A new beginning
In 2017, Lentheus Chaney stood up on a stage at an event hosted by DeMarco Morgan — now an ABC broadcaster — in front of numerous important people in Atlanta. He was supposed to be there marketing his magazine, Urban Lux, that he created and built from his dining room table.
Instead, with all eyes on him and a microphone in hand, he took a pause. Then, he did something he never thought he would.
“I still don’t know what it was, but my spirit was telling me I need to shut this magazine down,” Chaney said. “Even though we had all the success, I was talking to the crowd and out of my mouth came, ‘Hey, guys, I think this is going to be the last one.’
“Everybody got quiet and I said to myself, ‘Why did you just say that?’ But that was what was on my mind and in my heart.”
Ultimately, the reason for the change was because he no longer wanted to contribute to a liquor problem in the Black community.
The magazine struggled to find gainful sponsors other than liquor advertisers. The money from those advertisements was enough to keep the magazine going, but Chaney couldn’t see the moral or ethical good in propelling the issue.
“Historically, liquor has been pushed to African Americans in our communities for many years where there’d be billboards in our neighborhoods or liquor stores on every corner in our neighborhoods,” Chaney said. “You see Black communities where there’s absolutely no grocery stores, but you can find three or four liquor stores on the same street. That’s not right. I didn’t want to be a part of that.”
Why the Story Sprint?
Having just finished his journalism degree at Colorado State online from Atlanta , Chaney has jumped on any opportunity he can to keep telling stories.
They’re not in magazine form anymore. Instead, he mainly covers Black issues, social justice and feature stories for the Atlanta Voice. The pay for stringing isn’t much, so naturally, he took up a more fruitful occupation in Real Estate. No biggie.
“I understand that as a new journalist in the business, you’re not going to make a lot of money, so I still need a way to keep the lights on,” Chaney said. “If that means selling a house here and there, then that’s what I’ll do.”
He got noticed for some work he did for a class at CSU at a meeting for the Atlanta chapter of the Association of Black Journalists. There, he met the editor of the Voice and offered him his classwork, to which the editor agreed to publish.
Numerous stories in the Voice and a couple of front-page pieces later, he got the opportunity to join the Sentinel Story Sprint.
What’s next?
Anywhere he lands, Chaney simply wants to inform his community. Ideally, it would be in a multi media role, which he got a taste of during the Sprint.
Upon working on his story on the Colorado Lynching Memorial Project, he got some practice on-camera with a small team of journalists and a filmmaker, while working on what he called one of the most emotional stories he’s done so far.