Elinor Tatum

Overview

Elinor Ruth Tatum is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the New York Amsterdam News, one of America’s oldest and most influential Black newspapers, a position she has held since 1997 (The HistoryMakers). But her influence runs well beyond her own newsroom: on a weekend in 2020, days after the murder of George Floyd, she picked up the phone and called the chief executive of the Local Media Association. That call set in motion the Fund for Black Journalism and, eventually, Word In Black — a first-of-its-kind coalition of ten legacy Black publishers collaborating on a national website and newsletter (GXpress; Editor & Publisher). In October 2024, Editor & Publisher magazine named her its Publisher of the Year — the first Black woman to receive the honor in the magazine’s 140-year history (Editor & Publisher; journal-isms).

The call that built Word In Black

Nancy Lane, chief executive of the Local Media Association, still remembers exactly where she was sitting when the call came. “Always a visionary, Tatum quickly communicated that efforts were underway to support racial equity efforts in our country philanthropically, and she did not want journalism to be left out,” Lane recalled (GXpress). Tatum’s argument was that local Black news publishers needed to act together, in that moment, to supply the voice and perspective of the Black community — while COVID-19 lockdowns were emptying local media’s coffers (GXpress).

Over the next twelve hours, Tatum, Lane, and the LMA’s chief operating officer wrote the marketing copy, set up a Givebutter fundraising page, and designed a logo. The LMA and the Local Media Consortium each pledged $50,000, and within days more than $150,000 had come in — seed money that became the Fund for Black Journalism (GXpress). Tatum was already part of a digital-transformation lab for Black publishers; the group invited five more publishers in, and “that’s when Word In Black was born,” Lane said (GXpress).

The coalition — the Amsterdam News plus AFRO News, The Atlanta Voice, Dallas Weekly, The Houston Defender, Michigan Chronicle, Sacramento Observer, The Seattle Medium, The St. Louis American, and the Washington Informer — then won the full $300,000 in a Google News Innovation Challenge, one of only a handful of applicants to receive the maximum grant (GXpress). “Word In Black would not exist if it weren’t for Elinor Tatum,” Lane told Editor & Publisher. “Nobody thought to do it. The vision wasn’t there. That phone call changed everything.” (Editor & Publisher) In January 2024 the venture incorporated as a public benefit company, with a collective audience of more than a million (GXpress).

Three decades at a 1909 newspaper

Tatum was born Elinor Ruth Tatum on January 29, 1971, in New York City, to Wilbert and Susan Tatum (The HistoryMakers). Her father had served in the U.S. Marine Corps and worked as an activist before acquiring the New York Amsterdam News in 1971 — the very year Elinor was born — with seven other investors, whose shares he bought out over time to become sole owner (Editor & Publisher). Her mother, Susan Kohn Tatum, came from a family that fled the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia, first settling in Ecuador before immigrating to the United States; Wilbert and Susan met in New York City in the 1960s while working for local politician Edward Koch, who would later become mayor (Editor & Publisher). Elinor grew up in the family’s East Village brownstone — the same brownstone she still lives in, with her mother and her 14-year-old daughter, Willa (Editor & Publisher).

Though she grew up by her father’s side at the paper, nothing was predetermined: her father encouraged her to explore her own path first (Editor & Publisher). She studied government at St. Lawrence University and then international relations at Stockholm University in Sweden, and while riding a bus abroad she took the call that changed her plans — her father declaring it was “now or never” if she wanted to return to New York and help decide whether to sell or keep the paper. She chose the paper (Editor & Publisher). She started as an intern making coffee, copies, and faxes and doing classified layouts and paste-ups (“I was a whiz with an Exacto knife,” she recalled), became assistant to the publisher by 1994, was promoted to chief operating officer and associate publisher in 1996, and in 1997 was named publisher and editor-in-chief — one of the youngest publishers in the history of the African American press — while earning a master’s degree in journalism and mass communications from NYU the same year (Editor & Publisher; The HistoryMakers). After her father’s death in 2009, she assumed full control of the newspaper (The HistoryMakers).

Over three decades at the helm she steered the paper through the Million Man March, the deaths of Nelson Mandela and Michael Jackson, 9/11 — for Barack Obama’s inauguration the paper produced a special edition pairing the text of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” with Obama’s inaugural address — and the pandemic, pivoting the staff to remote work “without missing a single issue” (Editor & Publisher). As early as 2005, NPR identified her as the paper’s editor-in-chief and interviewed her as an expert commentator on how Black Americans get their news (NPR). Since 2006 she has produced and co-hosted a weekly segment of Al Sharpton’s nationally syndicated radio show “Keep’in It Real,” and her broadcast appearances include Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor, ABC’s 20/20, NBC’s Today and Nightly News, WNBC, NY1, and CUNY TV; she has also guest-hosted drive-time programs on WWRL Radio (The HistoryMakers; Berkeley College).

Blacklight, the newsroom, and the Harlem headquarters

In July 2021 Tatum appointed Siobhan “Sam” Bennett as the paper’s president and chief revenue officer, and together they built a five-year strategic plan to transform operations, expand the digital footprint, and grow readership (Editor & Publisher). Starting from an email list of 900, the newsletters — the daily Editorially Black and the weekly Art + Soul — grew to 27,000 subscribers; print subscriptions tripled; and, using grants and partnerships including Report for America, Tatum more than doubled the newsroom (Editor & Publisher).

Tatum and executive editor Damaso Reyes also launched Blacklight, the first-ever investigative unit in a legacy Black newspaper — a long-held mutual dream (journal-isms). Reyes had begun at the paper at sixteen as a freelance photographer; “Elinor gave me my first paid opportunity in journalism at 16 years old,” he said, crediting her entirely for his career (Editor & Publisher). Blacklight’s reporting has focused on gun violence, COVID, and climate change as they affect communities of color, and has drawn a stream of industry awards (Editor & Publisher; journal-isms).

Meanwhile the paper’s landmark Harlem headquarters on Frederick Douglass Boulevard — its home for nearly a century — is being renovated, with months of work going into selecting artifacts for preservation and archival at Cornell University (Editor & Publisher). Tatum envisions the renewed building as a museum honoring the Black press and a communal space “where plans are made, or plots are hatched to make change” (Editor & Publisher; Editor & Publisher).

2024 Publisher of the Year and civic honors

On October 7, 2024, E&P’s editor-in-chief and publisher surprised Tatum with the Publisher of the Year award during a Zoom call joined by more than thirty current and former staff members, contributors, community leaders, and industry peers; the formal announcement came from Nashville the next day (journal-isms; Editor & Publisher). The day after being named, she was also among the “35 Women News Leaders” honored by the International Women’s Media Foundation (Editor & Publisher).

Her earlier honors include a Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from Metropolitan College, the Manhattan Borough President’s Women’s History Month Award, the Public Advocate of New York City Award of Distinction, the Standing on Their Shoulders Award from the National Action Network, the Good Scout Award, the Outstanding Business Empowerment Award from the New York chapter of Black Business and Professional Women, and Pi Beta Phi’s Members of Distinction Award (The HistoryMakers). She has served on the boards of St. Lawrence University, the New York Urban League, the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, the Chinatown YMCA, Manhattan Community Board 3, and the Creative Visions Foundation, and was formerly secretary of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (The HistoryMakers).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not resolve the degree-title split between sources on her St. Lawrence undergraduate degree (B.S. per Editor & Publisher and Berkeley College; B.A. per The HistoryMakers) — it follows the majority and flags the disagreement rather than adjudicating it. The subscriber, subscription, newsroom-size, and award-count figures come from Editor & Publisher’s own reporting of what the company and its partners said; they are not independently audited here. The profile makes no claim about her private life beyond what the sources publish, and it does not repeat content-farm biographical detail that no verified source confirms.