Voiceover (00:00):

Welcome to the Taylor Ten. A fast-paced, ten minute deep dive into the minds of those shaking up the marketing world, bringing you the sharpest insights, boldest ideas and breakthrough trends driving the industry forward. So tune in, get inspired, and stay ahead. 

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Shan'T-Erica Pugh (00:18):

Hello, I'm Shan'T-Erica and welcome to the Taylor Ten. I'm here with sports editor Jonathan Giles from Ebony Magazine to learn as much as I can about curating meaningful stories in a somewhat saturated sports media landscape in only ten minutes. Jonathan, when we chatted a few weeks back, you told me that your coverage doesn't just report on the statistics that people know already exist online, but you really try to dig into and uncover the stories that are worth telling. Can you talk a little bit more about your thought process behind that? 

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Jonathan Giles (00:55):

My sort of take, especially as someone who used to play sports, I played sports in college, and I like the idea, and we get to see this a little bit more, I think, especially with social media and athletes being able to sort of control their own narrative – the idea that athletes are whole people, we maybe see them two hours at a game or three hours at a game. We might know a little bit of what's going on through practice and interviews and things like that. But really when you think about an athlete or an entertainer or whomever, even you and me, we're whole people and there's other interests that we have. One of my favorite things to do is see the NBA rookies showing off their Lego collection. That's so much fun. And I think that from the Ebony perspective, even though we may not be talking about Lego in our stories, but we do want to tell as much as we can, who is this person? 

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Jonathan Giles (01:53):

We want to celebrate them on the court as much as we celebrate them off the court. And that's really, I guess, speaks to how we want to use sport as a way to talk about culture and use that as a lens of what's happening in our world. More so than just saying, well, who won the game last night? Well, you can go to another platform and you can figure that out pretty quickly and actually probably faster than Ebony can cover it, better than Ebony can cover it. So when it comes to how we think about our resources, we really are trying to tell that next level story when it comes to the athletes and the sports that we cover. 

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Shan'T-Erica Pugh (02:24):

I kind of did some research on your coverage, and I noticed that it spans from everything from unrivaled off season impact to Bobby Wagner's Walter Payton Man of the Year speech to the global conversations like the controversy surrounding Haiti’s winter Olympics uniforms. And we all know, as you said, that Ebony has always documented black excellence, but how do you go about balancing, separating the celebration of achievement while still interrogating power, context and identity, especially when athletes are quickly being turned into just symbols sometimes? 

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Jonathan Giles (03:05):

I think you named a couple of those articles that definitely hit on that with the Haiti story. That was something in real time was happening, a lot of different outlets were having their perspective on it. And just as a person myself, I'm just curious and just transparently, I didn't know a lot about Haiti and the Revolution. I heard of it, but I didn't know much about it. So that moment was actually a really cool opportunity for me to sort of dive in and do some research and learn things about Haiti and how their freedom came about. And then learning even more about Stella Jean as the designer, who designed those. I would never have known she was Italian, Haitian. I would've never known much about her. So some of that I think comes from just a personal curiosity about the world for me personally. And then you mentioned the other thing about the symbol. 

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Jonathan Giles (04:00):

I just had the chance to, well, we interviewed Laila Edwards, US Olympian, Gold medalist US women's hockey team, and we got to interview her right before she left. And these were not her words, so I don't want to put this on her, but the thing I felt was, and I was seeing it everyone, first black woman on the US Olympic team, first black woman, and now we're seeing it now that she won the gold. And I think it's okay to celebrate that, but as I sat and talked to Layla, I was like, again, back to this idea, you're a whole person. This is not your identity. Sometimes as a community, I think we want to celebrate that thing that you're the first, but then what happens to them after they did the thing the first time? So I think what I try to do again, I want to give the person or the story that I'm, I want to allow it to tell its own story without necessarily forcing the narrative so much. 

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Jonathan Giles (04:54):

And so it was like curiosity, but also giving someone else the platform to really share who they are, especially when it's a story or a thing that, like Laila, I think we did some other pieces with Zoie Brogdon, who's an equestrian writer. Rajah Caruth actually just was at an event of his, where he was meeting with the Boys and Girls Club here in Atlanta. And it's not that they're not famous, but they're not LeBron James yet. They're not Steph Curry yet. They don't know, everyone doesn't really know about the Unrivaled league and all the great things that they're doing to keep not only people employed, but they get to stay home. There's so many other things that I think are important about those stories that again, aren't just the scoreboard, even though the scoreboard is the way we step into these conversations a lot of times. 

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Shan'T-Erica Pugh (05:40):

And I just wanted to ask your opinion on what are the stories that still haven't been uncovered or still need to be covered a bit more or are being overlooked in your opinion, that maybe don't fit traditional sports narratives? 

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Jonathan Giles (05:56):

So what is the thing that makes people or this thing unique? And sometimes we're like, can this story be told on any other platform besides Ebony? And sometimes maybe, but we really are trying to dig into what's that next level thing? What is that question that maybe someone else isn't asking? I think like a media company like Vice does this very well, they do it in a different lane, and sometimes it's very controversial. And so for me, and I think I also will say this for Ebony, I think we really want to talk about how do we empower, how our tagline is moving black forward? How do we elevate people? And even if we're telling a story that may seem controversial or we're not The Shade Room, those platforms have their space, even if we're stepping into something that might be a little bit of animosity or whatever, but can we find maybe something that someone can take away where they learn something, maybe it causes them to ask more questions to themselves. Is there an opportunity to show a little bit of joy and positivity and optimism, even if the situation is not necessarily, it may not seem positive on the surface. 

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Shan'T-Erica Pugh (07:14):

Are there any cultural shifts in sports that you're playing close attention to right now or that you anticipate coming up in the future? 

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Jonathan Giles (07:24):

I think the shift that I'm curious is where does technology, where does fandom and all that stuff sort of blend together? And is there a place where the OGs, even myself sometimes are like, man, I really, really wish the LeBron would be in the slam dunk contest, but there's other part of me is like that he don't need to. He doesn't need it. Who's it for? Is it for me or is it for him? So I think those are some of the things that are top of mind that I'm tracking. 

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Shan'T-Erica Pugh (07:53):

That was all very interesting insight, and I definitely agree, and I do want to thank you so much for giving us so much perspective. And I do want to just kind of put your name out there and ask where can people find and follow your work beside Ebony? 

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Jonathan Giles (08:10):

Oh yeah. Great. Well, I would say if your audience is people in PR and in sports, please email me at jgiles@ebony.com. Would love to just talk about what you or your athlete or if you're represented brand, if we'd love to just talk to you and see if there's a natural fit there. 

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My personal stuff, you can find me on most socials at jgileswrites, W-R-I-T-E-S-J-G-I-L-E-S-W-R-I-T-E-S jgileswrites, that's Instagram. I think I'm also that on Threads, and I have a podcast, if it's okay for me to plug it, starting next week is called The Coat Check. And we're just going to be having open conversations around a lot of different topics with a lot of different type of people. And yeah, if you just want to hear says, people kind of ask the question, what if that's a good place to come? 

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Shan'T-Erica Pugh (09:00):

Well, y’all, you heard it here first. You know where to find Jonathan. And thanks so much for listening to the Taylor Ten. I'm Shan’T-Erica and I'll see you next time.