Critique: "The Radical Blackness of Ebony Magazine"

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/opinion/ebony-jet-magazine.html

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In this New York Times opinion piece, it talks about Ebony magazine, a magazine created by John H. Johnson exclusively for African Americans. The magazine showcased middle-class black people doing every-day activities that were usually associated with white people. Ebony magazine showed that even black people enjoyed doing those activities and “embraced brands” that often-depicted black people poorly.

The angle of this piece is somewhat clear; they believe that Ebony magazine is a trailblazer for successful, black magazines and is a part of history. You are first aware of the position in the first paragraph. The angle can be identified throughout the piece, but it is kind of hard to fully understand their position. Their position is consistently applied in this piece with the help of research from all kinds of sources.

Throughout the opinion piece, they include many different sources which are identifiable because they’re highlighted links to the sources. I thought the variety of sources was a good touch in this story, since it contained so many different pieces of information. Some of the sources are biographies of the notable people who are named in the piece. One of the sources I clicked on was the Amazon link on where I could buy the magazine issue that was stated (under the link “Are Negro Girls Getting Prettier?”). One of the other links I clicked on was from the city of Chicago website (under the link “Wendell Phillips High School) which provided historical information on the high school that John H. Johnson attended.

The lead starts off with information on the topic of the piece and continues with more information. The lead was not attention-grabbing and didn’t use simple words to draw the reader in. For me, the title is what drew me in and honestly, if I didn’t have to read the whole thing in order to do this critique for class, I would have stopped reading after the first paragraph. The kicker came in and summarized the point of the piece and the writer’ position. Besides the lead being boring, the flow of the story was pretty good. The piece included subheadings to inform the reader what that section was going to be about. Although, there was one part of the piece that lost me and made me want to quit reading. It was the first paragraph under the heading “Abe Lincoln, White Supremacist.” I just thought this had nothing to do with the piece and, used a bunch of big words and a lot of information.

As I mentioned before, the argument wasn’t all that clear, but can still be understood after reading the entire piece. I didn’t see any fallacies used in this piece either. I just think the piece needed an engaging lead/kicker, a clearer way for the reader to understand their position and even more elements of audience interest to keep the reader wanting to read.