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The New York Times vs. Black Media Mogulettes: When Black Bloggers Visit the White House, We've Arrived

By Gina McCauley on Oct 15th 2010 6:05PM

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President Barack Obama

UPDATE: White House Stands by Bloggers -- From Richard Prince's Journal-isms™
I like to say that In the battle between technology and old media, technology won. Thank goodness! If you ever needed a reason to thank the technological gods for creating the blogging platforms that are slowly dismantling the old media industrial complex, I give you the jealousy and derision that flowed from the fount of a disgruntled New York Times reporter Jeremy W. Peters after he learned that President Barack Obama met with a group of black bloggers on Monday. Mr. Peters managed to miss a massive story about the transformative power of technology in his rush to defame black bloggers and imply they weren't entitled to be at the White House.

This week the White House held an African American Online Summit. I was invited to attend as the founder of the Blogging While Brown Conference, and sent our Programming Chair, Aminah. At the gathering was a wide cross section of some of the most highly trafficked black online platforms including Concrete Loop, The YBF and yes, Media Take Out. The entire list of bloggers in attendance is available on the White House website. Some have complained about their inclusion in White House media outreach, because these black online destinations include posts about gossip and entertainment. Well folks have a short memory because both The YBF and Concrete Loop conducted extensive campaigns encouraging their readers to vote in 2008. During the course of the summit, President Barack Obama made a personal appearance where he said the following about the emerging power of Black independent online outlets:

"It allows us to reach audiences that may not be watching 'Meet the Press' -- not that there's anything wrong with 'Meet the Press.' I'm just saying that, you know, it might be a different demographic," he added, stirring a few laughs from the group." (NY Times)


The NY Times erroneously reported that Angel Laws of Concrete Loop posted an off the record discussion from the meeting, BUT she didn't. It was only after she rallied her followers on Twitter that the New York Times bothered to correct their error. That wasn't before The Drudge Report took the New York Times' lead and ran with a headline that the President was implying that black people don't watch 'Meet the Press,' a narrative carried over to Real Clear Politics and Mediaite. Too bad they were focused on taking a quote out of context in order to weave their myopic narrative that they missed one of the greatest technology stories of our generation: young Black women as emerging media powerhouses.

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Where was the story about Natasha Eubanks of The YBF and Angel Laws of Concrete Loop running media empires before the age of 25? Where was the story about how, in an era in which people lament the digital divide, a small army of young black people are knocking down barriers to entry on the information superhighway for their friends, their families and their audiences? Where was the story about the fact that many of the bloggers at that White House meeting actually OWN their media platforms?Not rent, not share, not work for, but OWN -- and many of them have achieved this before the age of 30 years old. Did I mention that most were young African American women? Where was the story about what happens to black business innovation when the largest barrier to entry, access to capital, is eliminated? The bloggers are living and breathing proof that if given the opportunity and a fair playing field, black people can thrive.

The absence of the story of black innovation in media and the focus on the sensational implication that somehow black bloggers are getting something they are not entitled to is precisely why we as black people have to control our own media platforms. Otherwise some stories will NEVER be told.

Gina McCauley is the CEO of the Blogging While Brown Conferenceand the blogsMichelle Obama Watch and What About Our Daughters. She is currently completing her first book, 'Michelle Obama Watch.'

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