Newsroom Profile: Indianapolis Recorder
August 19, 2026
This column is part of the Indianapolis Public Editor project, a pilot program designed to test whether the presence of a public editor who analyzes local coverage can elevate audience trust in journalism and promote media literacy.
Indy resident Karis Dix, 18, is more likely to get her news from social media than a newspaper. But every year since she was 16, she has looked to the Indianapolis Recorder for coverage about the Debutante Cotillion and Scholarship Ball.
When she was a child, her mother, an avid Recorder reader, would take her to the cotillion to see the debutantes and experience the ball.
And in her junior year of high school, Ivy Endowment and the Alpha Mu Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. selected her to be one of them.
Now an incoming college freshman, she looks back on the Recorder’s faithful coverage of the Ball and knows what it’s like to be part of a bigger community story, and to see that story on a printed page.
The Ball and Scholarship Program are hallmarks of Black life in Indy that the Indianapolis Recorder has recognized over the years. The newspaper publishes the photos of the young women the sorority selects to participate in the dance rehearsals, workshops, activities, and community service that make up the program.
When Dix read about the event and saw her picture in the Recorder, she felt proud.
“I felt recognized and acknowledged for the hard work that all of the debutantes put into the program,” she told me.
These moments, the family reunions, the church anniversaries, the soirées, and homecomings, are all important events happening in Indy’s Black community that you won’t find captured in local mainstream news.
“By documenting our significant milestones and efforts in the community, the Indianapolis Recorder does more than report the news; it uplifts our mission, inspires future generations, and honors the rich history of Black excellence in Indiana,” said Ilisha Dowell, president of Alpha Mu Omega in Indianapolis. The African American sorority is dedicated to advancing scholarship, service and sisterhood throughout the Midwest.
To Dowell, the Recorder represents connection, legacy, and validation. She calls it an “essential cultural archive for our community.”
For this newsroom profile, I spoke with Recorder Media Group President and CEO Robert Shegog and Editor-in-Chief Camike Jones to understand the Indianapolis Recorder’s unique perspective. I also wanted to know how the news outlet is navigating shifts in the news business, so I asked Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the Black press trade association, to weigh in with a national perspective on Black newspapers.
Black newspapers have thrived for decades, adjusting to shifts in the market
Black newspapers have been a vital source of news to many Black communities across the country, since the publication of Freedom’s Journal, in New York City, in 1827.
“Historically, Black newspapers documented stories that other outlets ignored,” said Shegog. “They covered lynchings, civil rights activism, Black business growth, educational achievement, and community concerns long before those stories received widespread attention.”
Next year will mark the industry’s 200th anniversary. The Indianapolis Recorder is the third oldest Black newspaper in the country.
The Black press has suffered the same blows as mainstream news organizations. More people get their news from Google searches, social media and now, AI, in the digital era. To keep afloat, Black newspapers are trying to invest in social media efforts so they can meet their younger audiences where they get news. They’ve also been impacted by the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion measures, as corporate advertisers and sponsors are less inclined to purchase ads in a Black newspaper or support events in the Black community.
“The Trump administration has had a very negative impact on African American-owned media, particularly African American-owned newspapers, and other publications, with the drawback of Trump’s administration on diversity, equity and inclusion, which then led to corporate America retreating from diversity, equity and inclusion,” Chavis said. In addition to his role leading the Black press association, he’s also a civil rights activist and former NAACP president. “It’s had a devastating, I would say, 50% to 60% reduction in national advertising, because of the Trump administration.”
In its heyday in the mid-1920s, there were as many as 500 Black newspapers in the United States. Today, Chavis counts 253 Black newspapers and media as part of his membership organization, including the Indianapolis Recorder.
To be clear, the Recorder’s challenges go beyond the threats from the Trump administration, Shegog points out. After a wave of public support and commitments from corporations and institutions following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, that support was “reduced, redirected, delayed, or did not materialize the way many organizations expected,” he said.
“What we are experiencing today is, in many ways, a continuation and acceleration of that shift,” Shegog said. “Some companies are changing the language they use, reevaluating programs, and becoming more cautious about investments that were previously associated with diversity and equity. At the same time, economic uncertainty and changes in advertising and philanthropic priorities are affecting the entire media industry.”
Black-owned and local from the start, Indianapolis Recorder remains an asset to the community
The Indianapolis Recorder was founded as a church bulletin by George P. Stewart and William Porter in 1895. It became a weekly newspaper in 1897, which it has remained ever since. Early issues of the paper chronicled visits to Indiana from Black dignitaries like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois.
Today, the paper remains an asset to the community, covering stories ignored by other media. For example, this Central Indiana Housing FAQ, created in partnership with WFYI. Recorder reporters have been recognized for their sports coverage, sweeping the local Society of Professional Journalists 2025 awards for that category.
Today the Recorder has nine staff members, including four reporters. Over the years, the paper has been passed down through family ownership by multiple families and has always been Black-owned.
Stewart remained the publisher and editor until he died in 1924, and the paper stayed in his family until Eunice Trotter purchased the paper in 1988. In 1990, William G. Mays, founder of Mays Chemical Company, acquired the Recorder. In 1998, Mays’ niece Carolene Mays became the publisher and general manager. In 2010, Shannon Williams took over that position. Robert Shegog has been the president and general manager of the Recorder Media Group since 2018.
According to its website, the Recorder has a weekly readership of 128,000, and distributes 11,000 physical copies of the newspaper. It offers online subscriptions and can be found at grocery stores, drug stores and gas stations all over Indy.
Seventy-six percent of their readers pay for subscriptions to the digital and print versions of the news. Their website gets 684,000 page views a month, on average. Thirty-seven percent of their readers are between the ages of 25-44 and 27% are between the ages of 45-54.
The news outlet is funded by those subscriptions as well as print and digital advertising, sponsorships, events, partnerships, grants, community initiatives, and other multimedia opportunities, Shegog told me.
Recorder management is working to adapt the paper’s workflow to that of a multimedia organization, rather than a weekly paper, Shegog said.
“The introduction of social media and news influencers has really changed the landscape of media and changed what people are expecting from news outlets and how they engage with news and media,” Editor-In-Chief Camike Jones said.
Jones said part of her job is maintaining journalistic standards, such as integrity and fact-checking, even as the newspaper finds different ways of delivering stories to compete with social media influencers.
She believes the Recorder will stay relevant to its audience by continuing to cover important events and activities that make up the Black experience in Indianapolis year after year, but making sure people can find the information in their social feeds. “So those ladies’ teas and the church bazaar and some of those sorts of activities — youth programs, the men’s social clubs — I think that is still important to do and we still receive a lot of requests for that,” Jones said.
The Recorder allows the Black community of Indianapolis to tell its own story. If you are looking for stories about the events, places, and traditions the African American community of the city holds dear, you will find those cultural touchstones in the Recorder.
Karis Dix plans to study biochemistry at Florida Atlantic University this fall. Although she will be far from home, she will be checking up on her hometown newspaper to see what her community is up to.
“I think in the future, the Recorder will continue to share great information with the Indianapolis community, like the cotillion, that other news sources don’t,” she said.
With this week’s column, we are launching our database “Indianapolis News Providers: A Snapshot.” You can find basic information about the city’s newsrooms here. We will continue to add to the database as we collect more information.
Tracey Compton
Indianapolis Public Editor
Poynter Institute
I’d love to hear from you. Please send your questions about Indy’s media ecosystem to indypubliceditor@poynter.org, or reach out to let me know if you’d like me to come speak to your community group. Your input helps strengthen Indianapolis’ local journalism.
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The Indy Public Editor is a grant-funded pilot project run by the Poynter Institute. This column is edited by Kelly McBride and copy edited by Lauren Klinger. The project is managed by Nicole Slaughter Graham with support from Amaris Castillo.