Dimas Sanfiorenzo Interview
Dimas Sanfiorenzo is a journalist and editor. He’s written for Vibe, BET, BBC, and more. Most recently, however, he worked for Okayplayer and Okayafrica as the editorial director of both brands.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I had a pretty conventional path in media so far. Graduated from a state college and started out in local news. At the beginning of my career, I had a broad idea that I wanted to be a journalist. But even back then—and this was like 2010, 2011—I would hear all the same shit you hear now: there’s no money, outlets are dying, etc. I had ambitions of doing either sports or music journalism—the two things I read the most at the time. But not really a framework on what that would look like. Eventually, I got an internship at Complex, back when it was mostly just a men's magazine with a blog, which then sparked a path for me in the cultural space.
I wanted to get more into music, hip-hop really, and started working in Black Media, most specifically for an online publication called Global Grind. I got pretty burnt out there; I wasn’t making any real money or doing interesting work. For a couple of years in the mid-2010s I was essentially out of journalism, mostly a for-hire gun, making various indistinguishable forms of “content,” from ghostwriting social media posts to copywriting. I got into my rhythm in 2017 when a good friend of mine, Rachel Hislop, became the editor-in-chief of Okayplayer. I was freelancing for them a bit and she made me the managing editor in 2018. I was doing most of the hand-to-hand, day to day stuff, which allowed her to have an expansive look at growth and where the brands were going. (She was also the EIC of OkayAfrica.) What she did was empower me in a way that I’ve never been empowered before. She gave me the latitude to fuck shit up for a bit and make a lot of mistakes, which I think is crucial for anyone’s development.