Newspaper plans exciting sights and sounds, day-to-day reports
By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer
The AFRO-American Newspaper will provide unprecedented coverage of perhaps the most important political event in Black history—the Democratic Party’s nomination of Barack Obama as the first African American for president—during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.
The historic event takes place Monday, Aug. 25 through Thursday, Aug. 28 when the Illinois senator makes his acceptance speech at INVESCO Field on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
The AFRO’s Washington Bureau Chief Zenitha Prince, Managing Editor Tiffany Ginyard and Senior Political Reporter Sean Yoes will cover every angle of the convention -- from the sprawling “Tent City” protests to Obama’s climatic speech at INVESCO. Prince, Ginyard and Yoes will produce reports for the print version of the newspaper, as well as video and blog reports for the AFRO website from morning to night each day of the convention.
Videographer David Roberts will produce footage of all the exciting sights and sounds from Denver via video streaming for the AFRO website and photographic and video support for AFRO reports.
The AFRO team will be led in Denver by veteran award-winning journalist George Curry—former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and executive director of the NNPA News Service. Curry covered the historic presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988.
The Denver convention team will be supported in the newspaper’s Baltimore headquarters by AFRO Executive Editor Barbara Darko, News Editor Kristin Gray and Web Editor Maura Sopher.
In 2004, the AFRO set the standard for presidential coverage by the Black Press with reporting from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Mississippi and California. However, this year the AFRO plans to set the bar even higher.
“We are going to provide the most extensive coverage of any Black paper in the country,” said AFRO publisher and CEO John “Jake” Oliver, Jr. “I think our coverage will also stack up against any other newspaper coverage with the application of the technologies we’re using,” added Oliver who believes the AFRO audience and Black America, in general, will be tuned in to every aspect of the Democratic convention.
Said Oliver: “Black people will be glued to receive every piece of information surrounding every step of the event as it unfolds in Denver.”