FREE ESSAY ON FARAI CHIDEYA

FARAI CHIDEYA

Farai Chideya has accomplished many things at 28 years old that many journalists can only
hope to achieve. She began her career as an intern at Newsweek while studying at Harvard.
After her graduation, she was hired at Newsweek as a reporter and stayed on from
1990-1994. Chideya covered news in Newsweek's New York and Chicago bureaus, as well as in
the Washington bureau, where she covered national politics, from an article titled
Skewering Congressional Pork, to following President Clinton as a pool reporter on Air
Force One.
Soon afterward, Chideya made her transition to newswriting at MTV from 1994-1996. During
this short period of time, Chideya also completed a fellowship at the Freedom Forum Media
Studies Center, examining why young Americans are tuning out the news. She published a
book in 1995 called Don't Believe the Hype: Cultural Misinformation About
African-Americans, which is now in its eigth printing. Using statistics largely from
government sources, she attempted to undercut the argument that African-Americans are at
the roots of problems such as crime, welfare and drugs. 
Chideya spent time as a CNN Political Analyst during the 1996 presidential campaign. It
was at this time that she was named to the New York Daily News' Dream Team of political
reporters and commentators. She appeared on programming such as TalkBack Live and CNN &
Company, as well as ABC's Nightline, CBS's Up to the Minute, and BET's Teen Summit and
Town Hall Meeting on the Black Family. 
She saw the publishing of her new book, The Color of our Future: How the Nation's Most
Diverse Generation is Reshaping American Culture., in 1997. That was also the year that
she began her two current positions as an ABC News Correspondent and Editor of National
Affairs at VIBE magazine. During same period, Newsweek named her to its Century Club of
100 people to watch as we approach the year 2000. 
As a freelance journalist, she has written extensively about music, books and trends for
The Villiage Voice and Spin, among others. On a more serious side, she has profiled white
supremacists for Mademoiselle, examined child sexual abuse allegations for the Los
Angeles Times and written on Affirmative Action for the New York Times.
Chideya has also won many awards, including a National Education Reporting Award (for a
Newsweek story in the cover package about the World's Ten Best Schools), a Unity Award in
Media (for a Newsweek story in a cover package about the black family) and a GLAAD Award
(for a Spin magazine story on homophobia in hip-hop).
Besides her two current postions, Chideya currently serves as a member of the Advisory
Board of the American News Service and has her own web site called
www.popandpolitics.com, which has both music reviews and political commentary.