Joy Reid A Voice of Reason in Today’s Media Landscape

Joy Reid, born Joy-Ann M. Lomena-Reid on December 8, 1968, is an accomplished American journalist, television host, and political commentator. She is a national correspondent for MSNBC and is best known for hosting the political commentary program The Reid Out since July 2020. Here’s how she got started: 

Early Life and Education :   Reid was born in Brooklyn, New York City. Her father hailed from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while her mother was a college professor and nutritionist from Guyana. She grew up mostly in Denver, Colorado, until the age of 17 when her mother passed away from breast cancer. At that point, she moved to Flatbush, Brooklyn, to live with an aunt.

Reid graduated from Harvard University in 1991, majoring in film studies. Her college experience was a rapid immersion into a demographically different environment, transitioning from a community that was 80% African American to one that was only 6% African American. It was a valuable learning and growth experience for her.

• Early Career Steps: After college, Reid worked at a business consulting firm in New York. In 1997, she left New York and her consulting job to begin her journalism career in South Florida. Her first newsroom gig was at WSVN Channel 7, where she worked on the morning show.

• During her career, Reid also took a hiatus from journalism. In 2003, she left the field to work with the group America Coming Together, actively opposing the Iraq War and President George W. Bush.
• Later, she returned to broadcasting as a talk radio host and actively participated in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign .

Famous Books Written by Joy Reid:

Reid is also an accomplished author. She has written three books:

• “Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide” (2016)
• “The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story” (2019)
• “Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America” (2024)

Broadcasting and Notable Shows: 

Reid co-hosted Wake Up South Florida, a morning radio talk show, from 2006 to 2007.Her anchoring credits include shows like The Reid Report (2014–2015) and AM Joy (2016–2020).Since July 2020, she has been the host of the political commentary program The Reid Out on MSNBC.

In July 2020, MSNBC announced that Reid would host The Reid Out, a new Washington-based weeknight commentary show in the 7 p.m. Eastern time slot vacated by the March 2020 retirement of Hardball host Chris Matthews,  making her cable’s first Black female primetime anchor.

Joy Reid Marriage and Children

Joy Reid is married to Jason Reid in 1997 , a writer and editor based in New York City. The couple also share three children . Jason Reid is an award-winning documentarian who has worked as an editor for Discovery Channel and NBC. Per his LinkedIn, he also co-founded a production company called the Image Lab Media Group in January 2005. The couple have three kids – two sons named Nasir and Jmar, and a daughter named Winsome.

“Joy Reid: A Journey Through Controversial Comments and Public Apologies” .

Homophobic Blog Posts:

• Joy Reid’s old blog, The Reid Report, resurfaced with posts that mocked homosexuality and claimed to out people as gay. Initially, she denied making these comments, attributing them to hackers. However, she later admitted that there was no evidence of hacking and expressed disbelief that she wrote those “hateful things” because they were “completely alien” to her. She also acknowledged controversial tweets from her past.
• The blog posts referred to then-Florida Governor Charlie Crist as “Miss Charlie” and featured the tag “gay politicians.” She later apologized for these insensitive posts.
• Additional posts from her blog questioned homosexuality and expressed discomfort with male characters kissing in the movie Brokeback Mountain.