Monday, January 21, 2008

Krip-Hop article contributes to magazine award

Utne gave the 2007 Independent Press Award for General Excellence in Magazines to ColorLines and cited its article on "The Rise of Krip-Hop," about rap artists with disabilities, as illustration of its diverse arts coverage.

The 9-year-old magazine says it is a "national, multi-racial magazine devoted to the creativity and complexity of communities of color." The Krip-Hop article is not available online but some of ColorLines content is: http://www.colorlines.com/. For more about Krip-Hop, the person to know is Leroy Moore, who has produced two Krip-Hop mixtapes of disabled artists from around the world. He is an African American poet, writer, speaker and activist with cerebral palsy, who has been making presentations on race and disability for 13 years. For more about him, visit:
http://www.leroymoore.com/index.html.

ColorLines seems to be touching the heart and soul of race and politics with its content. There's an interesting media article in its current Jan/Feb issue, in which multimedia journalist Farai Chideya discusses her optimism about the future of journalism, especially online. It can be found at: http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=269. Chideya is an early innovator in online journalism, having begun her Pop + Politics blog (http://www.popandpolitics.com/) in 1996 before most journalists knew what to do with the Internet. Pop + Politics is now affiliated with USC Annenberg School of Communication and also does training in new-media journalism.