Q&A
Nia knows best BY ELEANOR BISHOP | PHOTO PROVIDED BY NIA DUMAS
Nia Dumas is forging a new path in the OU media scene.
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ia Dumas has long been committed to uplifting Black voices, including her own. The Ohio University junior is studying journalism and serves as the president of the Black Student Communications Caucus, OU’s Sigma Gamma Rho Eta Psi sorority chapter and the National Pan-Hellenic Council. Melanin in the Media, her new podcast, is a continuation of that mission. Since launching in February of 2020, Melanin in the Media has grown into a five-person team. Dumas does not have any plans to slow down any time soon.
WHAT WAS YOUR INSPIRATION FOR STARTING THIS PODCAST? One thing was that I didn’t really feel like I belonged at OU … even when I went to go look at The Post or things like that, they did not speak to me; when I walked into the newsrooms, no one looked like me, and then the stories they were covering … they cover large topics, but they don’t understand the subculture and the norms of those things. One thing [The Post] talked about was rap music, and they talked about a rapper like, “Oh he began rapping because he grew up without a dad,” and that lowkey irritated me because … there’s so much
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backdrop | Spring 2021
more depth and nuance than that. You don’t understand how systemically that was done. Hip hop in itself is a subculture, and I got sick of people trying to tell our stories for the sake of “diversity and inclusion” when they didn’t have the knowledge to tell our stories. So, I created [the podcast] because I felt that we deserve to have a place where the Black narrative can thrive and feel comfortable.
HOW DID YOU CONNECT WITH YOUR CURRENT CO-HOST, MIKAELA WOODS, AND FORMER CO-HOST, MYLES JAY WORTMAN? I knew [Mikaela] from OU because she used to be a Photo-J major. Myles and I are both on the [Black Student Communications Caucus] board and we’re really good friends. Over the summer, we just said, ‘Let’s set a date, let’s revamp, what do we want to do over this pandemic break that we weren’t able to do? How do we want to refocus? How do we want to restructure the episodes as far as topics, as far as layout?’ And once we did that, we were set to go. That’s when we [added] a PR director, a social media manger, a content editor. All that came after and I’m just really appreciative of them.
