Last week, one of the oldest and certainly the largest Black Internet daily newspapers in this nation ceased publications. Readers going to the site were shocked by this notice:

Beginning April 1, 2003, The Black World Today will cease temporarily to publish on this Web site as it undertakes an internal re-organization. If you would like to receive a notice regarding the date for resumption of services please type in your email address in the box below.

The Black World Today projected voices of Black intellectuals and thinkers worldwide, and those voices need to be heard. Whenever Black voices and Black media are quieted, whether by being taken over by white media, such as BET.com, Africana.com, or Blackvoices.com, or because there is insufficient capital to continue, as was the case with Netnoir.com and now TBWT.com, the Black community is diminished.

At this point in history, when Black voices are among the most rational in a world of convoluted values and ideals, those voices should not be silenced or hindered but should break forth as an early morning sunrise, dispersing the fog of parochial reasoning that governs and propels world politics.

In America and throughout the world, there is a dialogue that is ongoing about the plight and state of being Africans and African Americans. That dialogue is often structured by those who do not have the best interest of Africans and African Americans at heart, and that dialogue is usually propagated primarily by mass media, which disclaims any untoward proclivity in fashioning truth. But mass media has a very definite bent in its information about Black Americans and all things concerning America. Even before the new embedded reporters paradigm declared itself, mass media was embedded with governmental and antiquated ideas and stereotypes about most nonwhites.

It is mass media that creates heroes of non-heroic figures, stereotypes of minute nuggets of truth, and builds upon its own fictions so that lies and stereotypes are embedded and used as truth; it transforms the most homely into the desirable and wanted; it creates sex goddesses and fashions the tale being told so that all desire their sex goddesses.

With a media so powerful and so warped as is American mass media, there needs to be unembedded and unhindered voices of Black people speaking daily to the world. We must be able to tell our own stories, develop our own heroes and heroines, and we must speak the un-parochial truth so our children can see themselves as they really are, not as depicted by America's mass media. This is one of the major reasons for Black voices to be heard and for them to exist!

The demise of The Black World Today is a tragic demise; it directly threatens Gibbs and all uncensored Black media. The Black World Today offered insightful discussions on issues affecting the national and global Black community and was a stout contributor to the ongoing Black Dialogue.

We are saddened by this tremendous loss and call upon the Black community to support uncensored and un-embedded Black media. Indeed, the Black community has an obligation and even a duty to stop the takeovers and the deaths of serious Black Net media! It has an obligation to support Black voices that speak to the Black cause. It is imprudent to think mass media will ever tell the Black story; it is foolhardy to be dependant on others to depict you in a proper light. It will never happen!

Think about the first time you read Gibbs; you had read or heard nothing like it. And you won't if you depend on mass media. We raise issues others dare not raise, and that is why we need thoughtful Black media. Let BET, Africana, Blackvoice, and taken-over Black media sing their songs and flood the Web with entertainment, we will discuss and raise the important issues of the day. We are un-embedded, uninhibited, unfiltered media, only self-restrained. But through us and others like us will you get another view and take on important issues.

The Web presents an unfiltered media opportunity for Black people around the world to raise their voices uninhibited. At this time in our history when the use of the Web among Blacks has increased greatly, there should be strong voices on it, as was The Black World Today.

Gibbs Magazine mourns The Black World Today's untimely death. It had remained an uncompromised voice in the Black community. We and all the nation are diminished by its passing. []