Houston Community Media

Up Your Game Content Workshop

Tuesday, April 28, 2026 · Southern News Group, Houston TX
By Kainat Rajput

Nakia Cooper didn’t open the Up Your Game Content Workshop with a formal speech. She opened it the way she does most things — by being direct.

“All of us have really engaging content on our platforms,” she told the room. “But when I looked around, I saw some niches we were kind of missing out on sometimes — food, travel, culture, entertainment, sports content. We don’t always have the partnerships, and we’re trying to establish some of those today.”

L to R Stuart Rosenberg , Sandy close ,Tera Stidum and Nakiia Cooper at Up Your Game Content Workshop

That framing set the tone for the whole morning. This wasn’t a theoretical session about content strategy. It was a room full of ethnic media makers — many of them award-winning — getting a practical look at what separates outlets that attract big partnerships from those that don’t.

Nakia had two people in mind for the job. Both are people she knows personally, not just professionally. “They’ve helped me up my game,” she said. “And I don’t want to be selfish — I want to share them with you.”

Nakia Cooper — Moderator

Nakia Cooper is a familiar face to Houston Community Media. She’s a regular presence at their monthly roundtables and has been a driving force behind the organization’s push to help ethnic media outlets grow their reach and revenue. She organized the July 8th Expo at the United Way, where many in the room had received awards for their content — and where Stuart Rosenberg had also appeared on a panel.

She moderated the Q&A and kept the energy moving throughout the workshop, drawing on her own relationships with both speakers to pull out specific, actionable insight rather than general talking points.

Stuart Rosenberg — On Attracting Partnerships and Generating Revenue

Nakia introduced Stuart the way you introduce an old friend — with context and warmth. “Stuart was one of our features on the panel for PR at the July 8th Expo,” she told the audience. “He brought a lot of his friends to the table that shared their knowledge as well.” She paused on Public Content, his firm. “Public content is so very important to me right now — and it’s going to be very important to you going forward.”

Stuart Rosenberg is the Partner and CEO of Public Content, built after years running account management at top PR agencies in New York. His client roster over the years covers serious ground — Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Singapore Airlines, Celebrity Cruises, Procter & Gamble, 3M, and Tupperware, among others.

He returned to Houston in 2002, launching Studio Communications — which eventually became Public Content — and has since led the launch or relaunch of dozens of hotels, restaurants, and cultural destinations. His place-making work spans Greater Fort Lauderdale, Mystic Coast & Country, and St. Lucia, alongside major Houston developments including EaDo, CITYCENTRE, City Place, Regent Square, and Victory Park.

At the workshop, his focus was on what ethnic media outlets need to understand if they want food, restaurant, and entertainment content to actually attract partners and generate revenue. Three things stood out:

Brands want proof you know your audience — not just your follower count, but what your audience actually does, buys, and cares about. That specificity is what opens doors.
Revenue follows relationships. The outlets that consistently attract partnerships treat brands like long-term partners, not one-time advertisers.
Content without a strategy is just content. If you can’t explain how a piece moves a business outcome — for you or for a partner — it’s hard to put a dollar value on it.

Tera Stidum — On Standing Out in an Oversaturated Market

Nakia’s introduction of Tera Stidum came with a personal story. “I met Tera at KPRC,” she told the room. “We started on the same day. We were onboarding together — I went into the web department, she went into the lifestyle show.” She laughed. “All those crazy shows in the morning, running around in roller skates and all of that stuff — Tera was that producer.”

“She’s Randy. We’re gonna say Randy.” — Nakia Cooper, on Tera Stidum’s energy in those early KPRC days

Tera Stidum is a six-time Emmy-nominated Executive Producer with more than two decades in television. Her work spans Dr. Phil, Suze Orman, Judge Alex, and KPRC Channel 2, including behind-the-scenes production on Steve Harvey’s Final Comedy Show.

More recently, she Executive Produced for Kin Community and Philo Network. Her show Leave It to LeToya with LeToya Luckett reached millions through viral content. On Boss Moves with Rasheeda, she helped break the Nelly and Ashanti relationship story — which landed on the Today Show, People, the Los Angeles Times, and The Shade Room.

She now runs Janie’s Girl Media, where she works with celebrities, influencers, brands, and organizations to grow their reach through social media storytelling. She also leads digital strategy for Harris County.

Her talk was about what it takes to stand out when everyone is making content. Three things she kept coming back to:

The story has to be real. Audiences have seen enough polished, empty content to spot it instantly. What travels is something specific, something true — something that couldn’t have come from anyone else.
Positioning matters before you hit record. The outlets that end up with bigger opportunities aren’t necessarily the ones with the best content. They’re the ones that know exactly what they stand for and say it clearly, consistently.
Pick one thing and do it this week. If you’re waiting until everything is perfect to start or shift, you’re waiting too long.

Q&A — Moderated by Nakia Cooper

The audience Q&A pushed both speakers on the practical side. A few questions that drove the most conversation:

What makes content attractive to major brands or personalities?

Consistency and clarity of audience. Brands aren’t just buying reach — they’re buying trust. If your community trusts you, that’s worth more than raw numbers.

What does starting a podcast or digital series the right way actually look like?

Know your format before you launch. Too many people start without deciding whether they’re making a show, a conversation, or a marketing tool. Those are different things.

How do you position content to make money?

Stop describing what you make. Start describing what it does for the people who watch it — and for the brands that show up alongside it.

If you could tell everyone here to do just one thing this week, what would it be?

Both speakers landed in the same place: pick something specific and act on it. Not a plan. An action.

A Moment From the Room

One of the sharper exchanges in the Q&A came from an audience member who pushed back — respectfully but clearly — on the idea that every outlet needs a niche.

“My audience is totally Randy. I write for the ADHD tribe. We are an audience that can focus on everything.”

She wasn’t being defensive. She was making a real point. Her content approach is built around versatility — readers who move fast, cover a lot of ground, and don’t fit neatly into one interest category. As an example, she described how she’s thinking about FIFA coming to Houston: rather than covering the tournament itself, she wants to create profiles around what visitors actually need — where to get the right clothes, which brands to highlight, whether you even need a car to get around the city. Practical, sponsor-friendly, audience-first.

It sparked a conversation about what “knowing your audience” actually means. The takeaway from the speakers wasn’t that every outlet needs to narrow down to one topic — it was that you need to be able to describe who you’re for in a way a brand can act on. Whether that’s a niche or a lifestyle or a mindset, the clarity is what matters.

The Takeaway

The workshop ran 90 minutes. The lunch and networking session that followed ran longer than scheduled — which is usually a good sign.

What Nakia put together wasn’t a panel of strangers talking at the room. It was two people she’s worked with, learned from, and stayed close to over years — brought in specifically because she knew what they could give this group. That made a difference in how the room received it.

Up your game content workshop participant group photi on HCoM press vriefing event held in Houston on Apr 28 2026 at Southern News Gtoup Houston

The content in the room was already good. That much was established. The question the workshop kept returning to was: good enough for what? Getting awards is one thing. Building something that generates revenue, attracts real partnerships, and holds up in a crowded market is another conversation entirely. That’s the conversation this workshop started.