NATIONALLY SYNDICATED RADIO & TV PERSONALITY TOM JOYNER ISSUES STATEMENT ON ROSA PARKS Dallas, TX (BlackNews.com) - Tom Joyner issued the following statement on the death of Rosa Parks:

One of my proudest moments as a broadcaster is my involvement with Tavis and his campaign to ensure that Rosa Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal.

I'm reminded me of a few things: The power of black radio and how, like back in the day, radio was used to inform our listeners and rally them to a good cause. It proved that we are still willing to take stand about something important.

Rosa Parks' actions the day she refused to give up her seat sparked this boycott and countless other movements large and small that have led to opportunities for millions of people black, white, Hispanic, Asian -- you name it -- in this country.

Doing the right thing isn't always popular or comfortable. It doesn't guarantee that you'll have a place in the history books. It sometimes gets you fired. Rosa Parks had to leave Alabama and go to Detroit because she and her husband couldn't find work in Alabama after what she did. She didn't do what she did for fame and fortune. She did it because it was the right thing to do.

There's a whole generation of adults who were born after the Civil Rights Movement. To them its history. To them Rosa Parks will be like Harriet Tubman or Abraham Lincoln is to many of us. A History lesson. They don't have any personal stories about the movement. They can't talk about integrating a school or a lunch counter or meeting Dr. King. Its up to us who have had these personal experiences to pass them down and to let young people know where they might be if it had not been for people like Rosa Parks.


Reach Media, founded by radio and television personality, philanthropist and entrepreneur Tom Joyner, is a multi-media company formed in January 2003 as the parent company of all of The Tom Joyner Morning Show, the Tom Joyner Show in television syndication and several other businesses that will target African-Americans through radio, television, event production and the internet. The Morning Show is aired in more than 115 markets throughout the United States, reaching more than 8 million listeners every week. Its website, BlackAmericaWeb.com , which has more than 850,000 members, is a virtual town square for visitors to get daily news, play games, search for jobs and listen to the Morning Show online.  ¶ 10/27/2005 02:37:00 PM

  BANKBLACKWELL The Worlds First Black Internet Bank Announces NEWEST Board Nominations -- Former Ambassador, Esteemed Attorney and Prominent CPA Nominated --

Boston, MA (BlackNews.com) - BankBlackwell, the first federally chartered African-American Internet Bank, has announced the nominations of Former Ambassador to Tanzania, The Honorable Charles R. Stith, Attorney Vesper Gibbs Barnes, and CPA, Daniel Dennis to its Board of Directors.

BankBlackwell CEO, James Mundy said, "Vesper Barnes, Dan Dennis and Reverend Charles Stith will bring a wealth of financial, business, and community leadership to BankBlackwell's board of directors. We are honored that they have chosen to serve on BankBlackwell's board."

The Honorable Charles R. Stith is the Director of the African Presidential Archives and Research Center at Boston University. He is a former United States Ambassador to the Republic of Tanzania, and is also the founder and former national president of the Organization for the New Equality (ONE), a nonprofit organization with the goal of generating economic opportunity for women and people of color. In 1994, prior to appointing Rev. Stith Ambassador to Tanzania, President Clinton appointed Reverend Stith to the official delegation to monitor the South African elections. In 2001, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle appointed him to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Attorney Vesper Gibbs Barnes is the Principal of Vesper Gibbs Barnes & Associates, a law firm specializing in the areas of real estate development and acquisition, landlord/tenant issues and probate matters. She is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and a graduate of Howard University School of Business. Attorney Barnes is an active member of the Community and has served as a Director on several Boards, including Dudley Main Street, Roxbury Multi Service Center, and the Brimmer & May School where her son attends. In 1989, she was appointed to the Franklin Park Advisory Board by Governor Michael Dukakis, and served on that Board for several years.

Daniel Dennis is Managing Partner and Founder of Daniel Dennis & Company LLP, Certified Public Accountants. He is highly acclaimed for his involvement in local minority business development. He has served as a member of Senator John Kerry's Advisory Council on Minority Business, has been a Delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business in 1987 and was a Delegate in 1995 to the US Senate Committee on Small Business Advisory Board. In April 2002, Mr. Dennis was appointed to the NSTAR Board of Trustees. Mr. Dennis is a former Director and Chairman of the Audit Committee of OneUnited Bank and a former member of the Finance and Administration Committee for the American Baptist Conference of Massachusetts. Mr. Dennis is a member of both the American Institute and the Massachusetts Society of CPAs.


Upcoming Investor Seminars

On Thursday, October 27, 2005 at 7:00pm, the Bank's board nominees and other BankBlackwell directors will be hosting a BankBlackwell investor seminar at the offices of WilmerHale, LLP, 60 State Street, 26th floor.

Other upcoming BankBlackwell investor seminars and appearances include:

* October 31st, Mildred Avenue Community Center, 5 Mildred Avenue, Mattapan, MA, 7:00pm-8:15pm

* November 3rd, Coastal Network Group, 514 W. 42nd Street, Savannah, GA, 7:00pm-8:15pm

* November 4th, Best Western Hotel, 1720 Bush River Rd., Columbia, SC, 6:00pm-7:30pm

* November 5th, Technical College of the Lowcountry, 921 Ribaut Road, Beaufort, SC, 12:30pm-2:00pm

* November 7th, Urban Tea Party, 636 N. Highland Road, Atlanta, GA, 7:00pm-8:30pm

* November 8th, Urban Tea Party, 636 N. Highland Road, Atlanta, GA, 7:00pm-8:30pm


To attend a seminar, obtain additional information on these and other upcoming seminars, or to arrange to host an investor seminar, please contact BankBlackwell at 877-226-5229 or visit www.bankblackwell.com

BankBlackwell intends to operate as a savings bank focused on offering selected financial services over the Internet to African-American individuals and churches as well as customers who seek value and convenience. BankBlackwell has received approval from the Office of Thrift Supervision to organize a federal savings bank and from the FDIC for federal deposit insurance.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor will there be any sale, of the common stock in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful. The offering of common stock is made only by means of an Offering Circular.

For copies of the Offering Circular, subscription documents, or other information on the Offering, please contact:

James R. Mundy
President and Chief Executive Officer
BankBlackwell (In Organization)
580 Harrison Avenue, 4th Floor
Boston, MA 02118
Telephone: (617) 275-7202
Facsimile: (617) 275-7201
Bank Blackwell  ¶ 10/27/2005 11:27:00 AM

  Business Capital Search Engine Improves Business Owner Odds of Getting Financed Capital search engine allows business owners to match their financing needs against the lending criteria of more than 4,000 lenders nationwide.

BusinessFinance.com (PRWEB) October 26, 2005 – Whether you're an established business or a start-up, BusinessFinance.com provides the business finance connections to over 4,000 sources of capital on www.businessfinance.com

The business capital search engine at BusinessFinance.com allows business owners to select from 45 different funding programs for working capital, commercial finance, venture capital or investment funds, equipment leasing, business lines of credit, commercial real estate financing and government small business loans.

The free interactive capital searches are the business finance equivalent of online dating. First business owners fill in the blanks and then the business capital search engine produces a list of matched potential lenders complete with their contact names and telephone numbers.

BusinessFinance.com lists the lending and investing criteria of more than 4,000 sources of capital in the United States. By providing specific information on your business industry, the type of financing you are seeking, the amount of the loan, and some specifics about your company, the business capital search engine quickly pares your matches to a manageable size.

For example, a search for a 5 year old company with $5 million in sales that was seeking $500,000 in asset backed loans, turned up 50 potential matches. The list included large lenders such as GE Capital and Finova, several big banks, and a host of smaller more niche lenders from around the country.

Currently 150,000 business owners use BusinessFinance.com each month to connect with the more than 4,000 sources of business financing.

BusinessFinance.com began operations March 1995 and launched the first version of the business capital search engine in November of that same year.

When business owners have finished their capital search, they are encouraged to download free workbooks for tips on what Lender’s want, how to prepare your presentation, and how to write a successful business plan. All available on www.businessfinance.com  ¶ 10/26/2005 09:37:00 AM

  Raise Your Website Traffic with RSS - Blogs and YAHOO! Part 1. It is the trend du jour getting a lot of pundit press, guru glare, and is ready for mainstream adoption. RSS feeds and their communication kin the blog are bandied about as the next big thing.

Everywhere you look there are articles and ebooks touting the electronic affinity and high value of these two forms of media creation and distribution. However can these two forms of digital media drive more traffic to your site, or -- are they just hype?

Blogs are short for web logs and are like daily dairies on the web. Blogs started out as ways for Internet reality types to share their lives with other people on the web, without having to learn very complicated web design applications like Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.

While on the other hand RSS feeds are the natural extension of Blogs. RSS without getting into all the arguments over the name (for the purpose of this article) stands for Really Simple Syndication.

RSS feeds can take your blog postings and syndicate a preview of your blog headlines all over the Internet. Therefore in theory RSS feeds can drive traffic to your blogs and websites similar to how search engines have become major marketing channels.

If your blogs headlines are syndicated on major high traffic websites, RSS directories and Internet Portals it could be another major source of traffic to your website. But how effective is blog marketing to the average Internet marketer who doesn’t have a major personal brand name like John Reese, Yanik Silver, or Dr. Ken Evoy.

This question is reflected in the concerns of bottom-line focused Stephanie McIntyre, president of eSales Unlimited, an eBay Power Seller, auction trainer and coach. Stephanie has generated over $200,000 in profitable sales on eBay and has low tolerance for marketing hype.

"I am not convinced that blogging can really drive traffic or profitable sales states Ms. McIntyre. Internet Gurus like James Maduk haven’t convinced me that I can really make money with a blog."

She isn’t alone in her skepticism. Many online business people are confused why all this hype is being created about blogs and RSS feeds. Many wonder if they can really deliver in their potential to drive more traffic and sales to business orientated Internet websites.

In short, can blogs and RSS boost really boost our website traffic? I put the technology to the test in the last four weeks to get some definite answers.

I found blogs are having some major income impact on the bottom-line of some companies and business people.

Despite many reservations by some Netpreneurs blogs and RSS feeds have been boosting the bottom-lines of some marketers. Willie Crawford, a well known Internet marketer generates over $1000 dollars a day from mostly blog generated Adsense™ revenue. Blogging for Crawford has become yet another profitable part of his business.

Weblogs Inc., a publisher of almost 100 targeted niche blogs is noted as being on its way to generating 1 million dollars in Adsense™ revenue! This had to be a compelling reason for AOL to recently buy Weblogs Inc for a whopping 25 million.

Still another very successful Internet business person I spoke with (who doesn’t what to be identified) uses blogs as a form of buzz advertising resulting in $50,000 in indirect eCommerce sales when properly timed. This business person does close to 17 million dollars in online sales.

I also have been having good success saving time and money by publishing quickly with blogs. My blogs generated good income for me however I wanted to see if the distribution of my blog headline via RSS feeds would bring in any new revenues.

One of the promotional ways blogs and RSS are purported to increase your online traffic is the strategy of increasing your website’s traffic with what I call horizontal SEO. Horizontal SEO is called "winning the search engine lottery" by Internet sales star John Reese.

Most SEO firms and web marketers focus solely on high rankings for popular keywords (Vertical SEO) . In contrast a more comprehensive search engine driven Internet marketing campaign would scale more horizontally or deeper with more rich keyword informed content pages.

In other words a horizontal SEO campaign would be like playing the lottery. Your odds of winning the lottery are greater if you have more tickets.

According to Reese "search engines algorithms change from day to day. Therefore your ranking will go up or down. But if you have more and more tickets in the SEO lottery you have a better chance of winning."

Blogs and RSS feeds give you the ability to create and distribute a lot of web information (content) on the fly that’s distributed throughout the Internet at myriad media outlets. Blogs and RSS feeds drive more traffic to your site by helping you win the SEO lottery with horizontal SEO.

Blogs and RSS can be the easiest and most efficient way to win the SEO lottery. They do this by creating lots of targeted niche content on your and other partner sites that carry your feeds.

In the last 4 weeks I launched a website with a blog component without optimizing it in the traditional vertical SEO fashion. It doesn’t appear on top of any search engine results worth mentioning. I wanted to see if the blog powered by RSS feed would drive significant traffic to my site.

The results are amazing! I been totally blown away by the research. Check out why I have become a big believer in blogging and RSS in part 2 of this article.  ¶ 10/25/2005 11:38:00 PM

  The Buying Power of Black America Reveals 679 Billion in Buying Power New 'Buying Power of Black America' Report Shows African-American Consumers Spending More on Home Life

Annual report finds black consumers, despite reducing expenditures, still out-spend whites in key categories

(PRWEB) October 25, 2005 -- As the American economy continues to move sluggishly, African-American households are cutting back their spending in many categories, including food, clothing and basic household items, while investing more in home repair, home entertainment and consumer electronics. Although they are trimming back, black consumers are still spending more than their white counterparts on most of these products.

According to the newest edition of “The Buying Power of Black America” report, African-American households are tightening their belts when it comes to dining out, expanding their wardrobes, and leisure activities out of the home. At the same time, they are increasing their spending on home repairs and remodeling, audio and visual electronics, and contributions to churches. The report also estimates that black households collectively had earned income of $679 billion in 2004.

”More than ever, African-Americans are seeking to get the most for their dollars,” said Ken Smikle, president of Target Market News and publisher of the report. “As they spend more time at home with their families, black consumers are focused on increasing the quality of home life. However, the fact that they are still spending more on average than whites on certain food, apparel and media-related products demonstrates that their lifestyles are not changing radically.”

African-American households spent more per capita than white households in the categories of food, apparel, consumer electronics, media, personal care products, gifts, telephone service and appliances.

This trend is highlighted in the annually published report from Target Market News, a 17-year-old Chicago-based research and information company that specializes in tracking African-American marketing, media and consumer behavior. “The Buying Power of Black America,” which has been published annually for the past 12 years, is one of the most widely quoted sources of information on black consumer spending. The report details how millions of dollars have been spent by black consumers in more than 500 categories.

”This change in expenditures by black consumers means that obtaining and holding on to their loyalty will be more competitive for marketers,” said Smikle. “This represents a time of opportunity for those companies that can demonstrate they are serious about providing value for these customers.”

According to the report, black households had $679 billion in earned income in 2004, an increase of 3.5% over the $656 earned in 2003.

Among the products and services that showed the greatest one-year increase were sound systems (+127%), computer online services (+38%) and sports and recreational equipment (+19%), dishwashers (+ 42%), washing machines (+45%), and contributions to churches (+19%).

”The Buying Power of Black America,” a 104-page report, is based on an analysis of expenditures reported by 3,000 black households for the Department of Commerce’s Consumer Expenditure Survey.

For more information on obtaining “The Buying Power of Black America,” report contact Target Market News at 312-408-1881 or Target Market News.  ¶ 10/25/2005 03:28:00 PM

  1 Billion Monthly Local Searches -- How to Tap into This Astonishing Market Revealed Search Engines Becomes the Preferred Way to Find Local Businesses! by Kamau Austin

Do you have a website that fails to generate decent traffic? Have you failed to make search engine marketing a part of your promotion of your business because you have a local business, or feel the Internet is not where your customer's will find you?

Recent reports in Emarketer daily, one of the top Internet business resources, reveal over 50% of the country are now online. More importantly twice as many people search online for local businesses than use their Yellow Pages to find businesses in their area.

You could be losing at least 20 - 50% of your potential market and customers by not having an Internet marketing plan with a strong search engine component.

- Local Search Becoming More Important!

For those business owners who once felt that the Internet wasn't necessary for their local business, you should especially take note.

Now is the time to learn to tap into the promotional power of the Internet for your local business.

Since consumers increasingly are searching online for local businesses, how will your businesses take advantage of this fundamental shift in customer behavior? The Internet has affected almost every facet of business and has driven the creation of new business models while forcing the evolution of others, writes Click4Talk's Dave Landa.

Landa goes on to state traditional printed yellow pages and local commerce are being drawn headlong into the Internet vortex. The surge in online local searches by consumers relative to traditional printed phone book searches has prompted tremendous business focus in this space.

Local search has become such a strong business Google has even gotten into the act.

- Google Outsourced the Selling of Local Search

It is a very important development that Google has outsourced the selling of local search PPC programs to Bell South last year. Bell South has a large sales force that can sell search advertising face-2-face to local businesspeople and merchants.

In other words Internet search will become a significant marketing strategy for local business. This is significant because 20% of searches online are for local information. This is a huge amount of monthly searches.

- 20% of Internet Searches are for local Information means approximately close to One Billion Searches a Month are being queried via the Top Search Engines -- for local searches. This One Billion local searches will create new local business models and propel visionary tech savvy local businesses.

In other words, if you once thought your local business didn't need to be on the Internet, it is time to get a new reality check.

To bring home the importance of this grand Internet marketing shift on how it will impact your local sales, consider a recent experience with me and my wife. We listed a real estate property in two of our major local papers (The New York Times and The Star Ledger of NY and NJ respectively). The response was slow.

Later we ran a targeted local Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign with Google and received more than 10 times the amount of leads from both The New York Times and the Star Ledger!!!

Local focused and targeted PPC advertising with Google had out performed Two major northeastern newspapers with established real estate sections by an amazing margin. By the way, the collective circulation of the New York Times and NJ Star Ledger was 5.5 million people for the Sunday Editions.

This rise in the search engines and major portal to find local business has come at a price to local newspapers, major newspapers, and the local yellow pages. With twice as many people preferring to use the search engines to find local business than the yellow pages, this obviously has shaken-up print media.

To further illustrate this point recently the parent company of the New York Times purchased About.com the popular Internet portal!

Your competitors will soon be introduced to the importance of local search via sales consultants from Bell South and other advertising rep firms. Don't get caught sleeping -- on move to local search!

My business has grown 3-fold in the last year because I made a focused decision to grow my business in my local area using the search engines. I know of some business associates that have created lucrative local directory type web businesses rather than putting their emphasis on general Internet Traffic.

If you are looking to increase your sales and profits maybe looking at the short view and local niches in your are is the quickest way to get there.

Kamau Austin is publisher of www.eInfoNEWS.com and runs www.SearchEnginePlan.com. He is author of Always On Top "How to Get the Highest Search Engine ranking for your website. See more about his eBiz strategies at Always On Top the Book  ¶ 10/24/2005 05:31:00 PM