BIG IDEAS

While I’m talking about the Latino community, I want to turn you on to a great magazine that’s celebrating its one-year anniversary. It’s based in Chicago and called CAFE.

The managing editor, Gina Santana, and I sat on a panel a while ago and struck up a friendship. It’s been enlightening to hear how they are addressing a whole new generation of professional Latinos, most of whom don’t speak Spanish but still embrace their culture in unique and wholly different ways than their parents.

The parallels to the Black community are amazing, but it’ s still a very singular and unique story. I’ve been reading the latest issue closely and been circling every cultural reference that I’m not familiar with. I’m missing all kinds of nuances and I love that I am, because it just goes to prove the need for ethnic media and voices that reflect the culture in the way the culture speaks.

It also makes me wonder how white kids can listen to hip hop and assume they are now experts on Black culture. I admit I’m an idiot when it comes to Latino culture, but I want to know more. We’re going to be working with CAFE to do a series on the “Blacktino” experience. I hope you’ll tune in. In the meantime, check out Gina and crew on their site.

…She goes and takes all that credit back. That there is a contingent in Hollywood defending Roman Polanski for his admitted statutory rape simply because he made some good movies is, frankly, just ridiculous. You’d expect it from the morally bereft, like Woody Allen (laughable) and Salman Rushdie. But now, Whoopi?

Follow this link to JEZEBEL for the clip from the view. Says Whoopi “it wasn’t rape-rape..”

Say What?

This strongly-worded e-mail landed in my mailbox today from an executive at BET, who just resigned. I double checked with the source and checked another. It is, according to all sources, legit. Many people leave a job with a fantasy of such a letter in mind. Few take the opportunity. BET, for its part, certainly deserves the space to counter-attack, and I’ll give it to them should they decide to. But for now, read and either be surprised, affirmed or ambivalent:

To friends, colleagues and those that should know,

As of today (September 8, 2009) I am no longer the Executive Editor of Music at BET.com.

Upon entering the position at BET I said that I needed one year to see what really went on inside the belly of the beast. I needed 365 days to sleep with the enemy and infiltrate the system. One year to see if they REALLY wanted change at BET.

As someone who has been critical of BET for many years, it surprised many that I would leave my post at HipHopDX last year to take a position at BET. But it was an opportunity I absolutely had to take. I could no longer be critical of this company without accepting the opportunity to change it when given. Although I was hired to bring about change, I was systematically shut down. I wasn’t hired to make noise, I was hired to be silenced.

The truth of the matter is that everything that you thought was wrong with BET is true.

Over the past year I’ve seen a lot to reinforce my position that BET is too far gone in the negative to turn into a positive. We have all always thought the worst, but to actually see it in action is another thing in its entirety. The unprofessionalism, the tom foolery, the favors, the misappropriation of resources, the bad ideas that reinforce negative stereotypes, the emasculation of men, the meetings that break down in full fledged cursing battles, the unpaid overtime, the tears from employees scared for their underpaid and overworked positions and ultimately the unwillingness to change are all harsh realities that I’ve witnessed firsthand.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE AFTER THE JUMP

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Yeah, I know this a true story (of Michael Oher of the Baltimore Ravens), but still, can we be done with this narrative already?

More than 100 years after his championship victory, legendary boxer Jack Johnson got to the first step in the posthumous pardon proferred in Congress jointly by boxing fans Rep. Peter King and Sen. John McCain.
From CBS News:

“The resolution approved by Congress says that Johnson should receive a posthumous pardon “for the racially motivated conviction in 1913 that diminished the athletic, cultural, and historic significance of Jack Johnson and unduly tarnished his reputation.” It says a pardon would “expunge a racially motivated abuse of the prosecutorial authority of the federal government from the annals of criminal justice in the United States.”

Oprah

Any fan of Oprah Winfrey who knows how well she got along with Michael, Jackson and the other Jacksons she’s had on the show might be asking themselves in this media frenzy a simple question - Where’s Oprah?

The answer is that she, her entire staff and their families are on a charter cruise ship floating around Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. They’ll be back next week, which means the rest of the media world has exactly four more days to get every angle they can get, because when homegirl gets back, it’s pretty much done for everybody else.

As reported by Richard Prince:

Vibe magazine, the best-known and most respected magazine of the hip-hop generation, is folding immediately after 16 years, Steve Aaron, Vibe Media Group’s chief executive officer, announced on Tuesday.

“It is with a heavy heart that I share some tough news, VMG is closing down effective today, June 30 due to lack of additional financial investments,” Aaron told staffers in a memo.

“Unfortunately, over the last several months, a confluence of events has obviously posed VMG to exceedingly serious challenges.

“The collapse of the capital markets has impacted us greatly. Over the past several months, we have actively pursued investment resources while working intensively with our bank to find a solution. But the deal market right now remains very poor and at the end of the day, the lack of investment resources to restructure the huge debt on our small company has made this outcome become a reality.

“The print advertising collapse hit VIBE hard, especially as key ad categories like automotive and fashion, which represented the bulk of our top 10 advertisers, have stopped advertising or gone out of business. It’s also unfortunate that in a recession many companies reduce the multicultural campaigns. These facts, coupled with the continuing decline of the music industry not to mention the newsstand wholesaler consolidation in early 2009 all negatively impacted our business in a significant way.

“The relentless economic situation has depressed our growth initiatives on the digital front. To be clear, VMG has made significant improvement in this part of our business, but not at the accelerated pace required to offset the devastating effects of the most severe recession in our lifetime and the accompanying print losses.”

Kudos to Blackamericaweb.com for a piece today on two-year old Jada, from Portage, Indiana, a young girl of color who has gone missing but has not benefited from the national outrage that occurs when others turn up gone.

Read the full article HERE