Biting into the rising media pie

In a world where the vast majority of media is owned by a handful of corporations, Pop and Politics gives young writers and people of color a piece of the media pie. Pop and Politics is committed to aggressive truth-telling, to debating new ideas, and to educating and empowering younger Americans to fully participate in civil society.

* Pop and Politics provides a forum for discussion and debate among young people about current politics and culture.

* Pop and Politics trains next-generation journalists to produce mutli-media content and to use new media to distribute news and information in the public interest.

* And Pop and Politics introduces young people across the United States and around the world to organizations, movements, schools of thought that seek to widen inclusion in the public sphere and create a more truly democratic future.

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Journalist Farai Chideya started Pop and Politics as a blog in 1996 while working as an “X-Generation” campaign reporter for CNN. She posted material at the site that spoke to a younger multicultural audience, material that wasn’t making it on to CNN. You can read more about Farai’s motivation to start Pop and Politics and the growth of the mission of the project in her Editorial Note.

An antidote to mainstream political and cultural reporting, Pop and Politics continues to offer informed cultural criticism and straight-up, non-partisan information on where America and the world are headed. Pop and Politics stands strong on First Amendment rights and encourages their expression in all forms.

Training new journalists for the new-media landscape

Pop and Politics is committed to helping young people draw on their relationship with contemporary information culture to produce a new kind of journalism, one that promotes multi-cultural and multi-genre approaches to storytelling, that stresses authenticity as much as objectivity and that encourages authors, audiences and author-audiences toward civic engagement. Read more about our philosophy of new-media journalism in our P+P mini-festo, which also details some of the ways we are helping to reshape the news media.

Pop and Politics project staff

Managing Editor and award-winning writer Tricia Romano documented the city’s club scene for Village Voice for eight years, covering the trends that have come and gone (electroclash, the eighties revival, Friendster, the Strokes), and followed club culture as it shifted from small, grungy venues to upscale bottle-service lounges. Via her two columns, “Fly Life,” and “Club Crawl,” cover stories and features, she documented the crackdown on clubland, writing about the city’s smoking ban and the cabaret law. Her March 2006 cover story about sober DJs and promoters in the nightlife industry, “The Sober Bunch,”  garnered her a Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award for Best Feature.  Additionally, Romano is an authority on the cabaret law, giving interviews on the issue to The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, Channel 13 WYNET, and WBAI Radio. A Las Vegas, NV native, she has contributed to Spin, Radar, The New York Post, Urb, Rolling Stone, Salon, Paper, and the Seattle Weekly. She is also a photographer, and her images accompanied her column every week in the Voice; her photography has also been featured in Spin.

Meet the P+P @The DNC Team

Editor and Staff Writer Chris Nelson looks at the United States through the eyes of a citizen who grew up in Cairo, Egypt.  For nine years, he was immersed in Arab culture, laying the seeds for a unique interpretation of patriotism, nationalism, and the entire election process in the U.S.  He has since returned stateside to attend Duke and spend a six year stint in the corporate world working for New Line and NBC Universal.  Now a journalism M.A. candidate at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, he travels to the DNC as an editor and staff writer for one of the oldest still running blogs on the Internet: Pop + Politics. The voice that Pop + Politics has given him is unsurpassed.  Digital journalism and bloggers here to stay.  Chris looks forward to bridging the multimedia gap and blurring the line between print and online even further at the DNC.

Staff Writer Brooke-Sidney Gavins is a self-proclaimed news and politics junkie. A former Interactive Media Director, she decided to get up close and personal with the news by pursuing her master’s degree in journalism at USC Annenberg. Brooke-Sidney, a Dean’s Scholar at USC, spent her summer getting her feet wet in broadcast journalism with an apprenticeship with CNBC’s “Kudlow & Company” show. She is the creator of the CaramelBella.com blog, and also a writer for two international publications, The World Tribune newspaper and Living Buddhism magazine. Brooke-Sidney graduated with honors from Duke University with bachelor degrees in Political Science and Women’s Studies. She was a Duke in Oxford Scholar and studied tort law at Oxford University’s New College in England. Upon graduation this May, she hopes to land a job covering politics.

Contributing writer Torey Van Oot is a senior majoring in print journalism and political science at the University of Southern California. Her experience includes internships at a newspaper in New Hampshire, a Los Angeles-based fashion and lifestyle magazine and various positions at the USC campus daily, where she is now managing editor. Most recently, she spent seven months reporting on and around Capitol Hill for a newspaper in Washington, D.C.

Political Columnist Max Zimbert combines a Manhattan pace with California casual. A Southern California native, Max graduated Union College in Schenectady, NY with honors in political science and history in 2007. He can tell you a little (or a lot) about every president since William McKinley—go ahead and test him. Max is currently mastering the art of journalism at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Sharifa Johka is an independent producer with a background in feature film development, and acquisitions. Johka began her professional career working in Acquisitions at New Line Cinema/Fine Line Features. During that time she was responsible for tracking film projects in all stages of development and production for worldwide distribution consideration. As an independent producer, Johka has credits that span the mediums of both feature film and broadcast television, including the charming romantic comedy, “The Seat Filler.” Additional television credits include “Teen Summit,” an entertainment magazine show for teens; “Lyric Cafe,”a six-part series produced for the BET Jazz Channel, and “Daddy’s Girl,” a documentary feature directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood (“Biker Boyz,” “Notorious”) and produced for TV ONE. Johka’s most recent production is the “Africana!” television series, for which she serves as Executive Producer. Johka is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where she attended the prestigious School for Cinematic Arts and received a Student Academy Award for her compelling documentary “The Mirror Lied.”

Staff Writers & Contributors

Staff Writer Deborah Stokol is an L.A. native who double majored in Music and English at Berkeley. She plays the piano, sings, composes music and has just embarked on a two-year journey through the Online Journalism masters program at USC. She grew up on a steady diet of Peter Sellers, Catherine Deneuve, absurdity, tongue in cheek, puns, awkwardness, and John Cleese. Debbie can often be seen trolling for good coffeehouses and fresh pastries.

Contributing Author Shazia Haq is a stoic USC journalism grad who has raised a money plant, Xenotaft, named after 1) Xenomorph in Alien and 2) Howard Taft, her favorite president. Shazia enjoys word puzzles, krautrock, ornithology, socialism, Max Frisch and sandwiches. She’s come to realize that no profession comes close to the unglamorously fabulous life of the reporter. She’s interned at NPR and the LA Times. She had a childhood crush on Alf.

Contributing Writer (and former Managing Editor) John Tomasic has written and edited for the academic and literary press, for the United Nations and for business and culture magazines and websites. He has been a ghostwriter, rewriter, copywriter, blogger, but mostly a graduate-school-paper writer.  He now works as an Editor at The Huffington Post’s Off the Bus section.

Columnist Hanna Ingber Win has covered stories in Myanmar, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Africa, Mexico and the United States.  Hanna wrote a weekly column for the Argus at Wesleyan and one for the Myanmar Times in Rangoon. She is a Dean’s Scholar at USC and an intern at KPCC Patt Morrison. She is from New York and has been married for thirteen months.

Occasional Bloggers: Michelle Lanz, Matthew Mundy, Mark Naylor, Jean Yung, Keli Moore,