Tag Archives: New York Times

Meet The Root’s Media & Culture Critic, Natalie Hopkinson on The Greenlight Project!

The Greenlight Project is back from our little vacation!! On this show, Friday, July 23, 2010 we will be talking to The Root’s own, Natalie Hopkinson.  Natalie holds the title of the Media and Culture Critic there and is also a member of the adjunct journalism faculty at the Prestigious Georgetown University and co-author of Deconstructing Tyrone (Cleis Press, 2006).

Graduating from one of the top HBCUs’, Howard University, as a Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Political Science and also earning a master’s and doctoral degree from the University of Maryland-College Park’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.  Her late 1990s master’s thesis analyzed the first generation of Web-only general audience journalistic publications, including Salon and Slate.

With striving for greatness she later joined the Washington Post-owned Slate Group as a founding editor of the pioneering web journal of politics and culture, The Root. Her doctoral work showed Jurgen Habermas’ theory of the public sphere at work in Washington, D.C.’s go-go music culture.  (Side bar) My friends from Maryland LOVE “go-go” music!!!!   The work of this young lady has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, New York Times.com, NPR, WJLA and the BBC.

Not only has Mrs. Natalie Hopkinson mastered her career, but she is also a loving mother of two, married and will be attempting her first triathlon in the upcoming year!  Good luck to you Mrs. Natalie Hopkinson.  I would love some tips on the triathlon because I am still trying to make it through a mile!!! J

Tune into The Greenlight Project, Friday, July 23, 2010 to hear from Mrs. Natalie Hopkinson at 11am EST!!!!  Join us online or dial (646) 727-3906.

We also discussed the following in Rochelle’s Diverse Moves in Media:

Desiree Rogers, former white house social secretary talks what was in the white house and what’s next for her

http://clutchmagonline.com/newsgossipinfo/desiree-rogers-talks-white-house-ebony-why-its-wasnt-about-her/

Former White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers interviewed recently with Fox News Chicago.

On whether the American people will ever have a fair view on her accomplishments during her appointment after the White House crashers incident, Rogers set a record for producing 370 events in one year’s time.

Clutch Magazine Founder builds a team and Launches Coco and Creme

http://cocoandcreme.com/2010/07/welcome-to-coco-creme-thank-you/

A sister site to CLUTCH, Coco & Crème is a new and exciting online editorial experience focusing exclusively on urban fashion and beauty. Filling the void for up-to-the-minute style dishes from the street to the red carpet, Coco & Crème offers the fashion obsessed an user-friendly interface with visually stunning layouts, and some of the Web’s dopest styling, and photography!

Coco & Crème promises daily fashion and beauty news, product reviews, designer and model profiles, weekly plus-size features, video how-tos, and more!

The Coco & Crème Team:
Deanna “Dede” J. Sutton
Geneva S. Thomas
Audra E. Lord
Chelsea Smith
Teneille Craig
Nikki J. Duckworth

Living on the Grid: Your Digital Paper Trail

http://www.blackweb20.com/2010/07/20/living-on-the-grid-your-digital-paper-trail/

While technology provides many conveniences, privacy advocates are concerned that individuals are leaving an unprecedented amount of personal information about themselves stored on public and private servers.

Let’s look at a typical day of a person who uses common technologies.  Under each time slot, I note the places her information is stored. 5:50a-8:00p

While most of this information is aggregated and made anonymous by online service providers, there is no guarantee that this information can not be subpoenaed by a court order or a divorce attorney.  While few of us can avoid using credit cards, much of the information we provide is done on a voluntary basis.  Furthermore, as smartphones become more powerful and consolidate our online lives, they become single points of failure for protecting our personal information.  The digital age’s freedom has to be weighed against the cost to our privacy.

Angela Benton to Receive MMTC Award, All Five FCC Commissioners to Attend Conference

http://www.blackweb20.com/2010/07/19/angela-benton-to-receive-mmtc-award-all-five-fcc-commissioners-to-attend-conference/

Black Web Media Founder/CEO Angela Benton will be inducted into the Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC) Hall of Fame, in recognition to her contributions to diversity and inclusion in media.

Black Web Media is the parent company that publishes Black Web 2.0Politic365 and Young Black Professional Guide, among other properties. Benton has built the media brand from the ground up, with Black Web 2.0 as the leading online publication for African-Americans interested in technology and new media. She is also one of Fast Company Magazine’s Most Influential Women in Technology for 2010 and was named as one of Ebony Magazine’s Power 150.

And in Tamika’s ‘Da Scoop’ we dished on:

USDA reconsiders firing of Ga. official over speech on race

You all know about the political fallout started by a republican blogger that caught wind of a taped NAACP rally that Department of Agriculture’s regional director Shirley Sherrod served as a keynote.  Simply sharing her story of how helping a white farmer transformed and ignited her hidden racism, Sherrod was hoping to shed light on race relations by admitting her erroneous thinking and how facing the pain of what put the racisim there in the first place (her father was killed by a white farmer I believe when she was a child), by helping this man save his farm (the white man), she began to see NOT color, but people and that all poor people suffer no matter what color they are.  Well Mr. Conservative took that sound bite and ran with it all the way to Washington and within a matter of minutes of arriving, The NAACP, Roland S. Martin and The White House was beating down Mrs. Sherrod’s door to charge her as guilty and when they couldn’t reach her, they called her and thanks to good ole technology she was asked to PULL OVER on the side of the road and TEXT her resignation!  How ‘bout that! Can you imagine what that was like?  I’m not sure she even understood what was happening fully at the time.  And now the USDA reconsiders her firing with all kinds of public and private apologies and wanna give her a new job, look at that!  Wow, right?

I’m proud of her for immediately accepting interviews from major outlets like Good Morning America, CNN, etc. to get her story out and good for her for taking her time to THINK about what she desires to create for herself next.  This is a story we will continue to watch for sure!

http://www.ajc.com/news/usda-reconsiders-firing-of-574027.html

Vogue Africa, We Hardly Knew Ye

http://www.afrobella.com/2010/07/21/vogue-africa-we-hardly-knew-ye/

This story is courtesy of our sister station Afrobella’s Patrice Yursik on her blog www.afrobella.com. Cameroonian Photographer Mario Epanya had a wonderful idea of bringing Vogue to Africa and he set about creating that reality for himself.  Living in Paris as a beauty photographer and art director, Epanya shot a number of beautiful covers. His goal was to prove that Vogue Africa could be viable, vibrant, and admired. On July 16, Epanya announced on the Vogue Africa Facebook page that Conde Nast turned down the idea. Check out the article and weigh in!

Serena Williams, Big Butts and the Painful Path to Self-Love

http://www.theroot.com/views/defense-big-butts-and-smiles

This just in from The Root and written by TWS Media’s Afrobella host, Patrice Yursik who’s an amazing blogger/writer.  Yursik has a beautiful way of celebrating the differences of what make us women, human.  In this beautifully written article, she dissects Serena’s interview in Haper’s Baazar magazine where Williams talks about having a hard time learning to accept her curves but how finally doing so has empowered her to all possibilities.  A very empowering viewpoint!

Signing off,

Intern Tia Tia

How The Book of Me Inspires The Book of You

I sat at my desk typing this post with much on my mind and not sure of the focus of this post. There are many things have touched my life over the past two weeks. Beginning with the very personal and cathartic testimony of my challenges with weight and body image, to the deaths of public people many of us know about – Dorothy Height, Benjamin Hooks and GURU as well as a close family death of the last of a generation in my family.

Each of these life touches made me think more and more about the story I am crafting for my life. And, I realized that as I blog about whatever part of my life I am focused on at the moment, the most important requirement is that it be authentic me. That can emotionally taxing and difficult to get to sometimes in a world where we’re surrounded by only seeing the surface of things, but, I remind myself and those around me of that intention as often as I can.

As a marketing expert and new media entrepreneur, one of my greatest joys is being immersed in the quality stories that talk about challenges yet find the silver lining and the hope. I get exposure to many in my daily media fix. Others I get in obvious places and not so obvious places. And still, with as many stories as I am exposed, I find there is still room for more stories from perspectives that speak to, look like and reflect me.

I feel honored to be consciously making the choice to tell some stories for the first time or echoing other stories through the work we are doing with The Greenlight Project and other ventures to come from TWS Media. At the same time the story of a company dared to be started by two women (Rochelle Valsaint and Tamika Morrison) with a vision is a story of faith, test, perseverance and determination that is also being told. The details are being unfolded in real time and not always to our liking. Believe me y’all when I tell you, we are not sure what the day, week and/or month holds for us sometimes in our pursuit of entrepreneurship. But, we know what is being told is faith we have in the walk. And we are purposeful in this work daily.

So as we walk toward our dreams, we look to support and inspire the dreams of others by ‘Greenlighting’ some people, places, products, services and things that might not have otherwise gotten ‘the go.’

And we hope our audacity to create this story of legacy will touch many for years to come.