MTV’s Ananda Lewis Brought Journalism to a New Generation

Ananda Lewis’ death hits a little differently.

It was hard to determine why at first. The online reaction to her passing began with the typical outpouring of “RIP” and remarks about her work as the veejay and host of seminal ‘90s and early aughts pop culture series, such as BET’s Teen Summit and MTV’s Total Request Live. Then the feeling came into sharper focus: She stirred a passion for journalism and current events among her young audiences — and that’s sorely lacking today.

That’s an especially sobering realization when you put it into context with the many challenges facing young Americans today: a president who’s threatening their democracy, attacks on transgender teens and the reinstated “involuntary collections” on student loans, to name a few.

While there’s no shortage of important issues for young people to talk about that get them engaged in the news, there are too few spaces that actually do so successfully.

This isn’t to dismiss those who have come after Lewis; the intrepid, young journalists working tirelessly to bring urgent, well-reported stories to their peers, including the many at college newspapers and broadcast stations and at publications such as Teen Vogue.

But social media has created a distorted and far more competitive distraction from them.

While influencers entice young people by creating spaces for them to gather and share thoughts far more than traditional and sometimes stodgier news sources, too much of it is empty or even harmful chatter that’s quickly forgotten — or easily disproven — in just a few days. See the recent discourse around Sean “Diddy” Combs” sex-trafficking trial, for example.

Platforms such as TikTok and even The Shade Room have clenched the attention of teens and young adults often through engaging videos and juicy discussions that don’t feel gatekept like so many others in journalism and news media. But at what cost? Unverified reporting, celebrity gossip and misinformation run rampant over factual storytelling and complex conversations that compel young audiences to think more deeply about the news.

Lewis, who died of cancer last week at age 52, not only attracted her young audiences by engaging with them on their level, she enriched them as well. Young viewers flocked to their TV screens for Teen Summit’s honest, live forums on subjects that mattered to them, like sexism and race, and for her nuanced interviews.

For example, Lewis’ 1996 sitdown with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton on Teen Summit gave a young Black boy the opportunity to ask her if she ever considered running for president.

Lewis’ TRL co-host Gideon Yago summed up the importance of her work in Vanity Fair over the weekend and wrote this of Teen Summit: “If there’s an equivalent space as successful at holding the attention, or advancing the conversation, among young people today — particularly young people of color — I have yet to see it in America,” he wrote. “And America is a colder place for its absence.”

Lewis also led an impassioned open discussion about student violence in the aftermath of 1999’s Columbine High School shooting on TRL.

As others have said, she was a mix between an It Girl who was good friends with Aaliyah and partied with icons such as Madonna and Prince as well as a reporter who, for instance, challenged rapper Q-Tip for having scantily clad Black women in his music videos. (Years later, Lewis regretted how hard she came at the rapper, but her concern for her Black female audience and unwavering approach to the truth were fair.)

What’s perhaps most concerning is that not only has there not been a figure like Lewis who has galvanized youth culture — particularly marginalized Black and brown people — but there doesn’t seem to be enough young people today very invested in journalism regardless.

While a spiked level of distrust has contributed to that, it can’t be overstated how many young people don’t even see a professional future for themselves in news media. In fact, a whopping 57% of Gen Zers aspire to be influencers instead, according to a 2023 Morning Consult survey.

On one hand, you can hardly blame the cohort — especially at a time of rampant layoffs across the industry. Plus, entry-level journalism salaries are meager, at best, whereas Starbucks Corp., for example, is offering influencers up to $136K.

On the other, many young people might be influenced by a misunderstanding of what journalism even is. Gen Z journalist Olivia Hicks wrote about the issue in Poynter earlier this year. She rightly pointed out that her generation increasingly prioritizes information they receive from influencers, celebrities or “ordinary people” over journalists when those details are often scripted by publicists trying to curate a certain narrative, regardless of facts.

News media — and those who engage with it — are in a dire state. While Lewis couldn’t ever be mistaken for a conventional journalist (after all, she, too, was a media personality), she was never one to be dictated a narrative — from a press rep, a celebrity or anyone else. She understood her influence on otherwise overlooked young audiences, and she respected them enough to engage with them on the most difficult truths.

It’s one thing to have millions of young people gathering at your platform each day. It’s another to make sure they leave more empowered and knowledgeable than they were before. Lewis did both. Few other wildly popular voices today can say the same. What’s worse, they don’t seem bothered by that either way.
 

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