By Mike Green Where are black tech innovators in America? It's a good question that was raised in Silicon Valley two years ago when Angela Benton met legendary investor Mitch Kapor and founded NewMe, the first accelerator in Silicon Valley focused on black startup founders. Soledad O'Brien's "Black in America" series catalyzed a national debate when it spotlighted the NewMe Accelerator and the controversy o ...

By Tracie Powell House Republican leaders Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.) sat in front of a dry erase board with the hash-tag, #CommActUpdate, written in marker, to talk with former Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell (a GOP appointee) via Google Hangout about updating the 1996 Communications Act. If ever there was an oxymoron. It is also symbolic of what's wrong with Washingto ...

Government Monitoring Is A Way of Life for Communities of Color By Tracie Powell Immigrants, Hispanics, blacks and Muslim Americans are used to living under the watchful eye of the government. It's simply a way of life, which may explain why communities of color seem to be unfazed by news reports about government spying on citizens. Or maybe they've just forgotten their history. Advocacy organizations are s ...

To Code or Not To Code. That is not the question, nor should it be, writes Mathew Ingram for Paid Content. Journalists, he said, ignore a basic working knowledge of computer programming at their own peril. "Now more than ever knowledge is power," Ingram states. "More than that, it means having an appreciation for how technology affects the way media and content are being produced, consumed and distributed — ...

By Tracie Powell It may sound like an episode of CSI (take your pick from the franchise), but journalists are using high-tech tools to combat photo manipulations, an increasingly needed skill in an era where news organizations are relying more and more on user-generated content. The rise of digital cameras and the move to digital photo formats makes image manipulations a lot easier. Now everyone can fire up ...

Is Twitter Ruining America and American politics? "Why do we need journalism when we have social media" is the rallying cry of those who have a perspective to share. If you have something to say — a cool link you saw or a photo or a review of a restaurant — you go on Facebook and Twitter and Yelp and say it. Why do you need journalists to tell you about links or how good restaurants are when you have social ...

Those who know me best, know that I'm a total fan girl for soap operas. The juicier, the better. I even created a blog and launched popular social media fan pages honoring As The World Turns, a sudser that was canceled by CBS in 2010. My mother said she went into labor with me while watching World Turns and that's probably where my love for high drama started. But like the news industry -- my other passion ...

Each year CQ Roll Call publishes a list of the 50 richest members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives; and for the past two years we've reviewed the list to determine how much of these members' largess is connected to the lucrative media and technology sectors. (For context: The 10 poorest members of congress are dairy farmers, lawyers, small business owners and lifetime public servants.) From n ...

Fast Company, the premier magazine about media and technology, put out one of those lists again. This time it's the 25 Smartest Women on Twitter. Though the list is not meant to be exhaustive, it is still severely lacking in terms of diversity. The list, featured in the magazine's "Work Smart" section, was published days after Harvard's Shorenstein Center and Neiman Journalism Lab published a report that co ...

Last week the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Free Flow of Information Act, which prohibits a federal entity from compelling certain 'covered parties' to testify or reveal confidential information and sources. Introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York), it grants privilege for 'covered parties,' with an exception for cases deemed to be critical to national security. It amounts to a federal m ...