Conspiracy Theory

The wonderful little copy editor who shares a home with me in New Tampa has been floating this theory around for a couple weeks, and now I'm finally warming to the idea.

Maybe you all have seen the endless promos running on CNN for the upcoming special report, "Black in America"? It's the one where some poor woman actually goes through the pains of explaining to the camera that "most black people have not been arrested. Most black people are not poor."

Meh.

Anyhow, my lady seems to think that it's no coincidence that CNN is running the show from July 23-25. For those not in the media biz, that's when nearly 10,000 journalists and media executives will descend on Chicago for the UNITY convention, an extremely large and exciting quadrennial gathering for journalists of color.

From previous experience at these journalism conventions, I can tell you that not many of us will be sitting in our hotel rooms, checking out CNN and munching on room service on those nights. Probably not even Soledad O'Brien.

I've got a full schedule planned, and almost none of it has to do with watching network news.

Which makes me wonder: was CNN really crafty enough to time this series to run when it knows some of its potentially most searing critics will be schmoozing and boozing it up in the Windy City?

Hmmm. I think the woman is on to something.