A Conversation With New Journal & Guide Publisher

By Glen Mason
Contributing Writer
Special to the New Journal and Guide
Hampton roads

What better story to write for Women’s History Month than a story on New Journal and Guide editor and publisher Brenda H. Andrews.

One would be remiss if one did not give one of journalism’s most intrepid crusaders her due. She is the documentarian of a people and the myriad aspects of their lives that dailies only visit occasionally. Still.

As some would see taking stewardship of the Guide as a business opportunity, Andrews says she saw it as “an assignment.”

It was an assignment that turned into her life’s mission.

“What magnificent valor,” to quote one of Alexander Dumas’s Black Musketeers or mousquetaire noir.

Recently,  Andrews was just getting back from the National Newspapers Publishers Association conference in Fort Lauderdale. After putting the latest issue of the New Journal and Guide to bed, Andrews took time for a lunch interview at the popular Victory Rivers Burger Bistro. There she was asked where she gets her intestinal fortitude.

“I come from a family which believes that we never have to depend on someone else to pay our way,” said Brenda Andrews, editor and publisher of the third oldest African-American newspapers in the United States. “When I hook into something I don’t let it go until I feel it’s time to let it go. I saw obtaining the Guide as a divine assignment.”

The assignment of a lifetime. What a historic journalistic legacy to bear for anyone much less a young Black woman in a male-dominated field during the early eighties.

For lack of a better metaphor, the Journal and Guide is a legacy newspaper that documented and covered the life and plight of the African Diaspora when racism, Jim Crow and institutional journalism did not or would not. It was first published in 1900 as the newsletter of a benevolent society of Black men formed to support newly emancipated Black women and children. It grew into a full-fledged newspaper, covering news, sports, African-American culture, and society from all over the world.

When U.S. dailies sent their male staffers off to World War II, its newsrooms, at least locally, would often “re-write news and photos from the Journal and Guide.” The Guide had its own photographers, writers/soldiers, and correspondents in Europe just like the Associated Press and United Press International. Several studies and published dissertations have documented that the Guide “provides a Southern perspective on moments in African-American and American history.”

Norfolk Journal and Guide originated as The Lodge Journal and Guide. When P.B. Young Sr. purchased it in 1907, it was a four-page weekly with a circulation of 500. By the mid-1940s it had been expanded to 32 pages. The Young family would eventually sell the paper to radio pioneer Bishop Levi Willis in 1972.  In 1974, it was purchased by the Reverend Milton Reid, who became its publisher and religious columnist. Wanting to spend more time with his church and pastoral duties, he sought out  an editor and assistant in 1982 to take over for his daughter Maravia Reid, who had decided to get married. His selection for the job, Brenda Andrews, assumed ownership from Reid 10 years later during a critical time in the paper’s history.

A native of Lynchburg, VA, Brenda Andrews’ aunt who lived in Virginia Beach had told her about writing for the Journal and Guide, a newspaper in Norfolk. Incidentally, the newspaper was published by her aunt’s minister, Rev. Reid. Andrews first arrived in Norfolk to transition from a career in the Army to civilian life. She was recently divorced, with a young son. In 1982 Andrews took the leap of faith that turned into her lifetime assignment.

“I was a single mother who had to raise a young son,” said Andrews.

In the U.S. Army for four years, Andrews was a Public Affairs Specialist, then a Sergeant which is how she received her journalism training and experience. Her college degree from California State University at Sacramento was in English and psychology. She spent two years in Germany and two years at the Pentagon as a featured military journalist.

“Even as a child, I perceived that The Norfolk Journal & Guide brought excitement and pride. I looked forward to it every Thursday evening. I was delighted to see my name in print during my Girl Scout years,” said Paulette Jones-Morant, retired educator, now a Washington D.C.-based artist/photographer who was featured in the Guide last summer.

“Many years later my wedding was included in the Social Whirl. Publisher Brenda Andrews is a phenomenal woman and community servant.”

Leonard Colvin, recently retired as the Guide’s award-winning Chief Reporter. He was asked what he thought drove Andrews as a publisher besides being a mother and single parent. Weren’t the odds against her?

“Well, we all faced pressures and I suspect Ms. Andrews, as leader, wore the brunt of it. Like a lot of single Black women, who are placed in such high-profile positions, she was fortunate to have a very strong family and friend support system,” said Colvin. “So, her son, Oronde benefitted from loving and supportive family members who were there when she was absent from home, etc.

“I think she weathered that challenge very well, for her son has evolved into a very successful man, educated professional, husband, and father. Also, as long as there is a reasonable and manageable income flow, practical ideas to use it, and imaginative and competitive people dedicated to do their assigned tasks, such odds can be overcome. As you see the Guide has done well under her leadership over four decades.”

“She is regarded as a businesswoman, a socially conscious community leader, and a journalist dedicated to the cause of allowing ‘Black people to tell their story’,” Colvin continued during a phone conversation. “To tell that story without fear of White people may deem it unnecessary or wrong.”

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