This year, The Shade Room celebrates over 10 years of being a cultural force in the Black Community through news, entertainment, beauty, fashion, music, investigative journalism and, now, politics.
Political coverage is not entirely new to the Shade Room. It is has long been offered and aggregated through the brand’s #TSRPolitics vertical, which includes more than 8,000 posts and offers a snapshot of the topics that have resonated most with followers: social justice issues, anti abortion legislation, a potential TikTok ban, the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.
“I have an interest in wanting to elevate the platform. If you’re coming here every day, you’ve got to get some type of news,” Angie said. “I don’t want to completely walk away from everything [followers] love about the Shade Room, but I want to elevate it slowly.”
The Shade Room and its Founder & CEO, Angelica Nwandu, aims to revitalize its political coverage where the Roommates have a voice in the conversation while shifting how people view the platform because we take our responsibility in how we positively impact the culture seriously.
In fact, Angie hired a consulting firm to assist the TSR reporters with positioning and the selection process for the platform’s political news coverage and strategy.
“I invested in that, because I may not see from my lens why this is wrong, but let me get people who do this to come in and show us how to change our political reporting so that we aren’t seen as a right-wing site,” Angie said. “I’m not trying to be seen as a left-wing site, [either].”
Check out this feature on The Washington Post about how TSR plans to continue to expand in the political space!