In preparation for another successful joint convention, the leadership teams of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) announce the 2020 joint convention will take place in Washington, D.C. The organizations are now accepting hotel bids for the 2020 joint convention from hotels in Washington, D.C..
Zakaria (Zack) Mohamed and Edward Pilot
Please join us Saturday, Oct. 21 for our next monthly meeting: “Black & Undocumented: Immigration is Our Issue, Too.” We will be joined activist Zakaria Mohamed, of the Black Alliance for Justice Immigration (@bajitweet), and attorney Edward Pilot. The meeting will take place at the SAG-AFTRA building at 11 a.m. NABJ-LA Vice President Jerome Campbell will moderate.
Zakaria (Zack) Mohamed (@zmopdx) is a Somali-born movement strategist. At age five, Zack and his family fled their home country due to civil war, arriving in the U.S. as refugees. As BAJI’s Los Angeles organizer, Zack’s main areas of focus is to build a base and mobilize it to take actions that implicate black migrants. He has organized around racial justice, immigrant/refugee justice, LGBTQ Justice, economic justice and gender justice.
Edward Pilot (@edpilotlaw) is an attorney who has represented African people in immigration court for over two decades. Through his work, he has partnered with African churches and organizations to help people with DACA applications, naturalization and those seeking asylum.
Ana-Christina Ramón and Matthew A. Cherry
Please join us Saturday, Sept. 16 for our next monthly meeting: “Who Has The Right to Tell Our Stories?” We will be joined filmmaker Matthew A. Cherry and UCLA’s Ana-Christina Ramón. The meeting will take place at the SAG-AFTRA building at 11 a.m.
Matthew A. Cherry is a former NFL wide receiver turned filmmaker. His first feature film “The Last Fall,” starring Lance Gross, Nicole Beharie and Vanessa Bell Calloway, made its world premiere at SXSW Film Festival and received awards at the American Black Film Festival and Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. Dubbed one of Paste Magazine’s “Directors to Watch” in 2016, his current project is titled “Hair Love,” an animated short film about an black father trying to do his daughter’s hair for the first time.
Ana-Christina Ramón is the Director of Research and Civic Engagement for the Office of the Dean of Social Sciences at UCLA. Formerly the assistant director of the school’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, she, along with professor Darnell Hunt, director of the Bunche Center, co-authors the center’s reports on diversity in Hollywood.
Please join us Saturday, August 19 for our next monthly meeting. We will be reflecting on the national convention in New Orleans as well as taking general chapter and organization feedback on ways we can better assist our members. The meeting will take place at the SAG-AFTRA building at 11 a.m. We look forward to seeing you.
We’re looking forward to seeing those of you who’ll be heading to NOLA next week. Check out some NABJ-LA involved panels here.
Marc Duvoisin and Todd Mokhtari
Please join us Saturday, June 17 for our next monthly meeting: “Managing Media: News, Diversity & the Future”. We will be joined Marc Duvoisin and Todd Mokhtari, news managers of two of SoCal’s largest news outlets, the Los Angeles Times and NBC4, respectively. The meeting will take place at the SAG-AFTRA building at 11 a.m.
Marc Duvoisin is the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University with a degree in humanities, he broke into the newspaper business at The (Bergen) Record in Hackensack, NJ. He joined the Los Angeles Times in 2001 as an assistant managing editor. In 2007, he became a deputy managing editor, overseeing the paper’s daily Column One feature and its major investigative, explanatory and narrative projects. He was named managing editor in August 2012.
Todd Mokhtari is NBC4’s vice president of news. A graduate of University of California, Davis with political science and rhetoric and communications degrees, he began his career at NBC affiliate KCRA-TV in Sacramento, CA as an intern eventually becoming a producer. After serving as NBC4’s managing editor in 2006, he became news director and web manager for KIRO-TV in Seattle. He returned to NBC4 as vice president in June 2012.
Please join us Saturday, June 10 at Noon PST online for a Twitter chat: “Breaking Barriers: Black Men in Media.” Hosted on our Twitter page — follow us @NABJLAofficial and use #InspireBlackMen — we seek to engage in conversation around the experiences of black men working in newsrooms and media.
This chat is in conjunction with the national organization’s Black Male Media Project which seeks “to help change the lives and images of black men in the news and in society.” Local chapters of NABJ will be hosting a variety of panels, events and workshops on June 10, concurrently, in an effort to open doors and change the narrative of black men.
For more info on the Black Male Media Project, click here.
Dominique DiPrima and Brandon Brooks
Please join us Saturday, May 20 for our next monthly meeting: “Black Media Matters: The State of Black News Outlets.” We will be joined by Dominique DiPrima of KJLH and Brandon Brooks of the Los Angeles Sentinel and L.A. Watts Times. The meeting will take place at the SAG-AFTRA building at 11 a.m.
Dominique DiPrima is host and producer of “The Front Page” radio show on Los Angeles’ KJLH 102.3-FM. An industry veteran with a career spanning radio and television, she has five Emmy Awards, six Parents Choice Awards, an Ollie and the SAG/AFTRA American Scene Award for positive portrayals of women, the disabled, senior citizens and people of color under her belt. Before becoming one of the most sought after and notable voices on SoCal radio, she was a co-host of The Steve Harvey Morning Show, host and producer of her own radio talk show, “Street Science with Dominique DiPrima” and a host for San Francisco NBC affiliate KRON-TV where she also served as a segment producer.
Brandon Brooks is the managing editor of the Los Angeles Sentinel and L.A. Watts Times. A graduate of California State University, Long Beach, he first started at the Sentinel in 2005 as a contributing writer while simultaneously working at Warner Bros. as a production assistant. He was later hired as full-time an entertainment writer and served stints in several departments including accounting and sales. At the time of his promotions to leading both papers, he was the youngest to ever do so.
Marqueeda LaStar, Ira Madison III, Tyree Boyd-Pates, Dexter Thomas
Please join us Saturday, April 15 for our next monthly meeting: “#BlackTwitter: How Social Media is Changing Journalism.” We will be joined by Marqueeda LaStar (Black Girl Nerds), Ira Madison III (MTV News), Tyree Boyd-Pates (Black Book LA, Huffington Post Black Voices) and Dexter Thomas (Vice News). The meeting will take place at the SAG-AFTRA building at 11 a.m. It is open to the public, and parking is validated.
Panelist bios:
Marqueeda LaStar is the community manager of BlackGirlNerds.com, a society and lifestyle website and online community exploring the intersections of being Black, woman and nerdy. As community manager, she works to create and support an inclusive online community and collective whose reach goes far beyond the interwebs with engaging digital content and conversation. A culture technologist, Marqueeda is passionate about connections, emerging media and technology.
Ira Madison III is a culture writer for MTV News. His work has also appeared in Variety, Vulture and BuzzFeed. He will be featured in the upcoming documentary “Culture of Proximity.”
Tyree Boyd-Pates is a professor of Africana Studies, contributing writer for Huffington Post Black Voices and TEDx speaker. A graduate of Temple University and California State University, Bakersfield, Tyree expounds on Black culture from a millennial vantage and mobilizes communities of color through journalism, social media and education. He is co-curator of Black Book L.A., a weekly newsletter serving as “the Black millennial’s guide to Los Angeles.”
Dexter Thomas is a culture correspondent for Vice News covering the intersection of identity and art. He previously wrote for the Los Angeles Times, where he contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of shootings in his hometown of San Bernardino, C.A. Dexter is also a PhD candidate in East Asian studies at Cornell University, and is writing a book about Japanese hip-hop.
Please join us this Saturday, March 18 for a conversation with LA Times political reporter Kurtis Lee and political writer Seema Mehta on “Media in the Age of Trump.” The meeting will take place at the SAG-AFTRA building at 11 a.m.
Prior to joining the newspaper in August 2014, Lee worked for three years at the Denver Post and covered state and national politics. He’s also reported from the scenes of destructive wildfires and mass shootings and was a member of the Post staff that won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the Aurora theater shooting. He’s a Colorado native and a graduate of Temple University.
Mehta has covered the 2016, 2012 and 2008 presidential campaigns, as well as gubernatorial, Senate and mayoral races. A graduate of Syracuse University, the East Coast native swore when she joined The Times in 1998 that she would only spend a few years on the Left Coast. Many years, a husband, a house and a few cats later, Mehta can’t imagine living somewhere she couldn’t golf year-round.
