Gene Demby | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Hofstra University |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, Podcast Host |
Employer | NPR |
Known for | Code Switch PostBourgie |
Gene Demby is an American journalist and podcast host. He is cohost of the podcast Code Switch, created by National Public Radio (NPR). He's also the lead blogger covering race, ethnicity and culture on the blog of the same name. [1]
Demby previously founded the blog and podcast PostBourgie. He started his media career at The New York Times and Huffington Post.
Demby grew up in South Philadelphia, [2] and attended Hofstra University. [3]
Prior to joining NPR, Demby worked for The New York Times and then as managing editor for Huffington Post's BlackVoices vertical. [4]
Demby debuted the NPR project Code Switch on April 7, 2013 with an introductory essay that met with immediate acclaim; writing at Complex, Jason Parham said that if the essay "'How Code-Switching Explains The World' is any indication of the content to come, we couldn't be more excited." [5]
In 2016, Demby and cohost Shereen Marisol Meraji debuted what Harvard's Neiman Lab called "the long-awaited podcast" from Code Switch. [6]
Demby began blogging in 2004. Speaking to ColorLines in 2012, Demby said he'd been motivated by frustration with media conversations about race, mentioning in particular an occasion a CNN reporter approached him on a basketball court to ask for comment on Bill Cosby's Pound Cake speech at the 2004 NAACP Image Awards. Demby recalled, "I pushed back on him pretty hard...There are people who think black people's condition in the world would be better if we just looked better. 'Pull up your pants.' It seemed so petty that we were having these conversations." In search of an alternative, in 2007 Demby founded a collective blog on race, culture, politics and media called PostBourgie, inviting friends to collaborate who shared his desire "to have conversations that assumed that black people were human beings who were complicated and imperfect, a space that wasn't super didactic." [7]
Speaking to New York Magazine, Jamil Smith cited PostBourgie as one of the blogs that "really set the bar for...spaces that were made available to [African-Americans and other people of color]. Even if you were working for traditional media, you didn’t have the opportunity to offer your perspective, to tell the unvarnished version of the truth that you see every day...it really hearkens back to the tradition of the black press." [8] In The Washington Post , Alyssa Rosenberg praised PostBourgie's accomplishments in "building a ladder for all its participants. The blog gave the people who wrote there a chance to workshop their voices and refine their ideas for a smart audience, even when they didn’t have paying assignments for an idea. When one PostBourgie writer got a new job, he or she encouraged others to freelance for that new outlet and to apply for fellowships and jobs there." [9] PostBourgie alums have included Shani O. Hilton, now executive editor of news for BuzzFeed, and BuzzFeed writers Joel Anderson and Tracy Clayton.
Demby hosts an accompanying podcast also called PostBourgie.
In 2009, Demby's PostBourgie won a Black Weblog Award for Best News/Politics Site. [10]
In 2013 and again in 2014, Demby was named to The Root 100's list of the 100 most important black influencers. [11] [12]
In 2014, Demby and the Code Switch team won the Online News Association's award for Best Online Commentary. [13]
Demby is married to fellow journalist Kainaz Amaria, a Zoroastrian American [14] who is currently a visuals editor for Vox Media. [15] [16] The couple live in Washington.
Dave Winer is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
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Weblogs, Inc. was a blog network that published content on a variety of subjects, including tech news, video games, automobiles, and pop culture. At one point, the network had as many as 90 blogs, although the vast majority of its traffic could be attributed to a smaller number of breakout titles, as was typical of most large-scale successful blog networks of the mid-2000s. Popular blogs included Engadget, Autoblog, TUAW, Joystiq, Luxist, Slashfood, Cinematical, TV Squad, Download Squad, Blogging Baby, Gadling, AdJab, and Blogging Stocks.
In blogging, a ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent from the weblog to one or more Ping servers, as specified by originating weblog), to notify a list of their "Services" of new content on the weblog.
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Corporate blog is a blog that is published and used by an organization, corporation, etc. to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Although there are many different types of corporate blogs, most can be categorized as either external or internal.
An edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. Edublogs archive and support teacher learning by facilitating reflection, questioning by self and others, collaboration and by providing contexts for engaging in higher-order thinking. Edublogs proliferated when blogging architecture became more simplified and teachers perceived the instructional potential of blogs as an online resource. The use of blogs has become popular in education institutions including public schools and colleges. Blogs can be useful tools for sharing information and tips among co-workers, providing information for students, or keeping in contact with parents. Common examples include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. Educators who blog are sometimes called edubloggers.
While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard". Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.
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This Week in Blackness was an independent digital media platform which acts as a hub for a network of multimedia projects. Founded in 2008 during the presidential campaign season it is also the home of the video series of the same name hosted by Elon James White. The Blog was nominated for 4 Black Weblog Awards in 2009 and won 3 including "Blog of the Year." The site combines pointed criticism of politics and pop culture with social activism and urban humor.
The Black Weblog Awards was an online awards event which recognizes bloggers of African-American descent for their contributions in blogging, video blogging, and podcasting. The Black Weblog Awards started in 2005 with 11 categories, and grew to include 36 categories. Former Black Weblog Award winners include blogger and radio host B. Scott, comedian and YouTube personality Elon James White, comedian, television host, and New York Times best-selling author Baratunde Thurston, LGBT activist and media personality Keith Boykin, hip-hop artists D-Nice and Kanye West, musician and DJ Questlove, and model/media personality Tyra Banks. Other Black Weblog Award winners have also appeared in traditional media outlets, such as The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR.
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Jamilah Lemieux is an American writer, cultural critic, and editor. She rose to prominence for her blog, The Beautiful Struggler. She has worked for Ebony, Cassius Magazine, and Interactive One, part of Radio One, Inc. Lemieux currently writes a parenting column for Slate, and co-hosts an accompanying podcast, Mom & Dad Are Fighting.
Rembert Browne is a writer who primarily focuses on pop culture, politics and sports. Previously Browne wrote for Grantland, then for New York Magazine.
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Code Switch is a podcast from National Public Radio (NPR), and an online outlet covering race and culture. Code Switch began in 2013 as a blog, and a series of stories contributed to NPR radio programs.
PostBourgie was a blog on race, culture, politics and media founded in January 2008 by Gene Demby. Demby also hosted an accompanying podcast by the same name.
Shereen Marisol Meraji is an American journalist, podcaster and educator. She is an assistant professor of race in journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and is an alum of the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. She was the founding co-host and senior producer of Code Switch, a critically acclaimed podcast covering race, culture and identity, one of NPR's highest charting podcasts in 2020.