I need more gal-dem
As I lie down in a hotel relaxing before the long drive home, I and looking through the web for something stimulating to read. I find a website that seems to discuss issues that other sites would normally dodge from. A website by women of colour talking the talk and saying it the way it is. What I also liked was the fact it wasn’t a man bashing site and men wasn’t central to the content of the articles . . . It was a site for the gal dem, about the gal dem, by the gal dem and was entitled: gal-dem.com
There’s a core team how contribute articles to the site, with good illustrations and imagery throughout. Seems to be well managed and contributed to.
I got me thinking straight away – “We need a man dem”, started a quick domain check (via mrcmedia.com of course) and found it was taken 🙁 looked at the site, read a few articles and saw that it was set up on the same process as mine. A man dem version. It seems there was initial discussion about the name and the man version (which has nothing to do with the female one) changed its name to mandemhood.com out of respect for the orignal site.
The sites got me thinking, I set up Supatrax in 2001 with a similar passion, but to challenge the mainstream medias reporting of incidents, music reviews and events. It was raw when it was launched and the web was in its infancy – long before Facebook and Twitter. Supatrax has developed with the web and content has sometimes lacked as team members come and go, but the ethos has always been a site for raw young people with content by raw young people – but “me nuh young again!” lol, and the team needs a shake up.
The demographics of Supatrax’s social media and website stats show the core readers are aged 24-35 which highlights that the site may need to adjust its content. The website still appeals to its target audience, but things are moving so rapidly with social media that these outlets are now the ‘go to’ outlets. Content is rapidly uploaded with ease and no one has got time to sit down and right a long ass article again!
Maybe for this reason and this reason alone, Supatrax needs a change. Leave the wave of social media to do its thing. Maybe we need to keep it old skool and find like minded individuals that also aren’t on the social media hype as well to get involved. Maybe we need a site that young people can come to for inspiration, discussion and information rather than the latest hype. Hmmmmm!??