An independent forum for critical black voices: Washington, D.C.-based poet, and journalist Esther Iverem turns Web maven as founder of the two-year-old site SeeingBlack.com. (spotlight).

Nowadays anyone with a computer and the time to type can legitimately call themselves an author, a cultural critic or even a publisher by putting their ideas into pixels and posting them on a Website. Sadly, much of the verbose rabble in cyberspace is conceited commentary or narcissistic nonsense about topics of limited interest beyond the writer's own two ears. But Esther Iverem and her SeeingBlack.com Website are refreshingly different from the countless webloggers lurking on the Internet.

In Iverem's compendium of black cultural criticism, founded two years ago and published monthly ever since, Iverem demonstrates she has something to say. Even more importantly, she and a band of intelligent commentators are speaking to a wide and international audience starved for the 411 on diverse cultural topics they're unable to find anywhere else--even on the World Wide Web.

"I wanted to create a space for black people to write about black culture" Iverem says.

Her career as a journalist and poet for nearly two decades gives her firsthand knowledge of what she's talking about. After stints at The Washington Post and The New York Times, Iverem says she grew frustrated by the demands of her (typically white) editors for arts criticism that viewed black people and their culture as curiosities if they considered them at all.

"In the major, mainstream media, where I worked, there weren't very many black people employed and even fewer of them doing criticism of black culture" she says, speaking with authority and without bitterness. "In time, it became more difficult for me became I needed to hear what other people who are black had to say about the art that defined them" So she created SeeingBlack.com in April 2001, to coincide with and commemorate Paul Robeson's centennial birthday.

"At this site, I figured at least, we would be free to do what we wanted" she says. "I respect art as the highest form of our human existence. And here is a space for that to have expression that didn't exist before." She picked the Website's title, SeeingBlack, as a pun on the idea that all black art and culture mint be seen and analyzed by black people if it is to be properly understood by anyone. "This is so important because the way we see our culture is very different from how other people see and intersect with that culture."

SeeingBlack.com is drawing attention and praise from many quarters from around the world. A steady stream of e-mail from Africa, Asia and Europe suggests the power and reach of her ideas in distant places. To promote her Website, Iverem has appeared on Tavis Smiley's National Public Radio program, where she talked about her vision of black and African art as vital to the well-being of black peoples worldwide.

A reviewer for MSNBC.com noted approvingly that articles and commentary at SeeingBlack.com aren't likely to appear anywhere else. "You don't see many black arts critics in the media" wrote Jan Herman, who covers entertainment and the arts on the popular Website. "When it comes to reviewing films or commenting on culture and the arts, Iverem lays out views about issues of race and ethnicity that no white critic can."

While the concept and much of the design of the site belongs to Iverem, she draws heavily on a group of unpaid writers and commentators who are willing to share their words and ideas because it's important to get them in circulation among other black people, she says.

Among her regular contributors are Mark Anthony Neal, Robin D.G. Kelley, Karen Juanita Carrillo, Makani N. Themba, Frank Dexter Brown, Ron Nixon, DJ Renegade, Harry Amana, Kenneth Carroll and many other writers and activists who aren't necessarily household names in many U.S. homes. What they all share is a sincere, albeit decidedly left-of-center political, belief in making available arts reviews, social commentary and news from a black perspective. They hope to reach African Americans and people throughout the African diaspora.

"All of the writers are volunteers, they are unpaid and independent journalists" Iverem says."I know a lot of people. Some are from the mainstream media who are frustrated and can't say what they want in their publications. Some are academics that don't have to be paid by the word, but are flee enough to share their ideas. There are a lot of people out there who share this vision and share some of the frustrations of not being heard when they talk about our culture."

So how does SeeingBlack.com generate profits? Well, it doesn't. Not yet, at least. The lack of commercial support is a "double-edged sword" Iverem says, noting that her Website allows her freedom to say precisely what she wants to say. But, at the same time, she is operating the service off only her energy and resources. This limits her reach.

At 43, Iverem is a divorced mother of a teenaged son. She is no longer employed full-time by mainstream publications for which she worked previously, but she disdains the term "freelance" preferring to call herself "an independent journalist." Her film and visual arts criticism currently appear regularly on the commercial black sites BET. corn and Africana.com Websites, as well as in the British journal Black Film Magazine and The Washington Post Book Review.

But her professional heat beats to a rhythm in sync with her role as the founder, editor, publisher, writer and marketer of her work. Donning all these hats leaves Iverem little time to do more than collect and post the monthly contributions with the help of a Webmistress, Jamila White of Washington, D.C.

Readers who know about and frequent SeeingBlack.com have either come in contact with Iverem herself or stumbled across the Website by accident or word of mouth.

"I come at this as a writer, first and foremost,' she says. "I'm not coming at this with a standard business model. We don't have a lot of advertising. I guess you could say this is in the spirit of true journalism and free speech"

In fact, Iverem says her Website could be compared more to hip-hop culture and music than to traditional media outlets, such as newspapers and magazines. "It's all very grassroots" she adds. "We're just like the hip-hop artists who didn't start out with big contracts and all that, but sold tapes out of the trunk of a car."

"That's what we're doing," Iverem comments. "We're creating an underground voice for our art and culture. To do that, we must create a free media, and the Web is the perfect place for that."

Perhaps.

Hers is an alternative 21st-century model for reaching black minds. But eventually, Iverem will have to spin serious art talk into hard dollars. If SeeingBlack.com is to endure, it must drum up an audience that appreciates--and ultimately pays for--its colorful mix of art and cultural reviews. If she is successful, it will certainly set SeeingBlack.com apart from the myriad Weblogs floating in cyberspace.