I hope I've grown. We all should grow from year to year.
I've been an acquaintance of the president Ryan Glover for some years and for a couple years we've been talking about possibilities, puzzle pieces fitting together. I was doing an event that they were sponsoring, and after a group of us went to dinner and we started talking a little bit more and one thing led to another.We all thought it might be a good idea to try to develop a show and as we started talking about the show that we might bring to air, it turned into doing a newsmagazine.
We've had now eight years and there's this prideful sense among many African Americans. When you think about how elated they are when they see the First Lady on magazine covers or when she is out doing her thing. There just this pride our community has had for eight years now. When that goes away, I jokingly said it, but I do think there's going to be a bit of withdrawal.
You will meet their children through their eyes. One of the most poignant moments is when I asked each to describe the moment they found out their child had been killed. So this is a very personal side to each one of these mothers ["Mothers of the Movement"].
It's interesting because I laugh and tell people when I give speeches, ' I know what y'all think, oh we love Ed, but he's kinda stuck up or he's kinda this or he's kinda that.'
I was two votes away from class clown in high school.
I've got a buddy who will not watch me because he'll say 'I don't know who that dude is.'
I also know that I have represented for us a certain kind of journalist and for me over the years when an older Black person comes and tells me how proud they are of me and the way I represent us on television, or when a younger person says to me, 'Hey Mr. Gordon, I watched you growing up and my parents made me watch you,'.
Certainly there is a depression I think a lot of Black folks are getting ready to have come January [2017] and that might be an interesting story to tell.
One of the things that EBONY [magazine] has done for years, decades is perspective. They knew what our audience was, they know who we are, so that's what I hope to do with this show.
I want to find those stories that we may talk about at the barbecue or when we're playing bid whist or with our cousins watching TV, but you don't see it on television. Certainly it's perspective.
I heard someone the other day who said 'How can Colin Kaepernick lead this because he's mixed and he was raised by adoptive White parents. I wonder if those people feel the same way about President [Barack] Obama.
We're looking at a story we want to call "Am I Black enough for you?" That's that whole question of who determines what "Black enough" is. Is it color? And if it's color, then are you telling me that Clarence Thomas is Blacker than Louis Farrakhan? If it's not color then what's the line that determines whether you are?
I also want to do stories that I think are not brought to television that often that our community talks about.
I wanted people to kind of take a peek to see that the pain, even though you may see them out at the Democratic National Convention or at Essence [Festival] or any of these other places, that the pain is still very real for these women [from the "Mothers of the Movement"].
I sat with five of the "Mothers of the Movement." Of course I'm hyping the show, but I keep telling everybody this part is not hype. After a while particularly in the case of Sybrina Fulton, they've become celebrities and people forget that they've become celebrities because of the death, the murder of their child. So I wanted people to see the burning desire for these women to live their child's legacy, to not let their child have died in vain, so they're fighting to stop the violence.
I think the best comparable is Bryant Gumbel's "Real Sports," in the sense that it's quarterly as well. So that's what we're doing, a quarterly special, an hour, three to four stories each hour.
I feel like, I mean, there's no new wheel, you know. A newsmagazine is what it is.
I understand what the dynamic of the brand Ed Gordon has been all these years. I'm just trying to keep that as real and as honest as I can and I don't take it lightly.
