MEET THE PUBLISHER

In 2023, I published an essay titled The September Media Pivot, an analysis of the 2022 September issues of mainstream magazines - long considered the industry’s cultural barometer. Nearly 90% of those covers featured people of color. Having tracked September issues since college, I recognized this not as progress, but as strategy: white-owned legacy media making a sharp about-face, scrambling to court Black audiences in response to demographic shifts they were unprepared for. That essay remains the highest-ranked page on this site, with readers spending an average of 33 minutes engaging with it  - confirmation that cultural literacy, not proximity to power, is what audiences are actually seeking.

That context matters now. The current wave of “Best of” lists, trend pieces, and late-arriving cultural coverage reflects a familiar pattern: reactionary media attempting to reinsert themselves into conversations they failed to nurture. Major white-owned outlets, facing declining trust and shifting consumption habits, are now racing to position themselves as authorities on Black culture - often by placing work inspired by independent Black journalists behind paywalls. As Variety recently noted, audiences are searching for “trusted guides” in culture. Some institutions, having abdicated that role for decades, are now trying to retrofit credibility.

Black-owned media operates from a different mandate - but with similar outcomes. Publications newly entering the art space, after years of ignoring landmark moments in African American art history, now gesture toward relevance without making the editorial investment required to truly understand the field. When a magazine that promotes itself as the definitive ‘voice for Black women,’ but had no editorial coverage of 1.) the historic 2018 unveiling of Amy Sherald’s portrait of First Lady, Michelle Obama, or 2.) Simone Leigh’s historic 2022 selection as the first Black woman to represent the U.S. in the Venice Biennale…it has missed the moment! When you miss - then suddenly try to position yourself as an arts authority…the gaps show.

Art coverage is not interchangeable with entertainment, sports, and makeup - it requires context, continuity and care. Without those, or journalistic integrity....one must resort to sourcing story ideas and copying & pasting, from the very demographic that it claims to support. So the work that appears here first - original reporting, curatorial insight, and deep historical context – is later pasted and repackaged into a mislabeled roundup. 

Neither model - whether driven by legacy panic or belated participation - can substitute for sustained engagement. Cultural literacy cannot be reverse-engineered. It is built through years of looking, listening and being present. This platform exists because my audience comes here for vision, insight, authorship, and a point of view shaped by years of sustained engagement with African American art and cultural history. The others are arriving to a conversation that has already been underway. 

In 2006, I launched The Conscious Voice — the first multicultural art & culture magazine in the Midwest — along with a companion radio show and podcast. As the publishing imprint of my PR & creative agency, Conscience Media Productions, Inc., I served upward of 60 clients over 8 years. The Office of Mayor Michael B. Coleman of Columbus, OH, honored me with an "Excellence in Business" Award.

Before I became an entrepreneur, I was a newspaper reporter and photographer at Ohio's oldest weekly Black newspaper, the Call & Post. Hired as the Franklin County Reporter, I was promoted to Showtime Arts & Entertainment Editor. Then at the age of 28, I was chosen as the new Interim Managing Editor. Highlights include covering the Bush-Gore election, attending the Beverly Hills press junket for the movie "Baby Boy" and covering Tina Turner's Farewell Tour. It was an interview with Walter Mosley - the award-winning mystery writer of "Devil in the Blue Dress," that got me hired. (top right) It has an interesting backstory.

Once I found out I could cover arts & entertainment...and collect a check...I never wrote another hard news story again. I was officially an Arts Journalist! It would prove to be challenging as an entrepreneur...but I'm still here!