Retha Hill

Retha Hill is founding chief editorial officer of BET.com and vice president for content development for BET Interactive, where she is the executive in charge of content strategy, convergence and integration with the BET Network.

Voted “Best African American Community Site” in 2001 and again in 2002 by Yahoo! Internet Life magazine, BET.com provides a combination of online content and community tailored to the unique interests, preferences and issues of African Americans aged 18-49. BET.com, the highest-trafficked African-American site on the Internet, has robust content channels on news, health, careers, money, music, home buying, women’s issues, men’s issues, entertainment, romance, beauty, travel, books and the BET Network.

BET.com won a 2003 Best Online News Project award from the National Association of Black Journalists and two such awards in 2002. It came in second for the coveted Scripps-Howard Online Media award and received a special mention from the Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Foundation, which focuses on coverage of drug issues. BET.com has won recognition for its groundbreaking work in 2001 on the Black family, which was supported by a Pew Center for Civic Journalism grant.

Retha is an adjunct professor of journalism at the graduate school at the University of Maryland at College Park. She is active in journalism and media organizations including the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Minority Media Executives. She is a frequent guest speaker at journalism conferences and schools, including: Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the Online News Association, The Poynter Institute, The Media Center at theAmerican Press Institute, the Freedom Forum and the National Press Club. Media appearances include The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, Reuters News Service, Bloomberg News Service, Essence Magazine, Black Enterprise Magazine and CBS Radio.

Formerly, Retha was executive producer for special sections at WashingtonPost.com, where she specialized in creating new-content products. Previously, she was responsible for long-range planning for that Web site’s arts and entertainment coverage. She joined The Washington Post’s online operations in April 1995 as a content developer for its first local portal. In that capacity, she oversaw all local coverage, including the metro section, the community pages, the federal community, CollegePost, a Webzine for the area’s college students, and local arts and entertainment.

Before moving online, Retha was a metro reporter for The Washington Post beginning in 1987. As a 1992-93 Freedom Forum Fellow, Retha created and ran a program to improve high school journalism in the District of Columbia Public School System.

A graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit, Retha has also undertaken graduate studies at Georgetown University.