farai chideya
Farai Chideya is a multi-media journalist who has worked in print, television, and online. She is presently the host for NPR's News and Notes. She has been a correspondent for ABC News, anchored the prime time program "Pure Oxygen" on the Oxygen women's channel, and contributed commentaries to CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and BET. In 1996 Chideya spent the Presidential election season as a CNN Political Analyst and was named to the New York Daily News' "Dream Team" of political reporters and commentators. In 1997 Newsweek named her to its "Century Club" of 100 people to watch.
Chideya is the founder of the award-winning site PopandPolitics.com, an online journal of news and opinion. She also is a contributing editor and strategist for TheBeehive.org. Chideya writes for magazines including Savoy, Glamour, and Essence. Her arts-and-politics column is syndicated via Alternet.org. She is a frequent lecturer on topics including youth leadership development, diversity, and media.
Chideya's stereotype-shattering 1995 book, Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African-Americans (Plume Penguin), is now in its eighth printing. Her second book, The Color of Our Future (William Morrow, 1999) was named one of the best book for teens by the New York Public Library. Both books have been featured in college curricula across the country, including Duke, Syracuse, and Stanford Universities. Chideya's third book, Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters (Soft Skull, 2004), shows why half of Americans are cut out of the political system — and what we can do about it.
Chideya was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and received her B.A. in English, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1990. From 1994-96 Chideya was a writer at MTV News, and from 1990 to 1994 she reported for Newsweek magazine in New York, Chicago and Washington. In 1996, Chideya completed a Freedom Forum Media Studies Center fellowship, examining why young Americans are tuning out the news. In 2001-2002, she completed a prestigious Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. She now serves on the journalism advisory board of the Knight Foundation. Honors include winning a National Education Reporting award, a WIN Young Women of Achievement award and a GLAAD Award.
For more speakers on feminist journalism, see: Paula Kamen, Jennifer Baumgardner, Lisa Jervis, Farai Chideya, Irshad Manji, Courtney E. Martin, Suzanne Braun Levine
For more speakers on race and racism, see Veronica Chambers, Loretta Ross, Wyndi Marie Anderson, Meri Nana-Ama Damquah, Marcia Ann Gillespie, Irshad Manji, Catherine McKinley, David Oppenheimer, Lisa Tiger
