Welcome to Black Owned, a series that celebrates the brilliant Black entrepreneurs doing bits in the UK.
Despite the challenges, the community continues to create important and excellent work – and we’re here to make sure that you know about it.
This week, we’ve got Tobi Oredein, journalist, media entrepreneur and founder of the brilliant Black Ballad – the leading digital lifestyle subscription platform for Black women in Britain.
Journalism is this country is an overwhelmingly white, middle-class industry. Black Ballad, however, seeks to ‘tell the human experience through eyes of Black British women’ – elevating their voices through snappy content and bringing them together as a community.
Needless to say, Black Ballad has fast become a household name. Earlier this month, it took over HuffPost UK with a series by Black women on parenting, family and a post-coronavirus future. It also recently won a £70K grant to grow the platform across the UK – recruiting a team of regional editors to help tell the stories of Black women outside of London. So, without further a do, let’s meet Tobi.
Why did you start Black Ballad?
I started in 2014. There were two reasons why I started Black Ballad. Firstly, it was for personal reasons; I was a freelance journalist who struggled to find full-time employment as a journalist. I was tired of applying to mainstream women’s publications and not getting anywhere so I decided to give myself a job!
Secondly, I felt that that the journalism industry had problems when it came to race and the representation of Black women.
Black women were hardly on the pages of women’s magazines and if they were, their representation felt very narrow and one-dimensional. With my personal employment issues and my frustration with how the media industry represented Black women, I felt I had no choice but to create Black Ballad.
How does the lack of diversity in British media affect Black communities?
There is definitely a diversity issue within traditional media. White journalists make 94% of journalists in this country compared to Black journalists who only make up 0.2% of British media. Black people make up 3% of the population, meaning we are 15 times less represented in the media.
That underrepresentation means that when news stories that specifically affect the Black community are reported, they are done through a white lens. Often Black perspectives and Black voices are missing from major news stories, such as Brexit; we hardly heard from any Black reporters or members of the general public when it came to Brexit and how leaving Europe would affect the Black community.
Can you think of any stories whose coverage was impacted by racial bias?
As I said, Brexit was completely whitewashed and excluded Black Britons completely. COVID-19 coverage has been impacted by racial bias because there was a lot of coverage about what pre-existing medical conditions made people vulnerable, but yet there was little-to-no mention of sickle cell as a pre-existing medical condition. Sickle cell predominately affects the Black community but was barely mentioned as a pre-existing condition.
Furthermore, the fact that COVID-10 was disproportionally affecting Black people should have been picked up sooner as a news story.
What does traditional British media need to do now to serve non-white communities?
Employing Black journalists and other journalists of colour and having multiple Black journalists at senior positions.
All too often, mistakes in traditional media are made because these media companies don’t have more than one Black person in the room at middle management or senior level. We’ve seen news organisations say the N-word while reporting stories and that would have been more unlikely to happen if two or more Black people of power were in the room. Having one Black person puts too much pressure on that individual to have all the answers and they won’t have all the answers all the time. The more Black people in the room, the less likely mistakes are to happen.
Are Black people better served by platforms like yours that sit outside the traditional space?
If I’m honest, I do believe platforms like Black Ballad better serve Black people or the marginalised communities that is the target audience for that publication.
By having a specific and focused audience of Black women, Black Ballad doesn’t have to think about ‘watering down’ our content down to make others feel comfortable. We are never going to say Black women don’t sell magazines (if we ever decide to do a print version) because we would only ever have a Black woman on our magazine cover. The truth is, because media, like all industries, see Black women as an afterthought or a token gesture due to systematic racism, Black women don’t get the coverage they deserve.
Black women aren’t an afterthought at Black Ballad – they are focus and priority. Because of that, we serve Black women like no one else.
Black Ballad is a subscriber-based platform. What made you decide to make it membership-focused?
When we started Black Ballad as a free access blog, I assumed I would make money from advertising. We thought by getting advertising, we would be able to have a profitable business that paid our creators for their work. However, advertising didn’t come fast enough and I really hated not being able to pay Black women for their work. I felt like I was part of the problem; we know media has a huge problem with trying to get writers to work for free.
My co-founder Bola Awoniyi did some research and looked at publications in America and in Europe who had subscription-business models. We spoke about the idea and found that successful media companies who had memberships had an audience that was ‘focused’- they made content for specific demographics or interests. We thought it was the perfect business model for Black Ballad.
By having a membership, we have a regular and growing revenue stream that allows us to pay everyone who works for us, but gives us stability as a company.
What’s been your biggest success with Black Ballad so far?
The biggest success of Black Ballad will always be the crowdfunding campaign to launch the membership site. We decided to do the crowdfund to pre-sell memberships because we needed funding and we knew that as Black founders, investors weren’t going to invest based on a business plan like media founders before us. We had to prove ourselves and the crowdfund was the only way.
We aimed to raise £10,000 to start the transition into a membership platform and we raised just over £12,000. So much hard work and thought went into our crowdfunding campaign and there was no guarantee people would pay for a membership – especially when people had no idea what the membership was at that point.
We had just over 3,000 followers on Twitter and just over 1,500 followers on Instagram at that time, but our small audience was engaged and loved the brand, which was why we surpassed our target.
You’re a mum as well as an entrepreneur. How have you managed to juggle motherhood and business?
They phrase it takes a village is so true. I’ve been on maternity leave but I have been working part-time for the last few weeks and I couldn’t have done it without my husband and my mum. My husband and I really share childcare equally, which of course is the way it should be. And my mum has been extremely helpful in terms of taking care of my daughter in the afternoons and evenings so I can get work done.
Being a working mum requires support – I couldn’t do it any other way. I also try to do as much work as possible when my daughter sleeping, but I make sure every day that I have quality time with her. She is my priority and to be honest, she made me more ambitious – making Black Ballad work for her pushes me to work when I don’t want to.
However, I do struggle with mum guilt. I feel guilty for working at times when I know I could be spending time with her.
What do you hope for Black Ballad’s future?
Black Ballad’s future is to be the number one media company for Black women around the world.
We want to be the lifestyle publication Black women read in their lunch breaks, the podcast they listen to during the week and the events they go to after work. As a team, we genuinely want to help Black women be the best versions of themselves and help tell their stories on their own terms.
We want to become a global media company that leads the way in creating exceptional lifestyle journalism. I definitely want us to collaborate with more mainstream publications, as it is important we take up those spaces and share the perspectives of Black women in those publications when we feel it is right.
Did you experience any hurdles getting your business set up, as a Black entrepreneur?
It has been difficult to get funding for Black Ballad in terms of investment. When we speak to investors, many ask if the market is big enough. That’s a crazy question to ask – there are millions of Black women in the UK and a large portion of them are our target audience.
The best businesses often have a clear target market in mind and often, businesses don’t target the Black community. Black founders want to fix these problems or fill these gaps with the businesses we start. Usually, investors aren’t from the Black community so they struggle to see the potential. Even when investors are Black or say they want to invest in underrepresented founders, they struggle to see the potential in Black Ballad as they are looking for a Black founder creating a product or service that targets people beyond the Black community – so there is a lot of unlearning that many investors need to do.
However, we are finding Black and non-Black investors who really do see the business potential of Black Ballad; the opportunity there is for this business. Even now, brands are just starting to see the worth of working with Black Ballad in a way that makes financial sense for both parties. For so long, many brands either expected us to work for free or said that although they wanted to reach a Black audience, they’d rather work with mainstream media publications…which was perplexing.
What advice do you have for other Black women looking to set up their own business?
Make sure you are creating the best product possible and building an audience that is engaged with your brand. Getting customers’ attention is really hard, so work on that as much as you work on your product.
If you are looking for investors, date them! Get to know your investors, look at their track record, what have they investing in before, understand what their relationship is with the founders they’ve already invested in.
As a Black female founder, you will jump through more hoops so be resilient and know that you can do it – despite the journey being tougher.
How can young Black writers get involved with Black Ballad?
We are always looking for writers! Right now, we are on the lookout for writers outside of London as we are conscious that Black Ballad can be very London centric and we need to ensure that Black women across Britain are fairly represented. If anyone has any pitches or ideas that specifically look at life for Black people outside of London, please click here.
To write for Black Ballad generally, you can find the pitching guidelines here. We pay for all commissions.
Black Ballad membership starts at just £4.99 a month. Go to blackballad.co.uk/register and use the code Tobi for 40% off 12 months on any membership.
Do you have a story to share?
Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/08/29/black-owned-tobi-oredein-founder-black-ballad-13194496/
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