June 2013 Cable News FROM PAGE 7


www.hamptonroadsmessenger.com Duo FROM PAGE 6


age of 12, the family lost their home to foreclosure and was homeless for about a year. They couch-surfed, sleeping in different people’s living rooms until they were able to move into a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland, where there were “shootings on a regular basis.” Adding to their troubles, Reed’s father left the family at that same time, leaving his mother to care for her five children.


“I’d seen a very large spectrum of


the African American community in a negative fashion and I couldn’t stand it,” he said. “And so I asked myself, ‘What can I do to not be in this realm?’ I decided that everything that they’re doing, I’m going to do the exact opposite and see where I go.”


Reed attended the Bay Area


Piers Morgan Live Guest Lineup Was 91 Percent White. CNN’s most ethnically diverse show was Outfront, which still hosted white guests 71 percent of the time. Similar to The Situation Room, the higher proportion of non-white guests on Outfront can be attributed in part to a couple of regular commentators: CNN correspondents Christiane Amanpour and Fareed Zakaria on The Situation Room and conservative political commentator Reihan Salam and political comedian Dean Obeidallah on Outfront.


School of Enterprise in Alameda, a public charter high school where his entrepreneurial tendencies flourished. He eventually went on to graduate from San Francisco State University, becoming the first in his family to obtain a college degree.


Like his business partner, Cruz


was also raised by his mother and had a father who was in and out of his life. He lived in a house in Hercules, a city 25 miles from San Francisco, until the age of six, when his father was incarcerated for selling drugs. Soon after, the family was evicted from their home and rented a bedroom in a house in San Francisco. For 16 years, his mother raised him in that bedroom, saving up all her money so he could attend Archbishop Riordan High School, an all-boys private school. But his mother could only afford two years at Riordan, so Cruz spent his junior and senior years at Philip & Sala Burton High School, a public school with a tougher reputation.


“It taught me a lot more about just


White Men Were Vastly Overrepresented On Cable News. While white men enjoyed representation on cable that was nearly double that of their representation in the U.S. population, white women, who represent 32 percent of the population, were only 21 percent of guests on cable. Non-white women fared even worse. While they make up 19 percent of the population, they were only 8 percent of all guests on cable. Non-white men were also underrepresented; only 13 percent of guests on cable were non-white men while they make up 18 percent of the population.


The president of the National


Hispanic Media Coalition released a statement on how he believes these findings may have real world consequences.


“At a time when Latinos are over


16% of the country, a growing bloc of the electorate, and with over $1 trillion per year of buying power, it is unimaginable that we be excluded from cable news at


such rates. This has a real affect on our community - the way we are perceived is how we are treated, and when our experts are absent from these programs it gives the perception that Latinos are not making meaningful contributions to this country, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” said NHMC president Alex Nogales in a statement sent to Colorlines.com.


Scholarship Watch


2013 APA Lucie Foundation Scholarship for Professional Photographers Foundation looking to fund?


The 2013 APA Lucie Foundation Scholarship is currently available to a deserving established professional photographer for a specific project in the amount of $5,000.


Who is eligible for this scholarship?


The APA / Lucie Foundation Scholar- ship is open to all professional photog- raphers.


What types of projects is the Lucie How do I apply?


According to the website, funds for this photography scholarship are open to subjects “from photojournalism to fashion photography, digital to me- dium format, including every other category and subcategory. The organi- zation’s concern isn’t with genre, but rather to support visionaries produc- ing work that is at once gripping, and original.”


Professional photographers interested in applying for the APA Lucie Founda- tion Scholarship are asked to write a one-page description of the project for which they are seeking funding. Ap- plicants can apply online now but will close on July 31, 2013.


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surviving and about how life is,” says Cruz.


Back then, being an app developer


never crossed his mind, admits Cruz. Growing up, he was a rapper who won awards and produced music with storied Bay Area rap artists like Big Rich and San Quinn.


He credits having to care for his


ailing mother -- she almost died twice, once from a heart attack that Cruz


The Hampton Roads Messenger 11


attributes to stress -- for shaping his work ethic.


“It really pushes me beyond what anything else would,” he says.


Changing the Culture Now entrenched in the tech


industry, Reed and Cruz face a different kind of struggle, not with poverty, but with the biases within their chosen profession.


When asked if race is still an


issue for them in the tech world, both agree that as people of color they have to work harder to impress. “Sometimes I’ll talk to people and say I’m a programmer, or I develop -- but if I say that I coded Objective-C in six months, then they will pay attention to me. If I don’t, I’ll usually get ignored,” says Cruz.


“It’s also disheartening to see,


for me especially, [that] I am the only African American at many of the [tech] events I go to,” adds Reed. “Sometimes I see African American women, but… the males, you don’t see any.”


Cruz once tested the environment


by changing his appearance to see how people would treat him. “If I let my hair grow out, I’ll look more Caucasian. But if I’m shaved I get completely ignored because it seems like the people [in tech companies] keep to themselves a lot at many of the startups, especially all the mixers that I go to.” As a result, the men have stopped going to industry mixers, a crucial environment for networking opportunities and pitching ideas.


Today in the Zuggol office in San


Francisco’s financial district, Cruz and Reed’s idea has grown into a budding enterprise of 20 employees, nearly all from non-white ethnic backgrounds ranging from Filipino to African American to Hispanic. The company is experiencing steady growth – their user base increases by about 10 percent each week -- and the partners say they are busy fundraising and securing private investments deals.


Cruz and Reed are proud of what


they’ve accomplished so far and say they will strive to continue to make a difference, by doing whatever they can within their own company to diversify the tech sector.


“I feel like we’re the underdogs


and that Isaac and I are doing it for our people,” says Cruz. “I feel we have our ethnicities on our shoulders in the tech industry.”


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