A Spotlight on Black Media

A one-day symposium on Black media will feature expert discussions about moving toward antiracist journalism, cultivating diverse talent, telling Black diaspora stories, using social media and amplifying Black voices. “Black Media: Reflecting on the Past and Reimagining the Future” will take place on October 28 at BU’s Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground. The event, sponsored by COM, will end with a fireside chat including Kevin Merida (’79), executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, Paula Madison, a former NBCUniversal executive, and Ibram X. Kendi, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at BU and director and founder of the BU Center for Antiracist Research.

The symposium is open to the public and free to attend in person or online with advance registration.

For COM, this event has been three years in the making. The idea first crossed the desk of Mariette DiChristina (’86) shortly after she assumed the role of dean in 2019.  

There are not many places where this conversation can happen. There are journalism schools, communication schools, schools that deal with the film and television world—but COM has everything under one umbrella.

Mark Walton

Along with COM’s existing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) faculty and staff committee, DiChristina established a DEI Alumni Advisory Board—and she brought the idea to them. Mark Walton (’76), who also serves on COM’s Dean’s Advisory Board, suggested taking a broad approach: a symposium bringing all of COM’s disciplines together. “My job is to take other people’s amazing ideas and support them with a framework,” DiChristina says. “And I thought, what a great thing—we’ve never spent a day reflecting on these areas of communication through a Black lens.”

Walton, formerly the president of sales and marketing at One Caribbean Television and now a visiting associate professor of media management at The New School, says COM is in a powerful position to elevate the voices of Black media professionals. “There are not many places where this conversation can happen,” he says. “There are journalism schools, communication schools, schools that deal with the film and television world—but COM has everything under one umbrella.” 

Dorothy Davis (’76), also a member of the DEI Alumni Advisory Board, sees the event as an important moment in formalizing a Black alumni network. “The communications field is not easy to navigate. Many people don’t have mentors and are just winging it until they get it right,” she says. There was no such network in the 1970s when she and Walton were in school, says Davis, the president of the Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives and Dorothy M. Davis Consulting, which specializes in international development communications. “We are now creating something that can serve as a foundation.”

For DiChristina, the symposium represents a step forward in the college’s ongoing DEI efforts. “One of the things I’m constantly struck by is that despite our best intentions, we are often siloed in our thinking—based on our upbringing, the communities we grew up in our culture or where we happen to be located,” she says. “It’s important that communication is building bridges and, in fact, that’s baked into COM’s strategy. We’re building understanding for the world.”

Speakers include Deborah D. Douglas, coeditor in chief of The Emancipator; Meghan E. Irons, City Hall bureau chief for the Boston Globe; Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author; Tina McDuffie, professor of journalism at COM and host of Local USA on WGBH World Channel; DeShuna Elisa Spencer, founder and CEO of kweliTV; Tiffany Walden, cofounder and editor in chief of The TRiiBE; and others. 

Registration information, a schedule and speaker bios are available online. Livestream information will be emailed to registrants.