Developers promise "community investments," downtown revitalization, and a new "AI Center." What they don't say is that this development comes tethered to a massive resource-intensive data center that will cost billions, create pollution, and concentrate profits for the corporations and CEOs at the top-not the surrounding communities. This is not innovation, it's exploitation.
For the purposes of the BFOA, and what its main agenda and the goal is, there are people that are in the financial and otherwise, and anything that we can do to contribute to giving a helping hand to them is something we should not hesitate to do.
his community-oriented multimedia brand Do Good Crew launched last month with his new podcast, The Person Who Believed In Me, which features thought-leaders reflecting on the people who took a chance on them when no one else would. And his first guest? None other than Oprah Winfrey.
As U.S. job growth in 2025 reached its lowest point since the pandemic in 2020, Blacks have been hit extra hard. Their discharges stem from rollbacks in the federal government, DEI pullbacks, and large layoffs in areas such as education, health services and social assistance. Now, nearly two-thirds of Blacks in the U.S. are looking for a new job in 2026. Yet, 75% feel unprepared for the job search ahead.
Epicenter, a multiplatform community and news organization founded during the pandemic to help New Yorkers navigate COVID-19 while spotlighting arts, small businesses and ensuring resources reached those who needed them most, has faced this challenge repeatedly. Community, ethnic and small media outlets have long struggled to get responses from government and corporate press teams that prioritize outlets with perceived scale and reach.
To say press freedoms in the U.S. have taken a knock during the first year of Donald Trump's second term would be a gross understatement. Perhaps the most glaring example is the Department of Defense's new policy requiring journalists covering the Pentagon to sign a pledge promising not to use any information that hasn't been explicitly authorized. But the Trump administration's attacks on a free press have also included other tactics, like the effort to dismantle Freedom of Information Act processes across federal departments.
In the environmental nonprofit sector, "centering frontline voices" has become a familiar slogan, often detached from how decisions are made or resources allocated. It appears in grant proposals, conference agendas, and organizational values statements. And yet, too often, those voices are still positioned as illustrative rather than authoritative-invited to animate strategies already decided, asked to translate lived experience into language legible to funders, or flattened into narratives that travel more easily than the truths they carry.
What should be stories about innovation, resilience, market disruption, and leadership have increasingly been flattened into a single, repetitive narrative: DEI. Not the company's business model. Not the founder's vision or entrepreneur journey. Not the problem being solved or the customers being served. Just DEI. And it's often framed through the lens of rollbacks, political backlash, or cultural controversy.
The arrest of Don Lemon is not about Don Lemon It is about whether the federal government can criminalize proximity to protest and describe it as law enforcement. It is about whether observation can be reclassified as participation after the fact. It is about how easily a workable First Amendment boundary can be blurred once prosecutors decide a journalist was too close, too embedded, or too visible.
If you've worked in a technical role in news for long enough, you likely remember when the "show your work" spirit was everywhere. Newsroom nerds shared code on GitHub, swapped tips on social media and unfurled long blogs guiding others on how to get things done. You might also have a vague sense that - like reaction GIFs, demotivational posters, and that guy who sang "Chocolate Rain" - you're seeing less of it these days.
The pandemic changed Defector's course. New York shut down, the economy ground to a halt, and the offers of capital dried up. So the group decided to launch a new website on their own dime, this time structured as a worker-owned cooperative in which the journalists, rather than media executives, made all the decisions. The site became the kind of success that's rare in digital media nowadays, bringing in $3.2 million in revenue from over 40,000 paying subscribers in its first year alone.
