Bridges: Build, Cross or Burn?

One of the highlights of the Blogging While Brown conference was panel discussion entitled, 'Bridges: Build, Cross or Burn? Can New Media Work With the Old Guard and Old Media?'.


The panel was moderated by Kevin Ross (3 Brothers and A SISTER). Panel members included Gina McCauley (What About Our Daughters), Clarissa Goodlett (ColorOfChange), Tamera Reynolds (GlamMedia) and Necole Bitchie (NicoleBitchie.com).

The premise of the panel discussion was that there may be some friction between the new media and the traditional media. However, the true friction appeared to be between Black bloggers that want to monetize their blogs versus those that thought any movement toward monetization was a mortal sin for Black bloggers.

Sis. Reynolds is a director of the African American Network at GlamMedia. She shared some insights from the perspective of an ad network business. My learning from her was that GlamMedia was more than fashion. She pointed out to us a soon-to-be announced Blacklife section of GlamMedia.

However, the highlight of the session for me was Necole Bitchie. She is one of the few Black bloggers in the nation able to blog fulltime. In fact, the young college graduate shared with us that she signed an agreement with Gorilla Nation earlier this month. I first learned about Necole in Jan 2008 with her debut on the Black Blog Rankings at BBR #124. She became one of the hottest bloggers in America and today NecoleBitchie.com is BBR #16.

Theo Johnson (Now That's What I'm Talking About) live streamed the workshop ... so it is available for your review here.

Many Black bloggers are going to have difficult making any serious money with a blog. We need to focus on growing a loyal readership based on our consistent, high-quality blog posts first. Do you have any thoughts on this subject?


Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...