How many black people work for Vice/Noisey/Complex/SPIN/Rolling Stone? (UPDATE :BUZZFEED included)

[Ol’Otis]

I heard ebony and essence just sold to a firm in Houston,TX

 

[Northern Son]

Great thread. Deserves a bump for other young journalists getting blockaded by the industry who may have missed it.

Atleast he's not another white guy but damn breh... we really can't have shyt to ourselves.

Armenian's considered white.

 

[Booker T Garvey]

not sure if anybody saw this episode, but I did. it was the RESPONSE to the Noisey film on Chicago and Drill music...
I can't STAND this host BTW...but the community leaders and citizens of chicago let him have it.
there were some very tense moments - in fact there was a part that showed a group of dudes trying to do positive
NOISEY edited that part out of the initial film, those dudes confronted the host and forced him to put their story in THIS one - he was scared as shyt!


the most disturbing part of this documentary TO ME, was this little white bread, suburban, well-to-do kid saying how much he loved DRILL music.

how is that? seriously? how is it that the most depraved, violent, crazy, and sick music we put out, happens to be their favorite? and why haven't we picked up on this bullshyt yet?

I heard ebony and essence just sold to a firm in Houston,TX

they did.

 

[Hiphoplives4eva]

So Complex is the blackest group on that list?

Man fukk it, THE COLI should start a sports, music, and lifestyle magazine. Forum members can be paid contributors. Site could self supported. Ad revenue could be shared. This needs to happen yesterday!

@cook @Brooklynzson

 

[dre]

FWIW I have a huge article I wrote on this. I interviewed @Sagat and a couple other journalists about it. It's a big article, but no one wants to run it. Pitched a bunch of big outlets and the only feedback I got from one was "not a good fit." I guess that's the whole point. That's what I get.

I'm gonna probably end up just putting it on medium/my personal blog.

 

[Hov]

FWIW I have a huge article I wrote on this. I interviewed @Sagat and a couple other journalists about it. It's a big article, but no one wants to run it. Pitched a bunch of big outlets and the only feedback I got from one was "not a good fit." I guess that's the whole point. That's what I get.

I'm gonna probably end up just putting it on medium/my personal blog.

Can I run your article? Pm me

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

the most disturbing part of this documentary TO ME, was this little white bread, suburban, well-to-do kid saying how much he loved DRILL music.

how is that? seriously? how is it that the most depraved, violent, crazy, and sick music we put out, happens to be their favorite? and why haven't we picked up on this bullshyt yet?



they did.

White folks love heavy metal about killing folks and worshipping the devil too. And they always loved gangsta rap.

And drill music is in no way worst than NWA & The Geto Boys and Gangksta Nip and all that type of shyt that was being put out 25 years ago.

 

[Booker T Garvey]

White folks love heavy metal about killing folks and worshipping the devil too. And they always loved gangsta rap.

And drill music is in no way worst than NWA & The Geto Boys and Gangksta Nip and all that type of shyt that was being put out 25 years ago.

i know you probably felt like you had to say something, but this is arguably the dumbest comment in this discussion.

metal deals with the topic of death quite often, but that's not the same as promoting what's seen as the worst crime one can commit the world over

and yes, drill music is far WORSE than any other form of hip hop that's ever been released. NWA and GETO BOYS have classics that dealt with topics outside of violence ("mind playing tricks", "fukk the police")

go ahead and post up chief keef and lil durks story telling and socially conscious tracks

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

i know you probably felt like you had to say something, but this is arguably the dumbest comment in this discussion.

metal deals with the topic of death quite often, but that's not the same as promoting what's seen as the worst crime one can commit the world over

and yes, drill music is far WORSE than any other form of hip hop that's ever been released. NWA and GETO BOYS have classics that dealt with topics outside of violence ("mind playing tricks", "fukk the police")

go ahead and post up chief keef and lil durks story telling and socially conscious tracks

Have you heard nikkaz4Life? Where's the socially conscious tracks on that?

Look, I agree with you that those dudes aren't "socially conscious", but the harshest tracks that NWA, The Geto Boys, MC Eiht, etc. . . made was just as bad or worst than a lot of drill shyt. They were talking about necrophilia and all kinds of shyt. Listen to Gangksta Nip. That motherfukker was talking about cannibalism and shyt are you kidding me? The fact that every once in a while when Cube was in NWA, they'd do a non-gangsta track, doesn't cancel out all that other shyt.

You can't tell me "To Kill A Hooker" by NWA or "Just Don't Bite It" where MC Ren raps about forcing underage girls to suck your dikk and if they refuse to do it, "punch em in the eye" is any more fukked up than drill music.

 

[dre]

posted it yesterday. got good feedback for the most part.

though one oversight that was pointed out was i didnt mention the increasing amount of poc freelancer writers. shouldve mentioned it...thats still not inhouse staff though.



On The Dearth of Black Hip-Hop Writers At Mainstream Outlets

After Kanye West implored several “white outlets” to refrain from writing about Black music on Twitter in February, 31-year-old Producer/DJ Temisan Adoki was compelled to do some digging. A self-proclaimed “avid” reader of Vice, Complex, and other music outlets for over a decade, he had become disenchanted with the online publications on many fronts.

Via e-mail, Adoki vented that he’s grown sick of uninformed lists like Billboard’s ridiculous top 10 rappers ever. Ditto gawking articles like a February GQ.com feature in which Devin Friedman expressed a mocking astonishment that Young Thug’s first name is Jeff. The Nigerian-Crucian Adoki rued Vice visiting African countries and “doing their best to presen t Africans as uncivilized savages.” A piece in the Columbia Journalism review chided Vice for their “cultural tourism,” and Adoki believes NOISEY — the media behemoth’s urban music wing — and other outlets take the same voyeuristic approach with their Hip-Hop coverage.

“I was seeing way too many of these online publications get away with murder in terms of revisionist history,” Adoki said. His frustrations with outlets that tried to make “Tropical House” a thing compelled him “to look behind the front, and see what is going on behind the scenes.”

The results of his search were jarring, and he shared them on urban lifestyle message board TheColi.com. Of the 193 names he had come across via Pitchfork’s masthead, a Complex “Best Music of 2015” list, and Linkedin profiles, he found just 13 Black writers and editors between Rolling Stone, Complex, Pitchfork, Noisey, SPIN, Fader, and GQ. 4 each at Pitchfork and Complex. 2 each at Noisey and SPIN.1 at GQ and a whopping 0 on staff at Rolling Stone. Adoki admits the scope of his search was limited, but based on the current demographics of the Journalism industry as a whole it’s unlikely that his findings were drastically off.

A 2014 The Prospect article entitled “The Unbearable Whiteness of Liberal Media” tabulated equally troubling results: There were 4 minorities on the editorial staff of 61 at The Atlantic, 2 minorities out of 25 at Salon, and 4 minorities out of 23 at Vox. Also in 2014, Tatsha Robertson, an ex-senior editor of People magazine, sued the publication. She alleged just 5 of People’s 110 employees were Black. Gawker Media’s 2015 diversity report noted their editorial staff as 78% white. Why are these numbers so low, especially in the Hip-Hop industry — a predominantly Black artform?

Perhaps this dearth correlates with the rise of the “hipster” outlet, which has achieved a relatively undeserved ubiquity in Hip-Hop. Both Vice and Complex rode a wave of investments — and ad revenue from click-bait articles — to basically buy their online prominence. In the 2000s, Complex bought out a slew of smaller shoe and skateboard culture sites like 12 Oz Prophet and Sneaker News. While their bottomlines expanded, the racial dynamics of their masthead didn’t.

Meanwhile outlets like the Source, the mic-giving behemoth that reigned as the respected authority on Hip-Hop culture during print magazine’s heyday, can’t afford to pay their predominantly Black staff in 2016. Some Black writers have prospered via Complex and other prominent publications, but for every Ernest Baker there are hundreds more Black music writers who feel squeezed between the sides, resigned to pitching shots in the dark to predominantly white outlets or writing for publications that can’t offer competitive salaries.

When Complex Editor-In-Chief Noah Callahan-Bever was queried on the imbalance by journalist Elliot Wilson on a RapRadar podcast, he didn’t address it. Wilson brought up the “lack of African-American employees” as one of a cluster of criticisms levied against Complex. Bever fixated on readers’ problem with his outlet’s lists, but didn’t broach the topic of Black writers. Wilson didn’t bring it up again for the rest of the hour-long podcast. Perhaps neither Bever or Wilson, as entrenched a hip-hop writer as it gets (who partners with Brian “B.Dot” Miller, another Black journalist), thought it was a big deal. Elsewhere in the podcast, Bever expressed he had a “company first” mindset that trumped individual branding, which may indicate blinders towards the racial makeup at his company.

Preston West, co-Founder of Cypher League, a Brooklyn-based media company suggests the inequality is “part of a larger issue of racial disparity within the workplace, but that disparity is especially ironic when it comes to sites covering pop culture that has been essentially overtaken by hip-hop.”

24-year-old Journalist Ivie Ani adds that, “people forget how much of a stronghold white people have had in the ‘industry’ …especially black music. We already know that a significant amount of major publications — including some black publications — are owned by white people. ”

Indeed, nearly every music outlet mentioned in this piece is owned by a corporation whose hierarchy reflects that of western society’s upper crust — white males. Vice media is in bed with Rupert Murdoch after his 21st Century Fox corporation bought 5% of the company in 2013. Complex was just purchased by Verizon and Hearst communications for an undisclosed — undoubtedly hefty — figure. In 2015, Pitchfork was bought out by Conde Nast. A trickledown effect is inevitable within this power circle.

Pitchfork, who once published a “People’s List” of best indie rock albums that was 88% male (of 27, 981 voters), was acquired by Conde Nast in large part because the corporation saw an opportunity to add “a very passionate audience of Millennial males into our roster, ” as Chief Digital Officer Fred Santarpia gleefully mentioned upon purchase.

Ani referenced Hollywood Diversity Report director Mark Hunt’s recent comments on proximity in Hollywood for perspective on the dynamic. Hunt noted, “people want to surround themselves with collaborators they’re comfortable with, which tends to mean people they’ve networked with — and nine times out of 10, they’ll look similar. It reproduces the same opportunities for the same kind of people: You’re surrounding yourself with a bunch of white men to feel comfortable.”

 

[Supreme HD]

So Complex is the blackest group on that list?

Man fukk it, THE COLI should start a sports, music, and lifestyle magazine. Forum members can be paid contributors. Site could self supported. Ad revenue could be shared. This needs to happen yesterday!

@cook @Brooklynzson

@Brooklynson @cook @KidStranglehold @houston911

What u bruhs think?

 

[Unknown Poster]

FWIW I have a huge article I wrote on this. I interviewed @Sagat and a couple other journalists about it. It's a big article, but no one wants to run it. Pitched a bunch of big outlets and the only feedback I got from one was "not a good fit." I guess that's the whole point. That's what I get.

I'm gonna probably end up just putting it on medium/my personal blog.

Atleast you tried...I kind of felt like that was going to be a response to something of this magntitude. They don't want to run it cause then they would realize they're also complicit in the same actions that lead to this thread being made.

I guess we got the internet, media gave up on us a long time ago.

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

To me, all this smacks of nikkaz begging White folks to let us "in".

fukk these hipster mags. Only support real nikka shyt and keep it moving.

 

[Soundbwoy]

 

[That Singer Guy...]

Im reupping this thread off this picture alone, disgusting.