Wishing the best for the upcoming year and an enriched holiday season, Black media share holiday greetings through videos
By BHN
Since the official August 24 launch of Black Headline News, the Black Press has been ramping up this collaborative platform, providing viewers with podcasts, group forums (Hip-Hop Yesterday, election night) with more to come.
Here are this season's featured Black Press members who have a holiday greeting below for you: Texas Metro News, The New Citizens Press, ONME News, Rivet360 and Cheryl Thompson-Morton who is the director of the Black Media Initiative..
Black Press Holiday Greetings
Black Media Initiative
Cheryl Thompson-Morton, a leader in promoting diversity and equity in the news industry, is the Black Media Initiative Director for the Center for Community Media at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Thompson-Morton works to support Black media outlets through training, research, convenings, and connecting them to financial resources.
Previously, she was program director for the Lenfest Institute for Journalism in Philadelphia, where she created, launched, and executed several initiatives to increase equity in news media. These include the Lenfest Next Generation Fund, the Community Listening and Engagement Fund, and the Philadelphia News Ecosystem Collaboration Grant Program.
Thompson-Morton also led Lenfest’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy, focusing on individual support to journalists of color, investment in news organizations owned by people of color, and newsroom collaboration programs.
Black Press Holiday Greetings
Texas Metro News
The Texas Metro News’s mission is to inform, educate, enlighten, inspire, entertain, educate and empower, by providing thought-provoking news, photos, stories and commentary.
Texas Metro News is a Texas-based publication for people on the move and in search of news that is empowering and uplifting as well as informative and entertaining. On the pages you find information that focuses on trends, issues and varying opinions. It was designed for upwardly mobile men and women who want to stay abreast of the issues impacting their lives and those around them.
In addition to appealing to the broad audience, publisher Cheryl Smith gained as a popular, award-winning talk show host on Texas-based radio station KKDA-AM the publication focuses on empowering, educating, enlightening, inspiring and entertaining its readers.
Cheryl Smith is the Publisher and CEO of I Messenger Media Group, which includes the publications: Texas Metro News, Garland Journal and I Messenger. She also hosts a radio talk show, Cheryl’s World, on Blog Talk Radio.
With over 30 years in the industry, working with some publications where she had to take a document from a thought to a complete document; Smith has excelled in all areas as an award-winning journalist.
Smith received her B.S. degree in journalism from Florida A&M University in 1980, and her M.S. degree in human relations and business from Amberton University in Dallas, Texas in 1986 and is lifetime member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Smith has won numerous awards, most recently the Woman of the Year for the 100 Black Women, and in 2022 she was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.
In 2002, Rina Risper founded The New Citizens Press (TNCP) newspaper and host of The New Citizens Press Review (TNCPR) vlogcast based in Lansing, Michigan. TNCP is a biweekly, multicultural space founded in 2002, the paper has a print and online readership of over 40,000. Risper’s life has revolved around individual and social responsibility. She is also the Executive Director of The New Citizens Press Community Action Network (TNCPCAN). Its mission is to raise awareness of stopping violence, including domestic violence; to promote literacy and media programs; and to promote all forms of the arts. From 2011 to 2016, Risper also hosted “The New Perspective”, which is a podcast radio show for 3 years on Michigan Business Network that showcased businesses that serve the Black community and beyond. “I love people,” Risper said. “I especially love Black culture. The exploration of our Blackness culturally and from different experiences and perspectives makes us who we are. Interviewing a Black person from New Hampshire and a Black person from California, with shared commonalities and some inherent differences based on geographical space, makes me enjoy writing. I love learning. Sociologically speaking, we have so much to learn about being a part of the diaspora, nationally and globally.” Risper volunteers her time and talent to a number of Lansing organizations and individuals, including those that serve the homeless or offer supportive services for victims of domestic violence or violent crimes. In 2007, she started “State of Our Health: Through the Voices of Our People,” serving over 1,000 people by providing health information and minor medical services to the general community and our underserved population. In 2005, she also created Poetry in the City, a program allowing people to perform on the Capitol steps annually. As part of her initiative “Read to Succeed, Write to Ignite,” over 7,000 books, dictionaries, and thesauruses were collected for area schools. She also found time to teach poetry at Shabazz Academy and mentor the journalism class at Pleasant View Middle School. Additionally, Rina is a past president of the Walnut Neighborhood Association. “What’s truly important,” said Risper, “is listening to others. The New Citizens Press has allowed me to grow in many ways but being aware of what is needed is key to opening doors for others. Giving back doesn’t have to be done on a large scale; the small things that all add up might actually make a deeper impact overall.” She is the recipient of the A. Phillip Randolph “Unsung Hero Award,” the Kappa Alpha Psi Community Service Award, and the Lansing Black Chamber of Commerce Community Pillar Award. In addition, The New Citizens Press received the Business Excellence Award from the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. Rina also enjoys quilting and exploring Michigan. In 2011, she began hosting The New Perspective radio show on Michigan Business Network. She was also the President of the Walnut Neighborhood Organization and successfully managed to broker a deal with a large corporation to benefit the community at large for years to come. Risper’s other love is poetry. She volunteered to teach poetry at El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy, a now-shuttered public charter school, and has been the mentor in classrooms in the Lansing School District since 2009.
Risper is very active in the community and volunteered for the homeless organization, Open Door Ministries, and the domestic violence shelter, EVEs House. She personally works one on one with individuals in the community helping them find the resources they need to be successful, especially the homeless population and those impacted by murder. Currently, she is on the Lansing for Cesar E. Chavez Committee and was honored with a Humanitarian award from the committee in 2021.
A native of New York, New York, Risper graduated with a 3.6 GPA, while working full-time. She earned a BA in sociology from the City University of New York. The media outlet’s motto is “News for, about, and by people.”
Sheila Solomon: Strategic Alliance Manager at Rivet360
Sheila Solomon’s career has taken her from the newsroom to the boardroom. The award-winning former newspaper reporter and editor has worked for numerous newspapers and now is Strategic Alliance Manager at Rivet360, an audio production company based in Chicago.
She’s vice chair and a co-founder of Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit helping to secure and manage grants to support local journalism, president of the board of City Bureau and serves on the board of Growing Community Media. Among her honors is being inducted into the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications Hall of Fame at Hampton University (her alma mater), receiving the Ida B. Wells Award given by Medill and the National Association of Black Journalists, and the Chicago Headline Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Sheila is a judge for the National Headliner Awards and a member of the leadership team for The Obsidian Collection.
Info Media Distribution (Info-MD) is a black-owned media company that has managed and/or owned online media platforms since 1999, initially starting with just AMPTV which expanded to several original, online TV channels under one umbrella in 2009. A few years later, online media platforms, ONME TV, BLENDED TV, BeTuned TV, SpaSho Wellness TV, The Black Collab Wealth Channel and Inner Hero TV, were added with the recent addition in 2022 of Black Headline News.
Regionally, for the California area, ONME, which stands for “One New Media Expression, produces online news programming from a Black perspective for ONME News, a California-based digital news media platform, and The ONME Network, which is a culmination of original news audio and video podcasts, distributed throughout California, featuring hyper-local and California-wide news and issues relative to the Black experience.
ONME News also produces original news programming in video and audio through The ONME Network to help readers, viewers and listeners to have better in-depth knowledge of politics, education, community events and all other aspects of social action relevant to the masses.