Publisher Jarrett L. Carter on the Successful Growth and Challenges of HBCU Digest
Entrepreneur Jarrett L. Carter, Sr. is the founder and publisher of HBCU Digest, a digital publication distributed to Historically Black College and University students, faculty, school administrators, alumni, stakeholders, and consumers. HBCU Digest is an authoritative resource for news and information and has been cited in Forbes magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Carter is also the founder and CEO of Carter Media Enterprises, LLC, an online media holding and consulting company targeting African-American audiences. Under his leadership, Carter has created the National HBCU Executive Media Training Institute, an annual training seminar for Black college communications professionals, presidents, alumni, and student journalists.
In 2011, Carter presented and produced the inaugural #HBCUMediaWeek, the HBCU Summit, and HBCU Awards ceremony. Traditionally held during the second week of July, the events and activities kick off with #HBCUMediaWeek, which is a social media campaign that highlights the positive news coverage that happened during the academic school year. The two-day HBCU Summit, held on the Wednesday and Thursday of that week, convenes HBCU public relations and communications officials, faculty members, and communications students, along with a group of college presidents and chancellors. The group addresses a series of important issues pertinent to the state of HBCUs in the media industry, including the best practices that worked during the academic year; efforts made to increase awareness and visibility at the HBCUs; what plans and initiatives did or didn’t work well; and what made the biggest economic impact within the various college towns. The week concludes on Friday evening with the HBCU Awards ceremony honoring students, faculty, alumni, college presidents, and trustees.
“I wanted to create at least one night a year where there’s nothing but positive coverage on HBCUs,” says Carter. “My vision was to produce an awards ceremony like the Grammy or the Emmy Awards to celebrate all facets of HBCU culture, executive leadership, sports, student activities, and research.”
Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., President of Howard University, says Carter’s work is invaluable. “Jarrett Carter is a passionate advocate for historically black colleges and universities, and he is making a significant contribution to society by telling our stories through his publication, the HBCU Digest,” says Dr. Frederick. “Since its inception, Mr. Carter has provided our institutions with a platform to share the good news that often goes untold by national outlets. Through his annual HBCU Awards ceremony, he recognizes the excellence within our HBCU students, faculty, administrators, and the programs that make us unique and noteworthy. I appreciate his commitment and advocacy for the collective HBCU community.”
Carter is currently the Communications Manager of Maryland’s Howard County Department of Community Resources and Services. Before, during, and after the launch of HBCU Digest, he held a string of positions in communications and public relations, including an adjunct professor at the Community College of Baltimore County; Senior Communications Specialist at Baltimore Gas and Electric; Higher Education Writer for EducativeDive.com; Communications Specialist at the Howard County Public School System; and Associate Director of Public Relations for his alma mater, Morgan State University.
Born in Cheverly, Maryland, in the heart of Prince George’s County, and raised in Seat Pleasant, Maryland, Carter obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English with a concentration in journalism. He later received his Master of Science in Communications Management from Towson University. He is also a devoted husband and the father of four children.
Gwendolyn Quinn: Let’s start with the recent great news about Senator Kamala Harris. What impact do you feel she will have on HBCUs overall as a Howard University graduate and the first Black woman to be on the Democratic ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate?
Jarrett Carter: Senator Kamala Harris has made overtures to the HBCU community in the past with proposals for building academic and physical infrastructure and workforce development for graduates. These proposals have hit the right notes, but she’ll have to be the face of HBCU advocacy helping to build awareness of the need among HBCUs, creating bipartisan consensus in Congress, and being the primary advocate in promoting greater investment and attendance in Black colleges at state and federal levels.
President Trump has made historic investments in HBCUs, and certainly, an HBCU graduate should be compelled to ensure that her administration is not outdone by an unpopular predecessor.
GQ: When did you create and start the idea to publish HBCU Digest? Did you need to get permission or a trademark?
JC: I came up with the idea to start HBCU Digest in 2007, but I didn’t purchase the URL and start the publication until January 26, 2010. The HBCU Digest is an independent news service. I must give credit to Onnidan.com, an online publication that covers HBCU sports and athletics, which is the oldest digitally based publication covering anything on HBCUs. I was a big fan of that website and I love their approach to national coverage with a [lean] staff. I studied their model and tried to figure out how to cover higher education from a historically Black context.
GQ: How is HBCU Digest funded?
JC: It started as self-funded, and then over the years we were able to attract more than 40 institutions [HBCUs] as advertisers. Part of what we’ve done is to help the schools and follow the trends of where journalism is going. We went to a subscription-based model. Now, subscribers can pay five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year, and receive different levels of access and information. The subscription model has been successful for us. With journalism, most companies don’t want to pay for [a subscription] but if people can rely on coverage from an expert and know that it’s authentic then [oftentimes] people are willing to pay for the information. We launched our subscription model in February [2020].
GQ: Do you receive donations, funding, or advertising dollars on behalf of HBCU Digest?
JC: No. The majority of our revenue comes from subscriptions, but occasionally, we get companies that will say, “Can we promote something for a month? Can you do something on social media?” We have about 80,000 followers on Facebook and 50,000 on Twitter, [nearly] 14,000 on Instagram. For this school term [2020/2021], we haven’t engaged schools to buy advertising because we’re acutely aware that HBCUs’ revenue is in flux due to the coronavirus.
GQ: Has HBCU Digest always been a digital publication?
JC: For the most part it’s been a digital publication. There was a time when we published a [physical] copy that was specifically created for the presidents [of HBCUs] because the presidents liked to have [a hard copy] on their desk, but it just wasn’t a sustainable model where we could make money.
GQ: Do you work full-time at HBCU Digest?
JC: No, but HBCU Digest has been a platform for me to secure other [work] that I didn’t expect. The combination of working on the Digest and building a name and reputation has allowed me to land in [key online] searches. I turned down a job working with the Trump Administration a couple of years ago because of the work I do for the Digest.
GQ: Are you a Republican?
JC: I’m not a Republican, I’m an Independent. I tend to be left-leaning, but I think that’s what the [Trump Administration] was looking for: Someone who could advise the administration on HBCUs. Fortunately, I turned it down because at some point you’ve got to say, “If you’re going to be Black and work for Trump that you are conceding the point that you can’t go back home.” So every Black person who sees you in the street, they’ll say, “Don’t you work for Trump?” That was too heavy of a price for me.
GQ: When you worked at Morgan State University as the Associate Director of Public Relations and Communications, what type of crisis PR did you handle?
JC: Regrettably, a couple of campus shootings. We also had an issue where a then former student [Alexander Kinyua], had cannibalized another then former student [Kujoe Bonafo Agyei-Kodie], of Morgan State University. It happened off-campus, but the story received a great amount of media coverage. Kinyua, who committed the [heinous] act had some mental issues.
GQ: How many HBCUs are there now?
JC: People will say different numbers, but the one I tend to go with is the federal number of accredited HBCUs, which is 101.
GQ: What is the readership/viewership of HBCU Digest? Do you still write stories? And do you published during the summer months?
JC: The [HBCU Digest] website is hbcudigest.substack.com, which we recently launched. We have a platform and partnership with [Substack]. Our newsletter is direct-to-reader distribution. Our email subscriber list is about 3,000 people, but again, everything that we write is syndicated on social media as well. The total readership monthly is between 150,000 and 160,000 hits, which also includes social media stats. With direct distribution, social media, and email, Substack can track how many times our emails have been forwarded and opened.
GQ: How many writers do you have on staff for the HBCU Digest now?
JC: At this time, we don’t have any staff writers, and not because it wasn’t something we wanted to do. [Interested writers] were able to get better-paying jobs. As an independent [operation], it’s difficult to keep working professionals who are on a salary that’s less than competitive than you’ll find from large operations. However, we are fortunate to have presidents [of HBCUs] that contribute op-eds. We also have alumni and students that write op-eds, which often drive hot button topics, and sometimes it’s in response to something I’ve written. We don’t have beat reporters or bureaus.
GQ: How do you plan to expand HBCU Digest?
JC: The fortunate part is that our subscription model is working very well, and it looks like in the next few months, if nothing changes, we will be able to get some paid contributors, and we’ll be able to expand the podcast element. If those two things grow, our audience will grow. We are a resource for other media outlets.
GQ: When did you start the HBCU Digest Podcast? Who are some of the people you interviewed?
JC: I started the HBCU Digest Podcast in 2019. As the host, we have interviewed about forty HBCU presidents including Clark Atlantic President George French, Morehouse President David Thomas, Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell, Saint Augustine’s President Emerita Dianne Boardley Suber, and other HBCUs presidents, as well as athletic coaches, and trustees. We’ve talked with Johnny Taylor, former president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and the White House HBCU Advisory Board Chair. We’ve also had political representatives from the White House liaison office, where we discussed the White House initiatives on HBCUs.
We’ve also interviewed federal and state legislators. I also interviewed Congresswoman Alma Adams [North Carolina], who is a friend of the show, she has appeared on the show numerous times. We interviewed professional athletes and celebrities including Kenya Barris, the creator of “black-ish”; and Ninth Wonder, music producer of hip-hop culture and distinguished alumni. We interviewed Jedidah Isler, the first African-American to earn a degree in physics from Yale and an alumna of Norfolk State University.
During the school term, the podcast is distributed weekly, and in the summer the schedule is sporadic and based on breaking news. For example, we interviewed Morehouse President David Thomas and Spellman President Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell about the $120 million gift of which both schools received $40 million each from Netflix CEO [Reed Hastings, and his wife, philanthropist Patty Quillin]; and $40 million was presented to the United Negro College Fund to split among all its member schools.
GQ: What capacity do you work with HBCUs, and what are some of the challenges?
JC: One of the challenges about working with this sector [HBCUs] is that there’s a lot of turnovers, so I don’t have many public relations directors or communications vice presidents that I’ve known for ten years. It’s not a stable ecosystem at every school where you always have the same relationship for a long period and you can depend on them to get you information and give you things on the background. The biggest work that I do isn’t the reporting, it’s building the rapport with the communications professionals, the presidents, and chancellors so that they know that I’m trying to tell a fair and balanced story. But at the core of this is what’s going to be good for HBCUs because the one thing that plagues Black colleges is the fact that we don’t have a lot of contexts when something bad happens.
People often think, “That’s Black folks stealing,” or “That’s Black folks’ incompetence,” or “We just can’t get it right.” What people don’t realize is, how did this governor [of that state] impact that move? How did different conditions in the environment impact the situation? And that’s the context we’ve tried to provide, and I think that’s why a lot of the presidents trust what I’m trying to do. I think that’s why you see so many presidents buying in and getting interviewed and working with me to tell their story because they know that I’m a genuine and balanced voice on Black colleges, which is often difficult to find elsewhere.
GQ: What are some of the other initiatives that you’re working on with the HBCU brand?
JC: I want to incorporate a video broadcast component. When you look at content, or even if you look at the algorithms on Facebook and Instagram, you are punished if you’re putting up text links. Facebook frowns upon that content, and they won’t rank you high even on the timelines of your followers, so they’re [forcing its social members] to get more interactive and dynamic with their content.
To that point, I want to incorporate more video broadcasts and see what that does in the way of not only broadening the viewership but also [securing a] younger [audience]. The HBCU Digest typical reader is a Black woman who makes $100,000 a year and lives in Atlanta. One of the things I’d like to do is shift that to see, can we get more male attention to our work? I think that video content is going to be a way to [achieve] that.
GQ: What are some of the HBCUs doing about voter registration?
JC: Prairie View A&M University in Texas and North Carolina A&T State University students take voting seriously. They were the leaders of the effort to bring awareness to district gerrymandering in Greensboro, North Carolina, that got to the Supreme Court, which is dividing or redrawing district lines for voting, typically it’s done to box in minority voters. North Carolina A&T, Bennett College [for women], and HBCU students at large were heavily involved in raising attention to that issue, and they have been for years. Because of [those students] raising that as an issue, it became publicly scrutinized, and the Supreme Court said, “That kind of gerrymandering is illegal.” The [HBCU] students had something to do with that.
GQ: You said that Howard University is the flagship HBCU, so what are five things that are special about HBCUs, and what are some things people may not know?
JC: The number one thing I want everybody to know about all HBCUs is that they are major economic drivers in the cities and states where they’re located. If you could imagine any given place on a map and then ask the question, “Who’s the largest employer in that city or in that region?” the HBCU is up there. Then if you ask, “Who is the largest employer of Black folks?” The HBCU is up there.
Let’s ask another question on the subject of diversity, “How many college presidents do we have in this state? How many college presidents are Black? And how many of those Black presidents are at HBCUs?” You could ask the same question for football coaches, athletic directors, and vice presidents. Let’s break it down even further. If you were to compare the University of South Carolina and say, “How many African-American students does the University of South Carolina have out of 30-plus-thousand students?” Now, what does that number look like [compared to] the number of Black students at South Carolina State University? What we realize is that South Carolina State University enrolls more Black students than the University of South Carolina, which would suggest that if South Carolina State University is carrying most of the weight for the state in enrolling black students, what does that say about South Carolina State University?
[Black] people have this bad habit of looking at HBCUs as cultural repositories, “I love the marching band, I love homecoming, and these are places that let us in when we couldn’t go anywhere else.” That’s fine and good, but if we’re talking about what is most relevant today, it’s the fact that these schools are creating economic and professional workforce development opportunities for Black folks at a greater rate than anybody else.
GQ: What are some of the most challenging aspects of your work with HBCUs?
JC: For me, burnout, because I do a majority of the work myself. I’m married, I have four small kids, and I put a lot of stock into my family, so I have taught and forced myself to know you can’t cover everything every moment of the day. That’s a challenge, the commitment that I have to this sector. I have to fight that off to say, “No, I’ve got to be a good husband, I’ve got to be a good father. I can’t be dedicated to these schools 24/7.”
That means on a day when ten and fifteen HBCU presidents are calling me, sometimes I can’t take all the calls, and sometimes I can’t write up everything even when people are emailing me like crazy, so burnout is a big thing.
Another thing is that I wish that the HBCU community would take much more of an active role in the forces that are working against us. It’s one thing for Black folks to say, “Oh, you’re cutting our budget, we don’t like that and we’re going to march on the capital for that.” The same folks that are cutting your budget are also putting people on your board of trustees that are working against your interests, and they’re making you hire presidents that are working against your interests, and they’re changing zoning laws that are working against your interests, and they’re making new rules on reporting and finances that are working against your interests. We’ve got to pay attention to much more than just, “Are we getting money? Are we winning football games? And is homecoming live?”
Part of the reason that HBCUs have so much trouble across the board is that our constituent base doesn’t make a lot of noise about what’s happening to us. Imagine if people all over the country rallied as we did for George Floyd to tell state legislators, “We want more funding for HBCUs.” If they thought that Black folks would go berserk in the streets if we don’t give Black colleges more money that would change things and force a new conversation.
GQ: What are your best accomplishments you feel you have contributed to HBCUs to d ate? What is one of your proudest moments?
JC: The Digest has forced the conversation to be more equitable in mainstream media. Before 2010, there was a [substantial amount of media coverage], “Are HBCUs relevant? HBCU loses accreditation,” and all the negative narratives. What the Digest has been able to do is look at those negative stories with the appropriate context. How many of the mainstream outlets recognize that somebody is willing to call them out on imbalanced coverage and there is a place to get a more balanced context to these stories.
I would have to do is an [official] analysis, but there used to be numerous stories about how often a crime would occur, and the headline would say, “Shooting near Morgan State University.” It could be eight blocks from Morgan, but they would always say, “Shooting near Morgan State University.”
We were able to get attention in big-name mainstream media outlets, it has forced the smaller community or state-based media outlets to be honest with their coverage. Conversely, what is also done is made the presidents in the HBCU community more trusting of media.
Before, we had no problem with reporters or newspapers that we thought were antagonistic saying, “Okay, no comment.” As you know, that’s the worst thing to say, “No comment.” Now I think that because they know that there’s a place that will fairly represent HBCU interests and issues, that they are more willing to go to these reporters and go to the editors and say, “Hey look, if you’re not going to cover me fairly, don’t come over here for any advertising, because I could put my resources somewhere else,” or “You’re covering it this way, but the HBCU Digest is saying it that way. This seems a little more balanced to me, so what’s your problem?”
It has provided a media industry an alternative that presidents are using to leverage with other outlets to say, “You know what? You need to do better if you’re going to cover us as one of these state agencies or as one of the largest employers in this region, or as one of the stakeholders in this area. We don’t deserve to be beaten up like this in the papers all the time,” and I think that it’s worked.
GQ: What areas do you need support for the HBCU Digest and its brands?
JC: I would say even more than the money, I need people to read and to share the information and share the content. I’ve never been worried about going broke or going hungry or the Digest will go out of business; I’ll do it for free. I’ll keep doing it until I can’t anymore. The biggest thing that would help the HBCU community is if more people read and shared the [information].
I’m not just talking about HBCU alumni, students, faculty, and Black people, because I think that the biggest misconception is, even from African-Americans, “I didn’t go to an HBCU, so I’m not a part of the culture.” Yes, you are. Why? Because it’s an institution that is representing your interests. You hear Black folks say, “I didn’t go to an HBCU, but my grandmother did, or my aunt and uncle did, I was the only one, everybody went to A&T and I went to Wake Forest.” Let me put it this way. Of all the high-level professions that you can get in this country, doctor, lawyer, lawmaker, physicist, researcher, and all the high earning [positions] that you can get, there’s a reason why the majority of the Black folks holding those jobs went to HBCUs. This isn’t a question of, “Well, they let us in when nobody else would let us in.” No, they’re still doing that today.
Even though HBCUs enroll about one out of every ten Black students in the United States, they’re still represented in about forty to fifty percent of any given high-level profession that Black people hold. That’s not a coincidence. For everybody who says, “I didn’t go and I don’t know why that’s a big deal to me,” it is a big deal to you for Black institutions, Black businesses, Black people, Black political interests, and Black economic interests to be strong. That’s what HBCUs do, so if you say, “I went to Georgetown [University], so it doesn’t matter to me what happens to the University of the District of Columbia,” you’re wrong.
Gwendolyn Quinn is an award-winning communications strategist and consultant with a career spanning more than 25 years. She is the Chief Content Officer of the Global Communicator. As a contributor, she has penned stories for NBCNews.com, Black Enterprise, Essence.com, Huff Post, and EURWEB.com.
