“I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.”

– Huey P. Newton

In the black community today, we have a large amount of complaining people. Mind you, most of these folks are doing absolutely nothing to uplift the community, let alone make money for themselves independently. I won’t go as far as to say their agents because that would give them too much credit. Their just negative leeches and haters that want to tear down people that are actually doing something. The proverbial 2014 version of crabs in a barrel!

Like I’ve said numerous times, productive black media is slowly but surely being made.  As a journalist and author with two projects coming up, I consider myself a part of the  subsector of the community we choose to call black media. My critiques are only in  hope that we can improve on what we’re putting out to the public. At this rate, none of  us are competing with any of the white-owned media conglomerates. I’m talking to the  big shot executives at Bounce TV, OWN, Revolt TV and Aspire too!  Compared to  Viacom owned BET and Comcast owned TV One, they’re losing out as well.

We desperately need to step our games up in the media space, family! Why is Tariq  Nasheed’s The Eugenist and Hidden Colors series the only independently  owned black media projects that I can call off the top of the head that was worth  watching? Today, we’re going to have a compulsive discussion about the state of African-American produced media and what we need to do to make it better. Black media “mavens”, I need you to seriously take note!

 

1)   Produce Work Of Quality

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

-Steve Jobs

One Saturday during Father’s Day a few years back, my family decided to go to the Macon Mall. Since an outdoor mall was just built in north Macon (the white, suburban side of town), the Macon Mall hadn’t been attracting customers like it used to. Many stores closed down and it was basically relegated to shoe stores, non-black owned but black culture influenced clothing stores and greasy fast food joints. Meanwhile, the outdoor mall had everything!

Even in its slump, the Macon Mall always attracts a crowd of people during holidays. So there we were, making our way through a maze of people to get to the exit. However, we managed to stop at a table set up in the middle of the mall where two college aged brothers, an extremely attractive brown-skinned sister and a man that looked as if he was in his thirties were selling DVDs. For their sakes, I’m not going to mention the name of the production.

They boasted about the fact that their film won at a film festival and it was a movie in the leer of Tyler Perry. My parents bought two copies in support of them and went on their way. A couple of months ago, I managed to watch the movie in it’s entirety. Well, I’d more so say struggled than managed! The movie was horrible to say the least!

The acting was dry, the background music took over the film, the lighting was wrong and the storyline was poorly written. I honestly felt like breaking the DVD in two and throwing the cover out the window like a Frisbee that won’t come back. What a waste of money!

Black filmmakers, entrepreneurs and other artists make sure that your project is of quality. The word quality is defined as “the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.” The community has no time for hustlers and get rich quick schemes. If you’re not planning to put out work of quality, I need you to have a seat! If you don’t believe enough in your project, why would I pay money to see it or read it?

You can’t rely on a list of big name actors to be in your production either. This is where a lot of these mainstream black films fail. I went to see Think Like A Man 2 and I wasn’t a fan at all. I’m not being negative as the movie did draw laughter from me and it was entertaining. But it was nowhere near the first movie, which had a steady storyline and premise. Kevin Hart jumping around acting like a fool can only save so many movies.

 

2)    Put It Out On Time

“You may delay, but time will not.”

-Benjamin Franklin

How long does it really take to make a movie? I know of projects that have been “coming soon” with no definitive date for about ten years. Tariq Nasheed announced that he was starting production on Hidden Colors 3 back in July of 2013 and it debuted around the nation June 26, 2014. The DVD is coming out July 4^th and it’s already number one on Amazon!

I understand that it takes time to make a quality product but after a year or two without an update and many of fans inquiring about when it’s being released, you have a problem. Black folks have a terrible problem with time management that we need to get under control before we can even begin to challenge the big time corporations. You can talk about movies like Precious, For Colored Girls and The Help but at least they come out on time enough for people to see it. How is your movie going to compete when it’s coming out in 2015 and you’ve been working on it since 2007? Pushing back the release date every month isn’t cool either!

 

The cover to my novel, The Diary Of Aaliyah Anderson. It’s coming out in October. Also, My novella is dropping this summer.  Make sure you look out for me! You can read a preview of The Diary Of Aaliyah Anderson on Wattpad now!

 

 

Do you have any questions, comments or concerns? Was I right or wrong on this issue? I would love to hear from you! Contact me directly at:

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