Competition in news and views

For the two owners of a chain of five Boston weekly newspapers, the decision to purchase the Boston People's Voice this spring made business sense.

Paul DiModica and Dennis Cawley, publisher and editor of the Bulletin Newspapers group, saw an opportunity for growth in the Voice's traditional circulation area, which includes the predominantly minority neighborhoods of Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester.

''For the most part, these neighborhoods have been underserved," said Cawley. ''My thought is the more coverage of the issues we can provide in these neighborhoods, the better."

With added staff and a shift toward more hard-news coverage, the Voice is treading on territory long held by the Boston-Bay State Banner, which has been covering Boston's minority communities for the past four decades. Melvin B. Miller, founder and publisher of the Banner, dismisses the Boston People's Voice as competition. He noted that not only are the owners white, but so are the paper's editor and one full-time reporter.

''We've been here 40 years representing the interests of the communities of color," said Miller, who is black. ''How can a bunch of white guys come in and do that for the black community?"

In a signed editorial on July 7, Miller lamented the Bulletin's purchase of the Boston People's Voice as part of the larger trend of black-owned media being overtaken or forced out by white publishers.

Among the reasons a black press is needed, Miller said in the editorial, is that it is the ''primary recourse to rebut the negative distortions of blacks that are constantly published in the major media."

But, he also wrote, ''Unfortunately, the financial progress of African-Americans has attracted a number of journalistic carpetbaggers."

In an unsigned editorial a week later, the Boston People's Voice fired back, saying it is committed to ''street level" coverage of news in the community, which it contrasted with what it called the Banner's ''ivory tower thinking on race issues."

The Boston People's Voice was founded in 1996 by Arthur Sutton Jr., a black Dorchester political activist. Managed by Sutton and members of his family, the Voice consisted mostly of opinion pieces, reviews, and announcements.

Under the direction of Cawley, 45, and DiModica, 48, the paper has introduced a harder news edge, with coverage of politics, community meetings, and local issues.

Like the Banner, the Voice is distributed free at newstands, businesses, and in newspaper boxes. The weekly Banner has a circulation of 30,000. The circulation of the Voice, which is published every other week, is 6,100.

Cawley said that of the 20 people who work full time for the Bulletin publications, six are non-white, although none is a reporter or an editor. The company is trying to recruit minority writers, he said.

But managing editor Joseph Mont said race should not be the main criterion in hiring. ''I want to pick people based on their talent and their involvement in the community," said Mont, who also said that the Boston People's Voice has two or three non-white freelancers.

The Banner and Boston People's Voice are not the only publications paying attention to Boston's minority neighborhoods lately. Two years ago, the Dorchester-based Reporter chain launched the monthly Mattapan Reporter, the first paper devoted exclusively to Mattapan in at least two decades. The Reporter papers started the Haitian Reporter in 2001. Bill Forry, editor of the Reporter newspapers, said he welcomes the new Boston People's Voice as competition. While not criticizing the new ownership, he said he disapproves of outside publications' ''parachuting" into neighborhoods.

''We only go where we know the community," said Forry, a Dorchester native whose parents founded the Dorchester Reporter. ''We don't go to places that are just ripe for the picking."

Forry said his chief reporter for Mattapan, Judy Vance, is black, and most of the Haitian Reporter's writers are of Haitian descent. Forry, who is white, is married to state Representative Linda Dorcena Forry, a Haitian-American.

Richard Heath, a community organizer for the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation, said he has found the staff of the Boston People's Voice to be serious about covering communities of color.

''If they are able to keep their nose close to the ground and the people in the neighborhoods, I have no problem with their ownership," Heath said.

Robert Preer can be reached at preer@globe.com.