Joy Reid facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joy Reid
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Reid in 2018
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| Born | December 8, 1968 New York City, U.S.
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| Education | Harvard University (BA) |
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| Television |
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| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) |
Jason Reid
(m. 1997) |
| Children | 3 |
Joy-Ann M. Lomena-Reid (born December 8, 1968), known professionally as Joy Reid, is an American cable television host, MSNBC national correspondent, liberal political commentator, and author. She hosted the weekly MSNBC morning show, AM Joy, and in 2018, The New York Times stated that "Ms. Reid, the daughter of immigrants, has emerged as a 'heroine' of the anti-Trump 'resistance'." In 2019, she published the book, The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story. On July 9, 2020, MSNBC announced that Reid would host The ReidOut, a new Washington-based weeknight show in the 7 p.m. Eastern time slot vacated in March by Hardball host Chris Matthews' retirement.
Early life
Reid was born Joy-Ann Lomena in Brooklyn, New York City. Her father was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and her mother a college professor and nutritionist from Guyana. Her parents met in graduate school at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Reid was raised Methodist and has one sister and one brother. Her father was an engineer who was mostly absent from the family; her parents eventually divorced and her father returned to the Congo. She was raised mostly in Denver, Colorado, until the age of 17, when her mother died of breast cancer and she moved to Flatbush, Brooklyn, to live with an aunt. Reid graduated from Harvard University in 1991 with a concentration in film studies.
In a 2013 interview, Reid recalled that her college experience was a quick immersion into a demographically opposite place from where she lived, from a community that was eighty percent African American to a community that was six percent African American. She had to learn to live with roommates and people who were not her family. She paid her own bills and tuition while at Harvard and said it was a good learning and growing experience overall.
In 1997, Reid married Jason Reid, who later became a documentary film editor. The couple has three children.
Career
Reid began her journalism career in 1997, leaving New York and her job at a business consulting firm to begin working in South Florida for a WSVN Channel 7 morning show. She left journalism in 2003 to work with the group America Coming Together to oppose the Iraq War and President George W. Bush. She later returned to broadcasting as a talk radio host and worked on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
From 2006 to 2007, Reid was the co-host of Wake Up South Florida, a morning radio talk show broadcast from Radio One's then-Miami affiliate WTPS, alongside "James T" Thomas. She served as managing editor of The Grio (2011–2014), a political columnist for Miami Herald (2003–2015), and the editor of The Reid Report political blog (2000–2014).
From February 2014 to February 2015, Reid hosted her own MSNBC afternoon cable news show, The Reid Report. The show was canceled on February 19, 2015, and Reid was shifted to a new role as an MSNBC national correspondent. Beginning in May 2016, Reid hosted AM Joy, a political weekend-morning talk show on MSNBC, and was a frequent substitute for other MSNBC hosts, including Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. As of 2018, Reid's morning show on Saturdays averaged nearly one million weekly viewers.
Reid is the author of the book Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide, published by HarperCollins on September 8, 2015.
In 2015, Reid gave the inaugural Ida B. Wells lecture at Wake Forest University's Anna Julia Cooper Center.
In 2017, Reid ranked fourth among Twitter's top tweeted news outlets and most tweeted journalist at each outlet. The Daily Dot credited her in August of that year with coining the term KHive for supporters of Kamala Harris.
In July 2020, MSNBC announced that Reid would host The ReidOut, 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.
Reid also teaches a Syracuse University class in Manhattan exploring race, gender, and the media.
