By Jackie Jones

It was a gut-check kind of e-mail from a friend.

Yet another positive story about an African American attached, she noted with the usual kicker: “Here’s something you won’t see in mainstream media.”

I was ready to object. I mentally ticked off a list of articles I had written that looked at accomplishments in the black community. Then I stopped myself.

I no longer work for mainstream media. I write regularly for BlackAmericaWeb.com, the online home of the Tom Joyner Morning Show, a Web site that focuses on the condition of black America. Of course, stories of black achievement would be published there.

Just like much of the news we watch on television or read in other mainstream publications, news about African Americans often gets its start in virtual reality.

The bad news is that the mainstream media too many times still lag behind the times when it comes to fully diverse reporting of the spectrum of news—good and bad—about African Americans. The real story is that the Internet is changing that. In fact, cyber-news is increasingly informing traditional media coverage, and providing more lenses through which to view our world.

One example is in the coverage of young black people doing positive things, being led by black adults who are doing positive things, and the fact that this is increasingly recognized as “legitimate” news.

Kimberly Anyadike

Shortly after a story about 15-year-old Kimberly Anyadike setting the record as the youngest black female pilot to fly coast to coast appeared on the site and made the rounds on the blogosphere, I was encouraged to see it on a local television station, then on network news and, finally, in my hometown newspaper, The Washington Post.

Kimberly got her pilot license at 12, while a student at Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum in Compton, California, a program created by Hollywood stunt pilot Robin Petgrave, who wanted to inspire young people to pursue positive goals.

When Kimberly decided to go for the coast-to-coast record, she dedicated the trip to the Tuskegee Airmen, who she said paved the way for black pilots. Airman Levi Thornhill, 86, flew every mile of the trip with her.

Tony Hansberry,  a 14-year-old high school freshman attending a medical magnet school in Florida, developed a stitching technique to be used in hysterectomies that reduces surgical complications and the chance of error.

His findings were presented at a medical conference at the University of Florida before an audience of doctors and board-certified surgeons.

Jamail Larkins started flying at age 12, got his pilot license at age 14, launched his own business at age 15, created a tour to tell young people about careers in aviation at 19 and became the first official ambassador the Federal Aviation Administration for aviation and space education at 20.

“I found out about something I was extremely passionate about at age 12 and decided I wanted to fly as much as I can,” said Larkins, now 25 and the owner of his own airplane leasing company.

It’s easy to say the mainstream media don’t care about black achievement, but they’ve got to know about it to cover it. Minority journalist associations over the years have pushed to get reporters, photographers, editors, artists and designers of every stripe into newsrooms to broaden coverage of diverse communities.

But just getting into newsrooms hasn’t been enough. Journalists of color have had to develop relationships and influence that get them listened to when they make suggestions about coverage or object to the stereotypes of poverty, underachievement and limited ambition. Progress has been made, but it also has been slow.

Still, journalists love competition.  They want to be first with a story or to acknowledge a trend and mainstream media, particularly in a struggling economy, want to demonstrate they are a major, if no longer primary, source of information.

So reporters now blog; editors troll the Web looking for the story in passing that no one has jumped on, something that gets people talking and e-mailing and tweeting and posting on MySpace and Facebook.

It’s no longer taking one reporter/editor/photographer’s word for it that a story is good. It’s now a story that people are already chatting about and the station/newspaper/magazine doesn’t want to be the last to report some aspect of it.

The blogosphere is where black achievement can be touted and become the engine that drives mainstream media to take notice and young African Americans hold the key to it in the palm of their collective hand.

Fewer and fewer people use desktop computers at home and so much information can be uploaded to cell phones, that young folk are less likely to lug laptops around. Mobile devices make phone calls, take photos, send and receive e-mails, call up travel directions and can send a short message to dozens, if not hundreds, of people at once.

According to a Pew Institute and American Life Project study, African Americans are the most avid users of wireless Internet and their use of the mobile Web is growing faster than any other group.

Marshal McLuhan, considered by many to be the father of the electronic age, wrote in 1964, “the medium is the message”, meaning a medium can become such an integral part of society that it helps shape its character. So Americans went from a society of readers to radio listeners to television viewers to cell phone users to Internet surfers.

Immediate information gratification has become the fabric of our lives and black people are on its cutting edge.

Now that’s good news.

Jackie Jones is a career and fitness coach for those who want to get their lives in shape. Visit her?Web site?and blog at www.jonescoaching.net.