What was your first job as a journalist?
Photographer for my middle school’s yearbook
Have you ever used a typewriter?
to try it out, just to feel what it was like as my elders regaled us with stories of using them while growing up...
How is social media changing news?
it democratizes access and deconstructs gateholder narratives
Who's your favorite fictional journalist?
are there any branded "black?" One of post colonial Western culture's biggest problems is the lens the narratives are being "reported" from.
What does it mean to be a journalist?
good questions... no, really, really, REALLY good questions...
What's the funniest news-related #hashtag you've seen?
How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?
with as much info as possible
What tools and software do you use to do your job?
outside of the newsroom's CMS, pen and paper, and google docs, Wikipedia/Wikimedia’s tools and platforms
What's your favorite social network?
Twitter - dialogue and conversation with the real world in real time is so...meta.
Who do you wish followed you?
Sundiata Keita, Franz Fanon, W.E.B DuBois, Haile Selassie, Queen Anna Nzinga, Mansa Musa, Queen Muhmusa, Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons...
Why did you become a journalist?
How could I not? I have an insatiable need to know. Journalism is an industry built on finding answers to questions. This wasn't planned...
Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?
No - I was a tech into coding and html, was president of the local tech club, and interned at the local bank,.
What story are you most proud of writing or working on?
the one I'm working on now...
What advice can you offer to aspiring journalists?
Just start writing - never stop, don't quit. Chase the stories you want to tell, and write them yourself. Network, follow up and get mentors.
When's the best time to pitch you?
whenever you can
What's the best pitch you ever got?
the one You’re sending me right now...
What's the worst pitch you ever got?
I don't think there's any such thing - everything starts from a seed, you never know where the story's gonna go...
What's your favorite drink?
H20
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
On an iPad. With a keyboard. Or doing a freewrite in a notebook - manually.
Aside from your own, what's your favorite publication to read?
Harper’s Magazine, Indigenous outlasts, The Paris Review.
What's the most common misperception about your beat?
That “race” has any real basis genetically, scientifically or biologically. Its a systemic, institutional colonial weapon & can be dismantled
