Subscribing to a Belief in Their Community : Publishing: Founders of the Black Orange press on despite financial problems. Some say their intended readers must also bear a share of the responsibility for the magazine’s troubles.

Joyce Jordan’s end of a telephone conversation speaks volumes about the state of the Black Orange, the only Orange County-based magazine for the area’s small African American community.

“I know we owe you money,” the magazine’s publisher told a creditor evenly last week. “But right now, we have a magazine we have to continue to publish and other bills that come before yours. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to stand in line behind the other creditors.”

Jordan hangs up, closes her eyes, tilts her head toward heaven and takes a deep, ragged breath. “As you can see,” she said quietly to a visitor, “it has come to this.”

The 3-year-old Black Orange is at a crossroads. Its publishers and owners, Randy and Joyce Jordan, face the possibility of closing the magazine they produce in their garage- turned- printing room. Or they must find a way to stave off a throng of creditors and pay a mountain of debt they have incurred trying to keep afloat a publication that has been the county’s only voice on black issues.

Theirs is a daunting task. The Jordans have no money beyond the few checks that trickle in from advertisers and subscribers. But whether through obstinacy or foolhardiness, Randy Jordan said, the couple will not give up without a fight for the publication that serves their community.

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“It is the only thing we have that offers different perspectives on the black community beyond the gang and poverty problems that the mainstream press mostly focuses on,” said Randy Jordan, 44, who is exploring the possibility of converting the magazine into a nonprofit entity to make it more inviting to corporate sponsors.

The Black Orange lists a range of events, from NAACP meetings and business conferences to social mixers and art and music festivals. It also features political commentary and cultural essays.

The Jordans have been doing a lot of soul-searching of late, trying to figure out how they came so far and fell so hard from the heyday of February, 1992, when they launched the first issue to celebrate Black History Month.

At the time, the Jordans were working full time and were able to underwrite the Black Orange’s operating costs with a good chunk of their salaries.

But last year, Randy Jordan was laid off from his job as a networking specialist for a computer company. And several months ago, Joyce Jordan, 43, was let go by her consumer health care firm.

The couple said they were forced to borrow against their home and ran their credit cards to the limit to raise the $3,500 per month needed to put out the magazine.

The Jordans primarily blame themselves for the predicament. They were inexperienced in the publishing business and unprepared to run the magazine, they said. They didn’t market the magazine well, so few people are aware of it, they conceded. Perhaps their bookkeeping and accounting had been shoddy, they ventured.

What other reasons could there be for the magazine having 500 subscribers in a black community of 42,000, the Jordans asked themselves, when all the Black Orange needs is 2,000 subscribers to break even?

But some local black leaders say the community must also bear some of the responsibility for the publication’s troubles.

“I want to resist the temptation to identify a single factor that will explain why the publication has not been doing well, but I think the factor has less to do with the Jordans themselves and more to do with the inability of the community to support it,” said Thomas Parham, a subscriber since 1992 who directs the Counseling Center and Career and Life Planning Center at UC Irvine.

In Orange County, “the [African American] community is so dispersed that there is really no central place, no defined sense of community,” he said.

The county’s African Americans have often grappled with the issue of whether there is a community in the most basic sense here. According to the 1990 census, blacks make up less than 2% of the county population, or 42,000 people. But unlike Vietnamese in Little Saigon or Latinos in Santa Ana, there is no major concentration of blacks geographically.

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Some believe that because there is no well-defined black community in Orange County, blacks lack common bonds or shared interests.

“There’s a lack of unity, a lack of networking,” said James Ramsey, president of the Black Chamber of Commerce in Orange County, who has just joined the Black Orange’s board of advisers to study the feasibility of restructuring the magazine.

“Because we are so far apart, in space as well as in interests, we have nothing to hold us together,” he added. “The Black Orange, which has valuable information in each issue, would have done that. But the community hasn’t given it a chance.”

If there is no common bond, said Lawrence de Graaf, a professor of history at Cal State Fullerton, “it would be difficult for a magazine to sell itself as a . . . community newspaper to a community that isn’t a community.”

But the flip side of that argument, de Graaf argued, is that a publication such as the Black Orange could serve as a link between the diverse interests and concerns of the county’s African Americans.

The Jordans are banking everything they have on that belief.

Despite the obstacles, the couple have been determined not to cut corners in the magazine’s production. In fact, in March, the couple abandoned the orange construction paper used for previous covers in favor of a more expensive glossy cover that carries an artistic design.

Joyce Jordan works the telephones endlessly, staying in touch with businesses and organizations in Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties so the magazine can publish information on events throughout Southern California geared toward African Americans.

Randy Jordan continues to attend school and community meetings, participating in debates that become grist for commentary and essays in the Black Orange. His topics have included criticizing the investigation into the Christmas, 1993, shooting death of a black Orange County sheriff’s deputy by a white fellow officer.

Last month’s issue lamented the recent closing of Image’s, a Santa Ana boutique that sold African-themed products.

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“Why must a business close in order for our people to understand the value of that business,” Randy Jordan asked in a commentary. “There are those who judge but don’t support . . . who criticize but don’t provide customer feedback, and those who expect much more because you’re black but give so little of themselves.”

In the June issue, Jordan weighed in on a May 17 fight that broke out between black and white students at Aliso Niguel High School.

“We must recognize that this problem will continue to grow until the seriousness of it is recognized,” Jordan wrote. “The districts will have to come together and compare notes. The parents have got to come together and compare notes. . . . One thing that must not be taught under all circumstances is hate.”

Given the publication’s voice and the services it provides readers, black leaders here said, the demise of the magazine would be a major blow to the county’s African American community.

“Right now, it is the only periodical that even gives a damn about life in the African American community,” Parham said. “It is also trying to make sure that people in the community understand what’s going on. . . . This is one of the very few platforms we have to bring us closer together.”