Panelists, recruiters and attendees, network and discuss changes in the industry among other media professionals at the Hilton Chicago, Thursday, August 1, 2024, at the 2024 National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago. Thousands of journalists spoke with recruiters or networked at the career fair.
Christian De’Vine, a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia and first-time NABJ attendee, said he felt as though Trump wasn’t at the convention for the Black media representatives in the room but for his own public relations. “I think Donald Trump came here with no intention to speak to Black America. I think he saw this as an opportunity to gin up his base,” said Wickham, 78, who is a founder of the organization as well as the former founding dean of the School of Global Journalism & Communication at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Marcus Craig, a 16-year-old high school journalist from Washington, D.C., said he was attending his first convention to network. Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan made more pointed remarks on the subject at the NABJ convention in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1996, when he said journalists did not control the stories at the white-owned media where many of them worked. Farrakhan has been accused by critics of promoting antisemitic tropes, a criticism he has disputed.