Ailing Black Orange Makes Plea for Help : Media: Publishers say they need a turnaround in the next few weeks. Fewer than two dozen attend the meeting.

The publishers of the financially ailing Black Orange had mailed more than 500 postcards to subscribers and advertisers, inviting them to a meeting Saturday to discuss the status of the county’s only magazine focusing on local African Americans.

About 75 people called to say they would come.

Fewer than two dozen showed up.

That sums up the uphill struggle this magazine and its publishers, Randall and Joyce Jordan, have faced since the publication premiered in 1992.

“What does that say about the community’s interest?” Joyce Jordan asked sadly at the start of the meeting.

At its end, her husband added: “I have to admit that I’m disappointed. But I don’t have time to be disappointed. I have to look for the last straw to save this magazine.”

The Mission Viejo couple have been groping for that straw for a while, and during the two-hour meeting in which they appealed to the small crowd for help, they pulled no punches.

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They have done all they could to keep the Black Orange going--mortgaging their house, running up their credit and depleting their savings--and now have no more money. They need investors to keep the $70,000-per-year publication solvent. Or buyers to take over. They need more advertisers--and subscribers, more than double the scant 500 they now have.

And if they don’t see a commitment in three weeks, said Randall Jordan, the Black Orange is “going to close the door and shut down. We’re going to lick our wounds and recoup.”

The Jordans published the magazine’s first issue in February, 1992, to celebrate Black History Month. The publication lists cultural events and celebrations and includes commentary about African American issues. Because of the Jordans’ financial straits, they have not printed an issue since July. Randall Jordan is an unemployed computer networks specialist and Joyce Jordan is an office administrator.

Whether the publication continues or ends, its publishers promised a February issue. “We started in February and if we have to, we’ll end it in February,” Randall Jordan said.

During the meeting, the crowd--a mix of subscribers, community activists and those who only recently became aware of the magazine’s possible demise--was alternately optimistic that the publication could be saved and indignant that a community of 42,000 African Americans--2% of the county’s 2.5 million people--could not sustain the county’s only communication channel targeting the black community.

“It’s a damn shame,” said Shelton Love, 33, of Tustin. “We all have something to give and we cannot walk away from a responsibility to continue to make the Black Orange succeed.”

Willia Edmonds, of the African Cultural Arts Council and an advisor to the Black Orange’s board of directors, said she was “dismayed, disappointed and saddened” that the magazine has to be on the verge of “going out of business before we recognize the need to support it.”

But Love, Edmonds and others in the crowd were adamant in saying they would join the Jordans in the struggle to continue the Black Orange.

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“We can’t permit it to close,” said Leon Love, president of the Watts Willowbrook Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles. “That’s not an option.”

They pledged to appeal to friends and acquaintances in African American communities in Orange and Los Angeles counties to financially support the Black Orange.

John Steward committed himself to buying subscriptions as gifts for 10 friends and relatives. “The Black Orange has emerged as the voice, the communication for blacks in Orange County,” he said. “It is important for the Black Orange to exist. . . . There is no cohesiveness and this publication brings the cohesiveness to the community.”