Nene Leakes was scene on the set of her new sitcom “The New Normal” sporting blonde braids for the show’s Halloween episode. Nene’s plays personal assistant Rocky on NBC’s sitcom, which was picked up for a full season last week. The show follows a gay Los Angeles couple as they decide to have a baby through a surrogate mother. Despite the unusual premise, the program has proved seemingly less controversial than Leakes own “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” You can check out Leakes’s acting chops on “The New Normal” twice more in October, before “Real Housewives” makes its season debut on Nov. 4..
Still independent.
We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.
Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.
The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.
We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.
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