On the latest episode of the Nieman Storyboard podcast, award-winning journalist, author, and producer Danyel Smith joins Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper to discuss building the confidence to tell her own story and being a model for others to do the same.
Smith, the first woman and first Black person to serve as editor-in-chief of Vibe and who later served as editor of Billboard, is the author of “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.” The book is part memoir, part cultural criticism, while giving Black female music artists their due. Smith is also the host of the podcast “Black Girl Songbook” and a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame selection committee member.
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Smith prides herself as a writer who covers music icons, newsmakers, and world champion athletes, but in the last several years, Smith has turned more of her attention to memoir writing and bringing her own life experiences into the stories she’s assigned. As a journalist of more than three decades, she’s more than earned the right. But owning her space in the writing is still a process.
“ I don't know if I own it completely, yet,” Smith admits. “A huge down payment has been put down on owning that space, and I'm good on my payments. But, it's a discipline to look at things that were either so beautiful and wonderful or so terrible and so painful, and to just sit in that. It's an exercise, each time, in self-worth.”
That discipline extends to Smith’s editorship. The Oakland, Calif., native encourages the writers she works with to consider their experiences and observations as worthy of consideration in the work.
“ Once you’re an editor, aren't you essentially some type of coach or teacher? Reminding [writers] that everything that they've done and lived is important enough to be inserted into this piece, whether with the pronoun ‘I’ or just because your knowledge and creativity is going to infuse it. Even if [the story] is about something else [and] isn't about you, it's still your story and your take on things.”
Smith’s approach to writing is complemented by her journaling practice, her recent embrace of CrossFit, and her strong opinions on semicolons. The excerpts below are edited for length and clarity.
On being your own second voice:
There's a clip of Diana Ross where she talks about self-worth… I'm paraphrasing her, but she says, when she was a teenager, she always used to say, “Well, I'm gonna do this. I'm going to work at this department store, or I'm going to learn how to do this dance, or I'm going to be a singer.” And there would be that negative voice also in her head that said, “No, you're not. Why would you think that you could do that?” And she said she really started growing up and coming into herself when she started being her own second voice and co-signing herself. Because she was worth it and because she could do it. And so you have to remind yourself, or let me use the pronoun that is always difficult for me to use: “I” need to remind myself, always, that my story is worth telling.
On creating your personal archive:
I have journals from when I was 11, so I'm not a big thrower away of things. And those times when I don't have something that I wish that I could put my hand on, either digitally or in an old dusty box, I’m mad at myself. Everything goes back to self-worth with me. I feel like I probably threw that away, or got rid of it in a moment of feeling like it wasn't worth keeping. I'm not saying we have to be pack rats. But to just throw away words that you've written — or for me, sometimes it's even concert stuff, or photos from old phones — I mean, I'm worth keeping.
On sharing a deeply personal story for her NPR feature on Sade:
Sometimes I had to ask myself why I never pitched [a Sade story], because I never have. NPR pitched this to me. It was on the 20th anniversary of a particular album, and the person that came to me with the idea had been following my work for a while and was like, “You never really have written about Sade.” It seems like just a real obvious person that I would've written about Sade … one of the reasons is because she's tied up in so much pain for me.
But I trust people at NPR, the ones that I know and adore and respect. I said, “Well, if I do it … I'm going to have to say something about myself,” because my life was so tied up in her music. They were just like, “Why would you even feel like you had to announce that?”
And then I just decided if I was going to do it, then I should go on ahead and do it. It. And if I was going to do it, I should put it in the lede, because any other way would just be half-stepping.
On finding a new life for your unused material:
For ESPN, I wrote about Whitney Houston's [Super Bowl] National Anthem. That piece was so long when I filed it. Good gracious. It was, I don't know, 12,000 words. It was a mess because I did so much reporting, and I'm the rabbit hole queen. So one of the rabbit holes that I went down was about the singer José Feliciano …He sang the national anthem in a World Series game in 1968. And he changed the cadence of the song. Also, Whitney Houston did. Whitney Houston and her team slowed it down. José Feliciano gave it so much Latin soul…
My editor at ESPN was like, “Why is José Feliciano all up in Whitney Houston's business?” I had a whole speech about the comparison of the tempos, and she was like, ‘I don't care.’ But a year later, another ESPN editor called me… and said, ‘why did somebody tell me that you wrote something about José Feliciano that didn't get published? Because we're doing a whole piece on anthems that are sung in stadiums. And is there something that you wanna show me?’ Look at that. Look at the art gods working on my behalf!
On semicolons:
I’m not going to use a semicolon. It’s an indecisive piece of punctuation. My thing is, there's a period, and there's a comma. Pick one, or use an em dash. Very simple.
Reading, Listening, and Watching List:
- “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop” (Danyel Smith, 2022)
- Danyel Smith’s Shine Bright HQ newsletter
- Danyel Smith on Instagram
- “Black Girl Songbook” podcast
- “More Like Wrestling” (novel by Danyel Smith, 2007)
- “Bliss” (novel by Danyel Smith, 2010)
- Christina M. Tapper at Nieman Storyboard
- Christina M. Tapper's collage art
- “The Unstoppable Genius and Glory of Black Women in Music” (ZORA, June 15, 2020)
- “SZA's Ruination Brought Her Everything” (The New York Times, February 8, 2023)
- “The story of Whitney Houston's epic national anthem performance at 1991 Super Bowl” (ESPN, Feb 11, 2022)
- José Feliciano performing the National Anthem (1968 World Series, YouTube)
- “Sade Saves” (NPR, November 11, 2020)
- “Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary” (HBO Max, 2024)
- David Dennis Jr.
- Danielle Cadet
- Justin Tinsley
- Kelley L. Carter
- Aaron Dodson
Show credits
Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Episode producer and interview by Christina M. Tapper
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova
Nieman Foundation interim curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy
Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
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