URL Media welcomes Watch The Yard to the network

URL Media is pleased to welcome Watch The Yard as its twentieth media partner.

As one of the largest online platforms focused on the Black college experience, Watch The Yard is dedicated to being a leading destination for Black college news, culture, and online commentary.

Its ultimate goal is to empower the next generation of leaders, builders, and doers by digitizing the Black college experience, and archiving the legacies and contributions of historically Black fraternities and sororities.

Watch The Yard's origins can be traced to a special time in the founder's life.

While living in Germany as a Fulbright scholar in 2014, Watch the Yard CEO and founder Jonathan Rabb, a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., created the platform to stay connected with his fraternity brothers and keep up with the happenings at his alma mater and Black college students around the U.S.

(Historically Black Greek Letter organizations are committed to scholarship, service, and community service throughout their lives. The earliest member organization was founded at Cornell University in 1906.)

Nearly a decade later, the company reaches an audience of 1.75 million people every month across its social media platforms, notably its Instagram, which boasts 510,000 followers, and its TikTok, which has amassed nearly a million fans.

The people who engage, shape, and rejoice in Watch The Yard’s content are college educated African Americans spanning generations, from Gen-Z to Baby Boomers. Watch the Yard has also created impressive partnerships with institutions including Marvel, Facebook and the White House.

"We are thrilled to announce Watch the Yard as the newest Black media outlet to join the URL network," said co-founder and URL Media president Sara Lomax.

"Their focus on Black Fraternities and Sororities, as well as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which have been a source of power and purpose in the African American community for decades, gives a critical lens to the Black college experience. We anticipate that their reporting will become even more prominent in the future with the recent Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action."

Watch The Yard has already been recognized by legacy Black organizations, including the NAACP and Essence Magazine, which profiled Rabb this past June.

The company also received an exclusive video message from Vice President Kamala Harris, a graduate of Howard University in Washington D.C. and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., addressing all graduating students at HBCUs.

“Together with URL Media, we are poised to reach new heights, engage wider audiences, and continue our mission of empowering and inspiring our community," said Rabb about joining the network. "Through our partnership with URL Media, we aim to expand our revenue streams, foster long-term sustainability, and create a lasting impact on the media landscape.”

Watch The Yard joins URL Media partners Black Voice News, Documented, Epicenter-NYC, Native News Online, Prism, Our Body Politic, Outlier Media, palabra., Immigrantly, The Oklahoma Eagle, Sahan Journal, PushBlack, Pulso, Scalawag, ScrollStack, TBN24, The Haitian Times, and WURD Radio.

URL Media hires Ariam Alula as Audience Manager

Ariam Alula (how to say it) brings a range of skills and interests to URL Media, including newsletter curation, audience strategy and research, and measuring and tracking impact. Most recently, she has consulted with several organizations in the journalism support space, including the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Public Square Team at Democracy Fund, Online News Association and Women Do News. She has also written for the American Press Institute’s Need to Know newsletter. Alula is also a proud graduate of the engagement journalism program at the Craig Newmark Journalism School at the City University of New York.

On my first mentor, Henry Fuhrmann

Senior Recruiter Sonali Kohli here. I want to talk to you this week about the joy of having and being a mentor, and the grief of losing a mentor. I want to talk to you in particular about Henry Fuhrmann, who was my first journalism mentor. Henry died earlier this month at the age of 65, a few years after entering semi-retirement. He had so much left. Henry and I met when I was an extremely eager (perhaps too eager) student at the University of California - Los Angeles [UCLA]. As an undergraduate, I went to the Los Angeles Times building downtown every chance I could — for everything from tours to events and panels. At one such panel, I met Henry, who was an assistant managing editor overseeing the copy desk. At our college newspaper, the Daily Bruin, we were grappling with a decision (remember that this was circa 2011): my editor and I wanted to honor a source's request to use they/them pronouns in a story, which we'd never done. Neither had the Los Angeles Times, yet. But Henry believed in respecting a person's identity and using language as a tool to do that. He told me that journalists must strive for accuracy, and it is reasonable to deduce that the name or pronouns a person uses for themselves are the most accurate. He supported our decision to respect the source's identity and then used the Bruin as an example when the LA Times had that conversation about pronouns not long after.

Meet Andaiye Taylor. She joins URL Media as our first-ever Editorial Director.

Andaiye brings a unique cross-section of professional experiences to the role. She joins URL Media from her own company, Angle Content, which helps companies and publications exceed their audience and customer acquisition goals through strategic content planning, production and distribution. Before that, Andaiye spent more than a decade working at high-performing ad tech startups in roles spanning account management, product management, and content strategy. And from 2013 to 2019 Andaiye ran her own hyperlocal publication, Brick City Live, which covered her beloved hometown of Newark, NJ.

The URL Media team is growing

We are thrilled to announce an addition to the URL Media team: Ellah Nze is our new Director of Operations. URL Media is a network of high-performing Black and Brown media outlets that share content and revenues; the company, launched in January 2021, also operates a growing recruitment, coaching and executive placement arm that centers diverse talent and excellence.

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