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What Happened to Black Celebrity Media Blogs?

Zabia

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I feel like since 2015 or so Black Celebrity Media blogs have taken a major hit. Sites like MediaTakeOut, Bossip, TheYBF, Sandra Rose, Necole Bitchie, The Jasmine Brand, StraightFromTheA, have all fallen off. People are relying more on instagram blogs such as The Shade Room and Baller Alert or visiting mainstream TMZ. Why do you all think this shift from black celebrity media blogs has happened?
 

MikeyWins

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Blogs in general are dead, remember when people would get new music from Rap blogs?

Why do that when everything new gets uploaded to youtube seconds after it's released?


Blogs are also slower than social media, they get news late, hours after you've already read it elsewhere. unless they are the ones breaking the story.

Angela Yee for example reads Lipstickalley everyday for show prep, because this is a social media platform that has info that a blog wouldn't have. Although they do steal "news" stories from here. Bossip, BET, Oxygen, MTO and etc., have interns camped out here all day stealing stories and trying to get hits for their dead sites.

You can always tell when a site steals a story from here because the article tend to have the same slant as however the vast majority of people felt in the particular thread they stole it from.
 

Romey

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Its easier to check Twitter or IG for a news story, and its quicker.
 

trendsetta25

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I feel like since 2015 or so Black Celebrity Media blogs have taken a major hit. Sites like MediaTakeOut, Bossip, TheYBF, Sandra Rose, Necole Bitchie, The Jasmine Brand, StraightFromTheA, have all fallen off. People are relying more on instagram blogs such as The Shade Room and Baller Alert or visiting mainstream TMZ. Why do you all think this shift from black celebrity media blogs has happened?

I literally was talking about this to hubby last night. I wonder if there's more money on these social platforms than the blog world. TheShadeRoom allegedly charges around $8k for a post!!
 

NonEssentialist

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Concrete Loop really stood out for me. The comments got messy at times but Angel, Tianna, etc offered a lot of variety. There was plenty of educational stuff on politics and black history too.

Crunk+Disorderly had jokes for days. Fresh is/was one of the funniest bloggers out there. It felt surreal on C+D as they didn't take things too seriously.
 

WWE Diva

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Not all blogs aren't completely gone. There are still people making a killing off their blogs & such. I'd say black celebrity blogs are pretty much done.
 

hotsunset28

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I miss them though. I know everyone is on IG and Twitter and everything else now, but I'm school so I guess I'm just stuck in my ways. Blogs and forums are easier to read and follow.

I thought it was just me noticing that things are disappearing or becoming dead. LSA is still standing, but sometimes you want to switch it up and look at something new and it's just not there. I found one board that looked promising, but the last post was in 2014!

As I'm getting older and my interests are changing (I don't even recognize most the names of most of these 'celebs' folks are talking about on here) I'm finding there's not much out there for me and others like me.

#gonebutnotforgotten
 

faithless

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Seems like black readers flock to social media for entertainment news, because the more general entertainment blogs (US/People/EW/) are still doing okay. But then again those blogs are very established entities with print versions and actual reporters/staff. Their news is considered more legit and they do research. Gossip blogs in general have taken a hit because they're mostly run by single bloggers or very scant staff who publish anything for hits. MTO, for instance, is hot garbage. Say what you want about TMZ –they post a lot of nonsense–but they've broken many actual stories. There's no reason why a site similar to People for black entertainers can't flourish. They just really need to be good, post well-researched stuff and garner a good reputation.

Rap blogs seem to still be doing decent, like HotNewHipHop, Rap-Up, DJBooth (which has some good writeups).

I wish we would get more blogs, because social media blogs aren't scalable, and good luck viewing their story archives. I can find stories People Mag posted in 2001. These people are at the mercy of the social platform. For instance, if Instagram went under tomorrow, that's months of news/comments gone forever. Or look at TSR, who has had their profile deleted before. This isn't long-term thinking.
 

gagirl01

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Concrete Loop really stood out for me. The comments got messy at times but Angel, Tianna, etc offered a lot of variety. There was plenty of educational stuff on politics and black history too.

Crunk+Disorderly had jokes for days. Fresh is/was one of the funniest bloggers out there. It felt surreal on C+D as they didn't take things too seriously.

I agree. Fresh is hilarious and I do miss C+D. She'd have me in tears.
 

ARTIona

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Back in the day when the internet was "new", blogs like those you have mentioned were the go-to for "news" celebs did/didn't want you to know. Each blog was different. Each blog maintained a level of autonomy that doesn't exist so much today. The blogspots were fresh and new and everybody had one and everybody linked to everyone else.

Then branding stepped in. "I'm working on building my brand" became the mantra and as such, so came the big corporations promising support and pay to help you build your "brand". The atmosphere of each of these blogs changed a little bit. Commenters noticed; blog owners felt it. I feel like a number of blog owners became overwhelmed having to adhere to the new rules and regulations from those companies providing monetary support and networking for these otherwise, stand-alone blog sites.

The blogs became too much to handle as personal "brands" of the individual owner(s) were being built in other realms of the internet-o-sphere. There came a point where the owner(s) said, yes, to maintaining under a new rule or no, I'm done with this. Maybe they recognized the futility in speaking/commenting forever on others' lives? Maybe they got tired of the stanning or the haterations or the general grind of maintaining a blog.

A lot of the old heads I frequented have Twitter accounts, so I can still follow them from time to time. A lot have adapted to other forms of social media, like podcasts which require less of them and which are not governed by anyone but themselves.

I agree with some of you who say that social media (facebook, instagram, twitter and others) opened new and different avenues to do the same thing...but maybe with less stress.

It's a different world than it was ten years ago where Crunk & Disorderly was everything, where Concrete Loop was everything, where even Necole Bitchie was the bees knees... It's just different. But that's okay. We've still got LSA. :)
 

FlySoFly

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Those blogs you mentioned were only updated once a day. A lot of stories were stolen from LSA anyway.
The social media pages are updated throughout the day.
 

Zabia

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TheShadeRoom
BallerAlert
TeaTenders
thats where black blogs went.

I corrected that for you. I've never heard of Tea Tenders. LOL I tried to type fame-o-lous, why is fame-o-lous blocked on this site?
 

NoirPrincess

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Social media is killingit. FB, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms are taking over.

There was a lot of money in blogging and even running a blog for someone else until about 2007, when social media began to go mainstream. Popular blogs made money for the owners, the maintainers, the ghostwriters, and a lot of other people. If you built up your reputation in behind the scenes work, it was possible to make a few thousand a month working just a few hours a day. By 2010, that was over. Some of the top people were on sites offering their services for almost nothing.
 

vegansteak

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I think celebrity blogs have also declined because you don't need the blogs to know what celebrities are doing. With the rise of Instagram, you can go on their page and see what they're up to everyday for yourself. The popular accounts have piggybacked off the fact that people want their updates fast. It's great for the public because on the same app, you post your own stuff while getting the latest gossip. But as someone who liked the old blogs mentioned in this thread, I do miss the interviews of Necole Bitchie or the witty posts on C&D. At times, I get tired of TSR's constant reposts of other people's posts and the "clapbacks". I miss comment sections that were interactive and lively. It's hard to keep track of interactions on IG. I give up on reading comments after scrolling up once or twice.
 

Pinkcashmere

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Because instagram grew and it became easier to follow and read all your favorite sites, news and friends posts all on one organized easy timeline as opposed to bookmarking and clicking on multiple sites for news and gossip. If all the popular old school blogs jumped on the IG bandwagon early on the shade room wouldn't have been able to just take over so easy.
 

Zabia

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Because instagram grew and it became easier to follow and read all your favorite sites, news and friends posts all on one organized easy timeline as opposed to bookmarking and clicking on multiple sites for news and gossip. If all the popular old school blogs jumped on the IG bandwagon early on the shade room wouldn't have been able to just take over so easy.

Baller Alert was the only smart one of the bunch that did this. ^^^ Their blog wasn't as popular back in their day, but their instagram is 2nd to The Shade Room as far as black celebrities go.
 

Silentbx

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Social Media most definitely took over. I don't even bother updating my blog anymore. I started focusing more on updating my youtube with interviews etc. everyone wants to go straight to the source... meaning just show me the photo, the video or get gone. Hence IG popping off.
 

Pinkcashmere

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Baller Alert was the only smart one of the bunch that did this. ^^^ Their blog wasn't as popular back in their day, but their instagram is 2nd to The Shade Room as far as black celebrities go.

You're right and that's why they still managed to survive. Right now i'm only following TSR and ********. I used to follow Baller alert and several others but after a while they were clogging my feed with all the same stories and pics so I had narrow down to two.
 

HeavenHollywood

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I think celebrity blogs have also declined because you don't need the blogs to know what celebrities are doing. With the rise of Instagram, you can go on their page and see what they're up to everyday for yourself. The popular accounts have piggybacked off the fact that people want their updates fast. It's great for the public because on the same app, you post your own stuff while getting the latest gossip. But as someone who liked the old blogs mentioned in this thread, I do miss the interviews of Necole Bitchie or the witty posts on C&D. At times, I get tired of TSR's constant reposts of other people's posts and the "clapbacks". I miss comment sections that were interactive and lively. It's hard to keep track of interactions on IG. I give up on reading comments after scrolling up once or twice.



I totally agree that is why I like the IG site Spillth3sugar and I like Hustler Alert Spill interacts with its commentors and don't block people like that other dude on social media when people don't agree with him. Spillth3sugar also has that In case you didn't know I enjoy the old school tea you did not know about. Hustler alert has good stuff that not a lot of blogs on iG has but because they don't have a lot of followers they go unrecognized
 

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