Cooper, Barry 1956–

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Barry Cooper 1956–

Journalist, CEO

Creating communities, presenting job opportunities, providing a wide variety of retail options and keeping in touch are just some of the things that Barry Cooper has worked toward in the African-American cyber community. Cooper has provided a venue for these services through Blackvoices.com, a website that African-American web surfers can “call home,” according to Cooper in a conversation with Cara Beardi for Advertising Age. “They go online to look for and hook up with friends,” he explained. “And to find our what’s the buzz around Black America. And while they’re there, they hear or see about employment opportunities.” With Blackvoices.com, Cooper has basically created the leading recruitment site/virtual community for African Americans.

As a young man, Cooper dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. Although he drifted away from the idea as he got older, Cooper remained connected to the sports realm by becoming a sports writer and eventually producing a syndicated sports column. Even as a sports writer, Cooper proved to be a “chronicler of African American affairs,” according to a write-up on him at Blackvoices.com. He has more than twenty years of experience as a writer and columnist, and earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1983 for a series he composed on disadvantaged athletes. That writing experience propelled Cooper into the position of becoming the first editor of the Orlando Sentinel online, the paper’s first attempt at web publishing.

While he was editing the Sentinel online, the blueprint for Cooper’s virtual city came into being. Cooper had noticed a lack of content of specific interest for African Americans and felt that a destination where ideas and information could be exchanged was what African Americans that were online were looking for. During the mid-1990s, the field was wide open for sites out to serve a community of minorities largely unrecognized by the World Wide Web.

Cooper’s vision was born in the form of a simple click at the Sentinel’s site. “The focus was entirely on creating audience and eyeballs,” Cooper said to Advertising Age, and in December of 1995, Blackvoices.com was launched as part of the Orlando Sentinel’s site on America Online (AOL). Under Cooper’s direction, his website was able to create an interest and, seemingly, a need among African Americans for news on the web while also providing other features, including chat rooms.

The site quickly caught the attention of African Americans in the Orlando, Florida region and eventually acquired a national following. According to the Black-voices, com site, their users quickly came to represent close to one-third of all usage at the Tribune’s Digital City sites on AOL. Due to this popularity and demand, Cooper was able to move into his own domain by April of 1997. Within the first three days of launch, nearly 15,000 users signed up for the ride. Content featured on the site includes news and entertainment, sports features, career advice and job opportunities, clubs, contests, chat rooms and member photos.

“It is absolutely essential that we have full participation on the Internet, that we have all ethnic groups represented,”

At a Glance …

Born Barry Cooper, 1956.

Career: Journalist, entrepreneur. Orlando Sentinel Online, editor; BiackVoicesxom, CEO, currently.

Memberships: National Association of Black Journalists; YMCA Black Achievers; The Boy Scouts of America; NAACP.

Awards: Pulitzer Prize Nomination, 1963; MOBE IT Award, 1999, MOBE IT Award, 2000.

Addresses: Office —BiackVoices.com. Tribune Tower, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 2201, Chicago, IL 60611 Phone (312) 222-5734; Fax (312) 222- 4502.

Cooper explained in a conversation with Soo Hi Ji for Crain’s Chicago Business. Creating the destinations and content of interest is one half of the puzzle in initiating full participation by ethnic groups previously ignored in cyber space. “In the minority communities,” he continued, “we have a great opportunity … to harness the great power of the Net. I think that the Internet really makes our world smaller.”

By 1999 the Tribune committed to expanding Blackvoices, com. By this time, the site had become the nation’s number one online community and job- recruitment service for African Americans. PR Newswire reported that the Tribune invested $5 million to expand the recruitment service of the site. Cooper, along with Blackvoices.com’s headquarters, also relocated to Chicago and became a division of Tribune Interactive Inc. President of Tribune Interactive, Jack W. Davis described Blackvoices.com as one of their trend-setting sites. “Black Voices is an innovative site that continues to break new ground in the highly competitive Internet market,” Davis told PR Newswire. “It’s exciting to develop a successful business, but it’s even more exciting and rewarding when it’s a business that was the brainchild of an employee,” he continued.

The end of the twentieth century proved very positive for Cooper and Blackvoices.com. They partnered with the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund and the Tom Joyner Foundation to host the first Black College Virtual Job Fair, as well as with Cars.com to provide exclusive automotive content to the website. Cooper expressed to PR Newswire that African-American consumers would have “the most complete information and resources needed to make knowledgeable choices in the automotive market place,” with the addition of Cars.com to the website.

In July of 1999 the website had upwards of 400,000 registered members and according to PR Newswire, more than 14 million page views. In November of 1999, Cooper’s website launched Soko.com, an online retail store that featured African-inspired merchandise. Black Enterprise magazine had already crowned Cooper a leader of the “Black Digerati,” the group of African Americans setting trends in cyber space. And as the new millennium rushed in, he was presented with MOBE awards at the MOBE-IT Conferences held in 1999 and 2000. The symposiums were organized by Yvette Moyo and her husband Kofi to recognize African Americans making strides in cyberspace.

Cooper also set his sights on new partnerships in the new millennium. By October of 2000, he announced a three-year marketing partnership with the General Motors Corporation (GM). PR Newswire reported that GM was seeking online relationships with African Americans. They would sponsor features on the website that included Automotive information, including “GM Spotlight on Excellence” that would showcase African Americans leading the way in their professions and the community, and a sports channel that paid special attention to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

According to Cooper, Blackvoices.com was excited with the partnership, “We’re thrilled about the many opportunities that we can leverage in alliance with GM, including delivering great content to the African American Community,” he explained to PR Newswire. “GM is the leader in the automotive industry. The company’s commitment to Blackvoices.com underscores the strength of our business and effectiveness in reaching consumers nationwide.”

Partnerships such as the one that Cooper formed with GM proved very effective towards the end of 2000 when many internet start&hyphen;up companies targeting the general population plummeted in stock value and folded, and several highly regarded websites focusing on the African-American community either folded or put expansion plans on hold. Black Enterprise reported the demise of BlackFamilies.com and Onelevel.com, while HBO delayed the launch of Volume.com and Russell Simmons formed a partnership with BET.com to keep 360hiphop.com afloat. The GM deal also made the continuation of Cooper’s vision to go beyond the web possible because it included sponsorship of the off-line publication, BVQ, and scholarships.

In spite of the digital shakeups, Cooper still felt a strong future was ahead for Blackvoices.com and for cyber cities and commerce in general. “About 40% of all African Americans have some access to the Internet, be it at home or work,” Cooper told Advertising Age. “That number is going to grow, we think, over time.” With Black Enterprise reporting more that 500,000 registered users for Blackvoices.com, the growth Cooper predicts has become evident over the years.

Ultimately, Cooper has a grand vision for Black-voices, com. He laid out plans to seek approximately $25 million from private investors in the site. “We want Blackvoices to spin off and ready itself for an IPO 18 to 24 months down the road,” he said to Advertising Age. “We have a chance to create a large, multi-media company. We see a day when the Blackvoices brand will extend beyond the Internet into broadcast and print.”