For Nyesha00 Stone, meeting a Black newspaper editor during her sophomore year of college in 2016 changed her life. And set her on a path to start her own media company.
“I sent her my resume and work samples. I told her I wanted to get paid to write. She invited me to her office and said, ‘I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t even look at any of your writing samples. But, I see myself in you, and I’m going to give you a chance’,” Stone tells ESSENCE. “Ever since she let me write that first article with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it’s been up from there,” she says.
Not only did the Milwaukee native continue to write for that newspaper and several other publications. In 2017, while still a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she founded Carvd N Stone(CNS), a news media company with a unique mission to report positive news stories about Black communities.
The 26-year-old media entrepreneur says she wanted to combat the negative news coverage from local, national, and global media outlets and provide her local community with a better representation in the media.
“When I tell people we cover positive news, they’re like, what the heck is that? And then to how the heck are you even still here to this day? So it blows people’s minds,” Stone shares with ESSENCE.
The weekly news outlet has covered hundreds of positive news stories in Milwaukee and Atlanta through online articles, video and radio interviews and more. It also covers major positive news stories worldwide with a small team. Stone oversees much of reporting and writing and works along with two Black women photographers.
Some of the recent stories include features on local businesses employing Black youth and teaching them new skills, a photographer who created the project “Corporate Natural Hair” to inspire and uplift others and a software company that secured a $400K investment to develop tech that would aid individuals impacted by the justice system.
PHOTO BY: CARVD N STONE
