A one-sentence item in the Nation Digest in Sunday’s Post-Dispatch reported:

The publisher of Boston’s only black-owned newspaper says he’ll accept a $200,000 loan from the city to avert the shutdown of the financially struggling weekly.

Here’s a bit more information:

“Only a fool wouldn’t take it,” the Boston Globe quotes that publisher — Mel Miller of the Bay State Banner. “Let the Banner fail and deprive the community? That’s just foolish, and I’m not going to do that.”

Miller shut down the paper July 9,  citing falling ad revenue. The 30,000-copy paper was free. The newspaper journal Editor & Publisher says the loan will revive the Banner while a new business plan is worked out.

Some critics of the loan think it will compromise the paper’s objectivity, according to the Boston Globe:

Kelly McBride, an ethics specialist who trains journalists at the Poynter Institute in Florida, said publications that take public money to fund their operations whether in the form of a grant, loan, or tax break are risking public trust that they are impartial and independent.

“If they’re still getting loan money and this paper is covering the election, that could get pretty sticky,” she said.

The Boston Globe quoted Mayor Thomas M. Menino as saying the loan was not an attempt to curry favor, but an effort to “help a business that is very important to the minority community.” The Globe story notes that the Banner often has been critical of Menino.

E&P says the loan is coming from the Boston Local Development Corp., a nonprofit administered by the Boston Redevelopment Authority. It says the agency has lent money to other local businesses, including a coffee shop and bicycle company.