Value Add: Issue 4

🌟 Note from AAJA Sports President Michele Steele

I love Chicago and live in Chicago and - humblebrag alert - it’s our nation’s third biggest comedy market so I’ll be here for a while, but Seattle could not have been a better host for this year’s AAJA Convention. Weather: on point. Food: seafood, period. People: IYKYK. It was also an important reminder of the mission of our group: elevating our community’s voices, fostering GREAT storytelling to emergent and global audiences and helping our partners broaden their applicant pool and gain exposure for current talent. Big shoutout to STF board members VP Melissa Kim, CPO Howard Chen and everyone who contributed to a successful convention - and a round of applause for our programming chair James Koh, who assembled an all-star list of panel members including star influencer @AsianVerified aka Michael Wong, as well as AAJA members and executives from CBS Sports, The Athletic, NFL Network and ESPN. It was a massively successful convention for us and puts us in a position of strength headed into next year’s convention in Minneapolis. But until then….

It’s a shortened summer version of the newsletter…. so let’s jump in!

🚀 Stay Inspired

Did you miss #AAJA25? We got you…

• Check out pics & video from our panels: We were honored to have 2 panels to program this year: building your social brand and covering the women’s sports boom. Check it out in our IG Stories.

• Most creative swag award goes to… The Athletic: We’ve all gotten the proverbial fortune cookie at the end of a meal. How about these cookies? Everyone who went to Korean Barbecue got one … and STAY for the fortune!

• Say Hello! to our new sponsor NFL Network: VP Sandy Nunez and multi-talented anchor Mike Yam were on site to meet and greet and talk to AAJA convention attendees about exciting new developments at NFLN.

The Jobs Board + Other Cool Stuff…

• DISCUSS: Chief People Officer Howard Chen knows about potential openings for sports editors… do you have experience as an editor? Love to sink your teeth into a story? Hit him up at [email protected]. Or, fill out this form to be included in our confidential talent database, from which we will be making referrals to our partners.

• CONGRATS: STF Board Member Josh Tolentino, who has covered the Eagles, Cowboys and Rays, is now a sports columnist at the Baltimore Sun. Check out his first columns here.

• WELCOME: Hayden Kim, alongside Howard Chen, will be assisting the STF Board going forward on internship and scholarships with our partners. Learn more about Hayden below in our Reader of the Month feature!

  
  

🦋 Storyteller Spotlight: NextShark Founder & CEO Benny Luo

Luo on Building a Media Business From the Ground Up

Benny Luo is the founder of digital media business NextShark and the Rebel Yellow newsletter and social channels. He has consulted for brands including Billboard, MGM and McDonalds and speaks around the country. Here’s what he told us:

The Backstory: NextShark was founded in 2013 to solve a problem, “satiate a demand for stories about Asian Americans. Through our newsletter - the Rebel Yellow - our focus is really talking about a lot of the things that are happening in our country at the moment and how does that affect our individual communities. For us, there is obviously a big piece of reporting on stories that need to be told, reporting on stories that have a direct impact on our audience.

I always say that at a high level, I hope NextShark can be ‘Asian Disney’ in 10 years - what I mean by that is if you look at Disney, they have news outlets, they own ESPN too - they have different (intellectual property) out there. The way I look at NextShark is I see this as an ecosystem of companies and partners working together.

So we have NextShark News, which is our flagship, what people know us for. We have NextShark Studios, which is our film, TV and live events platform. We also have NextShark Ventures, which is our venture studio platform where we're basically helping support Asian creators and Asian founders too. And it ranges - it could be anywhere from your typical tech startup founder to your media entrepreneur that's looking to start their own podcast.

A lot of what I've been focusing on is on filmmaking, working with upcoming young Asian and Asian American filmmakers, and trying to tell important stories. One of my favorite projects that we did was a basketball mental health short film that we released a few months ago, and it premiered at LeBron James' Uninterrupted Festival and really touched on a lot of different issues like mental health in sports, mental health as an athlete, masculinity, all different things.

Key Learning: “I don't even know if I qualify as a media mogul (laughs). I struggled a lot in school… I was diagnosed with ADHD, and so school was a huge, huge struggle - paying attention and just surviving in academia. And so when I got into college, I knew that I couldn't necessarily compete with my peers through academics … but I was a hard worker. I mean, I really had this desire to be better and to do better.

I worked four jobs while being a full-time student at UC Irvine - my first year, I was a campus note-taker for students with disabilities; delivered computers; was a Dell rep; and an intern for Andrew Yang. My sophomore year, I met a guy that was doing very well for himself in online poker - so I became an online poker player for a year. I would say that poker allowed me to really sort of not be too emotional in the decisions I make, especially when it comes to business.”

Financing Details: “

Luo started NextShark with just $3000. “We started in 2013, so it's been close to over 12 years now, I guess you could say... it’s still bootstrap startup.”

During the height of the "Stop Asian hate" movement, the company faced financial hardship because brands were unwilling to advertise next to the news content. During that time, Luo said he personally subsidized the newsroom, funneling all of his speaking engagement fees back into the company. Today, Rebel Yellow is subscriber driven with a dose of financing from Luo and his ventures. "I get zero (of the speaking fees). Every single dollar of that was funneled back into the newsroom. And every single dollar that I still make today...still gets funneled back into the newsroom."

🏆 Reader of the Month: Hayden Kim

August Giveaway: We’re taking a month off! Summer vacation - giveaways will be back in September!

Till next time,

AAJA Sports Task Force