Smokey D. Fontaine

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Chief Content Officer
Interactive One
www.interactiveone.com

Smokey D. Fontaine, named after the Motown legend, oversees the largest online African American network, which includes the third largest online social network (BlackPlanet, MiGente) and five unique sites serving African-Americans (TheUrbanDaily.com, HelloBeautiful.com, NewsOne.com, Elev8.com, GIANTmag.com). His mandate—to engage and empower the full and diverse range of urban communities—is at once a programming, technology and brand-building achievement throughout Interactive One's sites and across parent company Radio One's radio, TV, and print mediums.

Formerly, Fontaine was the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of GIANT, the magazine of celebrity, style and culture. Since taking the helm of the newly re-launched publication in August of 2006, Fontaine cemented his status as one of the hottest editors in the magazine world with back-to-back covers of Beyonce, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, Ciara, Chris Brown, Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Prince.

Prior to that, Fontaine was most notably the Senior Producer of Entertainment for Volume.com, the $35 million Internet portal sponsored by HBO; the US Editor of Trace magazine where he secured the fashion and music magazine's US distribution and advertising deals and wrote nine cover stories; and the Music Editor of The Source where he oversaw the growth of the world"s largest music magazine on the newsstand and was nominated for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2000.

america, an "urban luxury" publication he dreamed up while visiting his childhood home in London, England, enabled Fontaine to run his own company and continue his high-end cross-platform work with clients that included Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, Target and Lexus. His 42-page portfolio with Sean "Diddy" Combs and Penelope Cruz by photographer Peter Lindbergh for Estee Lauder is considered an advertorial benchmark.

In 2002, Mr. Fontaine released his first two books. The first, What's Your HI-FI Q? (Simon & Schuster/Fireside) with partner Scott Poulson-Bryant, is an entertaining trivia book wrapped around three decades of black popular music; the second, EARL: The Autobiography of DMX (Harper Collins Entertainment), is a 350+ page life history of hip-hop's most tortured superstar hailed by Publisher's Weekly as an "unsparing, painfully honest account…[akin to] Manchild In The Promised Land."

Mr. Fontaine's first published piece was a retrospective essay about his relationship with James Baldwin for the Diary of the Civil Rights Movement in 1989 and he has since twice received the prestigious "Spotlight Article of the Month" award from the London Guardian newspaper. Mr. Fontaine is also a featured music correspondent for the BBC and Channel 4 networks in England, and is a repeat guest on CNN, The Today Show, FOX News, VH-1, The Wendy Williams Experience and The Tom Joyner Morning Show.