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Okay, maybe this "blogging the convention" thing isn't going to be very exciting.
Hoping to find some more substantive stuff going on during the day tomorrow. Spent most of the afternoon hanging out with a friend I ran into here. Can tell this week is gonna be over before I know it. Can't believe how much coverage a single clip of Teresa Kerry saying "Shut up" is getting. Every TV screen I walk by is playing it. Just shows how little has happened so far, if that's all people can come up with to put on the news.
The only thing that caught my attention (other than the new, big banner graphic that really is NOT an improvement) was this in Afro-Netizen's third entry of the day
This lack of meaningful inclusion adds insult to injury given that of the 15,000 credential journalists here, only a smattering of Blackfolk are among them. A new friend and colleague, Walter Fields of The North Star Network said that at the media walk-thru here 3 weeks ago, of the few thousand press folk who attended, he literally saw only a handful of Blackfolk present.
Now, don't even get me and Walter started on Viacom's erudite BET presence here, or the underrepresentation of Black newspapers. And before folks start adding comments to this blog entry about the "crabs in the barrel" phenomenon many of us believe our community suffers from, let me interject something to the contrary. Over the last few weeks, I have begun to have highly encouraging conversations with other Black netpreneurs who are actively interested in and committed to working together towards pooling our resources for our mutual benefit and the benefit of the African-American community -- online and off.
I am certain that by this time next year, those of us in Black cyberspace will have formed a well organized coalition that will bear much fruit.
Actually, as far as inclusion of bloggers of color, there just ain't that many of us in the editorial ranks. And of all the editorial bloggers you can find, some 200 applied. I was not among them. I'm willing to bet Christopher and Jesse were the only Black bloggers who are. Frankly, I doubt many Black newspapers applied for credentails, but I have no way of knowing that. It's just a hunch.
The BET thing, though…
The pooling resources thing sounds interesting, conceptually.
