Healthcare, African-American community in Charlotte

Aaliyah Bowden

Aaliyah Bowden covers healthcare for The Charlotte Post, which reports on the African American community in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bowden interned at North Carolina Health News, a nonprofit news organization, during the peak of the pandemic, reporting on health issues across the state. Her story on food handlers and farmers testing positive for the coronavirus was republished in The Siasat Daily in Hyderabad, India. Bowden won an award for her story on North Carolina's historically Black colleges and universities keeping COVID-19 cases low during the fall 2020 semester. As a student at North Carolina Central University, she was the co-editor of the Campus Echo, reporting breaking news and feature stories, and scoring interviews with fashion designer Dapper Dan and singer and actress Keke Palmer. Bowden, from Jacksonville, North Carolina, aspires to start a health magazine solely devoted to covering the health of Black women.

The Charlotte Post

The Charlotte Post Publishing Company is been the mirror to the African-American community in North Carolina's two largest media markets. The company's roots are in the AME Zion Church, where The Messenger was launched in 1878 to provide a faith-based forum for newly emancipated Black people during the Reconstruction period. It is the leading source of news and information in Charlotte's Black community, which makes up about one-third of Mecklenburg County's 1.1 million population. Its sister publication, The Triangle Tribune, was founded in 1998 and is similarly situation in the Raleigh-Durham market, which exceeds 1 million people. The 16-member staff consists of three full-time journalists and three freelance photographers and journalists.