I began my conversation with DéVon Christopher Johnson by asking him what he thought the most important word in the world was.
His first instinct was love. Then he reconsidered.
“I’m replacing love with consideration,” he said. “When you consider others, you consider yourself [and] how you want to be treated. Because within that consideration, love should exist.”
My word was choice.
And in many ways, love, consideration, and choice align neatly with the trajectory of Johnson’s life. He has made consequential choices from an early age, choosing entrepreneurship as a child, choosing a private-school education even though his mother was a public-school principal, choosing ownership in an industry where ownership has historically been difficult for Black media entrepreneurs to secure, and ultimately choosing to use what he has built to create opportunities for others.
Today, one of the most significant expressions of that choice is BOMESI, the Black Owned Media Equity & Sustainability Institute, which Johnson co-founded in 2020 with media entrepreneur Rhonesha Byng.
BOMESI was born during a year when the murder of George Floyd, the pandemic, and a national reckoning around race forced companies and consumers alike to reconsider who had access to opportunity and who controlled the platforms shaping our stories.
Johnson didn’t want to simply talk about the problem. “I wanted to do something about it,” he told me.
The result was an organization designed to help diverse-owned media companies become actual sustainable businesses, not simply compelling publications, popular social feeds or promising ideas.
And perhaps the best way to understand what that means is through WatchTheYard.com.
Founded by Jonathan Rabb, Watch The Yard has become a significant digital platform chronicling Black college culture, HBCUs and Black fraternity and sorority life. Rabb built a powerful social presence, but Johnson remembers a realization that became central to the company’s participation in the BOMESI Accelerator.
“He was really active, super active on social,” Johnson said. “He was like, ‘I love having social, but social is someone else’s platform. Not my platform.’”
That sentence gets at one of the most important questions facing anyone building a media company today.
You may have the followers. You may have the likes. You may even have millions of people paying attention. But what do you actually own? Algorithms change. Platforms evolve. Audiences migrate. A creator or publisher who has built an entire business on rented digital land can quickly discover how little control comes with popularity.
Watch The Yard already had the attention, but through BOMESI’s accelerator program, it was able to reinforce the business thinking around ownership and growth, including the importance of driving audiences toward an ecosystem the company itself controls.
The idea has become even more relevant as the line between “publisher” and “creator” continues to blur. For the first time, BOMESI is opening its accelerator not only to publishers but to creators running legitimate media businesses. The shift is intentional.
“Publishers have historical journalistic integrity that exists in media; that’s the foundation for media,” Johnson noted. “Creators have the audience’s attention.”
Neither group, he believes, has the complete answer. Publishers may understand reporting, editorial standards and the value of an owned platform, yet struggle to capture audiences in the places they increasingly spend their time. Creators may be masters of attention but have little control over the platforms through which that attention arrives. The interesting future may exist somewhere between the two.
“We don’t have time as journalists or publishers to sit back and complain about the new way,” Johnson said.
Then he put it more simply.
“The future arrives every day. We must move.”
BOMESI’s accelerator is designed to help media entrepreneurs do precisely that. And while Johnson is proud of its success stories, he is equally interested in what happens when somebody isn’t ready. He told me about one founder who applied to the accelerator multiple times. On the surface, the company looked impressive. Then BOMESI looked underneath.
“They didn’t have the QuickBooks or whatever accounting software,” Johnson said. “They hadn’t filed taxes. They didn’t have any tax return statements, anything.”
In Johnson’s words, “there was nothing organized on the inside.”
Then they got the accounting in order. They organized the business. They applied again and eventually earned a place in the accelerator.
Johnson remembers the transformation with obvious pride.
“They got their stuff together,” he said.
It is also one of the clearest answers to the question of who should apply to BOMESI.
The accelerator isn’t designed for someone who merely wants attention. It is for founders who are serious about turning media into a sustainable company, and who are willing to look honestly at the places where their business may still be fragile. Because an audience alone does not make a business.
That is why the $10,000 non-dilutive grant that selected accelerator companies receive is only part of the story.
“The hope is that by going through the curriculum that we put together, meeting mentors, meeting peers, really getting to know your business and know your books and know your growth trajectory, you’re applying those dollars to the right place,” Johnson said.
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BOMESI’s goal is to expose those gaps and help close them.
Across its first four accelerator groups, BOMESI says 32 graduates have come through the program, which has provided $675,000 in non-dilutive funding and facilitated more than $2 million in direct advertising revenue.
Those numbers are particularly notable at a moment when many Black- and diverse-owned media companies are confronting a dramatically different corporate environment than the one that existed when BOMESI was created.
In the years following 2020, brands made sweeping commitments around diversity, equity and inclusion. More recently, some of those commitments have been reduced or abandoned.
Johnson does not pretend the shift hasn’t been painful.
“It’s scary,” he said.
He compared it to finally being noticed at a party.
“You finally felt like you were at the party and someone’s going to ask you to dance,” he said. “And then all of a sudden, they choose someone else.”
That metaphor carries disappointment, but Johnson’s larger argument is ultimately less emotional than economic.
“We can just do math,” Johnson said. “If I want to sell products to the next generation of consumers, then the math tells me that those consumers look diverse.”
And Johnson believes advertisers make a similar mistake when they treat communities as seasonal marketing opportunities.
He points to Black History Month as the most obvious example.
“If we’re just going to focus on Black consumers and Black History Month, then you’re doing yourself a disservice as a brand,” he said.
“Yes, we can highlight, and yes, we can have tent poles, but I’m not sure why we turn the lights off the other months.”
That may be the larger argument for BOMESI.
If brands are going to reach diverse audiences consistently, then the media companies serving those audiences need to exist consistently too.
They need capital.
They need infrastructure.
They need advertising relationships.
And they need businesses strong enough to withstand whatever cultural, political or technological shift arrives next.
For publishers and creators who believe they are ready for that next stage, BOMESI is currently accepting applications for its newest accelerator class. The program is open to qualifying U.S.-based media businesses producing original content and building audiences they own or directly control.
Johnson’s advice to anyone debating whether to apply has very little to do with application forms.
“If you’re on the fence, which means you’re already thinking about it, so why not go for it?” he said.
It also circles back beautifully to another personal rule he shared with me.
“I never want to be a shoulda, coulda, woulda person.”
Love.
Consideration.
Choice.
Johnson chose consideration because it requires us to think beyond ourselves.
But choice is what comes next.
The choice to build something you own. The choice to make it sustainable. The choice to move when the future arrives.
And, sometimes, the choice to simply get off the fence.
Amy Pais-Richer is a published author, screenwriter, and former advertising creative director.
