Tuesday, March 12, 2013
SEO Killed the Validity of African American Urban Media
Recently I was informed that articles and essays I have been writing, content wise, for the past 30 years, would no longer be published in an urban newspaper I have been writing for over the past 20 years since its inception. I would place links but I don't want to reinforce what many already know. The reason given was that my articles were not receiving enough page views. Never mind that over the past two weeks I cited at least eight that received on average 5000 views – this was the reason I was provided. The specific articles they directed my attention to were on the “sequestration,” the anti-biotic resistant virus becoming for prevenient,” the death of an openly gay black Mississippi mayoral candidate, Chicago Public Schools starting to teach sex education to five year-olds, and new research on how sugar in immediate environment contributes to increase risk of diabetes’s.
I have heard this before; from the same news outlet which once informed me that the essay of health risked associated with eating fast foods wouldn’t be run because many of their advertisers were major fast food corporations. And another urban outlet that which noted that I am too honest in pointing out breeches in President Obama’s social contract and specific neglect of African Americans via his Keynesian economic approach.
Why? All because of what is called Search Engine Optimization – SEO. It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search enginesAlong time ago MTV played its first music video – “video killed radio. Today SEO is killing the African American journalist and media platform. I find this both diseased and neglectful of the needs of the African American community. First, being more concerned with page views instead of content implies that we desire for African Americans to be ill-informed, celebrity and reality TV addicted consumerist. Truth be told, this is our problem. Consumption, specifically the consumption of pathology, infection and decay affiliated with taking in mental stimuli that serves no benefit other than to promote, vanity, materialism and downright ignorance in the effort to entertain.
Entertaining the masses is more important, via obtaining page views than empowering the masses. Now what is comical is the content directed towards African Americans as steered by Urban media that gets the most page views include the following: Weekly celebrity instagram photos, what twitter is saying (as if twitter is a person) about Blu Ivy baby pictures, Celebrity boob jobs, Celebrities with fake hair and the ubiquitous reality TV show update. Ironic unlike other ethnic groups, African American community media outlets top web portals typically attended to celebrity, music and entertainment. No other racial breakdown of topical preferences shows similar levels of interest toward celebrity idolization. I mean just take the top ten mainstream web sites and compare them to the top ten African websites (in terms of page views). Meaning our appeal that we direct services is on the pathology of voyeurism, given the top AA blogs content addresses, fashion, celebrity, gossip, music and beauty.
Urban media and news have dropped the ball and have followed the path of radio after the introduction of video (that is in urban communities). SEO and page views and the bottom line is all that matters. So what little kids blow each other’s heads off every day with illegal weapons, let’s play music about killing each other daily, or put and article up to see what’s Drake’s latest instagram post. Urban media is feeding into the massive levels of African American consumerism and excessive voyeurism in a time of higher than ever African American poverty, homelessness, incarceration, HIV and illiteracy not to mention violence. The goal is to spread visual garbage in print media (because posts that get most page views have pictures and no words).
By following the lead of mainstream media, urban media is serving as an accomplice to mental genocide. It pushes the agenda of what is commercial and popular instead of what is essential. In essence waiting for whatever it is mainstream media tells us is important for us to know and accepting their definition of what issues, topics and subjects, and running with the ball. In the past we would be out in front of mainstream government news simply because they left out our story from our perspective. Thus we broke news and information that was important for our community’s survival.
All of this reminds me of something I am often reminded of. It was Carter G. Woodson who said, “If you can control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his action…If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the backdoor. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” Forgetting that in times prior one couldn’t enter through the front door, has lead us to make backdoors today big and wide for all to enter. The demand for page views and being enamored by SEO has destroyed the overall tenor of the distribution of news and information; in fact actually disseminating information by urban media may actually already be in the grave.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Friday, March 08, 2013
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Black Eight Year old Girl handcuffed, jailed for two hours
Rickman was handcuffed and held by Alton Police for two hours after throwing a tantrum at Love Joy Elementary School late Tuesday morning school. School officials, not being able to deal with the 70 lbs. Girl called the Alton Police to handle the situation.
She was even taken to jail in the back of a police squad car with her hands cuffed behind her back. The police would not allow her to get her coat. According to KMOV News in St. Louis, Her guardian said, “Her eyes were swollen from her crying and her wrists had welts on them,” said Rickman’s guardian, “They cuffed her feet too and she asked to use the restroom several times and was ignored.”
The police officer believes he took appropriate action. School officials could not be found for a comment.
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
American Foreign Policy and the Somalization of Syria
The price of the UN/US mission was heavy: 24 Pakistani UN peacekeepers inspecting a weapons site were ambushed and killed by Somalia soldiers under the warlord General Mohammed Aidid, 18 Elite Delta Force soldiers were killed and 84 wounded during an assault on Mogadishu's Olympia Hotel in search of Aidid. Although it was said the mission was to help deliver food aid, it became visibly clear the goal was to remove General Mohammed Aidid from power. As well as be in the position to control oil and gas reserves, since Aidid would block the permission granted to several large multi-national oil corporations from the Somalia president Siad Barre to search for oil. Not forgetting that Somalia has the largest coastline in Africa, part of which. One part of this coastline is just in front of the most important region in the world for the moment, the Middle East. Another part of the coastline faces the Indian Ocean.
From my narrow-mindedness, it appears that the goal of President Obama currently has nothing to do with growing democracy and protecting the citizens of Syria, but more so with the removal of President Bashar Assad. And as in Somalia, natural resources reinforce or interventionist agenda, especially considering the news that Iraq has approved the construction of a 900 plus mile natural gas pipeline that will connect Iran to Syria. I am almost certain this plays into the rational for taking down President Bashar Assad as well.
In East Africa today, there are still Somalis living in the neighboring countries of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti. Likewise, it was just reported that more than a million Syrians are now refuges in the neighboring nations of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq due to the two years of US instigated violence across Syria.
Since our intervention in Somalia, what has happened? One, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) regime of Zenawi Meles in Ethiopia has sent its troops into Somalia and their main goal is to create the Independent republic of Tigray. Then the EPLF (Eritrean People Liberation Front) from Eritrea that was occupied by Ethiopia, stepped in the political and military picture. Then in 2006, a group of high-ranking officers led by General Kamal Galchuu joined the Oromo Liberation Front. In the Orome area a real intifada started up and a few months ago, the OLF launched an appeal to all opposition groups to join the united front ADF (Alliance for Democracy and Freedom). All of this led eventually to incessant social and political destabilization and you guessed it, a nation stabilized via Islamic fundamentalist and anti-US rule via Islamist who did what America couldn’t (defeat the warlords and liberate the entire nation whole country in six months).
What we saw in Somalia, was the result of U.S. government meddling. All fueled by the United States support unpopular warlords, who once the Somalia people found out they were being supported by the US, made the popularity of the Islamist movement more appealing. Plus the manner in which the US backed Ethiopia and their indiscriminate shelling of Mogadishu’s civilian areas didn’t make it easier for anything other than a stronger hatred of America.
Now we see the same thing again. President Obama has stated that Assad has lost his legitimacy as a leader. In Mexico his position was outlined more specifically when while in Los Cabos, Mexico, he pointed fingers at Russia and China say that the have "not signed on" to any plan that promotes the removal of Bashar al-Assad's from power.
Truth be told the Obama administration doesn’t want a solution for they don’t believe there is any solution that exist that would to the violence that leaves him in power. The reason there is no diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria is because the Obama Administration doesn’t desire one. They want to continue to implement a policy of Bushian destabilization in Syria, they want Assad to go or be killed instead of what the Syrian People want.
The Obama Administration is trying with its all to make a case for more support for al- Qaeda rebels he calls the FSA and sequentially describing their actions as leading a popular uprising against an "illegitimate" government.
Assad on the other hand is saying that it is at war with "terrorists." If history is any indication, we will end up with a divided Syria that will eventually become a series of small states like at best, and at worse, a nation run by rise of warlords and militias. Just as we saw in Somalia.
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Friday, March 01, 2013
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