The May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer inspired nationwide protests, unprecedented debates over police reform, and, for countless Americans, self-reflection and hard questions about the causes and effects of systemic racism.<\/p>\n
For Eric Johnson \u201904, those questions \u201cforced me to evaluate what I was contributing to this space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evaluation led to action: This past March, the prime-time newsmagazine Soul of a Nation<\/em> debuted on ABC, with Johnson as an executive producer and project lead. The six-episode series, the first of its kind, featured an array of stories told through the perspectives of dozens of artists, athletes, and entertainers that \u201cput Black life in America front and center.\u201d But as Johnson emphasized, the aim was to deliver a show with universal appeal. \u201cBlack history is American history,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re telling American stories.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson is proud of the quality of the narratives presented in the series and also in its timing: it premiered in early March \u2014 a small, but significant change from Black programming that tends to air in February. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want this to be perceived as a Black History Month special,\u201d Johnson says, \u201clike we\u2019re telling Black stories because February says we have to.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson, who has worked on venerable titles such as Nightline<\/em>, 20\/20<\/em>, and Good Morning America<\/em>, recently became executive producer of program development at CNN, where he hopes to contribute more Black storytelling with another major news network.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m excited to build a team that will continue to create and elevate important stories, characters, and content \u2014 including diverse narratives \u2014 across CNN\u2019s platforms,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Throughout his career, he\u2019s leaned on his TCNJ experience to help him hone in on important and timely topics that he felt deserved more attention.<\/p>\n \u201cI look at what I did in college with my communication studies major, and the breadth of classes I took in African American studies and women and gender studies, and I absolutely see a connection, like \u2018Wow, little Eric Johnson from South Plainfield, New Jersey, figured out how to do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson says he hopes Soul of a Nation<\/em> will serve as a jumping off point for him, as well as other producers and networks, \u201cfor all types of storytelling that haven\u2019t had enough attention,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m excited to see the next steps beyond this.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Picture: Peter Murphy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Johnson \u201904 knows just the stories to tell to celebrate Black America in prime time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":11795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11785"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11800,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11785\/revisions\/11800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}