Arts.Advocacy+Wellness: "Don't Say GAY"

DON'T SAY GAY

An 8th Graders Brilliant Public Service Announcement.
Check it out:

Huffington Deal Raises Question: What Site Will Be Sold Next?

By EVELYN M. RUSLI

In agreeing to buy The Huffington Post for $315 million, AOL is putting what appears to be a significant premium on the ability to attract and build a community of readers.

Yet as more and more advertising dollars flow to the Web and to mobile devices, demand for popular and prolific online content producers like The Huffington Post, is rising. The market for online advertising is expected to increase 14 percent, to $51.9 billion, this year, according to the research firm Borrell Associates.

With that kind of growth, the deal for The Huffington Post is expected to raise the bar for other independent online media companies whose audiences have surged with the help of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Speculation is now turning to what prices others could fetch should they ever go on the block. Among the biggest is Gawker Media, home to a collection of popular sites, such as its flagship property and technology blog, Gizmodo, which attracts about 19 million users a month, according to comScore. Glam Media, a group of beauty and fashion sites geared toward women, boasts 87.8 million visitors a month.

The three-year-old Business Insider, something akin to a business version of The Huffington Post, with its mix of breaking original content and aggregation, attracts 3.5 million visitors a month, comScore says. And companies like AOL and Yahoo have been on the prowl for content providers.

“Right now, the macroeconomic turnaround and the explosive growth in mobile, is causing Internet companies to accelerate their investments and there’s a question of what is content,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Securities. “Companies like AOL and Yahoo are in a battle to make themselves relevant.”

For that reason, analysts barely blinked at a valuation for The Huffington Post that by most measures was a lofty one. The price is 6.3 times The Huffington Post’s projected revenue of more than $50 million for this year. That’s more expensive than the $25 million AOL paid last September to acquire TechCrunch, which claims to generate about $10 million in annual revenues.

If one uses AOL’s projections for revenue growth and costs savings in 2012, the price for The Huffington Post comes to 10 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization or Ebitda, wrote Mark S. Mahaney, an analyst with Citigroup. “Not cheap, but not outrageous for a relatively high quality asset with strong top-line growth, current profitability and margin expansion potential,” he wrote.

Read the entire issue here: www.NYTimes.com

HuffPost to Team Up with BET Cofounder Sheila Johnson on HuffPost GlobalBlack

By David Cohen

The Huffington Post will team up with BET cofounder Sheila Johnson to launch HuffPost GlobalBlack, an online platform that will examine news, politics, culture, opinion, and video through an African-American perspective.

HuffPost GlobalBlack will also feature a group blog with “leading thinkers, newsmakers, personalities, and provocateurs.”

HuffPost co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington said:

We couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with Sheila Johnson, a true media visionary, on creating what we hope will become a go-to destination for both the African-American community and everyone who cares about these deeply important issues — in America and across the world. HuffPost GlobalBlack will synthesize Sheila’s insights and perspectives on culture and media, and HuffPost’s unique blend of real-time social news and engagement. This a two-way partnership, with HuffPost GlobalBlack content and vision informing all of HuffPost’s coverage, and HuffPost’s editorial and reporting team covering stories shaping the black community.

Johnson added:

The Huffington Post is at the center of social news: the idea that people want to engage in the news and opinion of the day and not just consume them. The Huffington Post is the ideal partner for us to create a thriving online black community of scale, a forum for ideas and discussion meant to inform, engage, surprise, and entertain.

Prince & Androgyny by Clarence Haynes

A few days ago, Celebrate Brooklyn!, the series of concerts and events held in the Prospect Park Bandshell, held a Purple Rain sing-a-long in celebration of the film's 25th anniversary. The 2,000 seats and additional lawn space were full, with many fans clad in purple regalia, paying tribute to the man and his movie. The park joined media entities like SPIN Magazine and NPR's New York station, WNYC, which have hosted their own Rain discussions and commemorations. (SPIN has even produced a tribute album by a variety of artists, including a remake of "When Doves Cry" by The Twilight Singers, featuring Apollonia, one of the film's stars.)

The plot: Prince, starring as The Kid, is the head of a Minneapolis-based band whose sound falls outside of popular sensibilities. The group is barely hanging on to its headlining role at a popular venue. Enter gorgeous Apollonia, arriving with hopes of becoming a star while being romantically pursued by both The Kid and his archenemy, Morris Day, aka Purple Rain's main comic foil and scene stealer.

A mass of moviegoers singing and hooping and hollering to Purple Rain is perfect, for the plot is driven by the still-innovative music (I'm particularly fond of "Take Me With U"'s easygoing effervescence and whimsy), the concert antics, the comedy, and the sex. And what erotic treats there are: Apollonia's toplessness, and her lingerie and leather, and her love scene with Prince. And Prince's toplessness, and his blouses and leather, and his grinding and sweat, and almost perpetual aura of androgyny.

SPIN's Prince Cover, July 2009

It was the androgyny in particular that incited some of the women in the audience. High-pitched screams were elicited at key scenes -- the demure way the Kid tells Apollonia "stop" as they begin to groove at his place, the way he swivels his svelte hips and backside in his home, the way he parts his lips as he lay on stage, swathed in pink light at the end of his performance of "The Beautiful Ones."

It's an interesting lesson from a mid-80's film, that a man who exults in the feminine in his gestures and style -- lace, eye liner, curls, lashes, finger waves, head scarves, midriff tops, boots -- turns on legions and legions of women. And mind you, he's soaring with aspects of this style in a film set in a working class 'hood.

I spoke to some female Prince fans about their adoration of the man: two commented on their love of his uniqueness and willingness to do his own thing, with one woman exclaiming, "It's the heels!"

My suspicion: many women are thrilled by Prince because they readily see themselves in him, and vice versa, and the mutual love is visceral and real. And perhaps this lesson is lost on our current crop of soulful male performing artists who cling to a more rigid mode of masculinity. Andre 3000 and Maxwell come to mind as two artists with a huge female fan base who embrace "softness" in their creative instincts, yet note how anomalous they are in the current musical landscape.

(Special Note: Another shining star of brown androgynous manhood in film can be found in Chris Tucker's comedic character Ruby Rhod, a muscled, lipstick-wearing, squeaky-voiced radio personality who loves to pleasure women in the futuristic sci-fi flick The Fifth Element.)

The Kid is by no means a paragon of feminine virtue; he physically abuses and manipulates Apollonia, and is sometimes harsh and domineering with his bandmates, particularly Wendy and Lisa. Nonetheless, his fluidity onscreen is captivating, and makes me wonder how Purple Rain Prince would make out in these times of hardcore swaggering and conformity, where brothers take to the streets with an urban uniform and The Jungle Stroll -- shoulders hunched forward, fists clenched, arms swinging side to side.

Prince took his androgyny to the stratospheres of success, and we clapped, and continue to applaud. Yet in a cultural landscape where brown men who want to be seen as manly qualify acts of softness with the disclaimer "no homo," where r&b statesman Ne-Yo feels the need to issue a website statement defending his masculinity after crying onstage, how would new-to-the-scene petite royalty in golden gilded wraps and purple ruffled ascots fare?

Prince's compilation album cover showcases his signature styles.

READ MORE from Clarence Haynes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clarence-haynes