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30th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION-
“How Did I Get Here”
By Pat Stevenson
Thank you, God, for allowing me to continue publishing community newspapers for these past 30 years. I am 100% owner of Harlem Community Newspapers, Inc., which publishes weekly newspapers in predominantly African-American communities in Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. How did I get here?
I did not set out to be a publisher. I thought I would follow in my father’s footsteps and be an artist or an art teacher. As a youngster in Savannah, Ga. I use to spend a lot of time drawing and writing poetry. I was artist of the month in junior high school, and my work was posted on the bulletin board for all the school to see. When I graduated high school in New York, I was not sure what I wanted to do – so I tried many things. I went to beauty school and ended up working for Revlon in Macy’s. Then I went to the American Institute of Banking and worked for several banks. Next, I went to business school, and then joined International Paper Company as a sales administrator. International Paper Company at the time was located in the same building as the Daily News on 42nd Street. I often would walk into the building and think, maybe I should apply for a job with the Daily News.
After a couple of years, I decided I wanted to work for a television station. I interviewed first with ABC, and then walked down the street on 6th Avenue to NBC. It was my typing almost 85 words per minute perfectly that landed me a job in the network daytime television advertising division of NBC. I was promoted to work in the spot TV advertising sales division, working for the top sales executive at that time. After a couple of years, I decided I wanted to be a TV advertising sales executive. I was advised by the general manager of the department that my best course to that job was to first work for an advertising agency in the media department. Now that I had to seek out an advertising agency to be trained to work in the media department, I decided this would also be a good time to fulfill one of my other desires, which was to live in different states in the United States.
So I moved from New York to San Francisco, California, where I found an advertising agency that trained me to be a media buyer. With that training I moved to Chicago and became Media Director of an advertising agency. A media buyer develops plans on how to spend client’s money on advertising. We make decisions and negotiate which TV shows, radio stations, and newspapers or magazines to place our client’s ads. It was while doing this job that I discovered the racist ways Black media (Black radio stations and newspapers) were left out of ad buys. As a media buyer, I was told, “Do not include any Black radio stations or newspapers on the buy” for different reasons that had nothing to do with business. I was actually told by the client, whose business was in a predominantly Black neighborhood, that they did not want any more Black people in the business. I took this troubling experience and sought out a Black ad agency to work for. I moved back to New York and began to work for Uniworld Group as a media director. This was a rewarding move as our clients were corporations that specifically gave us advertising budgets to place their ads on Black radio stations and in Black newspapers and magazines. Over the years, I worked with other agencies, and was promoted to VP of Media and worked with fortune 500 corporations such as General Motors, General Foods, Anheuser Bush, Proctor and Gamble, and others. For more than a decade, I got to work with hundreds of Black newspaper and magazine publishers, as well radio stations and syndicated tv producers across the country.
I was very happy and very comfortable in my role as a media director. I directed the media for the Anheuser Busch Superfest concerts for three years. This entailed me traveling to about 15 cities. I also planned and executed the media rollout for Anheuser Busch King Cobra Malt Liquor in 100 markets. I traveled extensively to promote the product nationwide. I acquired so many frequent flyer miles that I could travel anywhere in the world. One year I chose to travel to Cairo to visit a friend and tour Egypt. That trip would change my life. The plane entered a storm, we got struck by lightning, the plane was falling, and I thought for sure I was going to die, I just prayed it would be quick. Evidently, I am still here, as we landed safely; however, after a couple more flights, I became too fearful to get on planes. That was the end of my career in handling national accounts. After trying a few freelance projects, I decided to become a newspaper publisher, once I discovered that Harlem was one of the few areas in New York that did not have a community newspaper. Thus, in 1994, I founded and began publishing community newspapers in Harlem.
