YR Media CEO Kyra Kyles sat down with Art “Chat Daddy” Sims of WVON in Chicago to discuss YR’s goals as an organization, new projects and plans for the future.
Here are a few excerpts from the interview. For the full audio, click on the link above.
On YR Media’s mission as an organization:
I think what it is, is it’s really showing you how all storytelling is connected and the focus is on young people of color and underrepresented communities and letting them know these are viable career options for you…We are making sure that they have the platform, but it’s really them that controls the voice. I think that’s what’s really special about it and something that makes it full circle for me.
YR’s nationwide footprint:
So we are based in Oakland. However, this is a national organization. We we will work with Chicago. We will work with Atlanta. We have a project that we’re doing on the election that we’re working with New York. We work with Philadelphia. We just recently released a kind of a statewide editorial project called Not So Golden, which talked about things that I think we can relate to in Chicago; housing inequities, mental health awareness like issues that affect youth not being able to afford to live somewhere. So it is based here, but we have a national imprint.