Back to the "good 'ol days?"
Commentary by Chitown Kev
For this morning’s Abbreviated Pundit Roundup, I linked to a story by Scott Hechinger, writing for The Nation magazine, about some of the goings-on at Teen Vogue magazine, an online-only magazine that was writing and putting out some surprisingly important content that routinely made the wreck list even here at Daily Kos.
Hechinger explains:
These stories chronicled the last decade of American crisis and resistance: from 2018’s exposé of Louisiana’s collapsing public-defense system—where attorneys described “triaging human lives”—to essays on the fight against the “superpredator” myth and the criminalization of trauma survivors. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Teen Vogue and Zealous partnered to publish firsthand accounts from inside Cook County Jail, one of the country’s deadliest outbreaks. In the wake of the George Floyd uprising, we collaborated on coverage explaining how “copaganda” shapes what the public believes about safety. And when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, together we connected the dots between reproductive rights and criminal punishment.
I did not have time to do anything more than a very brief skim of an article at Columbia Journalism Review titled “Has the Media Reached the End of Its DEI Era?”
Last week, Teen Vogue laid off multiple people, including the only two Black women writers on staff, during its transition to Vogue. “I can confirm that the majority of today’s layoffs were women of color. There are no longer any Black women working at Teen Vogue,” Lex McMenamin, Teen Vogue’s politics editor, posted on Bluesky. McMenamin was also laid off.
Versha Sharma, the editor in chief of Teen Vogue, also stepped down. “We built a team of young Black, Asian, queer, and trans staffers, who are passionate, whip smart and consistently pushed impactful storytelling forward.… Many of them are now without jobs,” she wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday. That same day, a group of over a dozen Condé Nast employees confronted the company’s head of human resources about the shuttering of Teen Vogue and other recent cuts, and four were fired as a result, Semafor’s Max Tani reported.
So, in part, the goings-on at Teen Vogue are a part of two larger stories involving the goings-on at Condé Nast (Teen Vogue’s parent company) and the insidious “laying off” of Black journalists and other people of color in nearly every major and minor newsroom in the name of the Trump regime’s vendetta against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (D.E.I) efforts.
I mean, are we headed back to an era where the nation’s newsrooms are every bit as segregated as the nation’s churches?
More importantly, I think, for the news business overall, who is going to read and watch news programming that may as well have invisible Jim Crow signs affixed to their programming and/or whatever medium the newsroom ?
Just as we did (and, for that matter still do!), marginalized people will create their own media sources and their own content...for our own consumption and for the white folks that choose to consume it.
I wouldn’t like for it to come to that and, chances are, it won’t have to come to that but...one never knows.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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There’s only one “King of Pop,” and now he’s got another record to claim as his own.
The teaser trailer for the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” has surpassed trailers for films centered on Taylor Swift and Bob Marley to become the most-viewed trailer for any music biopic ever.
According to WaveMetrix, the teaser trailer, which arrived on Thursday (Nov. 6), has already garnered over 116.2 million views globally in its first 24 hours of release, breaking not only the biopic record but also the record for concert movies and Lionsgate’s overall record for a trailer debut. “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” previously held the record with 96.1 million views, followed by the trailer to “Bob Marley: One Love” at 60.1 million views.
Now the crown belongs to MJ.
The film, which reportedly could be split into two parts, is directed by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) and stars Michael’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson, in his debut film as his uncle. Surrounding Jaafar will be Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Laura Harrier, Larenz Tate and more. The film is set to arrive in theaters and IMAX on April 24, 2026.
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For weeks, residents of Iyekogba in Benin City have seen a 15-metre-high tower rising up in the middle of their quiet, residential neighbourhood. On 8 November, the building, a domed bamboo pavilion, will finally be unveiled at the start of Nigeria’s inaugural Black Muse art festival.
Designed by the renowned Nigerian architect James Inedu-George, the pavilion is the centrepiece of the Black Muse sculpture park, a 3,500 sq metre landscaped site created to honour the city’s centuries-old artistic tradition and bring a new audience to contemporary art.
The park is the brainchild of the Nigerian-American artist Victor Ehikhamenor, who grew up in a nearby village, but regularly visited the city where his uncle was a well-known photographer. Ehikhamenor bought the land 15 years ago, with a dream of one day creating an artistic hub in the city.
“It is a personal investment in the present and future of art and cultural infrastructure in Nigeria,” says Ehikhamenor, who runs the non-profit arts organisation Angels & Muse and last year opened the nearby Black Muse Residency, an 11-room artists’ retreat.
This is a busy month for Benin City. The park is a short drive from the Museum of West African Art (Mowaa), the state-of-the-art facility that is a constellation of buildings and outdoor performance spaces spread across a 6-hectare (15-acre) campus. It will open on 11 November, showcasing objects from across Nigeria and west Africa, as the Black Muse art festival draws to a close.
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If you do not look closely, it is easy to miss the children.
They come and go during the day, a handful of boys and girls seeking refuge from the 110-degree heat. But at night, they are always there, their bodies curled up on the median near a gas station in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.
The girl in the red dress is Dalia, a bubbly 8-year-old who learned English from YouTube videos. The baby whimpering for milk is Abudy, born 17 days earlier. Nearby is a wide-eyed toddler, still learning to look both ways before crossing the road.
Their mothers, lying beside them, are Kenyan housekeepers and nannies. Their government encouraged workers like them to find jobs in Saudi Arabia and send their savings back to Kenya. They cleaned the houses and cared for the children of Saudi families.
Like so many other Kenyans employed in Saudi homes, they faced abuse, exploitation and neglect. But other women, when they are desperate, can go home.
These women cannot. They had children outside of marriage. And now they are trapped.
In this conservative Islamic kingdom, where an unmarried mother can be jailed for an “illegal pregnancy,” it is as if their children do not exist. Without identification documents, they are banished to the fringes of society. Yet they cannot leave the country, either.
Police officers, shelter workers and diplomats turned the mothers away. Finally, they came to the gas station. It made no sense, but rumor had it that this was the one place where single mothers could be deported with their children.
“I tried to leave,” says Fanice, 32, Dalia’s mother. “But it’s been impossible.”
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
