The current state and future prospects of Black media will be the focus of Black Media Initiative’s Black Media Futures conference on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. The virtual conference from 1 p.m-5 p.m is in celebration of the 198th birthday of the Black press.

Sessions will include:

1:00 – 2:00: Black Media in the Age of Trump featuring April Ryan: This keynote will feature insights on covering this administration, and the vital role that Black media plays in informing and empowering the Black community. 

2:05 – 3:05: Archiving Black Media: This session will explore how Black media have created and managed their archives. A panel of experts will discuss how they built and organized their archives, how they monetize them, and some of their favorite stories or images from the archives. This Q & A is a follow up to this previous event.

 3:10 – 4:10: Black Narrative Power – Honoring our Past to Face the Future: This workshop will challenge participants to examine the role of Black media makers in this moment and identify opportunities for Black media to coordinate for the betterment of Black America and society at large.

4:15 – 4:45: Networking Session: This session is designed to foster connections and collaborations between Black media leaders. REGISTERThe event will be held online using Zoom. Please follow the instructions you receive  after registering. Email CCM if you do not receive a confirmation message or if you have any questions.

About the Black Media Initiative: The Black Media Initiative is a national capacity building initiative for Black owned and controlled media. Its aim is to support Black media by providing research, training and connections. We are a part of the Center for Community Media which is housed at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Speakers

April Ryan, the only Black female reporter covering urban issues from the White House, is the longest-serving Black tenured White House Correspondent in U.S. history. She is the Washington D.C. Bureau Chief and Senior White House Reporter for The Black Press USA, and regularly appears on MSNBC. April has been featured in top magazines and served on the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association. She has earned numerous awards, including the NAACP Image Award. A Baltimore native and Morgan State University graduate, she mentors aspiring journalists and is the author of several books on race relations and democracy. 

 Brandon Nightingale is a historian and the Black Press Archives digitization project manager at the Moorland Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. Brandon’s project: to research and document the history of the Black press. The Black Press Archive was started at Howard in 1973, donated by the National Newspaper Publishers Association. The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation has gifted the Archive $2 million to digitize the historic collection. 

Dr. Allissa V. Richardson is an associate professor of journalism at USC Annenberg, and the founder of the Charlotta Bass Journalism & Justice Lab. She researches how African Americans use mobile and social media to produce innovative forms of journalism — especially in times of crisis. Richardson is the author of “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism” (Oxford University Press, 2020). The award-winning book explores the lives of 15 mobile journalist-activists who have documented the Black Lives Matter movement using only mobile and social media. 

Savannah Wood, an artist with roots in Baltimore and Los Angeles, is the Executive Director of Afro Charities, where she leads efforts to increase access to the AFRO American Newspapers’ archives. She has guided the organization through growth, initiated new programming, and attracted support from national funders. Wood graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California and is a 2024/2025 Johns Hopkins University Tabb Center Humanities Fellow. She lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, sharing and preserving Black stories. 

Anshantia “Tia” Oso, is a culture strategist, activist and speaker who uses the power of art and culture to enact change. She currently serves as the Senior Director of Media 2070. Tia has organized for over 12 years leading successful campaigns to mobilize thousands of advocates on issues ranging from migrant rights to racial justice to public arts policy. Her work is rooted in the legacies of Black organizing and ancestral resistance and inspired by Afrofuturist visions.  

Venneikia Williams, Media 2070 Campaign Manager, supports the Media 2070 team in the design and successful implementation of the project. She led the development of and taught a course on media reparations at Colorado College, was a featured speaker at the 2023 Decolonizing Wealth Conference, and serves on the Narrative Reparations Table convened by Liberation Ventures. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from UNC Chapel Hill and a Master of Divinity degree from Covenant Theological Seminary. 

Diamond Hardiman, Director of Reparative Narrative and Creative Strategy, supports Media 2070’s reparative journalism work and cultural strategy campaigns. Previously, Diamond supported Free Press’ News Voices project, where she focused on facilitating Black and Latinx communities in transforming media in Colorado. A graduate of Saint Louis University, Diamond is now leading the development of a community-rooted reparative journalism model.  

If you are a part of the community media sector or a supporter, and were forwarded this invite, sign up for our mailing list to find out about upcoming CCM events and trainings.