From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

It seemed like an ordinary enough business proposition triggered by demographics.

A new Florida broadsheet newspaper called the Gainesville Guardian aimed at the 43% black community of East Gainesville.

It also could have been seen as a boon to that community, which previously had no media outlet attuned especially to a black audience.

But news of the new weekly quickly provoked an angry response,

because the publisher of the Gainesville Guardian is the city's daily,

the Gainesville Sun, owned by the New York Times Company.

By the time the first issue of the Guardian rolled off the presses on Wednesday,

the Times Company stood accused of carpet-bagging in Gainesville,

taking money out of the pockets of black publishers.

Among the more strident critics has been George Curry,

editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association,

which represents 200-some black papers.

This week he wrote, Black people don't need the New York Times or any other white-owned media company to speak for us. We do that quite well

ourselves. He joins me now. George, welcome to O.T.M. Okay, I would disagree with your description

of me as being strident. I'm a well-reasoned person.

Okay. Well, fair enough. I'm quoting your column. It is arrogant and ridiculous to think that newspapers that primarily portray African Americans as criminals, athletes, and entertainers

will suddenly be able or willing to present African Americans in their full complexity.

Do you think the New York Times Company newspapers, especially the Times itself, is racially

tone deaf given to stereotypes dismissive of the black community?

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