This weekend a new voice will give Evanston readers a new choice at city newsstands.
The first edition of the Evanston Sentinel, which will be published monthly and focus on providing information for African Americans and other minorities, hits newsstands for the first time this weekend, said publisher Bennett Johnson, the executive director of the Evanston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The free newspaper, which is not affiliated with NAACP, will distribute 15,000 copies and circulate to Evanston, Morton Grove, Rogers Park, Skokie and Wilmette.
The Sentinel will take a “cosmopolitan” approach to covering community news, said reporter Ali Brown, one of six Sentinel staff members. Another part of the Sentinel’s mission will be to “bridge the gap” between area businesses and black communities, he added.
“Businesses have yet to really reach out to the market,” Brown said. “We’re going to utilize the paper as a vehicle for them to market their services to (blacks and minorities).”
Johnson said the Sentinel will be similar to CCC Newsette, a black newsletter that served the Evanston community from 1971 to 1984.
The paper also will “piggy-back” the Oak Park Sentinel, which connects black issues to area businesses’ strategies in Bellwood, Maywood and Proviso West, Brown said. The Oak Park Sentinel is edited and published by Walter A. Perkins III, who is affiliated with the Oak Park NAACP.
The Sentinel will not cover crime, but will be “geared toward employment trends and opportunities,” Brown said.
Some of the paper’s sections include community news, an events calendar and a business and technology section.
The section “Voice of the Future” will highlight high-school and grade-school students by giving them the chance to publish their writing.
A section called “Family Matters” will deal with “challenges faced by minority families,” Brown said.
He said the North Shore area needs a black newspaper because some of the larger media don’t cover issues relevant to that community.
Johnson said he hopes the paper will circulate as far north as Waukegan.
“We’ll find out how people react,” he said. “As we get readership and interest, we’ll go from there.”
Ald. Dennis Drummer (2nd), who owns the Dennis Drummer Drapery Service, 1425 Lake St., said the newspaper is a great idea.
“It has been proven that some of these smaller newspapers do have a market,” Drummer said. “It will give us another alternative to news. The Evanston Review is selective in what it reports. It’ll be a very helpful paper if Johnson can pull it off.”
