Tiffany Walden: Journalist

Episode Description:

Tiffany Walden is an award-winning journalist known for using her platform to advocate for systematic change shining a light on underrepresented voices in black communities. In 2017 she co-founded The TRiiBE which has now become a dominant news media outlet in Chicago, especially among the Black community. Before becoming editor-in-chief at The TRiiBe, she cut her teeth as a breaking news reporter at the Orlando Sentinel and is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. On this episode Fanshen and Tiffany discuss the role of journalism in reflecting a community, why Tiffany decided to create The TRiiBE and how they’re challenging other news organizations to re-examine their coverage.

TRANSCRIPT:

00:00:10:27 - 00:00:43:27

FANSHEN:  Hey family, welcome back to Sista Brunch, The podcast all about Black women and gender expansive people who are bringing joy and breaking barriers in entertainment and media. Now, do you all know Pete Chatmon? He is an amazing director. He has directed some of our favorite shows on TV, like Reasonable Doubt, You, Insecure, Grey's Anatomy. He's also directed on this new show starring Kerry Washington and Delroy Lindo. And Pete Chatmon loves our podcast.

00:00:43:29 - 00:01:14:15

FANSHEN: He left us a review. So here's his review over on Apple Podcasts. He says, "Incredible. Listen, each episode brings you directly into the world of each guest. Anya and Fanshen conduct an amazing conversation and you get to feel like you're at the table with them." I love that because that's our goal. "You also get to learn about the ins and outs of the industry, which is priceless. Be sure to check it out." Thank you so much, Pete Chatmon. We so appreciate you leaving us a review and we love watching you shine in the industry.

00:01:14:17 - 00:01:44:26

FANSHEN: So y'all should follow him on Instagram because he shares his journey as a director. And of course, we also deeply appreciate all of your reviews. So go ahead after this episode and like it like the episode subscribe rate and share our podcast with all the people in your life who want to know more about the industry and and what it's like, the inner workings and what it's like to be Black women and gender expansive people in the industry. I'm Fanshen Cox. I'm the founder of TruJuLo Productions.

00:01:44:28 - 00:02:20:13

FANSHEN: And today's amazing guest is Tiffany Walden. Hailing from the West Side of Chicago. Tiffany is an award winning journalist known for using her platform to advocate for systemic change, shining a light on underrepresented voices in Black communities. In 2017, she co-founded The Triibe, which has now become a dominant news media outlet in Chicago, especially among the Black community. Before becoming editor in chief of the Triibe, she cut her teeth as a breaking news reporter at the Orlando Sentinel and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

00:02:20:15 - 00:02:21:28

FANSHEN: Welcome, Tiffany.

00:02:22:12 - 00:02:23:22

TIFFANY: Hello. Hello. How are you doing?

00:02:23:29 - 00:02:51:27

FANSHEN: Good, good. First of all, we're just going to say how grateful we are for you being here, because we know that the last few months have been quite busy for you and think maybe we'll get into all that you've been covering. But we like to start off with understanding our guest's journey, and you can go back as far as you'd like, like from the day you were born or when your parents were born. But tell us about the journey to become a journalist.

00:02:52:14 - 00:03:21:22

TIFFANY: For sure. So as you mentioned, I was raised on the west side of Chicago, predominantly Black, blue collar neighborhood of North Lawndale. And I just grew up a very curious kid. I was very into music. So music is one of my first introductions to media. I was the kid that was in the house, like bumping the whole Bodyguard soundtrack and like at like four years old. Five years old going.

00:03:21:24 - 00:03:23:06

FANSHEN: Singing along with it as well?

00:03:23:08 - 00:03:53:28

TIFFANY: Yes. Singing along with it, I knew how to put the CD into the stereo system at that age. You know, Mary J. Blige, My Life album, you know, just some of those early 90s albums, I was I had all of those at my disposal in the house and would just be listening to them and imagining, um, you know, like scenarios and music videos to go along with them. Um, and also was a, was very much into BET and VH1, MTV around that time.

00:03:54:00 - 00:04:24:27

TIFFANY: And I watched a show that everyone I'm sure is familiar with called Behind the Music. Um, and I, I didn't exactly know what being a journalist was, but I would see Danielle Smith on there and some other like, you know, Black notable journalists back at that time. And they would be talking about the artists that I love and they would have that that that title of journalist. And I'm like, wow, I want to be a journalist. Still not knowing what that is.

00:04:25:16 - 00:04:34:18

TIFFANY: Um, and so later on, as I'm getting older, you know, I'm reading Vibe magazine. Um, I'm reading Honey, I'm reading Ebony magazine. Jet that all of that.

00:04:34:20 - 00:04:36:09

FANSHEN: Honey! Yes. That was so good.

00:04:36:11 - 00:05:07:03

TIFFANY: Yes. Yes, I had all of that. I actively was buying Vibe and Honey and Source and things like that. But my grandmother, she had Ebony and Jet and stuff in the house. So, um, I just always listening to arts and entertainment journalism. And when I got into high school and my teachers really discovered that I was a writer, that's really what propelled me into a career of writing and understanding that I could be a journalist and still be a writer while doing that.

00:05:07:11 - 00:05:44:00

TIFFANY: Um, and so my family didn't really understand what journalism was. They knew that, um, that journalism was the anchor on Channel seven or the anchor on Channel five or, you know, that was journalism to them. But there was not really an understanding of like, what a print journalist was. So being in school really helped me navigate a career into journalism. I had a high school teacher who really just created a curriculum solely solely for me to, um, to help me enhance and really hone my, my craft as a writer.

00:05:44:02 - 00:06:19:12

TIFFANY: And that same teacher pushed me to apply to Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, which, you know, again, me being on the West Side, I had never heard of Northwestern. I only knew schools based on who made it to the March Madness tournament, and Northwestern never did. So I was like, I don't I don't know, like school is right. I've never heard of this school. Yeah. Um, but, but it turned out that they had one of the one of the top journalism schools in the country and I applied and got in and that really set the set my path toward going into journalism from there. 

00:06:19:16 - 00:06:49:23

FANSHEN: I love this, Tiffany, because it's been interesting. This season is the first season that we've had more journalists on the show. We've had Tre'vell Anderson. We've had Tanya McRae. We had we were having you, obviously. And I'm having these memories that my father always wanted me to be a journalist since I was little. And and it's exactly what all of you have described, which is I was like, I don't know what that means. My only reference was anchors on television.

00:06:49:25 - 00:07:15:11

FANSHEN: And I was like, okay, but what if I love writing as well? And I think it's so important to point out the fact that you actually had examples of Black journalists both in, you know, written as well as like on BET, as you mentioned. What a difference that was that you grew up having that example for you that you could say, Oh, there are people who do this and this is what I could do to. 

00:07:15:17 - 00:07:46:20

TIFFANY: Yeah, that was really monumental for me because again, like I didn't grow up in a house with a family who got didn't come from a family of journalists, whereas like a lot of my peers at Medill, they had family members or some sort of relationship with journalism, and that's what got them into it. Um, for me, you know, a lot of it came from just a love of storytelling and, and growing up in the hood and, you know, sitting on a porch with my grandma and her friends and just listening to them recap the day, you know, listening journalism.  

00:07:47:07 - 00:07:48:11

FANSHEN: Which was journalism.

00:07:48:13 - 00:08:27:03

TIFFANY: Yes, it was. But, you know, like whenever everybody would sit on the porch in the summer, it would just be like, you know, I saw such and such down the street do this today or the police came and did this today. And you know, that's not recognized as journalism, but it is. And it's a part of our oral tradition as Black people dating all the way back to our roots in Africa. So a lot of that is just kind of ingrained in us. And it was ingrained in me as a as a child. And I just always wanted to tell our stories and really uplift Black stories from Chicago specifically because when I would look at the news with my grandma, you know, I would only see crime.

00:08:27:05 - 00:08:57:25

TIFFANY: I would only see Black people in some sort of narrative about crime. I never saw, you know, what I would see on BET about Chicago or I never even really saw Chicago represented on BET, you know, and we had a hip hop and a in a music culture. And we've we've set a lot of trends here in Chicago that's just not talked about or even recognized on a on a national scale. Like looking back at that time, House music was really big in Chicago.

00:08:57:27 - 00:09:06:00

TIFFANY: It still is today, but it was huge back then. Yeah. And I can't remember a time watching TV that saw people talk about house music in relation to Chicago, in.  

00:09:06:03 - 00:09:14:18

FANSHEN: Relation to Chicago. That's so right. It was just House music. Nobody really talked about where it was from. Unlike like Hip Hop. Everybody talked about New York, right?  

00:09:15:03 - 00:09:15:25

TIFFANY: You heard New York all day long.  

00:09:16:08 - 00:09:17:06

FANSHEN: Right, Right.  

00:09:18:09 - 00:09:19:06

TIFFANY: All day long.  

00:09:19:08 - 00:09:20:25

TIFFANY: New York, New York, New York, New York, New York.  

00:09:20:27 - 00:09:44:04

TIFFANY: So I get it because all of those stations were based in New York. But at the same time, for me, it was just like, man, I want I want people to know about Crucial Conflict. I don't want people to know about Juke music. I want people to know about the roots of house music, all of the stuff that I grew up with, a Cha Cha slide, like all of this stuff that was very much a part of Black tradition in Chicago. I just always, as a kid, wanted people to know about that.

00:09:44:22 - 00:10:09:05

FANSHEN: I love it. When Deshuna Spencer was here, she talked about her early days of journalism and how she was put on the the cop beat. Right. Like where And that that tends to happen a lot of times to Black folks to is like, oh, you're going to be in journalism and then you end up just retraumatizing yourself and others through the stories that you're that you have to tell. Did you have experiences like that? 

00:10:09:17 - 00:10:47:17

TIFFANY: I did. So my yeah, my in journalism, unfortunately, a lot of times you cut your teeth on the breaking news desk, especially a lot of us who are coming in during the Internet age. The breaking news desk is really your entry point into the newsroom. It's a lot harder to get into those roles of being an arts and entertainment reporter or a sports reporter or a travel food reporter, those type of things. So in order to just get a job, which, you know, if you went to Northwestern, if you went to Medill, the whole thing is like, okay, girl, like, where is your job? You need to have a job.

00:10:47:19 - 00:11:21:27

TIFFANY: We have paid all this money. Somebody needs to have a job. Um, from that point, you know, you just take what job you can. And so I ended up having to go back to school. I went to Medill for graduate school because at the time I was getting out of undergrad, which was 2011, the journalism industry was really going through some turmoil. A lot of publications were struggling to compete with some of the new outlets like Vice and Complex and um, and BuzzFeed, even.

00:11:22:20 - 00:12:03:09

TIFFANY: A lot of newsrooms were having challenges adjusting to the Internet and putting their stories on the Internet while also still maintaining their print product. So for me, I went to graduate school and then got out and got my first job in, um, in Texas. But when I left Texas and went to Orlando is when I ended up on a breaking news desk and I was covering crime and I didn't think Orlando had crime. In my mind, I'm just like, it's Disney World. There's no crime here. Um, but some of the some of the most traumatic things that I've like, read and experienced, uh, I read and experienced while I was in Orlando.  

00:12:03:11 - 00:12:36:09

TIFFANY: And it was devastating. I was there right after Trayvon Martin. Um, but during a lot of the, you know, hands up, don't, don't shoot like protests and, um, a lot of police brutality against Black people and, uh, Florida being a Republican state, it just made it really tough and made me really paranoid all the time. Whenever I would have to show up, you know, as a news reporter, sometimes they're like, just go knock on someone's door. But as a Black woman, you're like, I don't want to just go knock on someone's door like, I'm in Florida.

00:12:36:11 - 00:13:12:18

TIFFANY: I'm in Florida. Like what? You know? So you never know who's going to answer the door. You don't know if someone's going to shoot you when you're just at the door, you know? So it was just a very, um, traumatic time and, and it wasn't sustainable for me. Um. And I was talking to a lot of people. With Orlando being a very diverse community and me being one of the only Black people on the breaking news desk, I would always get sent to anything that was pertaining to Black people. But again, with a diverse community, you're going and speaking to people of Haitian background.

00:13:12:20 - 00:13:45:12

TIFFANY: You're going to see these people of Jamaican background on a terrible day, on a day that they've lost someone or they've lost their home to a fire, whatever the case may be. And then there's a language barrier, But you're expected to to be able to communicate with people just because you're Black. And I would tell you, no, I would come back to the office and be like, y'all like, this was really challenging for me. I don't speak patois or I don't speak right these languages. So how am I supposed to ask folks at a funeral to give me a comment about something? You know, it was just very, very challenging and heartbreaking.

00:13:45:14 - 00:13:51:18

TIFFANY: So I couldn't I couldn't sustain it. Not in that not in that capacity. I couldn't sustain it.

00:13:54:29 - 00:14:20:02

FANSHEN: This is Sista Brunch, the podcast by and about Black women and gender expansive people who are thriving in entertainment and media. Keep listening for more of our chat with journalist and editor in chief of The Triibe, Tiffany Walden. Also, do us a favor real quick. If you love this show and you know you do, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with your friends and family.

00:14:22:02 - 00:14:27:23

FANSHEN: And we're back. We hope you're excited to continue our informative conversation with Tiffany Walden.

00:14:29:14 - 00:15:02:28

FANSHEN: I mean and this takes us right to why you created the Triibe and and I just I want to just give you all the cookies and love and and uplift you for seeing a hole, seeing a lack and being like, somebody needs to do something about this. And I mean, it is a it is a pattern with the women and people that we have on this podcast is like something is missing here. The broader story is missing here and I'm going to have to go ahead and create this thing.

00:15:03:00 - 00:15:09:28

FANSHEN: So let's talk about The Triibe. Let's talk about how you started it, why you started it and where things are today.

00:15:10:13 - 00:15:49:22

TIFFANY: Yeah, Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Um, The Triibe we started in 2017 and it came out of my experience really on the breaking news team, coupled with my experience growing up in Chicago and not really seeing Black representation on mainstream media. And also one of my best friends being a documentary filmmaker, um, Morgan Elise Johnson. So when I was in Orlando, one of the big things that happened in Chicago was Laquan McDonald's murder. Um, where, if you're not familiar, uh, the police in Chicago shot Laquan McDonald multiple times and killed him.

00:15:50:01 - 00:16:36:25

TIFFANY: And it led to a lot of outrage, especially once the dashcam video was released, which protesters and media like really, really fought hard to have that that, um, that footage released, um, while I was in Orlando when that happened, I was watching national and international media parachuting to Chicago and talk about Laquan McDonald's murder in a way that really did not address the root causes of crime. It was very much just putting the sole blame on Laquan and not not really diving deeply into the conditions and environment that Laquan had to grow up in and also the conditions and environment that that made this tense situation for the police to shoot him.

00:16:37:02 - 00:17:09:28

TIFFANY: And and so that also was something that I witnessed every day in my work in Orlando, where, you know, there really was never any time created for journalists, news journalists, to really unpack why a crime happened in a given area, particularly in Black and Brown communities. It was just go out there, cover the story, get the get the information and just write that, you know? Write. Write. And if you don't have access to the people who experienced this situation, then you have to just rely on the police.

00:17:09:29 - 00:17:14:16

TIFFANY: Just write up the police report. You know, just just write up the court document, write up this. 

00:17:15:00 - 00:17:21:14

FANSHEN: And we know we already know how biased those those documents are. Right. And those parts of the story are.  

00:17:21:21 - 00:17:58:24

TIFFANY: Exactly. And so that's what made me in conversations with my with my best friend, Morgan, really start to unpack, you know, the role of journalism and if if if it's impactful or not. And something that she really brought to my attention that I think journalism has lost as we went into the digital age was being this this idea of having an outreach strategy or having like an impact strategy, which in documentary they have, you know, when they when they have a documentary and get ready to screen it to the community or screen it wherever, there's always an outreach and an impact strategy that goes along with it.

00:17:59:08 - 00:18:09:13

TIFFANY: And so Morgan would always question me and be like, you know, why don't y'all have, like, an impact strategy? Why don't y'all have this? Why don't you have that? And I'm like, well, news is happening so fast. You know, I'm just I'm kind of just.

00:18:10:14 - 00:18:18:11

FANSHEN: Going along with what right that you're hearing. Right? Is this is why we can't do this. And we we we start to believe it. Right?

00:18:19:01 - 00:18:33:06

TIFFANY: Right, right. Because we're told that from from college on. And no, we have to do things this certain way. We have to be objective. We have to be this. We have it's just so much it's so like ingrained into your mind. Right, that when she started questioning it, I'm just like, Yeah, why do we do that?

00:18:34:09 - 00:18:35:03

FANSHEN: Right?

00:18:35:17 - 00:19:13:12

TIFFANY: So when I moved back to Chicago with with her and we started freelancing in the community together and realized that, you know, the news is just really retraumatizing communities with the headlines and the coverage that they're doing. That's when we decided to we decided to create The Triibe and and really just put our skills together. She's a filmmaker and she knew how to take photos and tell stories. I'm a journalist. I know how to report and tell stories. And we we also reached out to our another Northwestern alum, David Elutilo, who knew how to build websites, and he was a web developer.

00:19:13:14 - 00:19:38:06

TIFFANY: And so we just all came together and sat in my sublet apartment and just really put it together and had our own deadline and everything. It was very, very important to us, but we had no idea that it was going to take off in the way that it did. And so, yeah, we love the product today and we're really excited about where it's headed. But it has been a journey since we since we started.

00:19:38:15 - 00:20:24:04

FANSHEN: I love it. Could you give us an example we know about, you know, Laquan story seriously mean? Well, I won't even get into the ways that this just keeps repeating, repeating, and then we all get shocked. And then and I think to your point that it's partly because we're only telling that one instance of the story versus talking about this, what's happening with the system, what are all the ways that the system is in part responsible for how this happens? I wonder if you have an example of a recent story you did or covered where you you looked at you were able to take the time to like look at impact more and outreach and and the systemic influences on the story. 

00:20:24:06 - 00:21:00:17

TIFFANY: For sure. So something that that we recently published on our on The Triibe is a look into we call it "Welcome to the West Side." And we profiled six wards within the city of Chicago on the west side and really talked about, you know, what's going on in those predominantly Black wards and how people and residents who live there and people who work in those wards, like how do they feel about the ward itself. And when you really peel back some of the layers, like my neighborhood that I grew up in, for example, North Lawndale, that's in a 24th Ward.

00:21:00:19 - 00:21:30:19

TIFFANY: And, you know, at the at its peak in 1960, 113,000 Black people live there. There were jobs there. It was a community there. People owned homes that people owned businesses. All of these things helped make the community an affluent community. After decades of systemic racism and overpolicing, the community today only has 50,000 Black people who live there.

00:21:30:24 - 00:22:08:22

TIFFANY: And some of the big symbols of state violence are housed on the west side. Now, particularly in the 24th Ward, you have the Chicago Police Department's Homan Square Black Site where The Guardian wrote that, you know, really in-depth reported story about the police disappearing people that they've arrested and torturing them. And this Black site that's situated in the middle of a predominantly Black neighborhood that has experienced so much neglect and policing and still looks like what the community looked like after the 1968 uprisings following the murder of Martin Luther King Junior.

00:22:08:24 - 00:22:46:21

TIFFANY: So I'm in my 30s and that community has looked the exact same since I was born. And and that goes back to those 1968 uprisings. So when you really look at a community and why there's so much violence there, there's always a connection to poverty. There's always a connection to life expectancy. You know, in these communities, people are have a 15 to 20 year difference in life expectancy, shorter life expectancy compared to white neighborhoods in Chicago. When you look at household income in these communities, the median household income is $30,000 and below some of them is $22,000.

00:22:46:23 - 00:23:19:22

TIFFANY: You know, there's no businesses. There are no, no, there's no access to fresh food, grocery stores. You have to go miles and miles to a to another area to get groceries. So how how can a community be a thriving community? How can how can a people thrive if there's just no resources in the neighborhood? And then you want to constantly point at people and call them violent and call them disengaged and call them a lazy or apathetic to what's going on. And that's not the case. The system is not built for us to to survive.

00:23:19:24 - 00:23:20:09

FANSHEN: Right.

00:23:20:11 - 00:23:52:12

FANSHEN: We are in no way supported. And that's just the the socioeconomic factors. Then there's the police, right? Like then there's the ways that we're constantly targeted. So all to say that is what's so powerful about what you do is that you are constantly looking at the big picture and therefore you're taking the time for it. So I want to ask about your whole point about the breaking news, right? Like they put the kind of entry level journalists on the breaking news, in part because that's the that's the hardest job, right? Like, you got to be up all night.

00:23:52:14 - 00:24:12:21

TIFFANY: Not even at it's the hardest job, really. It's really because that's what sells. That's what brings the newspaper. Yeah. The the the violent headlines the, you know, 20 people shot overnight. That's money, that that is clickbait. So it's like we have to build capacity for more stories like that because that's what's bringing the money in.

00:24:12:25 - 00:24:32:12

FANSHEN: Okay. Okay. So how do you work against that at The Triibe? What what kinds of I mean, this is I know this is the challenge for everybody, right? Is, is how do we how do we convince is not the right word, but like show that telling a story in depth is so much more valuable.

00:24:32:21 - 00:25:09:08

TIFFANY: Yeah, it's hard work and something that we did when we first started The Triibe was we had a, um, a short doc series called "Another Life" that Morgan Morgan produced and filmed and put together. And it had, I think, 6 or 7 episodes where we talk to people in Chicago who have lost a loved one to gun violence. And we talked about the long lasting effects and impact of gun violence on a community, not just not just, you know, people who are closely connected to the person that whose life was lost, but the community itself.

00:25:09:10 - 00:25:41:21

TIFFANY: And it's something that early on was was was groundbreaking in Chicago because at the time, the sensational headlines, The Chicago Tribune and The Chicago Sun-Times, they had like a crime tracker. You know, they had those, you know, overnight 20 people shot headlines. They were they were doing those things all the time. Whereas we were like, you know, let's take a step back and take a look at what what happens when a life is lost to gun violence and how long does that ripple effect, um, ripple in a community.

00:25:41:23 - 00:26:15:14

TIFFANY: And that was one of the first times that we started to challenge the mainstream media and how they craft narratives around crime and violence. Something that we're doing today, which is why our election coverage has been so phenomenal and resonating with people, is that we're really unpacking the definition of crime and who is committing the crime because, yes, you know, gun violence is is a problem. And gun violence is something that we all want to be reduced and hopefully at some point, um, completely done with.

00:26:15:16 - 00:26:27:27

TIFFANY: But when when a when a person commits an act of crime against another person in the neighborhood, is that as big of a crime as a government entity.

00:26:27:29 - 00:26:28:14

Right.

00:26:28:20 - 00:26:30:11

TIFFANY: Redlining a whole community.

00:26:30:13 - 00:26:31:02

FANSHEN: Right.

00:26:32:08 - 00:26:33:20

TIFFANY: You know how many

00:26:33:22 - 00:27:09:04

TIFFANY: people are impacted by redlining. How many people are impacted by not having a high quality hospital in their community? Those are crimes as well. And so when we take a step back and really ask those questions and challenge people to rethink about how they think about crime and who the crime is committed against, then we can challenge other reporters to start asking those questions in their interviews and in their stories about policy and about politics in Chicago.

00:27:09:06 - 00:27:23:12

TIFFANY: And and we're starting to see that in this election cycle because we've we're seeing our coverage now challenge our peers to think about their coverage differently.

00:27:27:15 - 00:28:05:05

FANSHEN: Hey, Sistas and Siblings, we wanted to let you know about our friend Chid Suzan. She's the host of the "But What do I Know" podcast. She and her guests take listeners on a journey of self-discovery and overcoming self doubt through learning, unlearning, healing and laughter. We know we could all use some of that self care and self discovery and our own lives. And we're so grateful for a podcast that inspires us in this way you can find "But What do I Know" on Apple and Spotify and subscribe to their YouTube channel, find them on social and on YouTube at BWDIK

00:28:06:05 - 00:28:11:24

FANSHEN: That's "But What Do I Know?" @BWDIKpodcast and support all they do.

00:28:17:10 - 00:28:24:15

TIFFANY: Hi everyone. It's a Tiffany Walden and you're listening to Sista Brunch, the podcast all about Black women thriving in entertainment and media.

00:28:27:17 - 00:28:48:04

FANSHEN: One of the questions we always ask our guests and answer to the extent that you are comfortable is about salary as in how do you sustain yourself? How do you live on this? And you know, so or prepare yourself for what the salary is like and that this is really kind of a job of passion. Yeah. So yeah.

00:28:48:06 - 00:28:48:29

TIFFANY: Yeah, I'll.

00:28:49:01 - 00:29:01:03

TIFFANY: Be transparent with y'all. So one of the reasons why my sister, for example, didn't want me to go into journalism was because she was a computer science major. So naturally, you know, she got out of school making bank.  

00:29:01:18 - 00:29:02:03

TIFFANY: Yeah.

00:29:02:26 - 00:29:03:11

TIFFANY: When I'm.

00:29:03:13 - 00:29:03:28

TIFFANY: Like.

00:29:04:00 - 00:29:05:12

FANSHEN: They doing all right, right.

00:29:05:14 - 00:29:13:00

TIFFANY: When got when I got into journalism, it's like I'm going to be a journalist, y'all. And it's like, okay, but what money are you going to make? Um, and I didn't make any.

00:29:13:02 - 00:29:16:05

TIFFANY: Money, but, but, but that just as as I was growing up, like, money just wasn't something I really like thought about in that way of like, oh, like what's, what's $30,000? What's what's 50? What's $100,000? You know, it just wasn't something that I was just so passionate about storytelling. And I think a lot of people who are creatives and and who are into art, we're so passionate about the work that sometimes the money is on the back end. And then, you know, when it comes to a point where you're staring the money dead in the face, it's just like, Wow, really chose something that doesn't make any money.

00:29:50:07 - 00:30:25:17

TIFFANY: Um, so getting out of school, my first job in Texas, I, I negotiated, and that was only because I had a graduate degree. And I was coming from Chicago and I was coming out of Medill, and they really, really wanted me. And it was Abilene, Texas. They really, really wanted me down there because it's like this girl from Chicago and from Medill is coming to Abilene, Texas. Oh, my God. So think they offered me like 28 and think negotiated to 30 or 32. Um, my job in Orlando, I got a bump because it's a larger city.

00:30:25:19 - 00:30:59:25

TIFFANY: So think there I got 45. Um, okay. And then when we started, when I moved to Chicago and started freelancing, uh, that's when I was completely broke. Um, everyone has this idea that freelancing is great because you're independent and you could set your own hours and you can do this, you can do that. But when you're freelancing, you're really just flailing in the wind until it's paycheck, paycheck, show up. Yeah. And a lot of people operate off the 90 day payment scale.

00:31:00:01 - 00:31:32:11

TIFFANY: So you really have to be a person that's meticulous and and and calculated and how you're freelancing, how often you're freelancing. But I really wasn't getting paid a lot of money for freelance stories. At the most, I might have got paid like $500. And that was only if it was like, I really, really, really, really, really begged for that. Um, but on average, I was getting like 150, uh, you know, $200 for a freelance story. So I had to, I had to work part time, um, to sustain myself.

00:31:32:13 - 00:32:04:03

TIFFANY: I worked like a social media job where I was working at like 5 a.m. managing hotels social media accounts. I worked at another like Black kind of publication. Um, and I used...I won't say that, but work like kind of another Black publication. I freelanced at Ebony at the time. But then we weren't getting paid, so I had to...I was in that lawsuit where we had to ask to be paid. So I went months, months, months, not getting paychecks from them.

00:32:05:01 - 00:32:24:16

TIFFANY: So with The Triibe, when we started out with The Triibe, it was just the three of us and we weren't getting paid from that either. We we were building a company from scratch and we were also we were also doing it at a time where the nonprofit journalism boom was happening, but we didn't want to go nonprofit because we were like, you know, we can't afford it. Like, we don't know how.

00:32:24:18 - 00:32:25:09

FANSHEN: Thank you. Thank you.

00:32:25:11 - 00:32:26:00

TIFFANY: We don't know how to run

00:32:26:02 - 00:32:27:16

TIFFANY: a nonprofit and we can't afford it.

00:32:28:08 - 00:32:28:23

FANSHEN: Right?

00:32:28:25 - 00:33:09:14

TIFFANY: Right. But also also, I mean, a quick, quick comment on that. First of all, a lot of nonprofits, especially the ones that are supposed to be about us, are not. We're learning that. We learn that all the time. Right. And then second of all, it's okay for us to make a profit. It really is okay if especially as you said, if it's the thing we love, the kind of work you're doing is towards change, right? Systemic, sustainable, systemic change. It's okay to make money doing that because what we know about you and the women like you that we have on is you going to put that right back into the work you're doing.

00:33:09:16 - 00:33:21:14

FANSHEN: Right. And hopefully, Tiffany, you also use that for some self-care here and there as well. Yeah. So you were talking about so now with with The Triibe, what's your income stream? How does that work?

00:33:21:16 - 00:33:45:15

TIFFANY: Yeah. So we because we are not nonprofit, we're able to have a multi stream revenue system. So we're bringing in money from advertising and partnerships. Like right now we have an advertising partnership up with Xfinity, um, who, you know, a lot of these, a lot of these companies want to work with, especially after the uprisings in 2020. A lot of them want

00:33:45:17 - 00:33:47:07

FANSHEN: Mm hmm they all reached out.

00:33:47:09 - 00:33:55:17

TIFFANY: Yes. A lot of them want to work with us, so why not work with them and then find ways to to funnel them.

00:33:55:19 - 00:33:57:08

FANSHEN: Utilize their power?

00:33:57:11 - 00:33:58:14

TIFFANY: Yes.

00:33:58:16 - 00:34:12:16

FANSHEN: Utilize the power. They have the visibility they have, you know, the ways that they can, you know, listen, as long as y'all keep still, keep telling the truth as you are, if they want to support that financially and otherwise, then yes.

00:34:12:18 - 00:34:13:03

TIFFANY: And we're and. We're also not afraid to tell them, you know, like there are some organizations who want to partner with us. But, you know. Morgan, who's our publisher, she's very transparent with people and just being like, you know, your mission doesn't align with our audience. You know, we're very much audience focused and we know who our audience is and what they like, what they would question. Our audience is vocal. They will DM us. They will comment if something is questionable. And so that's who we're accountable to. And so we don't we don't just work with an organization or a company or a corporation just because they have the money.

00:34:45:29 - 00:35:15:13

TIFFANY: We will be transparent with them and tell them that they don't align with what we got going on. But at the same time, if it is something that we can make work we do and we have that as a revenue stream along with grants, we do receive grants from foundations and things because we're a mission based, um, for profit. So we have it's like a three years to build relationships with a lot of the foundations who support us and we're really grateful for them and they've really held us down since we started.

00:35:16:07 - 00:35:39:24

FANSHEN: Okay, Tiffany, we've got a listener questions, so we want to say thank you for leaving us a voicemail with your questions. Our voicemail number is (424) 587-4870. And we're going to play your questions here on the show. We'll play them on our social media as well. This is Elyas's question this week, so we'll play it for you and we'll come back and have Tiffany answer.  

00:35:40:02 - 00:36:00:26

ELYAS: Hi there. My name is Elyas and I was wondering, how do you balance between choosing a project that might be very good for you and your career versus choosing a project that you know will have a positive impact on certain communities or will do significant good in the world. Thanks.

00:36:01:25 - 00:36:23:27

TIFFANY: That's a really good question. Um. Wow, that's. It's hard. Um, because. Because I'm the Editor in Chief of The Triibe, so much of my work and my career for the last six years has been dedicated solely to The Triibe. So I do have personal projects that I want to work on. One of them is a book that I've been writing.

00:36:24:13 - 00:36:24:28

FANSHEN: Yessss!

00:36:25:23 - 00:36:27:03

TIFFANY: Mentally at least.

00:36:27:08 - 00:36:35:02

TIFFANY: For three years. Um, so one day I will get to that. But, um, but yeah, it just kind of.

00:36:35:29 - 00:36:43:06

FANSHEN: Listeners, we're going to hold her accountable for that with next season. We're going to check in with we're going to have you on just to check in on how that book's coming along.

00:36:43:08 - 00:36:45:20

TIFFANY: Thank you. Please do. I do need some check ins.

00:36:47:03 - 00:36:47:28

TIFFANY: Um, but.

00:36:48:00 - 00:37:25:29

TIFFANY: Yeah, I think it depends. We work in at least our team now, we have a staff of, I think eight of us all together. Um, we all just really check in with each other and have an idea of like, what people's needs are, what, what types of stories they want to do. And during our, you know, annual check ins, we also talk about goals. Um, our publisher is really, really, really, really, um, into manifesting and honoring people's goals. And, and we write those goals down and we just find ways as a team to allow someone to go after whatever their goal is.

00:37:26:09 - 00:37:49:28

TIFFANY: Um, so we have team members who, you know, want to do different fellowships. We have team members who, you know, want to do certain, um, journalism projects, participate in other types of journalism activities, and we try to find ways to make room for that so people can also follow their personal passions and and career aspirations as well.

00:37:51:01 - 00:38:08:17

FANSHEN: I love it. I love it. Tiffany, this has been wonderful. Will you tell everyone and we'll make sure we do this on social as well? How do we follow support The Triibe view? What's the best ways to to make sure we're uplifting everything that you and Morgan do?

00:38:08:25 - 00:38:26:22

TIFFANY: For sure. You can follow us at The Triibe.Com. That's Triibe. Com We're on Instagram as the Triibe Chicago and then we're on Twitter and Facebook as the Triibe and then we're on Tik tok to think our Tik Tok is the Triibe Chicago. 

00:38:27:09 - 00:38:45:19

FANSHEN: All right. Last question, Tiffany. You and young Tiffany are sitting down to a Sista Brunch together and we want to know, what are you drinking and what is she drinking? What are you eating? What is she eating? And what do you tell her?  

00:38:47:20 - 00:38:50:08

TIFFANY: Oh, wow. What age? Let me see. Um.  

00:38:50:22 - 00:38:55:25

TIFFANY: If I'm in high school, I'll probably. High school Tiffany is drinking an orange Fanta.

00:38:57:24 - 00:38:58:10

FANSHEN: Those are good.

00:38:59:20 - 00:39:37:09

TIFFANY: Today. Tiffany today could not drink an orange Fanta. My stomach will not allow it. So probably a lemonade or something. I'm drinking or a ginger ale or something. Um, and high school Tiffany is nervous because and and not feeling super confident because she's really into writing. Um, she really has no idea like what the, what the world is outside of her community. Um, she's never really been in a world of with White people, to be honest.

00:39:37:11 - 00:40:07:25

TIFFANY: You know, her neighborhood was predominantly Black. Her high school was predominantly Black. Um, so she's always just been very nurtured in Blackness and just has no idea about how what she wants to contribute to the world will be received. Um, me today would tell her that she does not have to conform to what the world and these outside forces will try to and will successfully, um, conform her into. Um.

00:40:08:18 - 00:40:42:16

TIFFANY: She doesn't have to change her voice. She doesn't have to, um erase her experiences that she had growing up. All of those things are assets in the future, and all of those things are experiences that she is not the only person that had. It's a whole world of Black people who have had the same experience. And she'll get to see that world as we get further into social media and it becomes a community of people being able to express themselves and talk about the similarities in their upbringing.

00:40:42:18 - 00:40:51:02

TIFFANY: So I would just tell her to fight back and push back and just not let people tell her that the way she wants to do things is the wrong way to do it.  

00:40:52:10 - 00:41:20:12

FANSHEN: You have me crying over such. Oh, my goodness. I mean, if you didn't just say the whole reason we do this show is for for us to see ourselves and to know the way we speak, the way we write, the way we do everything, even back in high school was right and we're loved and supported. Oh, thank you so much, Tiffany. This has been beautiful. We're so grateful and proud to have you on Sista Brunch.

00:41:20:20 - 00:41:27:28

TIFFANY: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And I'm so happy that I met you in Boston, hoping that we can continue to to keep in touch.

00:41:28:11 - 00:41:29:06

FANSHEN: We definitely will.

00:41:30:24 - 00:42:01:14

FANSHEN: As always, thank you so much for listening to Sista Brunch, the podcast that brings you the stories of Black women and gender expansive people crushing it in entertainment and media. This is season four of Sista Brunch. Did you know that you can find all of the transcripts to our show and listen to our previous episodes at SistaBrunch.Com? We are so grateful to our listeners and we appreciate your support by subscribing to the podcast, leaving us a glowing review and sharing it with your friends and loved ones.

00:42:01:16 - 00:42:34:17

FANSHEN: And if you cannot get enough of Sista Brunch, be sure to follow and interact with us on Instagram at Sista Brunch podcast. Thank you so much and we appreciate you. Sista Brunch is brought to you by TruJuLo Productions. Our senior producer is Sonata Lee Narcisse. Our co-producer is Brittney Turner. Our associate producers are Farida Abdul-Wahab and Mimi Slater. Our executive producers are Christabel Nsiah Buadi and Anya Adams. We acknowledge that the land we record our podcast on is the original land of the Tongva and the Chumash people.

00:42:34:19 - 00:42:38:09

FANSHEN: That's our show and we will catch you next time on Sista Brunch.