'It is unacceptable,' Portis, publisher of the Greater Pittsburgh Black Business Directory & Resource Guide, told fellow directory publishers meeting in Pittsburgh Thursday.
Portis is serving her second term as president of the Black Pages Publisher's Association, which is holding its mid-year conference this week at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown. Nearly two-dozen publishers of black business directories in 52 cities are attending the conference.
'When someone asks why a black pages, I always say, 'Why not?'' Portis said.
'We have to be a link between those black businesses and the corporations, the government and the consumers,' said Portis, who has been publishing the Black Business Directory for 16 years. She said one of the most difficult aspects of the task is not printing it or selling advertisements, but distributing the publication into the right hands.
'We send them out to purchasing agents at corporations, human resource people, and to other businesses,' said Portis, who also publishes the Renaissance News, a free, weekly Pittsburgh newspaper. 'But when people leave those positions, we haven't found that they pass the directories on, so we have to call on a regular basis.'
The directories survive on advertising dollars, and word of mouth promotion, but Portis said this week's conference will help publishers find other ways to get the word out about their products. It will also help drive home the idea that the publishers must think of themselves as business people first.
'Unfortunately, we have to spend so much time on the social work end of it, we don't get to spend enough time on business,' Portis said. By 'social work' she means the task of convincing companies that they should support the black directories through advertising, and use the directories for finding goods and services.
'It's no longer the '60s, and relating to our community is no longer considered the sexy thing to do,' she said.
Ken Reid, publisher of the Atlanta black pages, and vice chair of the organization, said that 97 percent of the people who pick up the directories use them.
The publishers tout a study by Jeffrey M. Humphreys, University of Georgia director of economic forecasting, which boasts that the black community possesses a buying power of $533 billion annually, a 76 percent increase from 1990. That is more than the gross national product of India or Australia. During the same period, the buying power for all of Americans rose 57 percent.
'Many people wish that this dream of a color-blind society would take hold, but I say 'Never!'' Portis said. 'We bring something unique to the mix.'
The BPPA, founded in 1993, represents directories published in more than 50 U.S. and Canadian cities, and claims to represent more than 10 million readers and collectively lists more than 11,000 businesses.
The directories range from the hefty Nashville Black Yellow Pages, published by Delores Black Kennedy, to the slender Erie/Meadville/Jamestown black business directory, published by Cynthia Muhammad. Black directories are also published in Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, New England, Wisconsin and Las Vegas, among other cities.
Portis, who also publishes a black business directory in Harrisburg, said she was eager to host the conference, 'to show off Pittsburgh, and to show these business people from other cities that we have much in common, that our struggles are similar.'
Several of the publishers also publish newspapers in their hometowns. Wallace Jackman, publisher of the Minnesota Black Pages, based in Minneapolis, also publishes the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.
Jackman said he took over from a previous publisher who 'messed it up.' But, like his fellow publishers, Jackman was eager to hear from advertising and marketing specialists, and to take part in daily publishers' roundtables, where the publishers swap information and techniques.
While in town, the publishers will tour PNC Park, tour the city and play golf, and shop. From 5:30 to 7:30 tonight, the Pittsburgh Black Business Directory will host a People to People Networking Connection reception at the Regional Enterprise Towers, open to the public. State Rep. Bill Robinson, Democrat from Schenley Heights, will be the speaker at the reception.
