Radar catches up with the vanguards of the black blogosphere

LISTENING IN (From left) Jam Donaldson, Rod McCollum, Angel, and Eskay(Photo: Matt Salacuse)

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n late 2006, Radar began to take notice of some African American bloggers who were not only reporting black entertainment and news that was, at times, woefully underreported by the mainstream media, but who were also doing it in a style that was funny, irreverent, and totally unapologetic. This led to the discovery of other players in the black blogosphere whose focus was on politics—gay and otherwise—hip-hop, culture, and the controversy behind being a HAM, or hot ass mess.

Recently, we flew these vanguards to New York City for a photo op and a brief Q&A to get their perspectives on the new rules of the Internet fame game.

ESKAY: I'm Eksay, and I'm 29. I started my blog in 2005 as a way to consolidate all of the information that I came across. It's a really music-focused blog—video, audio, news, gossiping. I was always the guy that'd be like, I have the latest gossip or I had the latest mixtape or whatever, so I thought it was best to take it online, make it available in one place, and it started out for people I know.

JAM DONALDSON: I started in spring 2004, when I was in law school at Georgetown. It just kind of grew.

ANGEL FROM CONCRETE LOOP: I'm Angel, and I'm 22. I started Concrete Loop at the end of 2005, because the other popular culture blogs like Perez Hilton and US Weekly and whatnot, they don't really talk about black celebrities. So I was like, okay, somebody needs to put a main focus on that. And I also wanted a fresher blog instead of more of the humor-based thing. I was trying to get the whole spectrum of black celebrity—music, gossip, political-type stuff, all of that, the whole spectrum of it.

ROD MCCOLLUM: I'm Rod, I'm 35. My background is in television news, so I've been writing news and producing stuff for years for NBC News, Good Morning America, World News Now, CBS, FOX—I don't work in the news much anymore. I was interested in blogging; I'd go on other sites to find out what they don't have. I'd like to get into some other aspect of entertainment. Radio, TV, I don't know what.

DONALDSON: What's good is that there's conversation and there's dialogue, and I think that's the ultimate value. I was able to do a television project, had a great season, don't know if there's going to be a season two. It shows how the Internet is becoming this huge voice, this huge place, and it's really contributed so much to these cultural issues now. I think I'd like to do some writing; I'm thinking about it.

ANGEL: I'm doing a business plan right now, because I want it to be the black TMZ, basically. Right now they have the Source Media, the Source Comedy Loop, for like exclusive news and whatnot. Right now I'm just taking it day by day. It started as a hobby, and it's basically a business now. I'm trying to take more classes and get more information so I don't get, you know, hoed.

RADAR: The Internet is the ultimate medium, but it can spread information like wildfire and tends to distort things.

ANGEL: I was actually surprised that Diddy actually liked my blog, because they murdered him in the comments. They talk about all his business and say all kinds of mess, I was surprised that he actually read it. He said he liked that it's a black blog, and it's real and [has] no bias. We say our opinions, but I'm trying to keep it as a news point of view.