Who's a journalist?

So, this is something that I need to get off my chest.

At some point in my correspondence with the >IIE, the organisation which manages the Humphrey programme, I indicated an interest in Hip-Hop culture and popular culture more generally.

Since then, I have become type-cast as the "Hip-Hop guy". And certainly, while Hip-Hop is both a research interest but also central to how I self-identify, it has led to my being separated from the 'journalists' in the group of fellows at the University of Maryland.

It seems to matter not that I have worked at a news desk for an international media company, that I have worked as a sports announcer in commercial radio, that I have educated journalists who have gone on to do prominent work, or that (as a result of my interest in Hip-Hop) my journalistic work continues to be published.

No, my interest in matters cultural seems to render my work of lesser importance in the grander context.

To be frank, I don't covet the title of journalist. But I am perturbed that the apartheid which separated journalists and media scholars at an institution closer to home seems also to have reared its head in the Humphrey program.

Rant over.

The Hip-Hop Guy.