960 and 1980, the black middle class more than doubled to one-third of the black population, the number of Blacks attending college rose 400 percent, and black high school graduates were just as likely to go to college as their white counterparts (Martindale and Dunlap 1997). Still, the development of a black entrepreneurial class lagged. In 1993, 3.7 percent of Blacks were self-employed, compared to 9 percent of Whites (Conley 1999). Although many social scientists continue to cite racial discrimination as a primary cause, others such as Conley, Oliver and Shapiro are moving to the position that the bigger problem now is one of asset accumulation, or the lack thereof. In fact, Conley (1999) concludes that it is not race that directly explains the difference in black wealth versus white wealth. Rather it appears to be the parents’ net worth that has a direct bearing on the wealth accumulation of the next generation.