Nicki Mayo of Black Women Unmuted gets real on activism in journalism

Nicki Mayo is the Editor-at-large for Black Women Unmuted, a digital publication that focuses on the power of Black women in U.S. politics.

In the second episode of Black Journalists on Journalism, she walks us through her career as a reporter and editor, including stints in broadcast TV and radio, and her new venture at Black Women Unmuted.

We discuss: 

• Her work with NABJ
• The role of activism in the profession
• Black Women Unmuted
• Her appearances on true crime shows like “Snapped” and “Fatal Attraction”
• Journalists' relationship with Twitter

Follow Nicki on Twitter @nickimayonews.

Interested in being on the show? Email [e-mail].

More about Donnell Suggs: Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Donnell Suggs is the Editor in Chief of The Atlanta Voice, the city's longest-running Black-owned newspaper. A father and husband, Donnell has wasted years of his life supporting the New York Mets and Jets. Follow him on Twitter @suggswriter. 

More about Zuri Berry: Zuri is the owner and principal producer of ZMC Podcasts. He has been a journalist for two decades, working as a reporter, producer, and editor, with stops in California, Boston, Charlotte, and Washington, D.C. He’s originally from San Francisco. Find him online at https://zuriberry.com.

Don't forget to support this podcast by visiting https://www.buymeacoffee.com/blackjournos and buying Zuri and Donnell a cup of coffee. It goes a long way! And thanks for listening! 

Creators & Guests

Host

Donnell Suggs

EIC at @theatlantavoice , Life reporter at @gtimes ,lunchroom monitor at my son’s school, BK native, @Mets , Nets & Jets. @wafflehouse 4 Life

Host

Zuri Berry

I tweet about📝 journalism, 🎙 podcasts, and 📈 business. I run @zmcpodcasts. MBA grad. Originally from SF. 🌉 He/Him

What is Black Journalists on Journalism?

Have you ever wondered who that Black journalist was behind the story you were reading? Or who was that Black face you saw on TV? Or that Black voice you heard on the radio?

Maybe you wanted to know more about them?

If so, you’re just like us.

Get to know the Black journalists behind the stories and organizations we’re all reading, watching, and listening to.

Hosted by Donnell Suggs, the editor-in-chief of The Atlanta Voice, and Zuri Berry, the owner and principal producer of ZMC Podcasts.

Donnell Suggs: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Black Journalists on Journalism. We are here today with my partner in crime, Zuri Berry, and our special guest, miss Nicki Mayo. Nicki, how are you?

are you?

Nicki Mayo: Hey, thank you for having me on here, guys. I love it.

Donnell Suggs: Uh, welcome, welcome.

Zuri Berry: Yeah. Very, very nice to have you. And, uh, just as a FYI to our listeners and viewers, Nicki and I go way back to our times in NABJ Region 1 conference wrangling.

Nicki Mayo: Directors

Zuri Berry: She was, uh, president, uh, now like President Emeritus of the Baltimore Association of Black Journalists. I was the VP in the Boston chapter, and so we did a lot of work together to, uh, get some, uh, regional conferences together.

Nicki Mayo: And I'm currently chair of the membership committee for NABJ, so

Zuri Berry: Yeah.

Nicki Mayo: out.

Donnell Suggs: Well, we definitely want

Zuri Berry: you to.

Nicki Mayo: Every time I try to get out, they keep pulling back in, so I give up.

definitely

Donnell Suggs: touch on NABJ and the importance of that, uh, your career there. And we wanna start with just how are you doing? What are you doing these days? What's going on?

Nicki Mayo: Okay. I always tell people I'm doing a little bit of everything and the most important part is that I get to be in charge. I never knew I wanted to be a manager until I had so many bad ones. And that kind of motivated me to say that it's time for me to, uh, really walk strongly in my producer dom because I was always fluctuating and I still do, I do on air and I do behind the scenes as a producer.

But, um, yeah, you have one too many mismanagement situations and you're like, maybe I need to be the manager at this point. So everything from promotional videos, social media campaigns, I'm editor at large for Black Women Unmuted, which is a website devoted to black women in politics and policymaking spaces.

So these election years are very vital and it incorporates a lot of my background as a politics, uh, government reporter over and over and over again. So I enjoy kind of having the power to finally say, I want to work on these projects and not always filing a siren because you know, death, injury, and destruction. The D.I.D. of journalism. That was a lot of my career.

And um, as you kind of mentioned earlier, like, yeah, I just gotta still dabble in the D.I.D. of journalism still, but I like being in control of what do I get to cover.

Zuri Berry: Can you, can you walk us through your career arc? Because I, I think people, um, may come and, and see the Nicki on social and they, they, you know, they'll see Black Women Unmuted, but they don't see all of the work that you've put in over the years, particularly in broadcasting. And I, I'm someone who's familiar, but I'd love for you to inform our audience.

Nicki Mayo: All right. I'm going to give the cliff notes version because I do not wanna lose your listeners. I, uh, star I know it's a lot. I was always a speech and debate kid, so that kind of pushed me directly into journalism as a youngster. Went to Syracuse University who won the best communication schools in the country.

And believe it or not, I didn't actually go to that school. I forged my way into every class that I wanted to. So you see a theme here, like, if I can't get in, I'm gonna make a way no matter what.

Donnell Suggs: a way.

Nicki Mayo: Yeah, so I have two degrees and neither one of them is in broadcast journalism. They're in African American studies and communications and rhetorical studies.

Used to be called speech communications. I interned my butt off. I joined NABJ super early. We're talking like my sophomore year, maybe into my freshman year. And it's from that, that I've always had people from NABJ telling me, okay, this is how you do your career. Like the cheat codes, you know, like a video game.

Uh, so, um, interned at BET, interned at the, uh, ABC affiliate in Baltimore. Got a job at BET, fresh out of school. Went from there. By the time, you know, 2001, the world blew up. Viacom had owned, uh, BET, went from BET to WJZ. 13, another Viacom owned property. Uh, from there I went to, um, uh, CTV 76 and was a reporter producer.

I also had an opportunity to go teach high school at one point where I taught speech journalism and yearbook. Uh, from there I went to Sarasota, Florida and it was a 24 hour station that was owned by the New York Times and um, I think it's called the Sarasota Herald Tribune, um, s and n six.

It was one of those, uh, we were in that whole convergent market thing where everything was together in one spot. So I went from Sarasota, Florida to Appalachia, worked in Johnson City, Tennessee, and again, did the whole, you gotta do all of them. So, morning live shot reporter on the website, right? For the newspaper at the same darn time.

Uh, Buffalo, New York was a very, I started, uh, station called SNN 6, now known as Spectrum News Buffalo. That was my very first time launching something and it showed me that, how did this really work?

Had a goal to get home before I turned 30. So I came back home around 30, 31. I started at Crofton Patch. Got to launch that sucker again. So again, feeling though, how, how does something go together? How do you launch something? Um, then I launched another show, um, the list on EW Scripts, which is still going, but it started with local correspondents. And from there, uh, I did a quick stint, actually, no, I did three whole years. Three years for the Associated Press Radio team. And then from there, Philadelphia, at the Philadelphia Tribune, then back down here saying, okay, you know what? No more with the moving, cannot do any more moving. And now I'm like, officially Nicki Mayo News, LLC. I'll do a day job here and there. But the passion comes from the, the different stories I'm able to tell for different clients.

Donnell Suggs: Where did you teach high school? Where was that?

Nicki Mayo: Oh, Flowers High School in Prince George's.

Donnell Suggs: Wow.

Nicki Mayo: Yeah. In fact, they think it was like the second, if not the third year, that Flowers, it was a brand new school, uh, that it was in, in, in, uh, the district. And my students didn't know how old I was. They just knew I was a younger teacher. So it is really freaky when I walk around and like, I'll go to church in particular and you'll run into old students and they can't remember where they know you from.

And they're like, didn't we go to high school together? I'm like, kind of.

Kinda like,

Donnell Suggs: of

Nicki Mayo: Kind of. There was an eight year difference between me and my students and, uh, they're now finding that out. They didn't know before. I lied so many times. I'm like, you know, I'm, I'm short. I did, I I look like this now at 43.

So I'm like, I did not look my age remotely at anybody's 24. So I, yeah, it was a struggle.

Zuri Berry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you still do some teaching, don't you?

Nicki Mayo: Um, whenever asked, yes, I do.

Zuri Berry: Okay.

Nicki Mayo: I even have it over here on my vision board that I'm gonna do classroom visits. So, so far this year, and we're sitting at April, right? I've done three different classroom visits and I do 'em at all different age levels.

Um, my preferred age level is high school. Um, I have been invited to teach at the college level several times, and I might jump into it, who knows?

But yeah, I've taught at a STEM program over in Cheverly Maryland where I was doing the humanities because, uh, it was just kind of helping the kids open up a little bit.

We've all seen how kids can kind of like be nerves around with people they don't know. And, um, yeah, I still, I can't stay away from the classroom. I really do enjoy teaching and, uh, oh no, teachers just have, you know, you have fun until you don't have fun, but you have fun for the most part.

Zuri Berry: So I, I wanted to ask about, how you got inspired to get into journalism in the first place, because you just walked us through all of these different stops and let's talk, I mean, so many journalists, broadcast journalists in particular, but also I, I wanna say folks in sports and in different industries that have to travel the country in order to find the opportunity.

Um, you're certainly in that bucket and, but you have to be passionate about it, to want to be able to do this. And so what was it that sparked the passion for you? How did you get in and, and, and who nurtured it, if you will, along the way?

Nicki Mayo: it? Okay. So I was really blessed to be in a market where it was not weird or awkward or rare to see Black women on the news. So, growing in the Baltimore, I grew up with the Beverly Burkes of the world and the Sandra Pinks and, uh, Janet Roach and those women. Like, I got to see them as I was growing up. I got to see the goal right there.

And before wanting to be a journalist, believe it or not, I wanted to be the first black woman to be on the Supreme Court. But then I found out how long you have to go to school after you go to school, after you go to school. I was like, I don't wanna do anymore school. I'm overachieving and I'm tired of it already.

So, uh, that kind of turned me off from law. And I knew I wanted to do something where I could use my voice effectively, um, to somehow help others and advocate for others. And in journalism, I, I'm like, you can, but you're not. And I was like, you know what? I'm willing to take this much cause I love information and history.

So the passion came from being a student of history, social studies in particular, love that class. Um, and that's why I got African American Studies degree too, that part, um, a student of history and knowing the importance of, um, oratory and how it influences people. And then I realize that some people are nervous in front of cameras and microphones, and I'm like, well, I'm not.

I am a level 30 extrovert. Like it's extreme. So, I knew that this was gonna be something that I wanted to do. Uh, the people who ushered me along the way were definitely mentors. I really appreciate those who st took the time out with me because it's not easy. The teacher in me will tell you like, it's not easy to talk to folks when they're hardheaded.

And for me, I was just like, listen, I told you I went to undergrad, but I didn't have a major that I wanted to have to get this career. So I was listening to everything they told me to do. And these are people who are still in NABJ today. So I do appreciate the fact that they planted the seed and they also offered the cultivating and, uh, told me like, okay, apply for this, apply for that.

And I kind of attempt to model my life, uh, like the people who mentored me. I just can't be as. I only have two official mentees. That's all I'm taking on. Um, cause they're so intimate with those two that I can, if I have to like pull 'em up real quick, I can do that. Some folks are not made and I'm sweet.

Nice. But some people are just not made for any type of criticism or they don't wanna receive it. So I need the one that knows that, okay, we're going into this. We're going into this like teacher student, you good? All right, cool. Then let's talk about what you need to be doing. And I love that they're on an autopilot for the most part.

They only hit me up for like, how do I deal with office politics questions now? I love it. I'm like, I feel so proud.

Donnell Suggs: For

Nicki Mayo: I've done so much,

Zuri Berry: oh. There's so much there that was just right there that we could get into.

Nicki Mayo: I cleaned it up, didn't I?

Zuri Berry: Yeah. Yes.

Donnell Suggs: Nicki the student of history, I wanted to know your thoughts on NABJ and how important it has been to all of us. Everyone on this podcast, everyone that's probably gonna be listening to this podcast has some affiliation one way or the other. And if they don't, do they need to?

Nicki Mayo: don't, uh, if they're interested in being a journalist or possibly if they're interested in being a media related member. Sure. If not, it's good to know about us. Okay. Um, I'm not here in official capacity as a membership chair, but I am obviously like helping chapters figure out how to shore up their chapters. I like what NABJ does for professionals. I really do. Um, it is a, a legacy black organization and with that comes, you know, the handicap of things that were founded decades ago. Maybe in time might be time for a tune-up, maybe time for a progressive move or something. But at the same token, I'm never gonna discredit the work that an organization that old like 1975 has done.

I appreciate it. I know it had to be hard to be risky at that time. Um, although at seventies, I mean they, they really were kind of, kind of buck, you know, knuck if you buck if you wanted me. Uh, I've always been an activist and an advocate, so it's like one of those things of like, I like advocating for workforce needs and it's a good marrying of love journal. And, um, you know, wanna make sure that journalists are being treated appropriately in our newsrooms, that we are getting paid for the same, you know, we're doing the same jobs here and everything like that. And by me sitting in an intersectionality of being a black person and a woman, um, low balling, wage disparities, like a lot of this is like my life.

Um, unfortunately by age, I got and got stuck in the area where you're fighting people off from harassment, stuff like that. So you need to have like advocacy organizations, like NABJ to help you out or help you navigate the stuff. Like, the theme I think of my entire career has been, I don't move quickly, um, without counsel.

And that's where you can constantly, that's where you can find it. Uh, I think some people feel like, oh, I'll figure it out. I'm like, but it doesn't hurt to check in with people who have navigated these waters already. Yeah.

Donnell Suggs: And just to, to jump on, piggyback on that, and this is not just for the newbies. What about people like us that are veterans per se, in the business? So you, you know, you're, I'm 45 years old, so I wouldn't necessarily need counsel on how to get a job or navigate office politics, but I like going to my AABJ meetings and NABJ conventions just to fellowship.

Nicki Mayo: Yes, that's a big part. Um, I, I enjoy it. I mean, I'm one of those stereotypical NABJ babies as I've described. I did the student projects and all that stuff. So I've known a lot of these people. Woo. 20 years at this point. You know, like I've known them since we came outta undergrad. It's scary. Um, but it's not just a fellowship thing, because that can be a very expensive way to hang out with your friends.

Okay? I go as a business owner and, you know, I could pan around and show you all this gear and stuff behind me on that side, the green screen side. But I go honestly to, stalk the visual task force people, they know this. I go there, I'm like, what are we do? What are we doing for the convention? What toys y'all got?

founder Allison Davis. She always has the best stuff. And then it's like everything from, okay, what's the coolest teleprompter app? Cause there's a ton of 'em, but which one works? Y'all? I don't wanna waste my time. I don't waste my client's. I like that aspect of it. And I do think that sometimes, uh, journalists are like, I'm a journalist only.

I'm like, have you thought about the other roles in journalism that maybe you haven't explored yet? And the conventions are always a great opportunity to kind of hear from, see, and like you said, you can fellowship. It's also, don't forget, we are still networking as established professionals. If you're smart about it.

Now, if you wanna hold up the bar, I, I ain't mad at you, go ahead and do that too. But I've learned so many tricks of the trade. I've held myself off from buying gear that I don't need. Um, because buying a million cameras don't mean you're gonna get a good shot. Y'all, if you don't know how to use none of these cameras, all the shots gonna be trash.

So I like going and finding the people. Like we have photo journalists, we have graphic designers, people who know how to do this stuff. And if you're in a newsroom where you don't feel comfortable going up to the guy or the woman that does these roles, NABJ is a place where you can just kind of slide in dms like, hey, so, um, like I don't know if anybody see my saga with the DSLR camera that I'm afraid of, but I'm like, So I got this used camera, right?

So how do I use this thing, like for real, how this thing work? Cause I don't like it. I'm a camcorder chick, but I'm trying to learn how to use the dslr. I bought a used one from an NABJ member, um, who was a photographer at, um, our, at the ABC affiliate in Baltimore. And I bought it used because I'm like, I'm not sure if I'm married to this idea, but let me try it out for a bit.

And yeah, I'm trying it out for a bit. It's still not my primary number one camera, though. It's not gonna make it there.

Zuri Berry: I, I love that there's so many things involved in that. And, and you know, for me it's been both the networking, both the fellowships and, and, and now I feel like, you know, as I get older, it's transitioning and more of my time at NABJ conferences in particular I spent in the hallways and not in halls. Um, which is, you know, I think a common experience for people as they go through the middle parts of their career or whatever may have you. However you, however people wanna describe me and where I am. Nicki, I'm wondering, um, you, you talked about NABJ a little bit and sort of being a legacy organization, and I'm just thinking like, there's such a, a dynamic there in terms of where the organization is and, and how it's changed.

And it just, where do you see NABJ right now and, and, and where it's progressing, from your perch as a membership coordinator?

Nicki Mayo: changed. I will say that membership has always shifted younger because we'll have a lot of folks coming out of undergrad and those prime years, those, I'm sorry, formative years. The numbers are bigger and then people start to taper off and find other careers and I don't know, I might be under unpopular opinion that if they taper off, then it's okay.

You know, let's be straight. You know, I'm not here to stay a purist as a journalist and stay broke. That's not my life, that's not my ministry, but I'm here for those who wanna do it. Great. But you're going to lose people as they get older and find that there are professions that will pay better and let's not act like, uh, the newsrooms didn't just discover Black people in 2020, right.

We were not getting the best treatment in most places. So I need NABJ to continue to be the advocacy organization that it is. Um, I would like to take a little bit more dramatic moves at times, and I mean, I am more progressive than most of our members. So similar to when NAHJ said, we're not messing with Fox anymore, I would've loved to see the same thing from our organization.

We haven't done that. So I can privately be like, okay, y'all may not. But as for me, in my house, I don't do any, uh, you know, Fox, Breitbart, Newsmax, OANN, or o, whatever it's called. I don't do any of those. I have personal objections to the ethical uses, the ethical or attempted ethics of these news organizations they're using.

So I would like to see a more progressive move, but honestly, it's an organization, it's a professional organization at that, and they may not be ready to be as, um, bold and progressive as I am.

Zuri Berry: Well, let me, let me ask you about that specifically, because it feels like this is a moment. I mean, we're recording this on April the 12th, and Fox is about to go into. You know, trial with Dominion in this lawsuit. And it, there's serious questions about the ethical nature of their journalism practices. I mean, straight up lying in some instances and others.

And I mean, we've all sort of, uh, witnessed at one point or another, uh, a very racist and racial lang racialized language being used, um, in coverage in terms of whether it's Black Lives, black Lives Matter protest, or anything that has to do with Trayvon Martin, et cetera, et cetera. Like, I feel like there's all these incidents over the years.

Do you think that that is enough impotence for the organization and like NABJ, which is not just, you know, upholding, um, in, in my view, not just upholding the, the, the status quo for black journalists now and sort of advancing their e e equity within the industry, but also upholding journalistic values in, in, in terms of ethics, in terms of truth telling and in terms of advocacy.

Nicki Mayo: industry. I don't know if they're ready to be as progressive as I would like them to be. I might sound like I'm like on brand, but this really is me when I'm like, whenever asked about this. Uh, whenever I see organizations use such coded language that we know exactly what this coded stuff is standing for.

Like I'm really uneasy when I hear the woke this, the woke that number one woke is old. Okay. Like they're black pe they're white people came out like 2014 or something like that. So it's, it's kind of overused at this point. And woke is code for black. Woke is code for not cishet. Woke is quote for anything that's not waspy.

Okay. And I'm uncomfortable with the fact it's like, uh, me personally, yes. I, there's pictures of me protesting stuff back in 1999. Okay? So obviously I am miss, you know, f around and find out and ready to knuck if you buck if we got to, but I don't want to expect my organization to do that. Um, I don't see that happening from a legacy black organization unless they are a civil rights organization.

And I have worked for, I left it out, I have worked for like the NAACP for the Crisis magazine. So in those arenas, those are way more on brand for me. Um, I am the person that's gonna be very progressive to say, you know what, we can take a stance right here. We can like, you know, not support this thing. But, uh, when you're talking about a legacy black organization, like NABJ, that's not where I'm going to expect my activism and advocacy to come from.

And when they didn't step back from Fox when NAHJ did, that kind of solidified how I feel. It's like, okay, I get it. So I'm here for, show me the new cameras, show me the new video stuff I can use. Show me like what's new in our industry. Uh, you know, I haven't really looked for a job via the organization in a long time. I have that luxury, but if I'm a newbie and I'm young and I'm just trying to get my foot into the industry, this is what the organization is here for, that professional development. They're not really, you know, they have taken stances. I think the locally, the local chapters take more of a stance than the national does because, you know, more close and intimate.

And if you pull up any of my stuff, you know, obviously I've been doing that stuff too. Um,

Zuri Berry: yeah, Baltimore.

Nicki Mayo: oh yeah,

Donnell Suggs: Ain't.

Nicki Mayo: yeah.

Zuri Berry: I, there are issues in the market, but

Nicki Mayo: I'm like, yeah,

we can go through that for a while. But just know that, um, I know that when I'm looking at this organization, I can't expect them to be every aspect of what I want them to be.

I can be an advocate in my own right. And, um, practice advocacy journalism or frankly, frankly, take the hat off and be like, all right, first off, what you not gonna do and go in on somebody if necessary. I just don't think that I'm gonna get that or expect that from something that started in 1975 and before that, uh, because they got money to watch out for.

Zuri Berry: And the, let me just tack on there. I mean, there's freedom obviously in that, given your independence. And so, I mean, that's not something a lot of people who work in, you know, newspapers, corporate media, et cetera, et cetera, or outside of the black press for that matter, uh, experience.

Nicki Mayo: festival. Yes. I actually

advise people, I advise people all the time. Like I get that you want to be, uh, loud in the streets and sometimes, you know, you'll see me go on a whole like, you know, ethics, what are you doing? You know, going straight at news organizations that should know better.

But I do advise those who are in newsroom, especially considering what your market is. Um, we know our local markets well enough to know that some of them pe some of the people who run your station are also doing coffee and. I don't know, golf with some of the key offenders, right? So you don't really want to, uh, jeopardize your livelihood and name of, I'm taking a stance.

If you are the breadwinner of a household, I would strongly suggest not to do that. If you are single and don't, you know, again, or the breadwinner of the household, I don't suggest you do that as well. You have to know the dynamic of who you're about to go up, because you can do David and Goliath all you want, and you might find yourself out here blackballed from the industry.

And then like, but I stood in my ground and I stood up for myself. I'm like, yeah, and there's consequences to all that stuff. I was on a internship at channels, what is it? Okay, WTV, H five had to look at my old badges, TBH five and, um, Syracuse, uh, no, yeah, internship. I did an internship my senior year, but I led a protest in my sophomore year and the dang photographers from the dang, uh, who shot the thing for Channel five was like, why do I remember you?

I'm like, um, like, I don't know.

Donnell Suggs: Small world.

Nicki Mayo: Yes, it's a very small world. He was like, weren't you the one that was at that newspaper yelling at people like, okay, so what had happened was I was picking an ethical stance for journalism and ethics. I'm sure you can understand that. And they were getting all kind of testy, like, how dare you do that?

I'm like, how dare you not do it. That, I mean, I'm up here fighting for what we say we do as a craft, right? And when people start putting, you know, minstrel show looking cartoons in our newspaper, we got a problem. So we need to talk about that.

Donnell Suggs: I guess it helps our cause more to have a lot of us in the industry than outside the industry barking about the industry.

Nicki Mayo: Industry. It does help if we are there to be active and not there to be window dressing.

If you only wanna have the veneer of we care about black people, then you can miss me with that. We have black press, we can do our own. If we wanna be stressed out, we'll be stressed out, um, amongst our own and still be happy and proud about what we do. I am not an advocate for hire a bunch of, uh, black people and then tell them to silence their thoughts and assimilate.

What's the point of having them in the room then?

Donnell Suggs: Mm.

Zuri Berry: Absolutely agreed. Uh, let me ask you more about your, one of your current projects, Black Women Unmuted. Um, this is something I I'm interested in, in terms of just like I've, I've seen you guys out went hard for Black History, one month went hard for Women's History Month. Can you tell us more about these projects and, and what it means to, uh, wh why this was founded, actually. Because I, I think a lot of folks are still sort of coming to awareness of it.

Nicki Mayo: Yeah. We were founded about three years ago by one of my old colleagues, and I consider her a mentor even though we were peers, as we were. Um, actually, no, she still is my manager, uh, Sonya Ross. Uh, from the Associated Press time, I had three good years in there and I really glommed on to the people I worked there.

She was one of them, so both of us af like after AP. It was always a. A, a love project, a passion project she wanted to do. And I was like, oh, okay man, I'll cover politics all the time. It'd be nice to actually center Black women's since last time I checked, when it comes to mobilizing voter turnout, when it comes to like, you know, getting people literally to the polls, if you had to like literally driving you to the polls and also the vote that is coveted, I was like, it makes total sense to me.

So if you wanna start it, sure, let's go. Uh, we have operated without grants and without like, any major funding for about three years. And a lot of that was because you know, the pandemic and frankly getting your legs. I have started so many different news organizations that it was kind of interesting to see like, when you don't have the big money behind you, how far can you really go?

How well can this, do you know, you know, how, how well can we do? And I love some of the stuff that we had a chance to do because we're the ones deciding what's newsworthy, you know? Uh, we don't bury the, the Stacey Abrams stories, you know, it's, it's going to be front and center because the impact in Georgia impacts the rest of the country type thing.

We don't bury, uh, you know, the mobilization in Alabama, um, uh, in Texas when you had lawmakers walking out of the State House and they were like, no, um, this, we're not doing this vote. We're walking out. Like all this activism is happening. A lot of that is fueled by Black women. It's powered by Black women.

You, um, I'm a Delta. Now you know, full disclosure here. And we stay in politics. So that part too. So you have a AKA and Delta that got together and said, all right, we wanna start our own news organization and we want to center Black women. And there's never been, we've never had a problem finding content, put it that way.

If anything is finding the time to do the stories we want to do. And, um, I was really proud of our coverage this past election season because we had a correspondent on the ground in, um, Georgia. And it was a, well it was a student correspondent, so, you know, it was a lot of like l like, all right, you know, let's get you some food.

Don't eat at the event. You know, you're kinda walking them through like what to do. But you're so proud of like, look at what we're able to do. We're offering opportunities to, um, I think in this case, I think she went to like, um, university is Georgia the one with the blue and white? I don't know. Anyway, she went to school down there, but it was nice to give somebody an

Donnell Suggs: Georgia State.

Nicki Mayo: Thank you. Thank you. Oh, like blue and white. I know it's blue and white. Um, giving them an opportunity to be out there in the field, but also we're, our coverage is there. And I love like the social media campaigns. That's fun. That's where I love to live. Anyways. A good social media campaign. Obviously I can turn a feature package in a heartbeat.

And if it's breaking news, I got you too. Like I really have had 20 plus great years to learn how to do almost every part of this industry, and I'm able to give all of these gifts to Black Women Unmuted. It feels so amazing.

Donnell Suggs: Nicki is securing a major, major funding. Is that something that we kind of gotta check off our list or do we not necessarily need it, but we want it, or

Nicki Mayo: I think we need it?

We need it. And right now there's a big emergence of like nonprofit, um, news organizations. Uh, a good example is in Baltimore you had the Baltimore banner, right? And, um, they were able to court so many people from a legacy news org, like the Baltimore Sun.

Which means you have to pay these people. Right. You know, like we're talking about like, you know, like the Justin Fentons of the world, people writing, you know, stuff that's going to be on HBO later on. So if you can find funding like that, the, uh, it's like, oh, the places you'll go. Seriously, I'm not like making this up.

I wish I could say we could do it all, uh, private and fund it by your friends and stuff, but I've worked for enough because I think Black, a lot of my Black press orgs that I've worked for, they've tried to do it that way. And it just, it feels like you're always suffocating financially. And that's, again, that's not my ministry.

I, I work too hard. I wanna be paid, compensated accordingly. And we gotta find ways to secure funding that does not change how we cover content. If, uh, your funding dictates that, okay, but you go soft on these stories. I can't agree with that.

Zuri Berry: What, what is the, what is the, uh, is there a model, if you will, out there that you've seen, or an example of a news organization that you know you like the way that they're funded? Not necessarily Baltimore Banner, but you know, some something that Black Press oriented that you think represents what you would like to see for Black Women Unmuted.

Nicki Mayo: I like Capital B, you know, full disclosure, one of my friends works for them. But it kind of gives me a chance to kind of look at how it's operating and I kind of feel confident. Like it doesn't seem like, it seems like whoever is funding them. Cause I don't really know which company it is.

I'm not gonna act like I do whatever company or whoever is funding the, the effort has not told them you can't cover certain things. They are okay with them centering Black issues like that is the whole job is you report on Black people nationwide and I think they have like a localized version in Atlanta as well.

I like that, that relationship. I don't know what it takes to get that relationship though, but I would love to know, cause the things I would like to see Black women unmuted do and keep in mind, I'm a person that worked for BET and TV One and um, uh, Philadelphia Tribune and the Crisis. So I would like to see stronger resources devoted to black press.

I feel like right now, um, everybody has like one or two Report for America, uh, fellows and that's nice. But again, it's like that's not enough. I want people to be competitive Cause otherwise you become a farm team for bigger news orgs where you're gonna like, get them great and then they get pilfered or taken away.

Donnell Suggs: I can tell you that's not enough. Having two reporters that we got a chance to hire last year, two and that, and that made the, the whole staff four, it's not enough for Black orgs to kind of sort of be having a newsroom that's literally a, a, a crowd. It needs to

Nicki Mayo: they, I think especially for that program, they need to have, like you have to have guidance. Like they have mentors, they're typically green.

So like, if I wanna have state house coverage, I'm not sure I wanna send somebody who just graduated and never stepped their foot inside of anybody's city hall, county council, uh, state house or Capitol Hill. You know, I have, I know what I want and that ain't it. So it sucks that we don't have the resource to pay people amp the way they need to be paid.

And I think our news organizations do suffer. I mean, even me sitting here like, uh, I'll, you know, for the right price, I might go back at somebody's newsroom full-time, but you better be talking for real and not some jokes, right? I'll take my talents to where, like, I'd rather get paid less and enjoy what I'm doing and not be stressed out than getting paid mediocre or less and be stressed out and never see another weekend again.

Zuri Berry: Yeah, full, full disclosure because we brought it up. I, I used to be a screening judge for a Report for America, so I'm familiar with, with their, but they've obviously expanded in terms of the class of, uh, fellows that are taking part, uh, at, uh, Report for America. And so they went from, you know, what, what was it, 40, 50 people to, you know, a hundred or something like it.

It, it's a crazy number. So I'm not involved.

Nicki Mayo: though. I mean, it's a great opportunity. I'm not mad, but I'm just like, okay. If I'm the manager, like putting on the manager head again, like if I'm the manager, I'm like, how many of my newsroom is gonna be brand newbies that I have to, like, literally journalism 101.

Okay. When you go to the state house, don't take food from anybody. Sit you're behind down there. They might take your camera. Okay. Have a pen, have a notepad. You know, if I to do all them like, uh,

Zuri Berry: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, they actually started this new program, and I don't wanna get too deep into this because it's, it's their program and I, I don't have nothing to do with it anymore, but like, but like, they started this program where they started asking for more experienced journalists to come back into the fold and maybe they might pay you a little bit more, but it's not, it's still not that much.

And you know, it still requires a match from the host news organization and all of those things. So there's some interesting development, if you will, on that side.

Nicki Mayo: I mean, that's great. I mean, once I got, I, I became a national correspondent early, so once I became a national correspondent, I'm like, you have to hit me with the finances. If you want me to sit out here and be stressed out over all the death, injury, and destruction of the world.

It can't just because of the love of the, of the, I've been doing it too long at this point.

Zuri Berry: So, uh, that's interesting that you mentioned being a national correspondent, because actually that's one of the reasons why Donnell wanted to talk to you today.

Nicki Mayo: that's

Donnell Suggs: Yes, because I'm jealous of you. I've been jealous of you for years. And one of the reasons why I'm jealous of you is because you have been on two shows that I love, but one in particular, and that's Snapped. You were the correspondent on a couple episodes of Snapped.

Nicki Mayo: Okay. So you're worse than my mom. When I say I was a national correspondent, I was talking like Associated Press radio team, you know, like the list. You're like, okay. No, the murder, death kill shows. Okay. Those, yes, I do those, I do them very often. Yes. If it's a Baltimore case or a DC case, I typically get tapped to help um, with the recap, so of what happened. And, um, what I like to remind people about is that, while I've observed recently that some folks are just kind of popping up there and I'm like, okay, you've never covered anything in your life. Okay. Um, please know, This sounds really gross, but my body count is very high.

I have covered a lot of sad, horrible stories, a lot of dead bodies and a lot of coming up to a murder scene and everything is laid out. Crime scene, white sheets over bodies and the little tents to mark where bullet casings and everything has been. So unfortunately my general assignment re uh, reporting days, especially in Buffalo, whew child, have always been like, is it a crime or politics? Which frankly they can kind of go together.

Donnell Suggs: Hmm.

Nicki Mayo: But yes, crime or politics. Crime or politics. And um, when they started to approach me about Baltimore cases, in a lot of cases I was probably in the market and it wasn't my beat, because when I was in Baltimore, most of my reporting croston is different. But when I was in Baltimore, most of my reporting was on the lifestyles and lighter stuff. That was God's gift to me. I got two whole years of doing happy news.

But nope. Uh, I, they found me and they were like, Hey, are you familiar with this case? Like I am? And like, all right, well we wanna get you started and have you do these stories.

So yes, I do True Crime Mondays on TV One, and I'm also in episodes of Snapped. And Snapped has different parts, by the way. There's like Snapped: Killer Couples, like they, they branched out. It's crazy, right? Um, the ID channel and, um, oxygen. So all of those, yeah.

Yeah. I'm on all of

Zuri Berry: I think my, I think my wife first saw you on the ID channel. I was like, oh, that's Nicky.

Nicki Mayo: that's yes. And, and I have an interesting voice, so, you know, you'll hear me talking in the other room and it's like, for a television person, I'm like, yeah, that's right. So people are like, Nicki, I heard you talking. I'm like, yeah, and you stopped, didn't you?

There you go. Like, that's what we're going for in tv because we know you're not watching us. But if you hear us and you're like, whoa, wait a minute, I gotta pay attention. And these stories are crazy, but yes. Donnell your worst than my mom. Cause my mom is like, I would send, I would make feel old now. I would burn DVDs of my work and send them home from Florida, from Tennessee, from Buffalo.

I'm like, here are the latest reports, because I'm out of market and I want my parents to see what I do.

Donnell Suggs: That's right.

Nicki Mayo: I have DVDs of my work covering bad stories, like what you see on Snapped and on justice by any man, um, means, and for my man and all these things. And Fatal attraction, of course. Yes. Um, on, um, what was the last one? Like, payback.

So I'm on all of these and technically for every crime story, there probably is something similar to that that happened. But the package was only like, you know, two minutes. Um, she's like, but I love these more. I'm like, why? I have

Zuri Berry: It's the storytelling.

Donnell Suggs: the storytelling. He's right. It's the it. And I love that they add a real journalist in the middle of it, like you got your, all the footage and all that stuff is cool, but to have a real report in the middle always attracted me. Always.

Nicki Mayo: trying to tell you, um, what I'm like, it's not scripted for me. It's like they'll ask like, okay, so what can you tell me about Baltimore? What can you tell me about DC at a certain time? I had one killer, a couple, no, let's kill a couple.

Had one fail attraction where it was a love triangle over in the U Street area in DC and it was like, you know, three guys that they had a friendship, they had a, a trist of sorts and then they had two because somebody went missing. And it's like, you know, being able to like remind myself like, okay. Well you said it happened around 2004?

Yeah. Okay. I know exactly how it was on 2004. I was working in the area and everything at that time. I was just covering more Prince George's County stuff at that time. So they're asking you. That you as a journalist who has covered the region should know. And if you happen to be the reporter on the case, that's a double win.

So anytime you see me, you'll probably see Keith Alexander from the Washington Post and Keith lives in the courts, lives in like everybody's getting a ring. Keith's there. So that's his, that's his bag, that's his lane. Pulitzer fries winning and everything like that. I'm there because I know the area well enough to know, and as you can tell, I can tell a crazy story.

So

Zuri Berry: Yeah, absolutely.

Nicki Mayo: around for a while. He's crazy. I've had some crazy episodes. I'm serious.

Donnell Suggs: wait, wait. Zuri, Zuri. I'm not done yet because this is, this is blowing my mind here.

Nicki Mayo: mind. Yeah.

Donnell Suggs: So they'll call you up and say, hey Nicki, how you doing? This is, we got an episode here that happened at Baltimore. Hi, hint. This time, what? What do you know about that? That's awesome.

Nicki Mayo: That's how the conversation starts. And then they're like, okay, if I know enough, they're like, okay, well we're gonna have you come in. And, um, they'll tell me also, so I'm not completely blindside. Who, um, connected to the victim, they have to talk about these cases. Uh, in some cases, like you've heard the story so many times that you're like, you're trying to like block out the misinterpretations of what happened and just stick to, well this is what we knew at the time and this is what we know as journalists now.

Because it's easy to really get caught in like, well, I heard they used to do. I'm like, well, you can hear a lot of things. I can only go by the things I can attribute that part. Right.

I did have one where the one that everyone loves is the Josephine Gray story out of Baltimore, where she's like the black widow.

They called her like, uh, the Baltimore Black Widow. Right. Even though technically she was from the Prince George's in Montgomery County area. So much Montgomery County area. So they blaming us because she was dropping the bodies in Baltimore, but okay, I digress. But with her, there was an, an, an, uh, level of, uh, voodoo and Santa Maria involved.

Right. So, you know, If you're not a journalist, like, oh yeah, let me make this salacious. I'm sitting here like, uh, okay. Keep in mind that somebody's whole religion and faith and culture, so, and also I, I'm from the south, so, well, my family's from the south, so, uh, we not gonna play these games. Okay. Like they said, she was into voodoo.

They said she did this. They being the law enforcement people who found the, you know, found the shrine in her house. And that's about as far as I'm gonna go into that. And they're like, and the guys are going crazy, right? I'm like, I don't know what the guys did, I just know they're not here no more. So she could've been doing root work, she could've been doing voodoo, I don't know.

Whatever I know is that I'm giving y'all facts. I'm leaving at that. She's still locked up, so she's still alive and she could possibly rak some stuff, so I'm good.

Zuri Berry: Yeah, a, a a reminder to stay journalistically, principled in these, in these situations, no matter the platform. Right. And, and, and we appreciate you for that. Uh, Nick, I want to ask you about another aspect of what you do, and that is also social media. And this is, uh, expertise of yours. Um, it's demonstrated by you on a daily basis.

I'm a follower on, I un unfortunately, multiple platforms, so I see messages sometimes, you know, two, three times. Um, and I always know when you're pushing something

Nicki Mayo: hey

Zuri Berry: terms of campaigns for whether it's Black Women Unmuted or, or something else. Uh, but I, but I do, I do think we're at an interesting point for social media right now, and particularly when it comes to Twitter.

I mean, we have this like existential crisis going on with the, uh, owner of Twitter being I, I, and I wanna just say generously erratic in terms of policy and how things are being hap or, or, or. You know, being played out on the platform. And I wanted to get your sense of whether or not this is a, a place that has a long-term home for journalists, which, you know, have, uh, you know, again, generously been addicted to the platform for some years now.

Nicki Mayo: Now. There's always something new. Okay. So like if Twitter decides to totally implode, because it seems like it almost is there, but, uh, there's always another social media network to go to. Most recently NPR found out that, I mean, decided that they're just not gonna do Twitter, um,

Zuri Berry: was this morning.

Nicki Mayo: entity.

Yeah. So it's one of those things of like, I've had to run social media things since about 2007 and I think that's when we all can kind of point to where, uh, you know, Facebook and Twitter and everything really start to like, kind of blossom overwhelmingly take over our lives. And as a result of it, I'm always ready for the next thing anyway.

I, I don't get to marry to, oh my God, they take Twitter away. What do I do? I'll just move it to whatever the next. Now I'm not quick to just pick up every social media network because there's so many. I already have enough. And I even started to scale back since I do like, um, you know, I offer marketing ish skills on the side for people who I will never cover.

Um, I scale it down. I tell people you don't have to be on everything, be on stuff that you're most effective on. But for journalists, when it comes to Twitter, I'm like, don't melt down. If Twitter goes, there'll be something else. Right now we all have Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, um, you know, TikTok. And if you can use it effectively, your voice should be the same messaging, but maybe tweak your voice a little bit for each one.

Zuri Berry: Where do you, where do you find yourself in journalists like yourself, uh, congregating right now? Is it still Twitter? Is it something else? What, what are, what are you seeing?

Nicki Mayo: Right. It's still Twitter. It's cesspool out there, but we're still out there. It ain't like, we ain't been in like, you know, grimy situations before. It's the equivalent of sitting outside a courthouse in the rain and being annoyed by the whole situation. But we're here though, like we're not leaving everyone, like I'm leaving Twitter.

Okay. All the, all the artists and entertainers, like, I'm leaving Twitter. I'm going to, and they kept throwing out these different places. And then two weeks later they're like, so y'all still over here? Yep.

Donnell Suggs: Yeah.

Zuri Berry: It's a network effect,

Nicki Mayo: It's

Zuri Berry: network effect. Everybody's still there. And, and I'm one of those people who is, you know, I think, you know, disgusted by quite a bit of what I've seen on Twitter, not from the ownership just, but just the audience and, and there's the sort of what you call cesspool, I, I think is an accurate description of sort of the toxicity of the platform.

Um, it's, it's just not a good place to have good conversations.

Nicki Mayo: It is not at all. It sucks. I am so in awe of the people who you could tell, like, uh, 2016 was the worst. Okay. Absolutely. The ooh, it was the worst. And I worked for AP, so I had to hold back so much. It was pissing me off. It was horrible. And then that first inauguration that we had for the president at that time, who, it was painful.

And then one of y'all's HBCU Tougaloo decided to come out there with a band. And I'm like, I'm at AP and I'm just saying, okay, I'm just gonna do play by play on Twitter. That's gonna be the safe place for me. So there's no commentary involved in that. I will not get called into anybody's office. So I'm just like posting up stuff like, and the Tougaloo band and, um, Chrisette Michelle, you know, like I'm, I'm doing the black version of a very interesting inauguration, right?

And the amount of MAGA love I got, I'm like, y'all were the same people that were sending me all these horrible little like pep frog things a couple weeks ago. They're like, these great Americans. I'm like, really? Really, y'all are some interesting folks out here. So Twitter is a hot mess. The people who are on there, I got, I get harassed regularly about some stuff that went down like 2000, I think 18 or something where some anchor in Baltimore, she lost her job because she says some racist stuff on tv.

But every time somebody finds an on that, the MAGA folks come find me. So I'm like, Twitter is just like, do y'all ever see the people that follow y'all?

It is messy out here.

Zuri Berry: Would you say, would you say you're addicted to it as well?

Nicki Mayo: I'm addicted to all social media. I'm a social person again, level 30 Myers Briggs up in this piece, like stream extrovert over here. Like you were in my pointer class, you know how this went down. So it's like, you know, I like all things social. I get my energy and revive from like, you know, the people around me.

So sometimes I have to shut it off cause I'm like, ooh, it's just, ooh, it's ghetto. Like the earth is ghetto. I wanna leave ghetto. I don't like this. Uh, but. I like, um, I think if you ask me like, what was my preferred social media network, it's Instagram with a dash of Facebook because Instagram is more like, well now I'm obsessed with TikTok.

I ain't gonna lie, but it's still not like for the engagement of me being a part of it. I still like Instagram more than I like TikTok. That might be my a showing right there.

Zuri Berry: Is that, is that uh, on a personal level or is it on a professional journalistic level?

Nicki Mayo: Instagram's still more on a personal and professional because searchability and screenshotting things and starting your story there. Uh, as I do classroom visits and with the older students that I talk to, I try to remind them that your story can start on social media. It cannot only be on social media. You don't know who's running these accounts, uh, with this verification.

Pay some money. You, you too can be verified stuff. No, I, I need, and they hate that. Like, well, I saw this, they were wrong because you have all these bad examples out here. People like doing entire story like, well, they sourced, uh, feedback from social media. Okay, well they're at least one paragraph or two in there where they gave you some facts.

No, then that was bad. Call it what it is. It was trash, it was bad. I at least want to see, give me some facts and then tell me what people said about it. I love that part. And I think a lot of people love that part. I mean, we're on a podcast, we wanna hear people have conversations about things. Um, I, I love and hate TikTok because I have no control over the algorithms, and I swear they just seem worse on TikTok than anything else.

Facebook doesn't really have a weird algorithm thing that I think they kind of just show me people that I know. Instagram is doing that thing again, where they're starting to show you people like, like, what is this for? I don't know these people, but for the most part, they show me people that I know and things I'm interested in.

TikTok, if I click on one horrible pimple popping picture, I'm, I'm inundated with pimple popping. That's it. You

know, It's over.

It's like it, it's over. I'm like, I didn't mean to do this. I'm sorry. It's like a vereal

disease.

Zuri Berry: throw that account away. You gotta throw that account away.

Nicki Mayo: The whole count. Just throw it all away. It's like I didn't, I just, I I was like, what is this?

Ooh, ooh, ooh, gross. And I'm like, next time I'm like, war. I'm like, no. And you're like terrorized by you're algorithm on TikTok. If they could teach us or if they could shift it so that you could say, I don't want to see this anymore. Fine. Cause I enjoy My guilty pleasure right now is looking at passport bros uh, com commentary and videos.

It's like my guilty pleasure. Cause it is such a train wreck. I love watching it. I'm sorry. It's funny. And heck

Donnell Suggs: The equivalent to me watching snaps. Like, you know

Nicki Mayo: is, it's a dude. Is it bad day?

Donnell Suggs: Oh, they're terrible

Nicki Mayo: terrible. They're

Donnell Suggs: they are horrible.

Nicki Mayo: horrible. They're so horrible. But it's like I can't turn away.

Donnell Suggs: will be entertained. There's no

Nicki Mayo: no question about that. And now it's like, what it does is like, I want my algorithm to show me more of this crazy.

Train wreck of a, of a conversation. What it started to do is show me a lot of more eppy stuff. And I'm like, this is not what I meant. No, no, no. Go. I, I want, I want the sad guy who's getting accosted in Brazil, in, in Thailand. I want that. Dude, this is funny. I wanna see all the stuff that he's saying. So I can't control my algorithm.

So until I learn how to, I, I'm like TikTok. Ugh.

Donnell Suggs: is there anything good about Twitter? If you had to name something good about it, what would you, what would it be?

Nicki Mayo: okay, so I'm still a fan of threads. I am notorious for a good thread. Okay. I will sit here and plot out a thread or, uh, like with our coverage with Black History Month and Women's History Month, a thread is fun to me because they discover one, they discovered a whole darn thing.

I'm like, I am here for it. Which is good for a rant too, by the way. also with Twitter, the ability to, I'm still here for the original. Use that I saw of it, which was started around like when Scandal was a, a thing on abc and the way we were like, okay, it's Scandal Thursdays. Like everybody got on there and watched together in real time football and, and basketball tournaments.

We watching on real time. We're chiming in together. It's communal. I love that. So I'm still, I'm still here with Twitter. I mean, you kind of, you take the good, you take the bad, like, you know, it's McDonald's. There's something good in there, but

Zuri Berry: Mm

Nicki Mayo: this isn't healthy

Zuri Berry: mm. Uh,

Donnell Suggs: you. At the same

Zuri Berry: and I'm, I'm sitting here at this moment in time, I have tried maybe like, I don't know, three or four different alternatives,

Nicki Mayo: How'd that work

Zuri Berry: spout, Mastodon post, uh, look, none

Nicki Mayo: Is anyone on it to make it fun?

Zuri Berry: Yeah. Yes and no. Yes and no. Is it anyone on it that I want?

Nicki Mayo: No,

Donnell Suggs: Right.

Zuri Berry: nother question. There's a lot of people on these platforms.

Spot Ball in particular is getting huge. Um, but you know, like they, they also feel, you know, like a bunch of people who are very upset with Twitter. And

Nicki Mayo: Okay.

Zuri Berry: mean, that's a thing. So it de depends. I mean, how big they get and whether or not actual news organizations start to transition over there, that's when it'll be a sticky place for me.

Right now, it's just like, I'm just checking in. But if the news orgs, you know, N P R again, we just, we just mentioned it. They just quit Twitter earlier today. For good. If they start saying that they're gonna stick around and like in, in other organizations like that, say they're gonna start sticking around some of these other places like Mastodon.

I might be there more.

Nicki Mayo: Yeah. It's not like it's the end of the world if one of these goes again. I've been doing social media stuff since like 2007, you know, live, live posting, like I'll find a Facebook, make a Facebook thread, and just start live posting from county counseling court and stuff like that. Like I've been using them.

The same skillset can transfer to whatever. Social media comes out, you just gotta figure out, well, how does this one work? It's like a new board game. They pretty much, the idea is still to win. So how does it work? How do I procure my information on there? How do I push people to either our newscast, our online product, our, our verticals?

That's all you're doing. So I, I remind folks just do not get so invested that you can't take your toys and go somewhere else. Um, when I make videos, when I make, I sit and, you know, plot out a social media campaign, it's designed to go across all the different mediums with a little bit of a change to the verbiage, depending on who my audience is.

But the key thing is the, the method is still there. We're trying to get a message, information out. We want to inform. It doesn't matter what social media platform you put it on, it still should be doing the same objective, which is to inform people get lost in the personality part of social media. And that was burning a lot of journalists, especially newbie, sadly, because they didn't know that.

It was one of those things where you had the, as a new being and as a younger person, you're like, well I, that's my first language is social media. Okay cool. But I need you to learn how to use this in a professional setting. If you don't learn how to use this, you might lose your job. And I've seen people lose their jobs for just like posting something and thought it was cheeky and cute and boom, now they're getting called into HR and they ain't got no job.

So that's a lesson that it's evolv. And knowing that social media policies are extra evolving, um, knowing as a black person that you often have a crosshairs on your back or, you know, target on your back by your colleagues. So you don't wanna give them any extra guidance to ammunition to, to shoot you in the back and be like, well, did you see what they did on social media?

I was getting docs like crazy, but I was also independent, so it was like, oh, okay, fine. You know, I'm like, like, wait till we find out where you work, but you didn't. So that part, but for those who did have very visible, you knew where they worked. Um, when everything was going down in 2018, when that one lady lost her job, I had to tell local journalists like, do me a favor. Let's not lose your job. Okay. Like,

Zuri Berry: Yeah, don't get involved.

Nicki Mayo: like, I know how you feel and keep in mind like, these are my peers. And, and what I loved about that whole scenario was there were some old school heads who had been unceremoniously dismissed many a times. In the same market. They were like, they were in my DM talking about That's right.

She deserve it. I didn't even get to say goodbye or, but like they were just going in and I'm like, if people knew the stuff that black folks were going through in these newsrooms, they will understand why sometimes we have to be a little bit more vocal. And even with that, I'm strategic as heck.

I was a leader in the organization at the time, so I was like, let me, let me take it. I need you to stay on your job. Like, I do not need the, I do not need the white folks at your job pissed off at you. I do not need the viewers and the listeners and the readers to come at you with their old school, you know, style of hate trying to bring it in.

We are fighting for our liberation here and I happen to have a good reputation and history and a lot of experience in doing this. So, plus I wasn't like hired by anybody locally, because trust me, if I was, I would not have been hired much longer. They would've found a way to get my black ass out of there.

Sorry. Mean curse. But you can bleep that part. But they, it's just knowing that, um, You have to be strategic in your approach. If you go in with the bull in the China shop thing, like, I'm just gonna blow all this up, you probably won't get the desired effect.

Zuri Berry: Yeah, Absolut.

Donnell Suggs: Or you'll have a trend, you'll have a tweet that trends for three, four hours, and now the damage won't equate to the cool feeling you have when everybody actually tweeting it.

Nicki Mayo: Yeah. Like the damage is when the damage is done and you're being, uh, docks and inundated with a whole bunch of pepe frog looking things and people are just telling you how much, you know, they're showing you just how racist they really can be or how sexist they really can be. You know, having folks like tweet you stuff like, I hope somebody raps you.

I hope somebody kills you. I hope somebody, you know, stabs you, you just saying like, do y'all even know this lady y'all are caping for? I'm just trying to figure out like, will she spit if your house was on fire? No. But here you are attacking me. If anything, you just kind of use this, uh, using the Angel Reese out, um, backlash and you know, woo, all that stuff. You know, you, I'm a black woman. We're gonna be a target no matter what. A lot of folks hate us. Sadly, some of our men hate us. So it's like, you kind of get used to people being ready to attack you. We're human not superhuman. We're not like mystical Negros here, but it's just one of those things where you're like, when folks start showing you like, this is really how y'all are.

Huh?

Okay. All right. Take it to heart. Believe that mess. And it, it does. Like I have mentees. I have one that's a woman, one that's not a, um, one that's a man, and you know, kind of helping her navigate how unfair life can be in this industry. And you're just trying to tell people's stories. But when folks get mad at you, they show how, uh, the misogyny war is loud, is amplified, and they're comfortable doing it.

Zuri Berry: Yeah. Nicki, I wanted to ask you, um, I know we're at the, at past our time here, but I wanted to ask you on a hopeful note, what are you hopeful about for this industry and, and what are you telling those, those mentees of yours in, in, in terms of advice to, you know, prepare them for this industry and prepare them for the, I guess, the difficulties of the things that you.

Nicki Mayo: Uh, to be hopeful is to be realistic at the same time right now. Um, meaning like in 2023. So 2020 people decided since they couldn't get away from the George Floyd thing, because like we have to show we care. And that launched a ton of newsroom initiatives and things that are supposed to be geared toward equity and, uh, allowing us to tell our stories without telling us to water it down because we're being, um, we're, we're not being objective enough.

I feel like if we can ride this newfound interest in black issues, Then we're in a good place because we can start to get ourselves in position to be decision makers, shot callers, if you will. And, uh, improve how journalism works. If we do not capitalize on this time, or if we allow old school crap to go and float, then we're in trouble because we're just gonna go right back to having to silence our experiences or lived experiences at that.

And, um, our job being seen as you're only doing a good job if you're echoing that of frankly, your white counterparts. I don't like the idea of us ignoring our experiences. And I love that. I mean, hopeful that people continue to listen to us when we tell, say that there is an extra amount of, um, like I know I feel it when it's an intersectional thing versus it a black thing.

Is it a woman thing? And sometimes I'm confused, but normally I could tell when it's like this is a combination of I wasn't gonna win here at all. And, uh, Perceived, uh, perceptions, prejudice about who I must be before I even have a chance to introduce myself, that I don't want us to continue to go back to.

We have to push it tooth and nail. I like the energy of everybody wanting to be a journalist. I do balk at and I have made many of threats about this. People who want to play journalists and they want a journalism merit badge. I, I do feel like we have to do a better job of identifying, I am a journalist. You are not. You are blogging, you are potting, you are doing something else. I don't know what it is, and it's okay, but it's not journalism. I, I'm hopeful that, you know, I am worried about that aspect of it, but I like the fact that as I talked to classes, college classes in particular, I'm seeing almost like a little bit of a surge and more people want to become journalists and I'm hoping that they'll take these skills and make us proud and, uh, fill the, the newsrooms with the necessary diversity.

I feel like when I was coming outta school, a lot of the diversity they said they wanted, we were getting robbed of, and this is like circa 2001 where I felt like they were like, we want more black people in the newsroom. But then they would go and get like people that were not from America, black people, and then they were not.

I'm like, it made me so mad cause I'm like, I am such a pan-African chick. But I'm like, but, but wait though. You don't wanna get somebody who has no awareness of the ish that y'all done did historically. Here we come back, come back, fix that.

Zuri Berry: know, we can go further on that. We can always say, oh, you want to get somebody black from DC for instance, or Baltimore, for instance. And then when you hire somebody black, they're from somewhere completely different. I mean, it's,

Nicki Mayo: yeah, I want that. Like I, I, I just want there to be some level of ownership in the, in um, dedication to the audience because we're serving people. I know it looks so, and I've been in a broadcast world for most of my career, but I just say multimedia because that's what I am. But I know when you put the light on yourself and you like, you're sitting over at the camera and stuff like that, lights, camera, actions, like it's all about you.

Like, no, it's about the audience that we say that we are serving. Okay. That's the goal. If you're not here to serve our audience and to give them information to advocate like a watchdog of source advocate, then this ain't it. There's other things you can do. They're selling microphones, like hot cakes. Go have a podcast.

You know, there's other stuff you can do outside saying, oh my. I'm just saying like, at least you guys work like it's a podcast, but at least you work as a journalist. There are people who are just like, I just got, I got a podcast, so I'm a journalist. Like, no Joe

Button, you are not,

Donnell Suggs: no, you Joe button. You're

Nicki Mayo: and Complex needs to be smacked for that list that they just put out.

Talking about music journalists, I'm like, I couldn't count one on there. Thank you. Like, these are the things you can say when you don't work for other people. Like, okay, like that list was trash. I'm like, you have Joe Button and Kaisha on here. Is this what we're doing today?

Donnell Suggs: That journalist to them,

Nicki Mayo: How? Porsche Williams? Oh God,

Donnell Suggs: or she as a journalist,

Nicki Mayo: she

Donnell Suggs: microphone and she saw something yesterday in the street and she just told you about

Nicki Mayo: street. Oh my.

Donnell Suggs: She's reporting from her world.

Nicki Mayo: I'm holding back my commentary on Fox Soul because I'm, I'm, I'm trying to give it a chance to show me that you're not what I think you

are, but I'm getting Trojan horse vibes here. Okay.

Donnell Suggs: up.

Zuri Berry: Uh,

Nicki Mayo: I'm like, I'm not, I'm not. I've worked for enough.

Zuri Berry: Was it the name,

Nicki Mayo: The fox part, the affiliation

Zuri Berry: the

Donnell Suggs: that you had to call it

Zuri Berry: I didn't, was it was all of it?

Nicki Mayo: soul.

I'm like everybody, I work for Fox, so I'm like, it's Fox. I work for Fox. Soul. It's Fox. It's Fox. It's Fox, it's Fox. I'm like, y'all, am I the only one? I want black people to work. I do, but it's still Fox And I'm like, e, eventually I just, something about covering 2016 and the road to the White House and seeing how quickly information was getting mismanaged in black.

Um, I don't wanna say news, but in black forums and seeing how we were being targeted, whether it be Russia, uh, you know, uh, camps in Nigeria. I don't know where this stuff was coming from, but I could tell there was a concentrated effort to shift conversations in the black community. And it makes me very nervous.

So I'm like, when you're already a little bit, like, I'm skeptical of everybody who says I'm doing black stuff. Like, okay, cool. But it literally says Fox on it, y'all.

Donnell Suggs: but it says soul, though. That means it's black

Nicki Mayo: Unless you're telling me it's Fox five here in DC I ain't about that life because I'm like, that's the only time I've seen Fox not be like cringey.

Zuri Berry: Uh,

Nicki Mayo: It's still Fox,

Donnell Suggs: five Atlanta is pretty solid. Pretty solid,

Nicki Mayo: yeah. It's weird when you see them and they're like, you're like, so you're a fox, huh? I could hardly tell, like, you know. No, they do have a couple, like, uh, they had like one talk show on the station where I'm like, oh, okay, okay fine. But everything else is like, it's legit just basic news.

It's not falling, privy to, you know, the Sinclair conundrum where everything is like, you know, beca bands and we hate them. Those other people othering. Um, anybody who is not like waspy or whatever. I, I really, the reason I do dedicated so much of my vision board to, okay, do more media literacy. It's because I want people to understand that there are differences in the information that you're getting and we need you to be a better consumer of that stuff because I'm not, there's no, we're not able to stop it on the front end.

People get money, they gotta, they got a whole nother content product. And, um, I like the, I I do like this part because I mean, you say hopeful. I like the fact that black voices are finding their space, you know, and black journalists are finding, like, we black people, black Twitter's a thing. Okay. So black people know how to use social media to move something.

Black journalists know how to use social media to, um, amplify the stories. Like I was honestly using social media more so in Buffalo because I had the dry, I'm in court stories or I had the dry, sadly somebody got killed stories. So I was like, well I wanna make sure that people are seeing this stuff. So I started my following.

My following is like, I be like, okay Nick, what's Nicky working on today? And that's where I kind of saw how this, this social media thing can work for me. And that's circa 2009, 2010, right. We are very good with this and I love seeing, um, I don't say next generation, but just I love seeing journalists cause it's not even just next generation, it's like just black journals in general.

When you're not getting the amplified messaging that you want from your news organization, like fine, I'll motivated myself, you know, I will amplify it and I will make it move. And then if that's what gets your uppers, uh, your manager's attention. Okay, great. But it also is smart and a behooves individual journalist to promote your stuff because you never know when you might need to bounce.

Okay.

Zuri Berry: Yeah,

Donnell Suggs: you got a brand to take.

Nicki Mayo: Thank you. Your brand is you. They cannot take your brand from you. They can take your Twitter account, they can take anything that has the station call letters or the mass head or the name on it, but they cannot take who you are. Yeah.

Zuri Berry: That's a good place to end right there. Nicki, thank you so much for your time and, and your insights, and there's so many jewels that you've just dropped here, but I, I appreciate your perspective, so thank you. Thank

Donnell Suggs: a lot of fun, Nicky. Thank you.

Zuri Berry: Yeah.

Nicki Mayo: Appreciate it. Thank you Zuri. Thank you Donnell. Appreciate ya.