Voice Actor Thembisa S. Mshaka is a Modern Day Renaissance Woman
by Gwendolyn Quinn
Voice Actor. Creative Director. Author. Journalist. Entrepreneur. Filmmaker. Activist. Entertainment Branding Consultant. With a career spanning three decades, Thembisa S. Mshaka is a modern-day renaissance woman.
In June 1998, Thembisa S. Mshaka packed up her belongings and drove nearly 3,000 miles across the country from California to New York City to start a new job. Twenty-seven years old and newly married, she had spent three-quarters of her life in Southern and Northern California and was ready for something big and new. By this time, she had already invested seven years into her career in the media, music, and entertainment industries.
Moving to New York City was monumental for Mshaka because it brought her to the birthplace and Mecca of Hip-Hop. She had accepted a position as a senior advertising copywriter for Sony Music, where she was charged with creating global media and advertising campaigns for award-winning recording artists under the Sony Music Corporation and its associated music labels. She arrived just in time for the solo debut release of singer and rapper Lauryn Hill’s highly anticipated album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, in August 1998.
The album earned ten Grammy nominations and five wins at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards ceremony. At that time, Hill was the first woman in music history to receive that many nominations and awards in one night. In February 2021, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill reached Diamond status, making Hill the first female hip-hop artist to sell more than ten million albums and singles worldwide.
As an advertising copywriter, Mshaka also created multiple global campaigns for other superstars, including Destiny’s Child, Will Smith, Beyoncé, Wyclef Jean, Nas, Jill Scott, CeCe Winans, Wu-Tang Clan, Maxwell, Macy Gray, and numerous others. During her more than five-year tenure at Sony Music, she contributed to record sales of more than 170 million units worldwide and counting.
She wrote more than 100 media campaigns for African American recording artists in R&B, hip-hop, jazz, and gospel. One of her many responsibilities as the senior advertising copywriter was to hire voiceover talent for television and radio campaigns. Mshaka developed a stable of top-tier voiceover talent that she used regularly for Black music campaigns; the voices included Joan Baker, who voiced key campaigns for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album; Rodd Houston, who voiced television and radio spots for Will Smith, Destiny’s Child, Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, and Bow Wow; Montego Glover, a stage and screen actress who voiced a variety of campaigns for jazz and R&B artists, including Xscape; and actress Michelle Hurd, who was part of TV’s Law & Order franchise and worked on several projects including Jagged Edge’s Hard album.
As the creator of advertising and promo spots, Mshaka routinely put her voice on tape to circulate for in-house approvals. On one occasion, she developed a spot for Destiny’s Child then-new single, “Bootylicious.” As she was attempting to get the proposed spot approved, the group’s then product manager and marketing director, Quincy Jackson, listened to the spot and said, “I like the voice on this tape. I want the person who’s on the tape. It might be cool to try someone new.” Mshaka said, “That’s me.” Jackson said, “Well, do you want to do it?” Mshaka said, “Well, you want to pay me?”
At the time, she had no interest in working as a voiceover artist, it was merely an everyday function of her job to create, write and develop campaigns for recording artists. But that was her official entrée as a voiceover talent. Her first television commercial was the “Bootylicious” single from Destiny’s Child’s Survivor album. Soon thereafter, she did radio spots for Maxwell’s singles “This Woman’s Work” and “Get To Know Ya” from Maxwell’s third studio album, Now. She also voiced spots for Jill Scott’s single “Gettin’ In The Way” from her platinum-selling debut album, Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1.
It was at that point that she realized she had something special. Those three projects — Destiny’s Child, Maxwell, and Jill Scott — were the genesis of a new career. And it was those same television and radio spots that built the foundation of her first professional demo reel.
“As a director of voice talent, my unique vantage point serves me as a voice actor,” she explains. “When I’m in the booth on the microphone I understand how to receive direction. I know how to generate that direction in performance.”
Once she decided to pursue a career in the voice arts, Mshaka hired a coach. She turned to Joan Baker, the co-founder of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences. “I first met Thembisa when I voiced The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill for Columbia Records,” says Baker, Thembisa’s first VO coach.
“Sometime after the critical success of that project, Thembisa asked me if I would coach her to be a voice actor. Of course, voice actors come from different career backgrounds, and they don’t all succeed. Thembisa is in a special category called promo producer-turned-voice actor. One might think that would mean instant success. Not true. First, she ticks off all the boxes as being uniquely talented, hardworking, well-trained, and entrepreneurial. But her superpower is her knack for harnessing the resources within her grasp and making them work to create her career. She knows how to hustle, and her confidence lives in the quality she exudes as a voice actor. She’s gold!”
In 2001, Mshaka officially started her career as a voice actor and says she’s been blessed ever since. With years of coaching, studying, and networking, she has voiced spots and campaigns for major brands including IAMS Cat Food, Xfinity, Publix, Sun Trust Bank, Flu Zone, and Aussie Shampoo. She has done promo work for Lifetime, Oxygen, the Smithsonian Channel, and other cable networks. She has also voiced for the New York Liberty’s twentieth season on MSG, the Women’s National Basketball Association, the National Women’s Soccer League, and the Women of Team USA, ahead of the 2021 Olympics for NBC’s streaming service.
I have a killer reel; normally I don’t have the same amount of time as other actors to audition,” says Mshaka of her demo reel. “When I book, I often book off of my reel. My current reel has served me extremely well throughout my career.”
A six-time Voice Arts nominated artist, Mshaka says one of her biggest career achievements as a voice actor to date is when she was selected as the only female voice for the Legacy video at the Muhammad Ali Center, the non-profit museum and cultural center in Louisville, Kentucky, named for the boxing great. “Muhammad Ali was my hero,” she says. “He represented a specific part of my identity. As an African American and Sunni Muslim, he was a role model as I was growing up. I’ve always been a lover of sports, too. The Muhammad Ali Center’s Legacy video is housed in the museum permanently. So that’s also part of my legacy as a voice actor,” Mshaka explains. “The legacy video is in the museum alongside other videos that are narrated by other greats of the voiceover space, such as Keith David and Samuel L. Jackson. And that is why it is by far my greatest voiceover achievement.”
After Mshaka secured the job for the Muhammad Ali Center, she discovered that more than 1,100 voice actors auditioned for that job. She was astonished. “It was an arduous process and difficult, but that was just a test of all the work that I had done to date and my admiration for Muhammad Ali. I got to meet Muhammad Ali in Oakland when he was promoting his book [Healing: A Journal of Tolerance and Understanding]. I pulled on the encounter that I had with him. I pulled on the experience of being in his presence in my audition, and that’s an important note for people. Whatever experience you have connected to the product or the project, pull on that and use it in your audition.”
It All Started in Southern California
Thembisa’s parents, who are now deceased, both decided to change their surnames legally before they got married. They were of the Pan-Africanist persuasion and wanted to have Zulu surnames. The birth surnames of Thembisa’s mother, Fulani Mshaka, and her father, Dauod Mshaka, were Bell and Dandridge, respectively.
A year after their marriage, the couple welcomed a girl and named her Thembisa, which is “hope” in Zulu. Her mother, Fulani, was a psychiatric social worker and an award-winning public servant who, toward the end of her career, was the clinical therapy director for Fresno Juvenile Hall. She had dedicated her life to serving members of the community who were incarcerated, whether they were youth or adults. She had also worked with the elderly and ordinary people as a clinical therapist. Her passion was to work with youth who were incarcerated.
Her father was a pharmaceutical salesman for most of Thembisa’s adult life. In the 1980s, he was doing pharmaceutical sales work before Black people even thought of it as a viable career. He later worked at Merrill Lynch and became a stockbroker.
Born and raised in Inglewood, California, Mshaka attended Westridge School (for Girls) in Pasadena. A lifelong Los Angeles Lakers fan, she recalls that during the 1970s she often snuck into Lakers practices at The Forum, where the team played for thirty-two years (1967–1999) before moving to their new home at the STAPLES Center in downtown Los Angeles.
In 1988, the same year she graduated from high school, Mshaka’s parents got divorced. She was sixteen years old, and from that point on, her parents had their own households within Southern California.
After high school, Mshaka headed to Northern California for college. In August 1988, she attended Mills College, a private women’s institution located in Oakland, planning to study international relations with an eye toward eventually pursuing a career in politics.
Northern California: Breaking Into Entertainment
At seventeen years old, Mshaka landed an internship at De Leon Artists, an Oakland booking agency founded and headed by Lupe De Leon, now deceased. Working at De Leon Artists was pivotal in jumpstarting her career in music and entertainment.
Lupe De Leon managed the late great Etta James and was also her tour agent. The agency represented iconic blues, funk, jazz, and R&B artists from the ‘50s. Mshaka worked closely with De Leon and was one of four team members, who handled administrative work for the talent, from Willie Colón to Stanley Turrentine to Shirley Horn to Bobby Hutcherson.
Though her internship seemed at odds with her political ambitions, she did become an active student leader at Mills, where she headed the former Black Women’s Collective (BWC), currently known as the Black Students Collective (BSC).
“I was active in the Black Women’s Collective,” she says. “Then I eventually ran for office for the student body … which is known at Mills as the Associated Students of Mills College [ASMC]. I was elected ASMC vice president in 1991. I have an affinity for Kamala Harris because I was also a Black woman vice president and it was awesome.”
By 1990, one of the head agents, Bruce Solar left De Leon Artists amicably to form his agency, Absolute Artists, which focused on folk, rock, blues, and jazz. Mshaka was offered a position by Solar as the Office and Contracts Manager.
Solar added Cindy Lee Berryhill, Cake, The Club Foot Orchestra, and Danilo Pérez to his roster along with Gil Scott-Heron, who followed him to Absolute and was on the road 320 days a year. Many years later, Solar sold his boutique agency and is now partner and head of worldwide music at APA Agency on the west coast.
“Between Lupe and Bruce, I cut my teeth in the entertainment industry working for the likes of Etta James, Gil Scott-Heron, and Willie Colón,” Mshaka explains. “I also worked with jazz and blues singer Ernestine Anderson, jazz vocalist Shirley Horn, pianist Charles Brown, drummer Billie Cobham, and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. I was responsible for their riders and contracts. Saxophonist Junior Walker, I used to work with him as well. He was one of my favorites.”
Mshaka explains that her love of music, formed as a teenager, was a great foundation. “I had a tremendous background in music thanks to my parents having a rich vinyl collection and always playing Black music in the house, and in the car, all the time,” she continues. “I knew so much about these artists even though I was very young. That’s why I was a great fit at both of those small agencies. I was defending riders, making sure the artists got paid, and going to the venues. I was underage, but they had to let me in the club because I was the reason the talent was performing.”
“Working and touring helped me to understand how to handle and manage talent,” she concludes. “It also gave me a great perspective on celebrity, because when I started working in hip-hop, rappers did not impress me because I had been working with these iconic Black music legends. I had already been cussed out by Etta James. It was a different level of artistry, different level of commitment to the craft, and these are artists who were incredible performers but hadn’t released a record in ten or fifteen years, and were still selling out venues around the world.”
Mshaka’s leadership on campus also motivated and encouraged many of the Black women at Mills, including Rachel Noerdlinger, Partner at Mercury LLC, and one of the most influential public relations experts in the country. “When I was a junior at Mills College, there was a fearless woman who mobilized us to examine issues of equity, and she was Thembisa Mshaka,” says Noerdlinger. “She took that same leadership into a variety of directions and became a published author, a sought-after public speaker, and an entertainment industry pioneer.”
Mshaka eventually graduated from Mills College with a degree in International Relations and Ethnic Studies. But her interest in music guided many of her on-campus activities as well.
The Gavin Report
A music connoisseur, Mshaka was also an eyewitness to the growth of hip-hop as the music of her generation. While at Absolute Artists and Mills, she started writing music and concert reviews for Grits ’N’ Gravy, an independent music publication, which was run by two Black women, Nzinga Hatch and Kofy Brown MC. She also penned her first cover story on KRS-One for an all-genre street magazine titled KLUB, based in San Francisco.
“I would go to the parties, clubs, and concerts and write reviews,” says Mshaka. “Nzinga and Kofy Brown gave me free rein to cover a wide range of events. Once I did the cover story on KRS-One in KLUB, the doors opened for me to write for other books, and it got me noticed as a writer in the hip hop space.”
Mshaka also produced hip-hop events at Mills, including panels and showcases to raise money for the Black Women’s Collective. “It made no sense to me that we [Mills College] were in the middle of East Oakland where artists like Too $hort and MC Hammer were independent artists selling millions of records, but here was this small predominately white women’s college in the middle of their turf, and we were not talking about Black music?”
The events opened up Mills to the community. One evening, she met Kelly Woo, a Korean-American who was the rap editor for The Gavin Report, a music and radio trade publication based in San Francisco. Woo had come out to one of the fundraising events that she organized and afterward, he said to her, “I’m going to be leaving my job [at Gavin]. Would you like to interview for it?” Mshaka said, “Sure.”
Woo offered to train her on Gavin’s system for the research and data for the weekly radio charts, which, if she secured the position, she would be responsible for compiling by calling and talking to more than 300 stations and nearly 80 retailers every week. She interviewed for the position of Rap Editor, not knowing whether or not she would get the job. As it turned out, she was the only person who was trained on the system, so that helped her secure the job.
Mshaka became the first Black person and the first woman to hold the Rap Editor position at Gavin. During her tenure, from 1993–1998, she wrote many artist profiles on developing and legendary artists, including The Roots, D’Angelo, Common, Busta Rhymes, Timbaland, The Lady of Rage, and more. She also coined the phrase “Generation NeXt.”
The Wordsmith
In 2009, her debut book, Put Your Dreams First: Handle Your [entertainment Business] was published by Grand Central Publishing, which is named among the Top 15 Hip-Hop Literary titles by AOL, and the second edition re-release is scheduled in 2022.
She is a featured essayist in Peter Lang’s anthology UnCommon Bonds: Women Reflect on Race and Friendship (2018). She penned the chapter, “Friends in Real Life.” Her writings have been published in print and online, including the encyclopedia edition of 25 Hip-Hop Icons (2007), edited by Mickey Hess (Greenwood Press); and the anthology series Sometimes Rhythm, Sometimes Blues: Young African Americans on Love, Relationships, Sex, the Search for Mr. Right (2003), edited by Mills College alumna Taigi Smith (Seal Press).
“Thembisa has always been brilliant,” says Billy Johnson, Jr., music journalist and publicity company owner. “She has an expert understanding of how the music, business, and Black culture intersect and how they should be presented to the masses. Her creative voice is always decisive, on target, and unapologetic. She is a leader in that sense. She’s going to be the first to say what needs to be said and doesn’t need validation or clout. She finds comfort in being obedient to her instincts.”
Mshaka continues her journalism pursuits as a contributor for digital magazines including POISED, ShineYourCrown.com, Okayplayer.com, HuffPost, and her blog, thembisamshaka.com. She has also written for ESSENCE.com, among others. Founded in 2018, Mshaka Media is the media arm for projects by the author, journalist, and entrepreneur.
Through the years, Mshaka has delivered keynote addresses at the University of Maryland, Bethune-Cookman University, Howard University, Delaware State University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Filmmaker
The founder of SEEIT Films, Mshaka is a graduate of New York Film Academy’s film producing program. During that time in the program, she wrote, directed and executive produced two film shorts. Her first was First Kiss, a three-minute short about a couple meeting in the park and having their first kiss. It stars Nelson Estevez, who later went on to star in Tyler Perry’s Acrimony and Too Close To Home, and Loren Lillian, who is a former film editor who became an on-camera actress.
Her second film, The Divorce Counselor, is a ten-minute short starring Alexander Mulzac and Keisha Zollar. It premiered at the Pan African Film Festival (Los Angeles), and the Black Star Film Festival (Philadelphia).
Her first feature film, Islamic Speed Dating, is based on her sister’s dating and relationship experiences after her divorce. “I wanted to bring the specific world of the African American Muslim and the Los Angeles-based Black Muslim population into focus using the universal story of searching for love and partnership,” she says. “I wrote the script, and it took many years and many drafts and much refining.” Mshaka recently completed a production deal for the film, as of the week of March 1, 2021. Mshaka has also developed an episodic dramatic television series. And she co-produced Biscuit, a film short written and directed by Tank Burt, featuring her son, Mecca, as a skateboarder. The film also premiered at the Black Star Film Festival.
Mshaka says that the enormous success of actor Mahershala Ali, now a two-time Oscar winner, means that the world has finally caught up and is now interested in stories of and by African American Muslims. “We can attribute that to Mahershala Ali, and documentary and portrait photographer Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, who are both doing amazing work. There are so many Muslim creatives who are doing their thing right now. I’m hoping that I can add my name to the number.”
#HashTagByT
Another of Mshaka’s many projects is #HashTagByT, created under the Mshaka Media brand. Launched in September 2020, by Mshaka and her business coach partner, Katrina M. Carter, #HashTagByT is an apparel line that highlights some of Mshaka’s favorite hashtags.
The label was built as a creative coping mechanism during the global pandemic. “I needed a creative outlet to express myself, and it also became a revenue-generating opportunity for us,” says Mshaka. “People have been telling me for quite some time that they love my hashtags. They thought they were clever and fun.”
The project has turned into a successful endeavor. “Katrina and I built the front and the back end of the online business,” she continues. “We designed the apparel line and secured some press, and people love the items. It’s been great to see our work in wearable form.”
VO Inspirations
Meanwhile, Mshaka is doubling down on her work as a voiceover artist. She says that one of the most challenging aspects of the business is delivering a strong performance and remaining distinctive amongst all the other voices during the pivotal audition process. She’s always challenged with how to separate herself from the pack and to bring something that perhaps casting directors haven’t heard. As a creative director, she knows all too well that it can be difficult to cut through the clutter because of the volume of talent that casting directors and creatives have to choose from for a gig.
Throughout her burgeoning career in voiceover, Mshaka said she has been inspired by many voice actors, including Rodd Houston, who has helped coach and guide her in the sports space. “Women don’t always get to voice a lot of sports campaigns, but Rodd Houston dominates in sports. He has mentored me and given me great insight and advice. Becoming the voice of the New York Liberty’s twentieth season, I channeled all of the things that Rodd taught me and told me, and that led to me voicing campaigns for the Women’s National Basketball Association and other sporting franchises.”
There are other female voice actors who inspire her, including Cree Summer, who is probably best known for her role as Winifred “Freddie” Brooks in the 1980s NBC sitcom A Different World. “Cree Summer is one of the greatest of all time,” she enthuses. “A woman who I have never met, but whose work permeates animation. She’s a phenomenal actor. She does not get the recognition that she deserves. She’s one of these actors who has so much work in the marketplace that if she never wanted to work again, she wouldn’t have to.”
Mshaka is hugely inspired by the storied career of Regina King, the Oscar and Emmy awarding-winning actress-turned-director, who worked on the groundbreaking animated series The Boondocks (2005–2014). “Many people don’t realize she played both of those young boys [Riley Freeman and Huey Freeman] in The Boondocks,” she shares. “And to be able to perform those characters uniquely and distinctly is awesome.”
Nancy Cartwright is another exceptional talent, who is best known as the voice of Bart Simpson and other characters on The Simpsons, including Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, Kearney, and Database. Mshaka says, “Nancy is a phenomenal actor, just phenomenal. Her work is outstanding.”
In the live announcing world of voiceover, Mshaka says there is one person who comes to mind again and again, and that’s Joan Baker, the author of Secrets of Voice-Over Success: Top Voice-Over Actors Reveal How They Did It.
“Joan is in a class by herself when it comes to live announcing,” she says. “That’s very difficult work. When you’re live announcing you are under the pressure of being part of a live recording experience, with a huge audience. There are names you have to pronounce, and there’s a time commitment you have to adhere to, and you have to sound like it’s just Tuesday and you’re lounging in your pajamas. There’s so much pressure, and she keeps it flawless all the time, and she’s creative, too.”
A Mother’s Greatest Gift: Mecca and Umi
Thembisa’s parents were devout Sunni Muslims, and she has instilled many of their values into her children. Her mother passed in 2007 from melanoma, which is an aggressive form of skin cancer, and her father passed from heart failure in 2017. He wore a pacemaker and Thembisa said she thought the device would help him live for a long time. She recalls that on the morning of his passing, he went to the mosque to make his morning prayer, and surrounded by several doctors, he had passed out in the middle of prayer and they could not revive him.
“I would say that they both had what we in Islam would call a perfect death, a beautiful death,” says Thembisa. “They had both made Hajj, so they had performed their duty to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. My mom passed during Ramadan and she was buried on Eid, during the Eid holiday of that year. Her passing happened during a holy, spiritual time. Then my father died while he was praying in a mosque. I should be so lucky to go out in the fashion that they did. It’s tough to be without them.”
Today, Thembisa Mshaka’s greatest gift, greatest inspiration, and greatest reward are her two beautiful children: her twenty-one-year-old son, Mecca, and her nine-year-old daughter, Umi.
According to his mother, Mecca has been skateboarding since he was three years old. He always had a tremendous amount of energy and a short attention span. She said skateboarding became a meditation of sorts for him. When he was young, he was enrolled in the skateboarding camp at Chelsea Piers. Mecca has been skating now for seventeen years and has risen to become an Instagram star because he does a lot of street skating and trick skating in parks around the city. He is now sponsored by Bluecouch NY, which is a skate company, based in Brooklyn.
Mecca has always been an artist of some kind and today he is a film photographer. He developed his love for photography in middle school when one of his teachers gifted him a camera; years later, he segued into cinematography. He also loves drawing. He secured a two-year apprenticeship at Red Hook Labs in Brooklyn, which is a great space for students to learn the craft of photography. After the apprenticeship program, he decided that he wanted to go to art school.
“Mecca is very much a New Yorker,” says Mshaka, who raised her children as a single mother. “Both of my kids are born and raised in Manhattan. They’re very snobbish about their New York upbringing and he did not want to go to art school anywhere else. He is currently enrolled at the School of Visual Arts, which was his first choice.”
During his two years at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Mecca received his Associate’s Degree in Studio Art. He has produced experimental film shorts and won two awards at the student film festival for Best Experimental Film and Best Cinematography for WYA, shorthand for “Where Ya At.”
“In the process of being a photographer, Mecca has become a model,” she gleefully attests. “He was helping his friends, who are also photographers, and needed models for their shoots. He did an international campaign for Converse. He has modeled for G-SHOCK, Calvin Klein, and Vogue Italia. Mecca has been modeling, alongside his photography work. I plan to help him get an agent and get serious. Since he’s a photographer, he knows what to do as a subject.”
Over the past two years, Mecca has taught himself to play the electric guitar. He’s in a band, now untitled, with two young ladies. He has also been experimenting with emceeing.
“I was very conscious to raise him as a male feminist or male womanist, either one,” explains Mshaka. “Shout out to Alice Walker, but he is very conscious of what it means to not be sexist and we talk about that a lot.”
At nine years old, Umi has already decided that she wants to be a production designer and an interior designer. For her enrichment, Mother Mshaka subscribes to monthly periodicals including Elle Décor, Veranda, and House Beautiful, and says when those books come in every month, her daughter devours them.
According to Mshaka, Umi is athletic; a good basketball player, she likes gymnastics, too. She also loves playing engineering games, where she gets to build houses and then decorate them. “Her creativity is showing up that way, and she is also a good illustrator,” says the proud mother. “She likes to draw figures and portraits with pencils. She loves fashion and enjoys watching Fashion Week.”
One of her longtime friends, Rachel Noerdlinger, says, “I’m most proud of Thembisa as a mother and how she raised two phenomenal human beings who are gifted in their own right. Thembisa epitomizes women’s history every month and she is a blessing in human form.”
Mother Mshaka says she is trying to raise her children by the example that was set for her. “I was thrown everything and my parents let me decide. What do you like and what do you want to do? That’s the same approach that I’ve taken because I think enrichment helps you to clarify what it is you love doing and what you don’t want to do. Sometimes it becomes a career or sometimes it becomes a hobby.”
Mshaka concludes, “I’m raising creatives, and that’s the thing that I have to wrap my head around. It’s awesome. My parents were skeptical about me being a creative, but because I know what it means and know that you can be successful in it, I throw all my support behind both of them.”
Gwendolyn Quinn is an award-winning communications strategist and consultant with a career spanning more than 25 years. She is the Chief Content Officer of the Global Communicator. As a contributor, she has penned stories for NBCNews.com, Black Enterprise, Essence.com, Huff Post, and EURWEB.com.
