#late night performance or interview in 2019 BUT WE HAVE A BUZZFEED VIDEO! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

layesica · 5 years ago

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2019: It was a year that ends tonight.

2018 was rough, right? Well, so was 2019!

I did not feel like writing this, but it’s a tradition now, so for the fifth year in a row, here’s what I did all year with some of the crappy crap that made it not the greatest. I can’t promise an unwavering sense of optimism, but it’s okay. I’m okay. Here we go!

JANUARY Went to The Not Inappropriate Show at UCB curated by the Odenkirks, then Spent New Years Eve at Dynasty Typewriter with Ian & Emily. It was fun, but... eh. Home is better, y’all. Home is always better. Did a couple performances of a show at Second City – A Fonzie Scheme. It was fun. I was in an improv class at The Pack. I think it was Improv 4. The last weekend of January, Very Famous went to Sketchfest, which was super amazing. That’s, like, a goal. And even though it had pretty much nothing to do with anything I did, it was cool. And it was fun. And I was at a party with Neil Patrick Harris and I was SUPER cool about it.

Went to stuff: LA Times screening of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. It was free, and I would have never seen it otherwise. I enjoyed it. It was good.

Salt & Straw Flavor: Toasted Coconut Milk & Cookies (V)

FEBRUARY Made a return trip with Ian & Emily to San Francisco. Well, Oakland with an SF jaunt. I don’t have any cool stories, but Emily fought a seagull for her cookie and won, and that was pretty badass. On the drive back, there was a ton of snow just on the other side of the Angeles National Forest. I wasn’t excited enough to get out of the car, but snow is nice to look at. Oh, I had lunch with one of the head writers on my dream show that my old roommate met at the gym. I am terrible at networking.

Went to stuff: LA Times screening of VICE. It was free, and I would have seen it... eventually. It was... a bit... self-indulgent.

Salt & Straw Flavor: “The Chocolatier Series” = Jeni’s Coffee & Sweet Cream

MARCH Auditioned for a house improv team at The Pack. I didn’t mention working with a practice group all of February & March to prep for that. The biggest bummer about not getting on a team may have been the loss of that practice group. It was fun while it lasted.

Went to stuff: Saw comedy dads, Bob & David, at Largo. They asked for volunteers, and I almost passed just thinking about it. Ian & Emily jumped up there. Good for them!

Salt & Straw Flavor: Smoked Sea Salt & Chocolate Crack

APRIL Interviewed for a new job at one of the guilds. HEY! I owe the government $3700. That’s fun! I went ahead and added a good purse to my new 0 APR card.

Went to stuff: Dana Gould Podcast at Dynasty Typewriter. Panel with Conan Writers at Lyric Hyperion. For some reason, I saw Avengers: Endgame. I dunno. I feel like I should see it through for some reason. Deadline did their day-long FYC event, The Contenders, at Paramount, so I spent all day seeing so many people from TV and eating so much yummy food in between. Amazon FYC at Hollywood Athletic Club – went mostly for the building. Prime seat at Conan taping.

Salt & Straw Flavor: Wildflower Honey with Ricotta Walnut Lace Cookies – I wait all year for this to roll around again!

MAY We were supposed to have a call for a travel show on Buzzfeed, but they ghosted us. I went camping with a huge group at Idyllwild, which would have been fun, but it was FREEZING and I got SUPER sick on the second day. After a few days, I got better and got the guild job. Free insurance, baby! (More on that later.) Bought a Universal pass.

Went to stuff: A UCB show with people from Chicago. Free Booksmart screening with Q&A. Such a good movie! LA Times panel for Broad City. I never really watched it, but I would love to have a partnership like that! Netflix FYSee for Nanette. Guys, people are like vultures for the passed trays. Adam Sandler at Dynasty Typewriter. Attended the actual red carpet, fancy-pants premiere of Amazon’s Late Night. It was enjoyable and not at all realistic, and I could not stop staring at John Early in the theater. He glows!

Salt & Straw Flavor: Pear & Blue Cheese

JUNE Went to stuff: FYSee for Dead To Me. I had not seen it yet, but then I watched it and it’s good. JV show at UCB with Paul F Tompkins. Did a lap at the AT&T Shape event that is always free. I only go to be on the WB lot where I would like to be more often. Like, 40+ hours a week more often. That’s it. I just went to stuff.

Salt & Straw Flavor: Campfire S’mores (with Brian)

JULY SO. MANY. EARTHQUAKES. After the third one, it stopped being cute. Went for a drive to the Angeles Forest and hiked to a waterfall. Did a sketch with Very Famous at Packcon. It was a small group, so I got a part! Huzzah!

Went to stuff: Saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the Cinerama dome. (First visit!) Not a great idea because I kept trying to pick out the scenery and got a bit of motion sickness. Shirtless Brad Pitt on a roof in the ‘70s is nice.

Salt & Straw Flavor: Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero (2x)

AUGUST Went on a random overnight to San Jose. Time to get panicky about Pack Sketch Teams! I did what I should have done last year and requested to be moved. I loved the people on my team, but I wasn’t getting a return on investment for myself. And that’s no fun. Did a show called Gibberish with Duckboi as Sharon Osborne and wore a great wig. Sketch is fun. Fell off my bike & got bruised legs.

Went to stuff: Mike O’Brien & Friends at Lyric Hyperion. Saw some Pack shows to be a supportive. Put up a sketch at GSY.

Salt & Straw Flavor: Green Fennel & Maple

SEPTEMBER Started working tech at UCB. It’s pretty easy. I get to see new faces... and old faces, too. I have no more comedy theaters to work at. Well, unless someone is going to pay me real money. My vision has been getting blurrier, so I went to the eye doctor to get new glasses. Ended up getting referred to a specialist for a “freckle” in my eyeball, but had to wait a month to go. Submitted a character video for Pack Sketch performer auditions. Got a callback! That’s one step further than last years attempt, and I actually came up with characters and I was pretty proud of it. Came up with more characters, then faced the fear of being on a stage all by myself while trying to be funny. I felt good about it. It used to take a day to find out, but not this time...

Link to Character Audition Video

Went to stuff: Got an AMAZING ticket (location & price) to see Skintight at the Geffen with friggin�� Idina Menzel. She is a queen! It’s a cute theater I should go to more stuff at. Saw Scott Thompson as Buddy Cole at the Lyric Hyperion. So good! I think I’ve seen the evolving show every year I’ve lived here. My face hurts for several days after. Lyndsey got a fancy job and invited me to the Dreamworks Friends & Family screening of Abominable. Would not have seen it. It was cute. Thanks, Lyndsey!

Salt & Straw Flavor: Forgettable

OCTOBER Flew to Denver for my cousin’s wedding. I almost typed, “weeding.” That’s Colorado for you. It was my first time to see my family all year. The time just got away from me. I got a late flight out and spent the day walking around Denver on my own. Went to a good bookstore. Ate some Giordano’s. Left my luggage in a van. Found out I got cut from Very Famous – also, Very Famous got cut from sketch night – and I didn’t make a new team. Started watching new season of Mr. Robot and felt so lost, so started it from the beginning. The new Almodóvar came out, so I bought one of those expensive Arclight tickets. It was very, very good. Maybe my favorite Almodóvar film. Worth it! Saw the specialist about my eye. They dilated it, took a bunch of pictures, did a closed-eye ultrasound (Yeah, they use jelly for that!), and refereed me to another specialist. Hunter picked me up, and I ate at Canter’s for the first time. The specialist’s office made the appointment for me at an oncologist. Guys, I just wanted new glasses and now can’t stop Googling some pretty scary stuff! Lyndsey took me to USC & hung out with me for a while. They dilated my eye, took a bunch of pictures of it with a bunch of different machines, performed an OPEN EYE ultrasound, saw two trainees and then the doctor. She said she is not diagnosing me with melanoma. BUT it has the orange color and a sliver of the fluid that are “concerning.” The pictures of the tumor weren’t as large at the ophthalmologist’s pictures made it look. So... bright side, I guess. I go back in January to check for changes. Margot scooped me up and brought me home. Baby’s first root canal!

For our very last Very Famous show, everyone got to put up a sketch they wrote. My favorite had too much production, so I did a black out. It turned out great, and I felt loved. It was a very nice way to go out.

Went to stuff: Two weeks after the Arclight screening, the LA Times invited me to see Pain & Glory with a Q&A, so I finally got to be in a room with my favorite director. I may have cried... slightly more than I did just seeing the film.

Salt & Straw Flavor: Black Cat Licorice & Lavender (2 cones, 1 pint)

NOVEMBER It was time for Penelope’s annual visit to the vet, so I rented a car for the weekend and took her. She had lost quite a bit of weight. I sprung for all the tests, and she has kidney disease. Her numbers aren’t terrible, but there’s not really treatment for it. We switched to a new kind of prescription food. All I can do is be good to her and try to keep her hydrated & happy. So... yeah... September – November have been... uh... not so great. On the bright side, I got invited to be in the Night Cap with Stacy Rumaker show as a character! I love this show so much - and when you read a thing in December, this show is the exception to that. I was so nervous, but I pulled it together and think it went very well. It felt good! Also, I am so emotionally invested in Mr. Robot! Mom & Dad came to visit for Thanksgiving and that was a nice relief. It rained most of the time, but we got out at about a bit.

Went to stuff: Vulture Fest screening of MacGruber with Will Forte & John Solomon.

Salt & Straw Flavor: Spiced Goat Cheese & Pumpkin Pie (with Mom & Dad)

DECEMBER Fell off my bike, bruised my legs, and scraped a chunk of skin off my hand. Finally: I left my mark on this town! I was not in the mood to plan a birthday thing, but rented a car to take Penelope for her health certificate she might need to fly home with me, then went on a showtune-belting drive on my birthday. Not the best drive ever, but it was nice to just drive aimlessly. Margot went with me to dinner at an Italian place in Los Feliz. In other news, Penelope gained some weight. Then I flew home for Christmas. I’ve just been sitting around with Mom & Dad, and it has been great. I had lunch with Justin & traditional margaritas & Tex-Mex with Lindsey. I finally did an entire month of morning pages after 4 years, so I may be done with that. Oh, and I (temporarily) quit comedy.

Went to stuff: Saw CATS (can’t hate on a bad movie with bad source material) & Little Women (I cried so much!)

Salt & Straw Flavor: Apple Brandy & Pecan Pie (with Brian), but I’m in Texas now, so I’m ending the year with some Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla. Do better, Tyler!

So, that’s it. I was not looking forward to this, but it did make me feel a little better since the crap at the end has just felt like it has beaten me down. I’m not a quitter, but a breaker is maybe a good idea for a bit. I don’t have any resolutions for 2020.

If you’re still here, THANK YOU for reading my yearly download. I hope that you are doing well.

You’re great!

I love you!

Have a great 2020!

#year in review #2019

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lodelss · 5 years ago

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Danielle A. Jackson | Longreads | September 2019 | 16 minutes (4,184 words)

The late summer night Tupac died, I listened to All Eyez on Me at a record store in an East Memphis strip mall. The evening felt eerie and laden with meaning. It was early in the school year, 1996, and through the end of the decade, Adrienne, Jessica, Karida and I were a crew of girlfriends at our high school. We spent that night, and many weekend nights, at Adrienne’s house.

Our public school had been all white until a trickle of black students enrolled during the 1966–67 school year. That was 12 years after Brown v. Board of Education and six years after the local NAACP sued the school board for maintaining dual systems in spite of the ruling. In 1972, a federal district court ordered busing; more than 40,000 white students abandoned the school system by 1980. The board created specialized and accelerated courses in some of its schools, an “optional program,” in response. Students could enter the programs regardless of district lines if they met certain academic requirements. This kind of competition helped retain some white students, but also created two separate tracks within those institutions — a tenuous, half-won integration. It meant for me, two decades later, a “high-performing school” with a world of resources I knew to be grateful for, but at a cost. There were few black teachers. Black students in the accelerated program were scattered about, small groups of “onlies” in all their classes. Black students who weren’t in the accelerated program got rougher treatment from teachers and administrators. An acrid grimness hung in the air. It felt like being tolerated rather than embraced.

My friends and I did share a lunch period. At our table, we traded CDs we’d gotten in the mail: Digable Planets’s Blowout Comb, D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar, the Fugees’ The Score. An era of highly visible black innovation was happening alongside a growing awareness of my own social position. I didn’t have those words then, but I had my enthusiasms. At Maxwell’s concert one sweaty night on the Mississippi, we saw how ecstasy, freedom, and black music commingle and coalesce into a balm. We watched the films of the ’90s wave together, and while most had constraining gender politics, Love Jones, the Theodore Witcher–directed feature about a group of brainy young artists in Chicago, made us wish for a utopic city that could make room for all we would become.

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We also loved to read the glossies — what ’90s girl didn’t? We especially salivated over every cover of Vibe. Adrienne and I were fledgling writers who experimented a lot and adored English class. In the ’90s, the canon was freshly expanding: We read T.S. Eliot alongside Kate Chopin and Chinua Achebe. Something similar was happening in magazines. Vibe’s mastheads and ad pages were full of black and brown people living, working, and loving together and out front — a multicultural ideal hip-hop had made possible. Its “new black aesthetic” meant articles were fresh and insightful but also hyper-literary art historical objects in their own rights. Writers were fluent in Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison as well as Biggie Smalls. By the time Tupac died, Kevin Powell had spent years contextualizing his life within the global struggle for black freedom. “There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest],” former editor Rob Kenner told Billboard in a Vibe oral history. He’s saying Vibe helped create Obama’s “coalition of the ascendent” — the black, Latinx, and young white voters who gave the Hawaii native two terms. For me, the pages reclaimed and retold the American story with fewer redactions than my history books. They created a vision of what a multiethnic nation could be.

* * *

“There was a time when journalism was flush,” Danyel Smith told me on a phone call from a summer retreat in Massachusetts. She became music editor at Vibe in 1994, and was editor in chief during the late ’90s and again from 2006 to 2008. The magazine, founded by Quincy Jones and Time, Inc. executives in 1992, was the “first true home of the culture we inhabit today,” according to Billboard. During Smith’s first stint as editor in chief, its circulation more than doubled. She wrote the story revealing R. Kelly’s marriage to then 15-year-old Aaliyah, as well as cover features on Janet Jackson, Wesley Snipes, and Whitney Houston. Smith was at the helm when the magazine debuted its Obama covers in 2007 — Vibe was the first major publication to endorse the freshman senator. When she described journalism as “flush,” Smith was talking about the late ’80s, when she started out in the San Francisco Bay. “Large cities could support with advertising two, sometimes three, alternative news weeklies and dailies,” she said.

‘There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest].’

The industry has collapsed and remade itself many times since then. Pew reports that between 2008 and 2018, journalism jobs declined 25 percent, a net loss of about 28,000 positions. Business Insider reports losses at 3,200 jobs this year alone. Most reductions have been in newspapers. A swell in digital journalism has not offset the losses in print, and it’s also been volatile, with layoffs several times over the past few years, as outlets “pivot to video” or fail to sustain venture-backed growth. Many remaining outlets have contracted, converting staff positions into precarious freelance or “permalance” roles. In a May piece for The New Republic, Jacob Silverman wrote about the “yawning earnings gap between the top and bottom echelons” of journalism reflected in the stops and starts of his own career. After a decade of prestigious headlines and publishing a book, Silverman called his private education a “sunken cost” because he hadn’t yet won a coveted staff role. If he couldn’t make it with his advantageous beginnings, he seemed to say, the industry must be truly troubled. The prospect of “selling out” — of taking a corporate job or work in branded content — seemed more concerning to him than a loss of the ability to survive at all. For the freelance collective Study Hall, Kaila Philo wrote how the instability in journalism has made it particularly difficult for black women to break into the industry, or to continue working and developing if they do. The overall unemployment rate for African Americans has been twice that of whites since at least 1972, when the government started collecting the data by race. According to Pew, newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than U.S. workers overall. Philo’s report mentions the Women’s Media Center’s 2018 survey on women of color in U.S. news, which states that just 2.62 percent of all journalists are black women. In a write-up of the data, the WMC noted that fewer than half of newspapers and online-only newsrooms had even responded to the original questionnaire.

* * *

According to the WMC, about 2.16 percent of newsroom leaders are black women. If writers are instrumental in cultivating our collective conceptions of history, editors are arguably more so. Their sensibilities influence which stories are accepted and produced. They shape and nurture the voices and careers of writers they work with. It means who isn’t there is noteworthy. “I think it’s part of the reason why journalism is dying,” Smith said. “It’s not serving the actual communities that exist.” In a July piece for The New Republic, Clio Chang called the push for organized labor among freelancers and staff writers at digital outlets like Vox and Buzzfeed, as well as at legacy print publications like The New Yorker, a sign of hope for the industry. “In the most basic sense, that’s the first norm that organizing shatters — the isolation of workers from one another,” Chang wrote. Notably, Vox’s union negotiated a diversity initiative in their bargaining agreement, mandating 40 to 50 percent of applicants interviewed come from underrepresented backgrounds.

“Journalism is very busy trying to serve a monolithic imaginary white audience. And that just doesn’t exist anymore,” Smith told me. U.S. audiences haven’t ever been truly homogeneous. But the media institutions that serve us, like most facets of American life, have been deliberately segregated and reluctant to change. In this reality, alternatives sprouted. Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all. Greg Sandow, an editor at Entertainment Weekly at the time, told Billboard, “I’m summoned to this meeting on the 34th floor [at the Time, Inc. executive offices]. And here came some serious concerns. This dapper guy in a suit and beautifully polished shoes says, ‘We’re publishing this. Does that mean we have to put black people on the cover?’” Throughout the next two decades, many publications serving nonwhite audiences thrived. Vibe spun off, creating Vibe Vixen in 2004. The circulations of Ebony, JET, and Essence, legacy institutions founded in 1945, 1951, and 1970, remained robust — the New York Times reported in 2000 that the number of Essence subscribers “sits just below Vogue magazine’s 1.1 million and well above the 750,000 of Harper’s Bazaar.” One World and Giant Robot launched in 1994, Latina and TRACE in 1996. Honey’s preview issue, with Lauryn Hill on the cover, hit newsstands in 1999. Essence spun off to create Suede, a fashion and culture magazine aimed at a “polyglot audience,” in 2004. A Magazine ran from 1989 to 2001; Hyphen launched with two young reporters at the helm the following year. In a piece for Columbia Journalism Review, Camille Bromley called Hyphen a celebration of “Asian culture without cheerleading” invested in humor, complication, and complexity, destroying the model minority myth. Between 1956 and 2008, the Chicago Defender, founded in 1905 and a noted, major catalyst for the Great Migration, published a daily print edition. During its flush years, the Baltimore Afro-American, founded in 1892, published separate editions in Philadelphia, Richmond, and Newark.

Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all.

The recent instability in journalism has been devastating for the black press. The Chicago Defender discontinued its print editions in July. Johnson Publications, Ebony and JET’s parent company, filed bankruptcy earlier this year after selling the magazines to a private equity firm in 2016. Then it put up for sale its photo archive — more than 4 million prints and negatives. Its record of black life throughout the 20th century includes images of Emmett Till’s funeral, in which the 14-year-old’s mutilated body lay in state, and Moneta Sleet Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize–winning image of Coretta Scott King mourning with her daughter, Bernice King. It includes casually elegant images of black celebrities at home and shots of everyday street scenes and citizens — the dentists and mid-level diplomats who made up the rank and file of the ascendant. John H. Johnson based Ebony and JET on LIFE, a large glossy heavy on photojournalism with a white, Norman Rockwell aesthetic and occasional dehumanizing renderings of black people. Johnson’s publications, like the elegantly attired stars of Motown, were meant as proof of black dignity and humanity. In late July, four large foundations formed an historic collective to buy the archive, shepherd its preservation, and make it available for public access.

The publications’ written stories are also important. Celebrity profiles offered candid, intimate views of famous, influential black figures and detailed accounts of everyday black accomplishment. Scores of skilled professionals ushered these pieces into being: Era Bell Thompson started out at the Chicago Defender and spent most of her career in Ebony’s editorial leadership. Tennessee native Lynn Norment worked for three decades as a writer and editor at the publication. André Leon Talley and Elaine Welteroth passed through Ebony for other jobs in the industry. Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

Black, Latinx, and Asian American media are not included in the counts on race and gender WMC reports. They get their data from the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), and Cristal Williams Chancellor, WMC’s director of communications, told me she hopes news organizations will be more “aggressive” in helping them “accurately indicate where women are in the newsroom.” While men dominate leadership roles in mainstream newsrooms, news wires, TV, and audio journalism, publications targeting multicultural audiences have also had a reputation for gender trouble, with a preponderance of male cover subjects, editorial leaders, and features writers. Kim Osorio, the first woman editor in chief at The Source, was fired from the magazine after filing a complaint about sexual harassment. Osorio won a settlement for wrongful termination in 2006 and went on to help launch BET.com and write a memoir before returning to The Source in 2012. Since then, she’s made a career writing for TV.

* * *

This past June, Nieman Lab published an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic since 2016, and Adrienne LaFrance, the magazine’s executive editor. The venerable American magazine was founded in Boston in 1857. Among its early supporters were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. It sought to promote an “American ideal,” a unified yet pluralistic theory of American aesthetics and politics. After more than a century and a half of existence, women writers are not yet published in proportion to women’s share of the country’s population. The Nieman piece focused on progress the magazine has made in recent years toward equitable hiring and promoting: “In 2016, women made up just 17 percent of editorial leadership at The Atlantic. Today, women account for 63 percent of newsroom leaders.” A few days after the piece’s publication, a Twitter user screen-capped a portion of the interview where Goldberg was candid about areas in which the magazine continues to struggle:

GOLDBERG: We continue to have a problem with the print magazine cover stories — with the gender and race issues when it comes to cover story writing. [Of the 15 print issues The Atlantic has published since January 2018, 11 had cover stories written by men. — Ed.]

It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story. There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males. What I have to do — and I haven’t done this enough yet — is again about experience versus potential. You can look at people and be like, well, your experience is writing 1,200-word pieces for the web and you’re great at it, so good going!

That’s one way to approach it, but the other way to approach it is, huh, you’re really good at this and you have a lot of potential and you’re 33 and you’re burning with ambition, and that’s great, so let us put you on a deliberate pathway toward writing 10,000-word cover stories. It might not work. It often doesn’t. But we have to be very deliberate and efficient about creating the space for more women to develop that particular journalistic muscle.

My Twitter feed of writers, editors, and book publicists erupted, mostly at the excerpt’s thinly veiled statement on ability. Women in my timeline responded with lists of writers of longform — books, articles, and chapters — who happened to be women, or people of color, or some intersection therein. Goldberg initially said he’d been misquoted. When Laura Hazard Owen, the deputy editor at Nieman who’d conducted the interview, offered proof that Goldberg’s statements had been delivered as printed, he claimed he had misspoken. Hazard Owen told the L.A. Times she believes that The Atlantic is, overall, “doing good work in diversifying the staff there.”

Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

Still, it’s a difficult statement for a woman writer of color to hear. “You literally are looking at me and all my colleagues, all my women colleagues and all my black colleagues, all my colleagues of color and saying, ‘You’re not really worthy of what we do over here.’ It’s mortifying,” Smith told me. Goldberg’s admission may have been a misstatement, but it mirrors the continued whiteness of mainstream mastheads. It checks out with the Women’s Media Center’s reports and the revealing fact of how much data is missing from even those important studies. It echoes the stories of black women who work or worked in journalism, who have difficulty finding mentors, or who burn out from the weight of wanting to serve the chronically underserved. It reflects my own experiences, in which I have been told multiple times in a single year that I am the only black woman editor that a writer has ever had. But it doesn’t corroborate my long experience as a reader. What happened to the writers and editors and multihyphenates from the era of the multicultural magazine, that brief flash in the 90’s and early aughts when storytellers seemed to reflect just how much people of color lead in creating American culture? Who should have formed a pipeline of leaders for mainstream publications when the industry began to contract?

* * *

In addition to her stints at Vibe, Smith also edited for Billboard, Time, Inc. publications, and published two novels. She was culture editor for ESPN’s digital magazine The Undefeated before going on book leave. Akiba Solomon is an author, editor of two books, and is currently senior editorial director at Colorlines, a digital news daily published by Race Forward. She started an internship at YSB in 1995 before going on to write and edit for Jane, Glamour, Essence, Vibe Vixen, and The Source. She told me that even at magazines without predominantly black staff, she’d worked with other black people, though not often directly. At black magazines, she was frequently edited by black women. “I’ve been edited by Robin Stone, Vanessa DeLuca [formerly editor-in-chief of Essence, currently running the Medium vertical ZORA], Ayana Byrd, Kierna Mayo, Cori Murray, and Michaela Angela Davis.” Solomon’s last magazine byline was last year, an Essence story on black women activists who organize in culturally relevant ways to fight and prevent sexual assault.

Solomon writes infrequently for publications now, worn down by conditions in journalism she believes are untenable. At the hip-hop magazines, the sexism was a deterrent, and later, “I was seeing a turn in who was getting the jobs writing about black music” when it became mainstream. “Once folks could divorce black music from black culture it was a wrap,” she said. At women’s magazines, Solomon felt stifled by “extremely narrow” storytelling. Publishing, in general, Solomon believes, places unsustainable demands on its workers.

When we talk about the death of print, it is infrequent that we also talk about the conditions that make it ripe for obsolescence. The reluctant slowness with which mainstream media has integrated its mastheads (or kept them integrated) has meant the industry’s content has suffered. And the work environments have placed exorbitant burdens on the people of color who do break through. In Smith’s words:

You feel that you want to serve these people with good and quality content, with good and quality graphics, with good and quality leadership. And as a black person, as a black woman, regardless of whether you’re serving a mainstream audience, which I have at a Billboard and at Time, Inc., or a multicultural audience, which I have at Vibe, it is difficult. And it’s actually taken me a long time to admit that to myself. It does wear you down. And I ask myself why have I always, always stayed in a job two and a half to three years, especially when I’m editing? It’s because I’m tired by that time.

In a July story for Politico, black journalists from The New York Times and the Associated Press talked about how a sophisticated understanding of race is critical to ethically and thoroughly covering the current political moment. After the August 3 massacre in El Paso, Lulu Garcia-Navarro wrote how the absence of Latinx journalists in newsrooms has created a vacuum that allows hateful words from the president to ring unchallenged. Lacking the necessary capacity, many organizations cover race related topics, often matters of life and death, without context or depth. As outlets miss the mark, journalists of color may take on the added work of acting as the “the black public editor of our newsrooms,” Astead Herndon from the Times said on a Buzzfeed panel. Elaine Welteroth wrote about the physical exhaustion she experienced during her tenure as editor in chief at Teen Vogue in her memoir More Than Enough. She was the second African American editor in chief in parent company Condé Nast’s 110 year history:

I was too busy to sleep, too frazzled to eat, and TMI: I had developed a bizarre condition where I felt the urge to pee — all the time. It was so disruptive that I went to see a doctor, thinking it may have been a bladder infection.

Instead, I found myself standing on a scale in my doctor’s office being chastised for accidentally dropping nine more pounds. These were precious pounds that my naturally thin frame could not afford to lose without leaving me with the kind of bony body only fashion people complimented.

Condé Nast shuttered Teen Vogue’s print edition in 2017, despite record-breaking circulation, increased political coverage, and an expanded presence on the internet during Welteroth’s tenure. Welteroth left the company to write her book and pursue other ventures.

Mitzi Miller was editor in chief of JET when it ran the 2012 cover story on Jordan Davis, a Florida teenager shot and killed by a white vigilante over his loud music. “At the time, very few news outlets were covering the story because it occurred over a holiday weekend,” she said. To write the story, Miller hired Denene Millner, an author of more than 20 books. With interviews from Jordan’s parents, Ron Davis and Lucy McBath, the piece went viral and was one of many stories that galvanized the contemporary American movement against police brutality.

Miller started working in magazines in 2000, and came up through Honey and Jane before taking the helm at JET then Ebony in 2014. She edits for the black website theGrio when she can and writes an occasional piece for a print magazine roughly once a year. Shrinking wages have made it increasingly difficult to make a life in journalism, she told me. After working at a number of dream publications, Miller moved on to film and TV development.

Both Miller and Solomon noted how print publications have been slow to evolve. “It’s hard to imagine now, particularly to digital native folks, but print was all about a particular format. It was about putting the same ideas into slightly different buckets,” Solomon said. On the podcast Hear to Slay, Vanessa DeLuca spoke about how reluctant evolution may have imperiled black media. “Black media have not always … looked forward in terms of how to build a brand across multiple platforms.” Some at legacy print institutions still seem to hold internet writing in lower esteem (“You can look at people and be like, well, your experience is writing 1,200-word pieces for the web and you’re great at it, so good going!” were Goldberg’s words to Nieman Lab). Often, pay structures reflect this hierarchy. Certainly, the internet’s speed and accessibility have lowered barriers to entry and made it such that rigor is not always a requirement for publication. But it’s also changed information consumption patterns and exploded the possibilities of storytelling.

Michael Gonzales, a frequent contributor to this site and a writer I’ve worked with as an editor, started in magazines in the 1980s as a freelancer. He wrote for The Source and Vibe during a time that overlapped with Smith’s and Solomon’s tenures, the years now called “the golden era of rap writing.” The years correspond to those moments I spent reading magazines with my high school friends. At black publications, he worked with black women editors all the time, but “with the exception of the Village Voice, none of the mainstream magazines employed black editors.” Despite the upheaval of the past several years (“the money is less than back in the day,” he said), Gonzales seems pleased with where his career has landed, “I’ve transformed from music critic/journalist to an essayist.” He went on to talk about how now, with the proliferation of digital magazines:

I feel like we’re living in an interesting writer time where there are a number of quality sites looking for quality writing, especially in essay form. There are a few that sometimes get too self-indulgent, but for the most part, especially in the cultural space (books, movies, theater, music, etc.), there is a lot of wonderful writing happening. Unfortunately you are the only black woman editor I have, although a few years back I did work with Kierna Mayo at Ebony.

* * *

Danielle A. Jackson is a contributing editor at Longreads.

Editor: Sari Botton

Fact checker: Steven Cohen

Copy editor: Jacob Z. Gross

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everettwilkinson · 7 years ago

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POLITICO Playbook: CONYERS, Dean of the House, accused of sexual harassment

Good Tuesday morning. BIG LATE-BREAKING SCOOP: BUZZFEED NEWS: “She Said That A Powerful Congressman Harassed Her. Here’s Why You Didn’t Hear Her Story: ‘When you make private settlements, it doesn’t warn the next woman or the next person going into that situation,’” by Paul McLeod and Lissandra Villa: “Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not ‘succumb to [his] sexual advances.’

“Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sexual favors, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic. …

Story Continued Below

“Two staffers alleged in their signed affidavits that Conyers used congressional resources to fly in women they believed he was having affairs with. Another said she was tasked with driving women to and from Conyers’ apartment and hotel rooms. …

“The documents were first provided to BuzzFeed News by Mike Cernovich, the men’s rights figure turned pro-Trump media activist who propagated a number of false conspiracy theories including the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy. Cernovich said he gave the documents to BuzzFeed News for vetting and further reporting, and because he said if he published them himself, Democrats and congressional leaders would ‘try to discredit the story by attacking the messenger.’” http://bzfd.it/2znPCNa

— TRUTH BOMB: Many outlets in town are working on stories about sexual harassment by members of Congress on the Hill.

**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/2lQswbh

CHARLIE ROSE — “Eight women say Charlie Rose sexually harassed them — with nudity, groping and lewd calls,” by Irin Carmon and Amy Brittain in WaPo: “Eight women have told The Washington Post that longtime television host Charlie Rose made unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas. The women were employees or aspired to work for Rose at the ‘Charlie Rose’ show from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011. They ranged in age from 21 to 37 at the time of the alleged encounters.” http://wapo.st/2hPSFpY

— PBS and BLOOMBERG have suspended Rose’s show, and CBS has suspended Rose.

— “Don’t believe Roy Moore’s accusers? Then listen to Moore,” by Kyle Whitmire in AL.com: “First, read his book. In it, Moore describes how he met his wife at a Christmas party hosted by friends. He would have been 37. She was 23. ‘Many years before, I had attended a dance recital at Gadsden State Junior College,’ Moore wrote. ‘I remembered one of the special dances performed by a young woman whose first and last names began with the letter ‘K.’ It was something I had never forgotten. Could that young woman have been Kayla Kisor?’ Moore later determined that it was. … When Roy Moore first took notice of Kayla she would have been as young as 15.” http://bit.ly/2hPThM0

— “Liberals turn on Franken,” by Elana Schor and Seung Min Kim: “‘We believe Lindsay Menz. We believe Leeann Tweeden,’ tweeted Indivisible, the progressive advocacy group that’s gained prominence challenging President Donald Trump this year. ‘Senator @alfranken should be held accountable and he should resign.’ Democratic senators, who quickly coalesced around calls for an ethics probe, stayed mostly silent on Monday. Aides to numerous Senate Democrats in leadership, as well as female Democratic senators, did not respond to requests for comment on CNN’s story about Franken’s latest accuser.” http://politi.co/2AiX1xd

— @MeetThePress: “.@RepDianaDeGette tells @KatyTurNBC she was harassed in an elevator by former Rep. Bob Filner #mtpdaily”. 1-min. video http://bit.ly/2z7qMwQ

— “As sexual harassment in politics investigations widen, California Assemblyman accused by six new women,” by LATimes’ Melanie Mason and Dakota Smith: “Late one August night in 2010 at a bar, Sylvia Castillo slid into a booth next to Raul Bocanegra, who was then the chief of staff to California Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes. Bocanegra was a familiar face to Castillo, who worked as a coordinator for a student mentorship program in Sacramento. She asked if he had seen a friend she was looking for and made small talk. Suddenly, ‘he pounced,’ she said. ‘He grabbed me with one hand, grabbed my head and shoved his tongue into my mouth,’ Castillo said in an interview this month. ‘With his other hand, he put it up my dress. I put my hand down to stop him from trying to grab at my crotch.’

“Just one year earlier, Bocanegra had been disciplined by the Legislature following allegations that he groped a fellow legislative staffer, Elise Flynn Gyore, at the same bar, Mix. … Castillo is one of six women who told The Times they also faced unwanted sexual advances or unwelcome communication from Bocanegra, 46, now a Democratic assemblyman representing the northeast San Fernando Valley.” http://lat.ms/2jb183r

— PBS: “Poll: A third of women say they’ve been sexually harassed or abused at work” http://to.pbs.org/2hFOkBP

CANCEL YOUR DECEMBER VACATIONS … — RACHAEL BADE and HEATHER CAYGLE: “Concern is growing in both parties that a clash over the fate of Dreamers will trigger a government shutdown this December. House conservatives have warned Speaker Paul Ryan against lumping a fix for undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors into a year-end spending deal. They want him to keep the two issues separate and delay immigration negotiations into 2018 to increase their leverage — which both Ryan and the White House consider reasonable.

“But many liberal Democrats have already vowed to withhold votes from the spending bill should it not address Dreamers, putting Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in an awkward spot if they don’t go along.” http://politi.co/2jaZtLf

SCOOP — “Harvard Faces DOJ Probe Over Affirmative-Action Policies,” by WSJ’s Melissa Korn and Nicole Hong: “The Justice Department is investigating complaints that formed the basis of a federal civil lawsuit filed in 2014 in Boston … That suit alleges Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asian-Americans by limiting the number of Asian students who are admitted. … The letter also said the school had failed to comply with a Nov. 2 deadline to provide documents related to the university’s admissions policies and practices. [DOJ] told Harvard it ‘may file a lawsuit’ to enforce compliance if Harvard doesn’t hand over the documents by a new deadline of Dec. 1.” http://on.wsj.com/2AhaSEc … The DOJ letter http://politi.co/2B90pYG

BULLETINS — at 1:13 a.m.: “MOSCOW (AP) – Russian State TV: Vladimir Putin met Syrian President Bashar Assad in Sochi on Monday.” … at 4:39 a.m.: “MOSCOW (AP) – Kremlin says Assad’s visit to ensure he agrees to peace initiatives reached between Russia, Iran and Turkey.”

****** A message from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation: As Washington debates tax reform, there’s talk of tax cuts that will give trillions of dollars back to American taxpayers. That sounds great. But if these tax cuts aren’t paid for, future generations will be stuck with the bill. Congress, tax reform should grow the economy. Not the debt. www.pgpf.org/tax-reform. ******

HEADLINE OF THE DAY — NYT: “A Road Meant to Ease Traffic Will Be Named After Christie” (print headline: “Christie Breaks Ground on a New Road and Reflects on Ones Already Taken”). http://nyti.ms/2z6qxlD

USA TODAY — “Trump administration to send Haiti earthquake victims home in 2019,” by Aamer Madhani: “The Trump administration announced Monday it will end immigration protections for about 59,000 Haitians living in the United States in May 2019, concluding that conditions on the ground in the poverty-stricken Caribbean country have improved enough since a massive earthquake in 2010 for residents to return.

“The Obama administration first granted ‘temporary protected status’ to Haitians after the nation was ravaged by a magnitude-7.0 earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. The protections have allowed Haitians to legally remain in the U.S. and have been extended each year as Haiti struggles to recover.” https://usat.ly/2jHt4zT

TRUMP FOUNDATION NEWS — KEN VOGEL: “The Donald J. Trump Foundation raised $2.9 million in 2016 — almost as much as it had raised in the preceding four years combined — according to its annual tax filing for 2016. It also showed that the foundation donated $3 million last year, more than it had given in the previous three years combined.

“Most of the money came from a pair of $1 million donations from leading supporters of his presidential campaign — the Las Vegas gambling investor Phil Ruffin and Laura Perlmutter of Lake Worth, Fla., whose husband, Isaac Perlmutter, is the chairman of Marvel Entertainment. They donated in connection with an event that Mr. Trump staged to benefit military veterans, which set off scrutiny of his foundation for giving away only a fraction of the money it raised to charities, and for making payments in a manner that appeared to benefit Mr. Trump.” http://nyti.ms/2z6Ydj8

ALEX ISENSTADT SCOOP — “Vice President Mike Pence is putting his imprint on the 2018 midterm elections, doling out contributions to three dozen Republican candidates — many of whom have been steadfast allies of the White House.

“Pence is cutting his first batch of checks through his newly-formed political action committee, Great America Committee. The vice president is giving financial support to a slate of high-profile candidates that includes Missouri Senate hopeful Josh Hawley, Nevada gubernatorial contender Adam Laxalt, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who is eyeing a potential Senate bid. …

“Looking to reward those who have been loyal to the administration, Pence is wading into several prospective primaries. Among those getting checks is Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Senate hopeful who is facing a fight for the Republican nomination, and Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso. Several potential Barrasso primary opponents have emerged, including investor Foster Friess and Blackwater founder Erik Prince. … Pence is also filling the coffers of a half-dozen members of the House Freedom Caucus, including the group’s chairman, North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows.” http://politi.co/2z71grv

POLITICO EU’S JANOSCH DELCKER in BERLIN: “Germany moves closer to snap election: Merkel says she favors new poll over minority government after running out of coalition options”: “Europe’s biggest economy and pre-eminent political power was plunged into deep political uncertainty late Sunday night after the collapse of exploratory talks involving Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, plus the liberal Free Democrats and the Greens.

“That left the Social Democrats (SPD) as the only viable junior partners who could give Merkel a parliamentary majority. But SPD leaders voted unanimously Monday not to reprise the ‘grand coalition’ of the last four years with Merkel’s conservatives, having recorded the worst result in their history in September’s general election.” http://politi.co/2hI5pek

TRUMP’S TUESDAY — At 1 p.m., the PRESIDENT will pardon turkeys at the White House. At 3 p.m., the president and first lady depart for Andrews Air Force Base en route to Florida for Thanksgiving.

THE FIRST SON — “Taller than mom! Barron Trump towers over Melania – aged just ELEVEN – as the pair greet the official White House Christmas tree” – The Daily Mail — 14 pix on one page http://dailym.ai/2AZExOr

MEDIAWATCH — “Trump administration sues to block AT&T-Time Warner merger,” by Steven Overly and Josh Gerstein: “The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Monday to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, amid a growing political storm over whether the administration has tried to use its review of the $85 billion deal to force the sale of CNN, a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s media criticism. A DOJ official told reporters Monday that the agency is concerned the combined company will charge competitors hefty fees to distribute Time Warner content, providing an unfair advantage to AT&T-owned DirecTV. Such an arrangement would have a negative impact on American TV viewers … ‘We believe, and our investigation has found, the merger would harm competition, resulting in higher bills and less innovation for millions of American consumers,’ the official said, adding that the agency made a ‘good faith effort’ to resolve the conflict through negotiations.

“The official denied that ownership of CNN was a factor in the DOJ’s thinking and said the Trump White House had no influence over the decision to challenge the merger in court. No state attorneys general have signed onto the DOJ legal complaint, though the department remains ‘hopeful’ that will change, the official said.” http://politi.co/2zTCkr4

–“FCC plans total repeal of net neutrality rules,” by Margaret Harding McGill: “[FCC] Chairman Ajit Pai will reveal plans to his fellow commissioners on Tuesday to fully dismantle the agency’s Obama-era net neutrality regulations, people familiar with the plans said, in a major victory for the telecom industry in the long-running policy debate. The commission will vote on the proposal in December, some seven months after it laid the groundwork for scuttling the rules that require internet service providers like Comcast or AT&T to treat web traffic equally. President Donald Trump-appointed Pai’s plan would jettison rules that prohibit internet service providers from blocking or slowing web traffic or creating so-called paid internet fast lanes.” http://politi.co/2jI9mnN

CABINET TRAVEL WATCH — “‘UGH!’: Zinke’s wife’s travel caused headaches for Interior staff,” by Ben Lefebvre: “Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s wife has frustrated department staffers by saddling them with extra work when she traveled with her husband on official business, according to new records that a liberal watchdog group says uncover the potential misuse of government resources. The records document Lola Zinke’s last-minute requests to join high-level dinners and additions to the guest list for a conservative group’s event near the couple’s home in Southern California earlier this year.

“The Western Values Project filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last month to force Interior to release more than 100 pages of documents related to Lola Zinke’s trips with her husband and interactions with Interior staff. Shared first with POLITICO, the documents shed new light on the outsize profile Lola Zinke has established compared with the typical Cabinet secretary’s spouse, including her dictating which people to invite to a town hall hosted by the conservative Young America’s Foundation for her husband.” http://politi.co/2B8CF70

HAPPENING TONIGHT — Dead and Company at the Capitol One Center.

LATE-NIGHT BEST – SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.) on Colbert – Trump’s tax plan — 10-min. video http://bit.ly/2AYcRcS … Sexual harassment on the Hill — 3-min. video http://bit.ly/2hIJWC6

PHOTO DU JOUR: Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Bocharov Ruchei residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia on Nov. 20. Putin met with Assad ahead of a summit between Russia, Turkey and Iran and a new round of Syria peace talks in Geneva, according to state media. | Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION — “Leading Trump Census pick causes alarm,” by Danny Vinik and Andrew Restuccia: “The Trump administration is leaning toward naming Thomas Brunell, a Texas professor with no government experience, to the top operational job at the U.S. Census Bureau, according to two people who have been briefed on the Bureau’s plans. Brunell, a political science professor, has testified more than half a dozen times on behalf of Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts, and is the author of a 2008 book titled ‘Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.’ The choice would mark the administration’s first major effort to shape the 2020 Census, the nationwide count that determines which states lose and gain electoral votes and seats in the House of Representatives.” http://politi.co/2jMnrRb

THE MOOCH! — “Here’s the early proposal for Anthony Scaramucci’s book, which is now dead in the water,” by Business Insider’s Maxwell Tani: “In the months after getting ousted from the White House, Scaramucci sought a publisher to put out a book, which at one point was titled ‘I Did It My Way,’ about his 10 days as Trump’s communications director. A proposal for the book that was circulated to several major publishers earlier this summer and shared with Business Insider promised a ‘tell-all’ to dish on his bizarre ouster from the White House as well as his ‘countless other interactions involving Sean Spicer, General McMaster, Sarah Huckabee and even the Vice President.’ … But in a text message to Business Insider on Monday, Scaramucci … said he was no longer interested in publishing a book, saying he was not willing to write the kind of tell-all that would create buzz but damage his standing with the president and the White House.” http://read.bi/2hGPw7Z

****** A message from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation: Washington is debating tax reform. There’s talk of substantial tax cuts that will give trillions of dollars back to American taxpayers. That sounds great. But if these tax cuts aren’t paid for, future generations will be stuck with the bill. Congress is right to pursue tax reform – the code is outdated, complex and unfair. Tax reform done right should be permanent, because businesses and individuals need certainty to plan and invest. It should be based on realistic, independent projections and assumptions about the effect on our economy and our fiscal outlook. And it should enjoy bipartisan support, so that it’s durable over time. Lawmakers should use the valuable opportunity presented by tax reform both to improve our fiscal outlook and strengthen the economy at the same time. Congress, tax reform should grow the economy. Not the debt. Learn more at www.pgpf.org/tax-reform. ******

CONFUSION — “Watchdog says Homeland Security bottling up travel ban report,” by Josh Gerstein, Ted Hesson and Seung Min Kim: “The Department of Homeland Security’s official watchdog is accusing his own agency of slow-walking the public release of a report about confusion that ensued earlier this year after President Donald Trump issued his first travel ban executive order. The still-unreleased inspector general report found that senior managers at Customs and Border Protection were ‘caught by surprise’ by Trump’s order and that agency officials ‘violated two court orders’ limiting implementation of Trump’s directive to suspend travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries … The report’s conclusions appear to be sharply in tension with the picture the White House tried to paint of the execution of Trump’s Jan. 27 order, which led to confusion throughout the air travel system, protests at airports and delays at ports of entry to the U.S.” http://politi.co/2hQdq4T

FOX NEWS HOST WATCH — “Neil Cavuto Shreds Trump: ‘You’re The President… Why Don’t You Act Like It?,’” by HuffPost’s Ed Mazza: “The Fox News host says Trump’s Twitter attacks are like ‘using a bazooka to respond to a pea shooter.’” http://bit.ly/2hH8rj5

–“Fox News host Jeanine Pirro hit with speeding charges after cops clock her driving 119 mph upstate” – N.Y. Daily News: http://nydn.us/2jJuAkU

SPOTTED at a Clinton 25th election anniversary after-party at Kaki Hockersmith’s home in Little Rock this weekend: Donna and Mack McLarty, Nelson Cunningham, Harry Thomasson, Don and Nancy Baer, Elizabeth Bagley, Kris Balderston, Bob Barnett, Paul Begala, Jim and Janet Blanchard, Susan Brophy, Andrew and Kelly Friendly, Maria Echaveste, Tamera Luzzatto and David Leiter, Skip Rutherford, Craig Smith, James Lee Witt.

–SPOTTED at the Clinton Foundation VIP reception at the historic Choctaw building next to the library: Prince Turki al-Faisal, Chris Jennings, Mack and Donna McLarty, Bob Nash and Janis Kearney, Rodney Slater, Blanche Lincoln, Gen. Wesley Clark, Ami Desai, James Carville, Bruce Lindsey, Tina Flournoy, Stephanie Street, Mary Street and Clyde Tuggle, Donna Shalala.

WEEKEND WEDDING – OBAMA ALUMNI: REID CHERLIN, the supervising writer at “Vice News Tonight on HBO,” and an Obama WH alum, on Sunday married Annie Schachar, associate director and senior attorney adviser at Treatment Court Programs and a native of Toronto. Pool report: “They got married at The Basilica, a super cool repurposed old factory (they made railroad car wheels there) in Hudson, NY. The groom came off [the injured list] (injured his arm in a bike accident a few days prior), and he rallied strongly for an epic hora. Great dance floor showing by Annie’s U Toronto Dance Teammates.” Pics http://bit.ly/2z8vFFM … http://bit.ly/2hS3zv3 … http://bit.ly/2zZorW0

SPOTTED: Emily Loeb and Sarah Feldman, Katie Johnson and Nate Rawlings, Matt Bennett, Adam Frankel and Stephanie Psaki, Michael O’Neil and Stephanie Sutton, Katherine Lyons and David Hahn.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Ed Meagher, weekend programming manager at CNN, and Mara Meagher welcomed James Vincent Meagher. “His mother Mara is doing great and his brothers seem ok with sharing their room with the new guy down the road.” Pics http://politi.co/2hI7qYa … http://politi.co/2hQ0njC

–Ryan Taylor, communications director for Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Bevin Taylor, Washington representative for the Tennessee Valley Authority, email friends and family: “Bevin and I are happy to announce the birth of our son, James Richard Taylor. At 21.5 inches and 8lbs, he is sure to make an excellent first baseman someday.”

BIRTHDAYS OF THE DAY: James Braid, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.); Braid recently made the law and policy section of the Forbes “30 Under 30” list. A trend he thinks deserve more attention: “The fundamentally broken process and misaligned incentives of the U.S. defense acquisition system. From the Littoral Combat Ship to the Army combat data system, our country is spending far too much money on weapons systems that are unlikely to provide value for money. It will be our servicemen and women who bear the brunt of the failures of Congress and at the Pentagon if our country does find itself in a war where our enemies have a more symmetrical military capability to our own.” Read his Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2B9BsfV

–Capri Cafaro, former Ohio Senate Democratic leader and executive in residence at AU’s School of Public Affairs. How she’s celebrating: “In London with family and friends. My sister organized a dinner at The Roof Gardens, one of Richard Branson’s properties.” Q&A: http://politi.co/2AZG47v

BIRTHDAYS: Bloomberg’s Max Abelson is 33 … Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is 73 … Tina Brown … Christopher “Gindy” Gindlesperger, VP of public affairs and comms at the National Confectioners Association … The Hill’s Mallory Shelbourne … Politico Europe’s Kalina Oroschakoff … Matt Kehres of the National Wildlife Federation … RGA’s John Burke, a Rubio alum (hat tip: Olivia Perez-Cubas) … DNC’s Colby Moore is 25 … ABC News’ political director Rick Klein (h/ts Jonathan Karl and Devin Dwyer) … Anthony Randazzo, director of economic research at Reason Foundation … Joanna Liberman Turner … NYU’s Mitchell Moss (h/t Tammy Haddad) … Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) is 66 … Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) is 56 … Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) is 53 … Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) is 47 … former Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.), now in prison, is 61 … Gurwin Singh Ahuja, co-founder and executive director of National Sikh Campaign and We Are Sikhs (h/t Ryan Williams) … Patrice Franko, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College (h/t Sandy Maisel) …

… T.J. Tatum, senior associate at Finsbury and a Scalise alum … Valerie Berlin of BerlinRosen … Gabriel Panek … Chelsea Hawker … Jasmine Mora … Lauren Cowin, former Fox News booking producer … Lloyd Miller … Dave Boomer is 61 … Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, is 46 … George Zimmer … Nathan Isbell is 55 … Carl S. Ey is 51 … Jack Vaughn … Michael Donohue … Sarah Courtney of the League of Women Voters … Shawna Shepherd … Matt Martinelli, managing editor of Boston publication The Improper, is 35 … Michael Lipson … David Culver … Evan Allen, analyst at Potomac River Partners … Kyle Nevins … Betsy Dudley … John Stocks, executive director of the NEA and the pride of New Orleans … Susan Wicks … Brian Spahn … Diane Liepa (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)

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lodelss · 5 years ago

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When American Media Was (Briefly) Diverse

Danielle A. Jackson | Longreads | September 2019 | 16 minutes (4,184 words)

Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

* * *

‘There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest].’

* * *

Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all.

* * *

Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

* * *

Danielle A. Jackson is a contributing editor at Longreads.

Editor: Sari Botton

Fact checker: Steven Cohen

Copy editor: Jacob Z. Gross

from Blogger https://ift.tt/32qwQi7 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

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