Episode 2574: Elinor Tatum ~ Prestigious EPPY & NYPA Award -Winning New York Amsterdam News Owner ~ The Importance of 116 Years of Black Owned Media

 EPPY & NNPA Award-Editor & Publisher Honoree

 Elinor Tatum currently serves as publisher, editor-in-chief, and CEO. The newspaper launched a companion web site and online edition, amsterdamnews.com, in 2009. She was recently awarded the prestigious the EPPY Award honor excellence in digital publishing by Editor & Publisher Magazine.

She is the first Owner/ Black Publisher to have won the EPPY. New York Amsterdam New has won over 30  Presitigious Awards for Oustanding Jounalism!


The Amsterdam News was founded on December 4, 1909, and is headquartered in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. The newspaper takes its name from its original location one block east of Amsterdam Avenue, at West 65th Street and Broadway.. 

An investment of US$10 in 1909 (equivalent to $339 in 2023) turned the Amsterdam News into one of New York's largest and most influential Black-owned-and-operated business institutions, and one of the nation's most prominent ethnic publications. It was later reported that James Henry Anderson published the first copy: "...with a dream in mind, $10 in his pocket, six sheets of paper and two pencils."

The Amsterdam News was one of about 50 black-owned newspapers in the United States at the time it was founded. It was sold for 2 cents a copy (equivalent to $1 in 2023) from Anderson's home at 132 West 65th Street, in the San Juan Hill section of Manhattan's Upper West Side. With the spread of Blacks to Harlem and the growing success of the paper, Anderson moved the Amsterdam News uptown to 17 West 135th Street in 1910. In 1916, it moved to 2293 Seventh Avenue, and in 1938, it moved again, to 2271 Seventh Avenue. In the early 1940s, the paper relocated to its present headquarters at 2340 Eighth Avenue (also known in Harlem as Frederick Douglass Boulevard).  Subscribe @ amsterdamnews.com

In August 1982, Wilbert A. Tatum, chairman of the AmNews Corporation's board of directors and the paper's editor-in-chief, became publisher and chief executive officer. Under Tatum's leadership, the Amsterdam News broadened its editorial perspective, particularly in international affairs. This expanded thrust has produced considerable interest and readership from all sectors of the local, national and international communities.

In July 1996, Tatum bought out the last remaining investor, putting the future of the paper firmly in the hands of the Tatum family. In December 1997, Tatum stepped down as publisher and editor-in-chief and passed the torch to his daughter, Elinor Ruth Tatum, who at the age of 26 became one of the youngest newspaper publishers in the United States. Mr. Tatum died in 2009.

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