Haitian-American publisher stands in the gap of Springfield, Ohio, debacle fueled by Trump comments

BALTIMORE — Garry Pierre-Pierre had been a reporter at The New York Times about seven years when it dawned on him that Haitians in the United States were evolving from exiles to immigrants.& “When my parents came in the 1960s, the plan was to lay low, wait out the dictator, then go back home. Thirty years later, everybody was still here. No one had been back. The situation hadn’t got that much better,” he recalled in a recent talk with journalism students at Morgan State University, an HBCU in Baltimore. They needed a means of communication that reflected their emerging status, he said.& “I thought, ‘Hey, you know. This might be a moment. Why don’t I bet on myself and do something crazy: leave The New York Times and start my own publication?” Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder, The Haitian Times. Photo courtesy Garry Pierre-Pierre He did and the paper thrived as a leading voice of the Haitian diaspora until, like thousands of newspapers, it fell victim to the shift of advertisers from print to digital media. Bowing to the new reality, The Haitian Times distributed its last print issue in 2012 and became an online publication with a growing presence on...