The Beginning

Picture it, Kansas City, Mo., 199—

I grew up as an imaginative and creative child who loved to make people laugh and a social butterfly. I explored my creativity by producing my own stories and excelling at most assignments that involved creative writing. 

These qualities eventually manifested in my decision to become a journalist during my sophomore year at Grandview Senior High School. From then on, I served as the Opinion | Entertainment Editor of the student newspaper — The Student.

MIZ—

Enter Mizzou. While in college, the journalism industry was ever-changing and adjusting to the digital era. At Missouri School of Journalism, I trained to be a multifaceted journalist with a degree in emerging media, which prepared me for that ever-evolving media landscape. 

While I earned my Bachelor of Journalism, I worked as a Multimedia Producer at Vox Magazine and Writer at Newsy.com. But during this time, my crowning achievements were serving as Committee Chair of the National Association of Black Journalists — Mizzou Chapter, and becoming the Editor-In-Chief of The BLACKout. 

The BLACKout was founded during the Civil Rights and Black Power era in 1969, revitalized as a news website by Victoria Uwumarogie and Veronica Wells in 2009, and then run by Gabriel C. Tyler and myself, covering Black student life, current events, and culture.

NABJ Baby Takes on Big Apple

The summer between junior and senior year was a crucial one. I set out to intern in New York City, and with the help of an NABJ fellowship during the summer of 2011, I interned at TheGrio.com during the website’s NBC News days. Later that summer I did the National Association of Black Journalists’ student projects, with the online news team in Philadelphia. 

Being both an intern and fellow in NYC in the summer of 2011 wasn’t only significant to my budding journalism career but my identity, being the summer I came out as gay and started to come into my own.

I’m Going Going Back Back to New York, New York

My love for New York only grew after interning in the summer of 2011, making the conscious decision to return to live and start my professional career there after graduating from Mizzou in May 2012. 

I saved money post-graduating for six months, eventually making my grand return and grinding as a part-time server and part-time freelance journalist (The Huffington Post, MadameNoire, etc.), intersecting narratives about pop culture, marginalized identities (Black and LGBTQ+ communities among other experiences), and social issues. 

Looking to elevate my career in community engagement and social media journalism, I joined what is now known as the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY M.A. in the engagement journalism program, which as I previously wrote, “recasts about journalism as a service to help communities reach goals and solve problems through the following principles: listening, building relationships and trust, engagement, community collaboration and finding solutions to a public’s needs.”

• READ MORE: What is social journalism? How I’m applying it to Black Lives Matter

My community practicum (capstone project) centered on the Movement for Black Lives. At the beginning of 2015, media attention surrounding #BlackLivesMatter mainly focused on Black male victims of police or state-sanctioned violence, while the movement focused on the intersectionality of Black identities and experiences impacted by systemic racism. This meant the movement was for ALL Black lives and lived experiences. Enter a solution to this issue: Black Narratives Matter, a project centering on how to go in-depth and cover an array of Black experiences from tracking police killings to health disparities to environmental racism to the BLM’s wants out of the 2016 presidential election.

• READ MORE: How I became woke producing the Black Lives Matter Impact Project

At CUNY, I mastered community-based social listening, building relationships, and engaging and collaborating with communities. I even used engagement journalism to bridge communities together, like facilitating conversations between Black journalists and Black community organizers of BLM. 

• READ MORE: Black Lives Matter activists and Black journalists talk how to report on race

Not only was I able to successfully apply engagement journalism to interning for the politics section at The Daily Dot but carry the work into a major career breakthrough. 

The Big Break

There have been numerous instances in my career where I have had the opportunity to participate in creating something new and innovative, especially working with media startups like The Tylt.

Three months after graduating from CUNY, I became one of the first editors of The Tylt, an online polling platform designed to give online communities a voice to share their opinions by voting on an array of two-sided debates using hashtags in the spring of 2016. 

I applied engagement journalism to running The Tylt’s top section—entertainment and using its methods to produce polls and brackets mostly engaging with music fan armies and geek fandom.

While I got to do some cool, experimental, interactive, innovative things at The Tylt, the outlet unfortunately was discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2020. Since it’s now legend, I created The Tylt Arhive of my previous work.

NOTE: Some of the articles posted via the Archive were originally written while at the height of serving in my Entertainment Editor position at The Tylt (2016-early 2018). Because Tylt articles were polls that eventually closed with “results attached,” many performed well via search and were later updated and republished throughout my tenure at The Tylt. These are the latest, most updated versions of the polls later republished in 2019-2020.

Also note that since The Tylt is now defunct, many articles were found via Wayback Machine and many embeds are broken links within the PDFs. These samples are meant to capture and showcase some of my previous work, so please try to envision what the articles were beyond any broken links. Nevertheless, here are some highlights. 

While I held the roles of Entertainment Editor to Deputy Editor/Senior Fandom Editor, I also became known by the honorific title, “The Breaker of Tylts.” Yes, I challenged The Tylt website’s infrastructure multiple times due to the massive amounts of fan voting on an array of polls — like the website-breaking success of “Favorite K-pop boy group: BTS or EXO?” in 2017. One of The Tylt’s first forays into K-pop polls, BTS or EXO brought in 10 million+ votes and page views throughout its publication history.

In 2019, I created the “Best of Decade” project featuring “Pop Icon of the Decade?” and “Which groups won the decade?” Collectively, the project. These were feats even some of the startup’s incredible team of developers couldn’t stop. 

Hence, one of my first big hits was a shared byline with David Cohn, Senior Director of Innovation and R&D at Advance Digital and Chief Strategy Officer at Subtext, originally published in 2016 and later republished as an SEO mega hit—Who would win in an all-out brawl: Justice League or The Avengers?

I produced other popular geek content like “Which CW superhero show do you love the most: ‘Arrow’ or ‘The Flash’?“

During my tenure, I also produced other popular music articles for The Tylt like:

• More iconic pop legend: Michael Jackson or Prince?
• More influential pop queen: Janet Jackson Or Madonna?
• Tupac vs. Biggie: Who’s The Greatest Rapper of All Time?
• Most iconic grunge band: Nirvana or Pearl Jam?

At The Tylt, I created “Stump Deron” in 2019 (where my vast pop culture knowledge was put to the test); I also produced “Streaming with The Tylt” (a series centering bracketology where TV fans got to vote on their favorite shows across genres via Netflix) in 2020; I took the results and rankings of these TV brackets and created “Tylt Recs” like Best Netflix geek shows and Best Netflix Marvel shows.

That’s not all. In 2020, I launched Fiercely Fandom with Deron., a podcast centering where pop culture meets fan culture. 

Next, I worked as a managing producer for Trending | Social at PennLive, another Advance Digital property based in Pa. There, I brought in thousands to millions of page views writing about an array of trending topics like stimulus updates to “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” 

Since my days at Advance Digital, I started freelancing at Everyday Health, writing about Black experiences with health disparities and mental health awareness. Also, I got back into project management, leading a team of 16 copy editors to proofread a website migration for the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg.

What’s Next?

As it goes, I’m in a rebuilding phase, gearing up to have my Sailor Moon moment like Storm in “X-Men ’97.” IYKYK.

Hence, I’m open to work.

If my career trajectory in this bio proves anything, I can adapt, experiment, innovate, and outperform as an engagement-driven digital media specialist. And you best believe, I’m bringing my multifaceted skill set to the table—emphasizing my unrelenting passion for digital media. 

I have written and edited content about pop culture, entertainment (movies, TV, music), fandom, social issues and movements, identity politics (Black + LGBTQ+ communities), mental health, culture, lifestyle, politics, the economy and general news. Hence, I’m well-versed in an array of topics. My pen has always been on fire! 💁🏾‍♂️

No matter what hat I wear (writer, editor, podcaster, visual producer, social producer, or project manager), the common dominator is always community engagement. My greatest passion isn’t simply producing content, it’s socially listening and engaging with communities around narratives that truly impact them. As an engagement-driven journalist and media professional, I’m open to digital media opportunities in writing and editing, content marketing, and community management.