Nekesa Mumbi Moody takes Top Editor Spot at Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter has a new boss.
With a woman of African American descent at the top editor's spot at Hollywood Reporter this is what it means for us.
Nekesa Mumbi Moody, an Associated Press editor, will fill the role that Matthew Belloni left after a dispute with the publication’s parent company.
The Hollywood Reporter has found its new editorial director https://t.co/ngPTzitDVd
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) April 30, 2020
Known as a reporter with strong talent relationships (she spoke often with Aretha Franklin), Ms. Moody has spent 20 years at The Associated Press. She was music editor for 12 years, breaking the news of Whitney Houston’s death in 2012, the same year she was promoted to her current position.
Ms. Moody will move to Los Angeles to helm a recently gutted operation, where a dozen journalists lost their jobs in the wake of Mr. Belloni’s departure. The Hollywood Reporter’s publisher, Lynne Segall, and the veteran film critic Todd McCarthy were among those laid off as Valence Media, the publication’s parent company, tried to balance a budget sheet that was reportedly losing $15 million annually.
Creator of my favorite Stylist list, Hollywood Reporter has had issues with putting actors of color on the cover. These actors and actresses already face huge barriers to mainstream success, from a lack of meaningful work to casting directors’ antiquated ideas of who the public will accept to the assumption by executives that there isn’t an audience for productions that are too “black”. So many black female actors grace our television screens each week because film studios have deemed them dispensable. Despite proving time and again that their work is rigorous and bankable, black women actors are, simply, unseen by studios and sometimes unseeable by the public. With Ms. Moody as the leader. we will certainly see more faces of color in the months and years to come.
Let's celebrate,
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