Idea Lab

Meet Danielle Belton, the Woman Behind the Black Snob

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

From pop culture and politics to the personal, Danielle Belton's The Black Snob covers a lot of ground. During a recent week, Belton weighed in on everything from Mormons comparing themselves to Southern blacks during the civil rights movement, to the Michelle Obama Action figures. She didn't think much of either. Writing with a distinct voice that allows her personality to shine through, Belton rarely leaves the readers wondering what she's really thinking. "Big Sis sent me this story Friday and my head almost exploded from the sheer ignorance of it," she wrote about on the Louisiana judge who refused...

• October 17, 2009
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Reflections on a Facebook Birthday

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

This year for my birthday I got three calls. Two people sent cards. And I don't think I ever received so much attention in my life. I have to say, it was fabulous turning 51 years old on Facebook. The well wishes started pouring in on the night before my birthday and they kept coming the day after, too. Friends from junior high, high school, college, past jobs, former neighbors, fellow travelers all weighed in on my Facebook wall. According to a January study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, adults between 45 and 54 make up 19...

• June 29, 2009
• 3 comments

Cell Phone Video Makes the Difference in Oscar Grant case

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

In the end, it may be the cell phone that makes the difference in Oscar Grant's death. Without it, it's likely that 22-year old father would have been just another anonymous black man who ended up dead after a run in with law enforcement. Instead, as Grant lay face down on the platform of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station, a handful of passengers pulled out their cell phones and hit record, capturing the moment that a BART officer shot him in the back, killing him. The graphic footage made its way around the world, sparking outrage. Two weeks later,...

• June 5, 2009
• 11 comments

As Newspapers Implode, Diverse Voices Move Online

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

In a few weeks the American Society of Newspaper Editors will release its annual census. The census, created to capture an accurate picture of the industry's diversity, will also tell us how many jobs were lost in this year of layoffs, buy-outs and shuttered newspapers. As newspaper companies struggle with advertisers and audiences continuing to migrate to the web, the horrifying and at times mind-numbing rate at which the industry appeared to be imploding has take the question of diversity virtually off the table. As one newspaper CEO said to me a while back, "Diversity isn't only off the front-burner,...

• April 1, 2009
• 4 comments

When is a Riot a Riot?

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

By now almost everyone knows that a group of demonstrators protesting against the killing of a young father by a transit officer splintered off and began a wave of destruction in downtown Oakland. Mainstream media outlets called it everything from a riot to a violent protest. Some bloggers referred to it as a civil unrest, rebellion or both a riot and civil unrest. Like is true with many issues, our perception of what happened is often shaped by our fault lines of race, class, gender, generation and geography. Perhaps because I live in Oakland and spent some years in Detroit,...

• January 12, 2009
• 10 comments

Ta-Nehisi Coates, from Politics to Poetry

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Go to Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog and you don't know if you're going to find a post on politics, poetry, the NFL or the world of videogames. A journalist who has worked at Time Magazine and the Village Voice, Coates started his own blog after being laid off from Time Magazine. Then, back in August, the author of the recently released "The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood," was added to the magazine's roster of bloggers at the Atlantic.com. There he continues to interweave culture and politics in posts that ruminate on topics ranging from...

• December 8, 2008
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Bloggers Demonstrate the Difference Diversity Makes

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Two days after the election both UNITY and the National Association of Black Journalists sent out open letters urging the media to redouble their efforts to diversify staffs in the aftermath of the historic election of Barack Obama. At the same time, others privately wondered if there are some people who would argue that the election of the first African-American president signaled the country has moved past the need to be concerned about racial equity. It is true that some television networks put on air more African-American commentators during the campaign. Those additional voices, however, were not numerous enough to...

• November 13, 2008
• 1 comment

Meet the Editor Behind Sterohyped

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

A little more than a year ago, when Jossip Initiatives launched Stereohyped, it tapped former print journalists Lauren Williams to be the editor for the "black interest" site, which boasts the tag line "Once you blog black, you never go back." Written with attitude, humor and at times a sense of horror at the mess we humans can make, the site provides one stop shopping for those who enjoy everything from Beyonce to Barack, from the serious to the celebrity. On any given day, Williams will post an item and links on subjects ranging from an historical overview of the...

• August 20, 2008
• 2 comments

How Different Media View Racial Controversies

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

No matter the medium, the subjects were the same. Jesse Jackson made some rather unwise remarks about Barack Obama and the New Yorker published a satirical depiction of the Obamas that many thought missed the mark. The difference came when you looked at how those stories were covered on the web compared to the "traditional mainstream" media. In the end, that was perhaps the most interesting aspect of the controversies because it was illustrative of the pros and cons of both forms of media. While some in the "mainstream" media struggled with how to characterize Jesse Jackson's off-camera and ill-advised...

• July 21, 2008
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Glimpsing the Worlds of Neighbors Online

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Over at TheRoot.com, Kim McLarin points out the ridiculousness behind the rumor that floating "out there" exists a tape of Michelle Obama using the term "whitey." McLarin does not base her argument on the fact that a Princeton and Harvard University graduate, married to a man with the political savvy to come from behind to be the presumptive Democratic nominee, is not likely to be guilty of such a political misstep. Nor does she argue that someone who has spent decades of her life navigating the racial fault lines is not likely to step on a cultural landmine by spewing...

• July 1, 2008
• 1 comment

Election Day Could Be Our Own Pangia Day

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

When the filmmaker Jehane Noujaim won the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED), her wish was to create one day where people across the world gathered at the same time to watch films produced by international filmmakers. Best known for her film Control Room(film), Noujaim believed the power of the films could help the audience see beyond our differences to the humanity that binds us together. Or, as the tag line declared, "4 hours. 24 films. A new way to see the world." Pangia Day, as it came to be called, took place on May 10th at 18:GMT, 11 am PDT, at...

• June 10, 2008
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Sean Bell Illustrates Lines that Divide Us

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Blaring red headlines on the Drudge Report announced to the world that the three New York City Police who shot Sean Bell 50 times, killing him, were found not guilty. Drudge, with his right wing reputation, it turns out was one of the only mainstream white blogs to prominently play the Bell verdict. In fairness, the Huffington Post did have a small headline about the verdict. Things were different in the black blogosphere. It wasn't just that the black interest sites carried the coverage, it was also that many included rich texture and context in which to look at the...

• May 12, 2008
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Our Hidden Biases Reflected in Our Work

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

In a recent post Lauren Williams editor of the black interest blog Stereohyped, wrote about the case of a black man accused of killing a white police officer in New Hampshire. In defense of the accused, Mahzarin Banaji, the creator of Implicit Association Test, a web-based test that measures an individual's inherent biases, testified that it would be virtually impossible for a black defendant to get a fair trail by an all white jury. The movie Race to Execution makes a similar argument, noting that once the jury composition tips in favor of white men, the chances it will deliver...

• April 19, 2008
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Early Adapters Don't Conform to Conventional Use

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

At a recent meeting, a representative from Verizon and a former BET executive were discussing the seeming contradiction between the fact that African American males were early adapters of mobile technology, yet have a very low rate of posting videos on internet sites such as BET.Com and Youtube. BET tested the waters with two experiments. One involved fashion/entertainment and the other involved politics. Neither resulted in a flurry of posts, such as the ones MTV receives when it puts out a call for videos. What makes this interesting is that by all accounts African American males are not only early...

• April 8, 2008
• 1 comment

Computation + Journalism Confab: Exciting, Disappointing and Confusing

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Last week's Symposium on Computation & Journalism left me excited, disappointed and confused. It was hard not to be excited listening to all the technologists talking about the latest advances that will allow us to get news to once isolated people in Africa and India using mobile phones and other technology. Once again, it was driven home that no longer is the price of a computer a barrier to digital participation. The ubiquitous cell phone, as common in my neighborhood as the bikes people use for transportation, is now allowing us to get news to people all over the world....

• February 25, 2008
• 1 comment

Bursting the Social Bubble and Getting Outside Your Sphere

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Once again, the issue of social networks versus social bubbles has been on my mind since I attended the Online Newspaper Association. While I was there, several people either asked me directly or raised the issue of diversity in online social networks during panel discussions. I think what they were really talking about is how to burst their social bubble and actually create a social network. A network, particularly on the hyperlinked web, suggests to me a vast series of connections that naturally lead you away from your comfort zone and into the home of those you might never encounter...

• November 7, 2007
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Social Networks or Social Bubbles?

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

First, the Jena 6 story lived on the Internet. Bloggers, many of them black, members of list serves such as the National Association of Black Journalists and members of social networks like Facebook, used the Internet to spread the story before it took off with mainstream news organizations like CNN, The Washington Post, and NPR. The fact that the "afro-sphere" has largely received credit for driving this story is important to keep in mind when we think about what is going on in cyberspace. At a time when "the digital divide" is still code for "people-of-color-don't-have-access-or-know- how-to-use-the-Internet," Jena 6 reminds...

• October 15, 2007
• 1 comment