By Omari Salisbury

All good things must come to an end. A show that we intended to last a few months to give our community curated information about COVID turned into over two years of covering some of the most important stories and issues in the Seattle area. Now 26 months later since our first Morning Update Show on March 19, 2020, our final episode will occur this week.

For those that know me best, then you know I have never wanted to be on camera or in the spotlight, that has never been my calling. For the majority of my career, I have been behind the scenes as a writer,  producer, director, and media executive. I spent some time on the radio (I have a face for radio) but just a few years. My whole career I have always been behind the scenes telling stories and making sure important stories get out.

However, COVID put us all in new positions that the community needed us to play. Inspired by people like the Def Chef and Chef Kristi who stepped up and started feeding community. For me, it was doing something I had NEVER done before, hosting a TV show, and a live TV show at that. It wasn't just me wading into the unknown, this was also new for my co-host TraeAnna Holiday as well as our director Darryl "DQ" Glover.  On that first day, I told Trae Holiday and DQ that I could guarantee an audience of two people for sure because I knew my mom and dad would be watching. We had no idea that just a few short months later the world would be watching as well.

Converge Media was already 4 years old when we launched The Morning Update Show.  It was something very special in the early months, although our core mission was to update our community about COVID, every show was very much like sitting and having a morning cup of coffee with our community. It was a very positive space for us to come together. No one outside of our community knew about the Morning Update Show and that was okay with us because it was just our community that we sought to serve. That all changed with the murder of George Floyd and Converge Media's in-depth coverage of the Seattle Protests. In so many ways life has never been the same and neither has the Morning Update Show.

I will be honest with you that the last two years have taken an incredible toll on my body and my mental health. I sustained several injuries during the Seattle Protests they still need to be addressed and because we never really stopped over the last two years the mental scars have never healed from the unprecedented police violence, the murders, the impacts of COVID, the Epidemic of Gun Violence, and the pain and anguish that so many in our community suffer with daily. Reporting on it and also living with it in community daily takes a very high toll at times. Unfortunately, two years later I still cry more than I smile, PTSD is real, trauma is real, memory loss is real, and heartache is real. I have carried this grief on my shoulders, my heart, and my soul for far too long. It’s time to heal and smile and laugh and live again. To do that I must exit stage left and the Morning Update Show will come to an end. Replacing the Morning Update Show is The Day With Trae hosted by my good friend TraeAnna Holiday. It will also air at 11 am and we are all very excited to take this show to new heights. 

What’s next for me after catching my breath? Although you won’t find me on the screen, you will find me in the director’s chair in the Black Media Matters Studios working with the talented team of content creators that produce over 15 shows at Converge (I bet you didn’t realize we had that many shows right?) as well as all the amazing segments that you enjoy so much like #SupportBlackBusiness and #ThrowBackThursday. I will also be in Portland as we seek to uplift the Black community there in the Rose City through the Converge Media lens.  

One place you will find me for sure though is back on the Continent of Africa, that is where I spent so much of my career before returning home to Seattle and I look forward to developing cultural exchange between journalists in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda where they come to Converge and we send filmmakers and content creators there to East Africa. It is an ambitious plan but at Converge we know that impossible is nothing.

I am so thankful to all of you who supported the Morning Update Show and Converge Media. I encourage you to please continue your support, as I mentioned, we have a lot of programming out there all aimed at the uplift of our community. Thank you to everyone who have donated or subscribed to Converge (Keep that same energy :-), and to all the people who we have interviewed or spotlighted on the Morning Update Show in our over 400+ episodes, thank you for your time and for sharing your story with us.

I am ever grateful to TraeAnna Holiday, Carlos Imani, "Dirty Hands", Erik Kalligraphy, and Darryl DQ Glover for your faith and dedication, there would have never been a Morning Update Show without you, I honor and uplift you. Thank you La’Keith “G-Prez” Asphy and Barry “Blendiana Jones” Gayle for all of your technical support and dope music in those early days!

Morning Update Show Directors Roll Call

Darryl "DQ" Glover

Alaia D’Alessandro 

Curtis Delgardo II 

Salman Albuqayshi 

Go forward in your purpose, Go forward in your humanity!
#BlackMediaMatters #WWConverge