Chris Brown is BAAAAACK!

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/10/27/chris-browns-video-%E2%80%9Ci-can-transform-ya%E2%80%9D-an-early-look/

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid33680306001?bclid=44273411001&bctid=44135350001

You'll hear what WE say on Tuesday! Call in and join the chatroom to share what YOU say!

 

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting US president to win the Nobel Peace prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the 1 February nomination deadline.

Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said.

“His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

The committee said it attached special importance to Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.

“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play,” the committee said.

Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the UN panel on climate change.

The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize.

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament.

Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel's death.

The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.

Maya Angelou Addresses Rumors

Sorry guys, video wouldn't embed properly. Silly posterous.  Just click the link to check it out.

A picture of President Obama with Olympic Fencing Medalist, Tim Morehouse. (Morehouse is also a Teach For America alum)

-Jovian

In Pitch for Games, a Gamble for Obama

New York Times

Ebony Has Evolved, but Will It Be Enough?

Facing a Possible Sale, Mag Still Struggles to Shed Staid Image

By Pepper Miller

Published: September 28, 2009

Pepper Miller

I wonder how many readers of this blog have recently read Ebony. Ebony is a good magazine and the Ebony/Jet website is great. After rumors and speculation about Ebony's financial challenges, Newsweek detailed the issues surrounding the potential sale of the oldest magazine targeting African Americans. According to Newsweek, Johnson Publishing, holding company for Ebony and Jet magazines and Fashion Fair Cosmetics, has approached buyers and investors that include Viacom (owners of BET), and Time Inc. (owners of Essence Magazine).

This is not that surprising. In February, we learned about deep staff cuts and by June, it was reported that Johnson Publishing mortgaged Ebony's Chicago Loop headquarters to its printer RR Donnelly for $12.7 million.

 

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Too bad. Within the past three years, Johnson Publishing Chairman-CEO Linda Johnson Rice brought in top notch talent to counter the "something I read while visiting my grandmother" perceptions. As creative director, Harriet Cole and her team of designers transformed Ebony into a beautiful, stylized publication. And within the past three years, the editorial has been shaped into insightful, relevant, contemporary content. Cole's duties were expanded when she recently replaced outgoing VP-Editorial Director Bryan Munroe. Additionally, former P&Ger Anne Sempowski-Ward was promoted from Fashion Fair president to president of Johnson Publishing, and Eric Easter, VP-digital and entertainment, one of the brightest minds in the digital space, revamped the Ebony/Jet website into an entertaining and wealth of useful content.

So trying to swim upstream in the river of Economic Downturn, with a smart team, Ebony never launched the "new Ebony." It took a few months and my favorite issue -- "Who You Callin' a ..." which was in response to the Don Imus slanderous remarks about the Rutgers' University basketball team -- for me to realize that there was something new -- even edgy -- about Ebony.

Not launching didn't help. Word of mouth could not take on the powerful old school dated brand perceptions. I suspect one reason for not launching is Ebony's apparent hold onto their loyal long-standing, but declining older target, while also pursuing a much younger target.

Who is Ebony today? Who is Ebony really talking to? Those questions go unanswered and seem to loom over every issue. Dr. Boyce Watkins, one of the most highly sought-after African-American scholars and Black social commentators, also points to Ebony's slow embrace of digital.

The thing about Ebony and Jet... is that much of their financial demise could possibly have been averted. If management had taken stronger steps to adjust to the advent of the Internet, perhaps they could have remained profitable.

Nonetheless, if and when Ebony makes the sale, I hope the new owners will be committed to taking the business to a new relevant and meaningful level and not lower the still important value that Ebony and Jet have with the Black community.

@Jovizi (Jovian) That's What We Say Pick: "The Help" by Kathyrn Stockett

Synopsis

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

For more information. Click here.