Is 'The Voice' in the wilderness?

After its stop-and-search plea, is the paper still in tune with the black community?

The black British newspaper The Voice won a rare chorus of approval from some of its most vicious former critics last week.

From The Sun to The Daily Telegraph, the conservative commentators of the mainstream (white) press were unanimous in their praise for Mike Best, The Voice's editor-in-chief, and his "brave stance" in calling for the police to stop and search more suspects to halt the rising tide of gun crime.

Yet in some parts of the black community, where the paper had been renowned for fierce opposition to stop-and-search powers, there was unease at The Voice's volte-face. Instead of seeing the praise as a welcome sign that the paper founded 20 years ago in the wake of the Brixton riots had finally come of age, some rivals suggested it had made a naïve blunder. Many were certainly exasperated that Mr Best was being seen as the mouthpiece for a community they believed he did not represent.

"Mike did a very dangerous thing there," said Michael Eboda, editor of New Nation, which regards itself as a more thoughtful tabloid than its rival. "I've been rung up by newspapers who have come to the conclusion that there has been a change of mood in the black community. There's almost a patronising sense of, 'They've come round to our way of thinking'. This is what lots of them have been wanting to say for a long time and Mike has given them the opportunity."

Given the way the story continued to echo round newsrooms last week, Mr Eboda could be right. Repeated calls by The Independent on Sunday to The Voice's offices elicited no response, prompting speculation Mr Best may have had second thoughts about his comments.

But why should anyone have paid attention to The Voice in the first place?

The title was founded in 1982 by Val McCalla, an entrepreneur who was born in a poor part of Jamaica, trained as an accountant, emigrated to Britain and became one of this country's wealthiest black publishers.

By the early Nineties, audited figures showed the paper had a circulation of 55,000, selling to one in 10 of London's black population. It was (and still is) buoyed by recruitment advertising from the equal-opportunities-conscious London boroughs and the BBC, to the extent that when one editor took a homophobic line which upset the local authorities, he was fired.

It has always attracted controversy. When rioting broke out the day after it highlighted the death in custody of a black man called Wayne Douglas, the paper got the blame. Critics point to a tendency towards sensationalism that has won it the tag, "the black Sun". Internally, things have been tempestuous, too, with a sometimes turbulent turnover of staff. Two years ago, Mr McCalla called in auditors after discovering a £400,000 shortfall in the accounts.

When a former assistant editor at The Voice, Joseph Harker, launched an upmarket rival, Black Briton, Mr McCalla went for a classic spoiler. He founded his own upmarket title, the broadsheet Weekly Journal, which closed once he had killed off the upstart new arrival by starving it of revenue.

Today, The Voice no longer pub- lishes an audited circulation fig- ure and it is whispered that circulation has slumped. It may be no more than that of New Nation, which claims a readership of 32,000, and some say the figure is in the 20,000 to 25,000 range.

A survey of its rivals would suggest its moment may have passed. New Nation, for example, is more concerned with providing an entertaining read than manning the race barricades.

Mr Eboda said: "The Voice is our biggest problem because it's the template for a black newspaper, yet we're nothing like them. We have very good writers, we're a proper newspaper staffed by people who have had years of experience in national newspapers. Our readers are a very non-victimised readership. We don't moan and complain about racism every two seconds. Most of the people who read us are aspirational."

Much of the black media, might make similar claims. Online sites such as chronicleworld.org, which offers a black intellectual perspective, or Black Britain, which says its readers are mainly ABC1 and 2s, arguably offer a more sophisticated, forward-looking black experience than The Voice.

Elaine Sihera, who edits The New Impact Journal, aimed at professionals interested in diversity, said she did not believe The Voice had as much of a say in the community as it would like people to believe. "It has one good thing: it reflects the Afro-Caribbean community. People do buy it because it's better than not seeing yourself at all. But it caters mainly for CDEs and it's certainly not representative.

"The fact is", she added, "the black press is like the white press, with different newspapers serving different sections of the community, serving different values and different expectations. The trouble with The Voice is it was first. It's been around a long time and hasn't moved with the times. It's a very backward paper."

Others in the black community are more cautious in their criticisms. CJ Kool, editor of the Black Britain website which was launched four years ago and regularly wins quality advertising from big business, said he had a great deal of respect for the paper.

But he added: "The Voice isn't the only black publication out there. There are others, New Nation and The Caribbean Times, that are doing good work, and of course Pride magazine and New Impact. For advertisers who think The Voice is the only publication, there are others they should be looking at."

Trevor Phillips, the broadcaster who worked on The Voice in the Eighties, said that, ironically, it was more influential for the way the mainstream white media used it to understand the black community.

But it was important to consider The Voice as an institution (and not a hugely relevant one), not a newspaper, Mr Phillips added. "It's like a church. Nobody would ever go to it because it's too dull and boring and doesn't have anything very much to do with what they're up to. But they would never allow it to be desecrated."