Joy Reid Biography

Joy Reid is a liberal political analyst and MSNBC national correspondent in the United States. She was named one of the political experts “who have been in the forefront of cable-news conversations this election season” by The Hollywood Reporter in 2016.

Joy Reid Age

Reid is 53 years old as of 2021. He was born on 8 December 1968 in Brooklyn, New York, United States.

Joy Reid Height

Reid stands at a height of 5 feet 9 inches.

Joy Reid Family

Reid’s father was a college professor and nutritionist from Guyana, and her mother was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her parents met in graduate school at the Iowa City’s University of Iowa. Reid has one sister and one brother and was raised as a Methodist. Her father was an engineer who spent much of his time away from the family; her parents finally split, and her father went to the Congo. She spent much of her childhood in Denver, Colorado, until she was 17 years old, when her mother died of breast cancer and she relocated to Flatbush, Brooklyn, to live with an aunt. Reid earned a bachelor’s degree in cinema studies from Harvard University in 1991.

Joy Reid Husband and Children

Reid married Jason Reid in 1997, who went on to work as a documentary film editor. They have three children together.

Joy Reid Education

Reid said in a 2013 interview that her undergraduate experience was a fast immersion into a demographically opposite location from where she grew up, going from an 80% African American community to a 6% African American community. She had to adjust to living with roommates and individuals who were not related to her. She paid her own bills and tuition while at Harvard, and she described the experience as a positive learning and growth opportunity.

Joy Reid Weight Loss Surgery

Reid has lost a lot of weight although she has not shared her weight loss journey.

Joy Reid Career

Reid began her journalism career in 1997 when she left New York and her job at a business consulting firm to work for a WSVN Channel 7 morning show in South Florida. She left journalism in 2003 to work with the anti-war group America Coming Together to fight President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. She later worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and returned to broadcasting as a talk radio personality.

Joy Reid Photo
Joy Reid Photo

Reid co-hosted Wake Up South Florida, a morning radio talk show broadcast from Radio One’s then-Miami station WTPS, with “James T” Thomas from 2006 to 2007. She was the managing editor of The Grio, a political columnist for the Miami Herald, and the editor of the political blog The Reid Report from 2000 to 2014. Reid held her own MSNBC afternoon cable news show, The Reid Report, from February 2014 to February 2015. Reid was promoted to an MSNBC national correspondent after the show was canceled on February 19, 2015. Since May 2016, Reid has presented AM Joy, an MSNBC political weekend morning talk show, and has filled in for other MSNBC anchors such as Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. Reid’s Saturday morning show had approximately one million weekly viewers as of 2018.

Reid is the author of Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide, which was released on September 8, 2015, by HarperCollins. Reid delivered Wake Forest University’s Anna Julia Cooper Center’s inaugural Ida B. Wells lecture in 2015. Reid was the fourth most tweeted journalist and fourth most tweeted news outlet on Twitter in 2017. In August of that year, The Daily Dot credited her with coining the word KHive for Kamala Harris supporters.

Reid will host The ReidOut, a new Washington-based weeknight commentary show, in the 7 p.m. Eastern time slot vacated by Hardball host Chris Matthews’ departure in March 2020, making her cable’s first Black female primetime anchor. Reid also teaches a race, gender, and media class at Syracuse University in Manhattan.

Joy Reid Controversies

Reid’s blog postings from 2005 to 2007 were made public in April 2018. Reid said she didn’t make the posts and wanted lawyers to look into if her blog or archives had been hacked. According to The Washington Post, Reid recommended the film Loose Change to her readers and remarked of Israel, “God is not a real estate salesman.” Joy Reid issued a formal apology for her previous articles in June 2018, adding, “I’m a better person today than I was over a decade ago.” MSNBC reaffirmed its support for Reid, saying that while some of his blog entries were “clearly vicious and hurtful,” they were “not reflective of the colleague and friend we have known for the previous seven years.”