Karl B. Rodney, Publisher/CEO, New York Carib News and his wife Faye A. Rodney founded the newspaper thirty years ago to serve the growing Caribbean American community in the nation’s largest market. It has grown into the largest circulated publication serving the Caribbean American community.
In New York City Carib News has become the publication for record for the Caribbean-American Community. As Founder and Sponsor of the Annual Multi-National Business Conference in the Caribbean, Carib News for nearly two decades has hosted a successful business conference bringing together African-American Entrepreneurs, elected officials and Civic Leaders to explore opportunities of business, health, education, and information in the Caribbean and between our American Friends.
Rodney is currently the chairman of the National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA) Foundation. In his position Rodney leads the organization’s efforts to increase African-American participation in journalism and work with community-based organizations and corporations to further the Foundation’s goals.
“We have a new initiative which began in March, 2013,” Rodney told the Tribune in a telephone interview from his busy New York office. “We have established a small task force of black clergy from the east coast to develop collaboration to support each other’s programs and to deal with issues affecting black people particularly HIV/AIDS. The effort is being led by Dr. Walter Thompson, Senior Pastor at Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in New York.”
Rodney envisions regional task forces across the country made up of black clergy and NNPA members who can work together on a far-ranging number of issues.
Additionally Rodney envisions increasing the participation of black students in journalism programs especially at the nation’s historically black colleges and universities.
“Currently we offer 40 scholarships to black colleges. We want that number to increase to 60 this year in communications and journalism. Eventually we want to have a NNPA Foundation scholarship recipient on every HBCU campus.”
At this time the NNPA Foundation has established a digital lab on the campus at Howard University in Washington, DC. Additionally NNPA archives are housed at the school’s prestigious Moorland-Spingarn Research Center which is recognized as one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive repositories for the documentation of the history and culture of people of African descent.
The program also offers fellowships and stipends to graduate students in the School of Journalism and Rodney hopes to expand the foundation’s presence on campus.
“The foundation is looking to renew our Memorandum of Understanding with Howard to include not only print journalism but digital and broadcast journalism students in the future,” Rodney explained. “Our Scholarship program in collaboration with our corporate partners continues to strengthen and grow as we target the youth and future leaders from HBCU institutions. We are investing in the future through our scholarships.”
The bulk of the foundation’s work is funded by corporations, private donors and in certain cases government agencies.
“Our leading private corporate sponsors include General Motors, Toyota, Nissan, Ford and AT&T,” Rodney said. “We also have grants from the Centers for Disease Control for AIDS Awareness outreach and other events. We are committed to continuing the vital partnership with CDC to address the scourge of AIDS in our communities.”
Rodney’s other initiative as chairman is to build a new NNPA headquarters building at the existing site in Washington, DC.
“We have a building in DC and are planning to redevelop the land and build the Center for Black Media and Communications and the Center of Excellence and Advance Technology. It will not only be our State of the Art headquarters, but will be a symbol of our Presence and Power, and an epic center for media, that we can advance to the future.”
The estimated cost of the centers is approximately $8 million.
Rodney is proud of what the foundation has accomplished under his leadership but says there is so much more to do.
“We have a number of initiatives but there is so much to be done. I am currently investigating a project that will shine the light on the people who are wrongly incarcerated in our country and help them to seek justice