Summer 2010
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OUR TEAM
Linda Torrence
Atlanta Publisher
Syleena Johnson
Chicago Publisher
Neil Foote
Dallas Publisher
Latisha Gray
Minneapolis Publisher
Chrishirella F. Warthen, Phd
Milwaukee Editor
Cheryl Ragland Media Consultant
Atlanta
Publicist
Patricia Arnold
Chicago
Photography
Denise Gray
Atlanta
Photography
Dan Dry
Chicago
Photography
Scott Witte
Milwaukee
Graphics & Production
Ebony Ssali
Website
Johnson Media
Milwaukee
Matthew A. Johnson
Group PublisherFor the past twenty-six years the business of media & entertainment has been in the forefront of Matthew Johnson’s life.
Since 1983, Matthew Johnson has made a name for himself in the
communications and entertainment business. In 1990, he founded the
Strive Foundation organization that supported the African American arts
community in Milwaukee. He produced well over a half dozen Broadway
plays such as “Ain’t Misbehaving”, “Your Arms are Too Short to Box with
God”, “Mississippi Delta” and “Raisin in the Sun” to name a few. His
big theater success can when he was the first ever African American
producer in Milwaukee to sell out three shows at the Performing Arts
Center’s 2300 seat theater to a 99% African American audience in 1991
with the off Broadway play “Our Young Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to
Care”.
If Broadway plays were not enough, Matthew also served as the entertainment coordinator for African World Festival that showcased acts like O’Jays, Levert, Men At Large, Keith Washington, Grover Washington Jr., Cameo and many more. He also produced and promoted several concerts of his own in Milwaukee. His most recent concert featured Angie Stone in 2004.
In 1991, Matthew was offered an opportunity to produce a one-hour live teen talk show special with Black Entertainment Television (BET), called “Young Sister’s and Brother’s-Teen Forum. He quickly jumped at the opportunity to get into the television industry. Teen Forum’s first show aired on Time Warner Cable and got the attention of the local Fox affiliate’s general manager. Matthew served as executive producer and produced six half-hour specials on the local Fox affiliate during that year. Now, wanting to expand his show’s reach, he inked a deal with the ABC affiliate (WISN) to 26 shows in 1992. Over the next nine years, Matthew went on to produce over 200 episodes, received six Emmy nominations and won two Emmy awards.
What started simply as a teen television show, Strive Foundation grew into the formal training of high school aged teens in a comprehensive curriculum of five fields of mass communication at Marquette University under the new name of Strive Media Institute. Areas of focus: print journalism, integrated marketing communications, technology, film and video production, and radio broadcast. Students participated in the accredited four-year curriculum after school and on weekends out of the organization’s high-tech downtown state-of-the-art media institute, and upon their high school graduation received scholarships to assist with the tuition costs at the University of their choice. One hundred percent of Strive Media graduates went on to college. Five hundred teens participated in Strive Media Institute over the fourteen-year period.
Gumbo Teen Magazine, a teen magazine produced for teens by teens was born inside of the Marquette program in 1998. Gumbo Teen Magazine, (“gumbo” means diversity), became yet another successful tool for Matthew to train and prepare his teens as reporters, writers, photographers and editors for the real world. This sixty-eight page, glossy magazine was distributed to teens in twenty-four cities and six countries. In 1999, Teen Forum was discontinued on ABC and Gumbo TV (GTV) aired for the first time on the WB Affiliate in the summer of 1999. Gumbo Teen Magazine teen reporters traveled the world covering stories in Brazil, Europe, Africa and Costa Rica. Gumbo TV was created to help “brand” the magazine and TV show together. Gumbo Teen Television went on to earn more Emmy nominations, and winning two more Emmy Awards in 2006 and 2007.
As Gumbo Teen Magazine was changing the lives of teens across the country, Ya Heard Magazine’s Urban Music Pocket Guide rushed onto the young urban scene in 2001. Matthew wanted to promote positive music and positive urban artist on the pages of this new niche magazine that targeted a young impressionable college audience in twenty urban cities across America. This was the start of the pocket-size/purse size trademark concept that is so popular today with Girlfriends Health Guide. Ya Heard Music Pocket Guide had nearly 2.5 million readers and was distributed to over four hundred urban radio stations, record labels and Historically Black Colleges and Universities for over six years. This was the start of Matthew’s multi-titles publishing business.
In 2001, Matthew was recognized as a social entrepreneur and was awarded an international fellowship of $150,000 from Ashoka US/Canada. The fellowship was awarded to Matthew in recognition of his innovative approach to ending the under-representation of minorities in mass communications. Matthew is also a Pieper Fellow, a program that exposes nonprofit leaders to the management principles of the Peter Drucker Foundation.
Due to his expertise in mass communications diversity, disadvantage youth development, and a social entrepreneur, Matthew is a much sought after public speaker in schools and seminars around the country. In the fall of 2003, Matthew traveled to the cities of Sao Paulo and Brasilia in South America to participate in the International Seminar for Democracy and Communication sponsored by Dombali of Brazil. He spoke on the experiences of diversity and inclusion of youth in the media. He has also traveled to Florence and Rome.
Matthew has personally been honored and recognized throughout the years with several awards, including The Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” designation in 1997, the Milwaukee Times Newspaper’s Black Excellence Award in 1998, Price Waterhouse Coopers’ Star-stream Award in 1998, Wisconsin Black Media Association, Clear Channel 1999 Communication’s Peace Achiever Award in 2000, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority’s Trail Blazer Award in 2002, Phi Beta Sigma’s Voice in the Community Award in 2003 and in 2005 the Baha’i Faith Award. Most recently, in 2007 he won the Business journal’s Inner-City growth Business Award.
On April 6, 2006 Matthew’s life took a change of direction. Matthew lost his “#1 girlfriend” to congestive heart failure-his mother. He spent her last 15 minutes holding his mother’s hand before she passed. This was a devastating lost to him- never losing anyone in his family that was so close to him.
While on a business trip to Atlanta in July 2006, he came across a magazine that gave him the idea to publish a magazine of his own for women of color. He named it Girlfriends Health Guide for Women of Color.
Matthew is currently the President & CEO of Girlfriends Holdings, LLC. Founded in August 2006, Girlfriends Health Guide launched its first publication, selling out all the ads that were available in three short months, in January 2007. This health guide is the only health guide in the country that targets women of color exclusively. Girlfriends Health Guide is published in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Atlanta and has over 3 million readers. Nearly one million magazines have been printed in the first 22 months. The goal is to expand into a total of ten targeted cities in the next two years, print eight million magazines with 30 million women readers.
Matthew continues to use his many years of media experience by creating Johnson Media Consulting. He recently formed the Johnson Media Consulting Firm that specializes in developing media curriculum for community media organizations and schools while still consulting with other clients on developing media plans, comprehensive media campaigns and broadcast television projects across the country.
email address: mjohnson@gfhguide.com
If Broadway plays were not enough, Matthew also served as the entertainment coordinator for African World Festival that showcased acts like O’Jays, Levert, Men At Large, Keith Washington, Grover Washington Jr., Cameo and many more. He also produced and promoted several concerts of his own in Milwaukee. His most recent concert featured Angie Stone in 2004.
In 1991, Matthew was offered an opportunity to produce a one-hour live teen talk show special with Black Entertainment Television (BET), called “Young Sister’s and Brother’s-Teen Forum. He quickly jumped at the opportunity to get into the television industry. Teen Forum’s first show aired on Time Warner Cable and got the attention of the local Fox affiliate’s general manager. Matthew served as executive producer and produced six half-hour specials on the local Fox affiliate during that year. Now, wanting to expand his show’s reach, he inked a deal with the ABC affiliate (WISN) to 26 shows in 1992. Over the next nine years, Matthew went on to produce over 200 episodes, received six Emmy nominations and won two Emmy awards.
What started simply as a teen television show, Strive Foundation grew into the formal training of high school aged teens in a comprehensive curriculum of five fields of mass communication at Marquette University under the new name of Strive Media Institute. Areas of focus: print journalism, integrated marketing communications, technology, film and video production, and radio broadcast. Students participated in the accredited four-year curriculum after school and on weekends out of the organization’s high-tech downtown state-of-the-art media institute, and upon their high school graduation received scholarships to assist with the tuition costs at the University of their choice. One hundred percent of Strive Media graduates went on to college. Five hundred teens participated in Strive Media Institute over the fourteen-year period.
Gumbo Teen Magazine, a teen magazine produced for teens by teens was born inside of the Marquette program in 1998. Gumbo Teen Magazine, (“gumbo” means diversity), became yet another successful tool for Matthew to train and prepare his teens as reporters, writers, photographers and editors for the real world. This sixty-eight page, glossy magazine was distributed to teens in twenty-four cities and six countries. In 1999, Teen Forum was discontinued on ABC and Gumbo TV (GTV) aired for the first time on the WB Affiliate in the summer of 1999. Gumbo Teen Magazine teen reporters traveled the world covering stories in Brazil, Europe, Africa and Costa Rica. Gumbo TV was created to help “brand” the magazine and TV show together. Gumbo Teen Television went on to earn more Emmy nominations, and winning two more Emmy Awards in 2006 and 2007.
As Gumbo Teen Magazine was changing the lives of teens across the country, Ya Heard Magazine’s Urban Music Pocket Guide rushed onto the young urban scene in 2001. Matthew wanted to promote positive music and positive urban artist on the pages of this new niche magazine that targeted a young impressionable college audience in twenty urban cities across America. This was the start of the pocket-size/purse size trademark concept that is so popular today with Girlfriends Health Guide. Ya Heard Music Pocket Guide had nearly 2.5 million readers and was distributed to over four hundred urban radio stations, record labels and Historically Black Colleges and Universities for over six years. This was the start of Matthew’s multi-titles publishing business.
In 2001, Matthew was recognized as a social entrepreneur and was awarded an international fellowship of $150,000 from Ashoka US/Canada. The fellowship was awarded to Matthew in recognition of his innovative approach to ending the under-representation of minorities in mass communications. Matthew is also a Pieper Fellow, a program that exposes nonprofit leaders to the management principles of the Peter Drucker Foundation.
Due to his expertise in mass communications diversity, disadvantage youth development, and a social entrepreneur, Matthew is a much sought after public speaker in schools and seminars around the country. In the fall of 2003, Matthew traveled to the cities of Sao Paulo and Brasilia in South America to participate in the International Seminar for Democracy and Communication sponsored by Dombali of Brazil. He spoke on the experiences of diversity and inclusion of youth in the media. He has also traveled to Florence and Rome.
Matthew has personally been honored and recognized throughout the years with several awards, including The Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” designation in 1997, the Milwaukee Times Newspaper’s Black Excellence Award in 1998, Price Waterhouse Coopers’ Star-stream Award in 1998, Wisconsin Black Media Association, Clear Channel 1999 Communication’s Peace Achiever Award in 2000, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority’s Trail Blazer Award in 2002, Phi Beta Sigma’s Voice in the Community Award in 2003 and in 2005 the Baha’i Faith Award. Most recently, in 2007 he won the Business journal’s Inner-City growth Business Award.
On April 6, 2006 Matthew’s life took a change of direction. Matthew lost his “#1 girlfriend” to congestive heart failure-his mother. He spent her last 15 minutes holding his mother’s hand before she passed. This was a devastating lost to him- never losing anyone in his family that was so close to him.
While on a business trip to Atlanta in July 2006, he came across a magazine that gave him the idea to publish a magazine of his own for women of color. He named it Girlfriends Health Guide for Women of Color.
Matthew is currently the President & CEO of Girlfriends Holdings, LLC. Founded in August 2006, Girlfriends Health Guide launched its first publication, selling out all the ads that were available in three short months, in January 2007. This health guide is the only health guide in the country that targets women of color exclusively. Girlfriends Health Guide is published in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Atlanta and has over 3 million readers. Nearly one million magazines have been printed in the first 22 months. The goal is to expand into a total of ten targeted cities in the next two years, print eight million magazines with 30 million women readers.
Matthew continues to use his many years of media experience by creating Johnson Media Consulting. He recently formed the Johnson Media Consulting Firm that specializes in developing media curriculum for community media organizations and schools while still consulting with other clients on developing media plans, comprehensive media campaigns and broadcast television projects across the country.
email address: mjohnson@gfhguide.com
