Gene Demby

Last updated
Gene Demby
NationalityAmerican
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]

Contents

Demby previously founded the blog and podcast PostBourgie. He started his media career at The New York Times and Huffington Post.

Early life

Demby grew up in South Philadelphia, [2] and attended Hofstra University. [3]

Career

Prior to joining NPR, Demby worked for The New York Times and then as managing editor for Huffington Post's BlackVoices vertical. [4]

NPR Code Switch

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]

PostBourgie blog

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.

Awards

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]

Personal life

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.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dave Winer</span> American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blog</span> Discussion or informational site published on the internet

A blog is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were often the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

<i>Joystiq</i> Video gaming blog

Joystiq was a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 as part of the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs, now owned by AOL. It was AOL's primary video game blog, with sister blogs dealing with MMORPG gaming in general and the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft in particular.

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.

This is a list of blogging terms. Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialized vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.

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 student and 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.

<i>Planet Money</i> Economics podcast

Planet Money is an American podcast and blog produced by NPR. Using "creative and entertaining" dialogue and narrative, Planet Money claims to be "The Economy Explained."

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamilah Lemieux</span> American journalist

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rembert Browne</span> American writer

Rembert Browne is a writer who primarily focuses on pop culture, politics and sports. Previously Browne wrote for Grantland, then for New York Magazine.

Doreen St. Félix is a Haitian-American writer. She is a staff writer for The New Yorker and was formerly editor-at-large for Lenny Letter, a newsletter from Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.

Eve Louise Ewing is an American sociologist, author, poet, and visual artist from Chicago, Illinois. Ewing is a tenured professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her academic research in the sociology of education includes her 2018 book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, a study of school closures in Chicago. She is the former editor at Seven Scribes and the author of the poetry collection Electric Arches which was released in September 2017. In 2019, she published 1919, a poetry collection centered around the Chicago race riot of 1919. Additionally, Ewing is the author of the Ironheart comic book series for Marvel centered on the young heroine Riri Williams.

Tasneem Raja is the current editor-in-chief for The Oaklandside, a non-profit newsroom based in Oakland, California that is funded by Google News Initiative and the American Journalism project.

<i>Code Switch</i> Podcast about race and culture

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PostBourgie</span> Blog

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.

Kat Chow is an Asian-American author and journalist who was a founding member of the National Public Radio show and podcast Code Switch. She has also been a regular panelist on the NPR podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour. In 2021, her book Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir was released, which discussed her family's immigration to the United States via Hong Kong and Cuba, life at age 13, and losing her mother to cancer in 2004.

References

  1. ↑ "NPR Launching Code Switch Podcast". Cision. May 23, 2016.
  2. ↑ "I'm from Philly and 40 years later I'm still trying to make sense of the MOVE bombing".
  3. ↑ Young, Yolanda (September 6, 2016). "Gene Demby gives Black writers a voice with 'PostBourgie,' and more". Rolling Out. Retrieved September 30, 2016.
  4. ↑ Wilson, Benét J. (June 29, 2011). "Huffington Post Turns Up the Volume At BlackVoices". All Digitocracy. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
  5. ↑ Parham, Jason (April 8, 2013). "NPR Launches New Blog Covering "Race, Culture and Ethnicity"". Complex. Retrieved August 4, 2016.
  6. ↑ Wang, Shan (June 2, 2016). "What does the intersection of race and culture sound like? NPR's Code Switch is looking for the right mix". NeimanLab. Retrieved November 30, 2017.
  7. ↑ King, Jamilah (April 12, 2012). "Sepia Mutiny's Closure Is a Reminder: Blogging While Brown Ain't Easy". ColorLines. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
  8. ↑ Tabor, Nick (July 24, 2016). "MTV News' Jamil Smith on What's Wrong (and Right) With the Media". New York Magazine. Retrieved July 30, 2016.
  9. ↑ Rosenberg, Alyssa (February 3, 2015). "PostBourgie, Andrew Sullivan and why blogging still matters". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 30, 2016.
  10. ↑ "Black Weblog Awards - Past Winners". www.blackweblogawards.com.
  11. ↑ "The Root 100: A Who's Who Of Black America". NPR. September 26, 2013.
  12. ↑ "#ICYMI: This Week's Public Media Highlights". Protect My Public Media. September 26, 2014.
  13. ↑ "2014 Awards". Online News Association. August 25, 2014.
  14. ↑ arZan (2013-05-31). "Kainaz Amaria in Conversation: Being Zoroastrian". Parsi Khabar. Retrieved 2021-12-30.
  15. ↑ "Accomplished journalists set for presentations as part of ongoing Speakers Forum". Pennsylvania State University . September 29, 2020.
  16. ↑ "Kainaz Amaria Profile and Activity". Vox. Retrieved 2021-12-30.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.