Joy Reid Make Herstory with Prime Time on MSNBC
BY STUART EMMRICH, VOGUE
On July 20, Joy Reid, who has been with MSNBC since 2011, will take over the cable network’s 7 p.m. weeknight time slot, officially replacing Chris Matthews and the long-running Hardball.
With the new show, to be called The ReidOut, the 51-year-old Reid, who currently hosts AM Joy, a political weekend-morning talk show, will become the first woman of color to anchor a prime-time news show on MSNBC and the only Black woman currently anchoring a prime-time news show on any of the major networks. The last Black woman to host a prime-time network news show was Gwen Ifill, who, along with Judy Woodruff, was a co-anchor on the PBS NewsHour until her death at age 61 in 2016. (Several Black women hold prominent anchor spots on daytime news programs, of course, including Gayle King at CBS, Robin Roberts at ABC, and Harris Faulkner at Fox News.)
“I’m honored and thankful for this opportunity,” Reid said in a statement issued by the network on Thursday. “I’ll always be proud of the work we did on AM Joy by pushing the envelope and tackling pragmatic conversations. I’m eager to carry that same energy into the 7 p.m. hour where we can continue to build on bringing in diverse, smart, and accomplished voices to the table on topics that are important to our viewers.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Reid said she planned to address racism, police brutality, and other “cataclysmic social issues we need to reckon with.” Said Reid: “I am a Black mom, a Black woman, a Black daughter. I am also a journalist who can conceptualize that pain from a unique point of view. Every day I’m in this job, I’m very conscious of that responsibility to make that collective voice heard. It’s unique to do that as a Black woman.”
Reid told The Washington Post, that her new high-profile assignment was “pretty overwhelming,” adding, “It is a huge responsibility.”
Reid takes over the 7 p.m. slot, ending a lengthy hiatus following Chris Matthews’s abrupt resignation from the network in March, after a series of statements that were considered insensitive and allegations of workplace harassment. Reid was one of several fill-in hosts over that period.
Of course, Reid has a bit of her own complicated history, after being called out in 2018 for statements on an old blog of hers that critics called homophobic. After first denying she had made that statements, saying her blog had been hacked, Reid later apologized. “I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me,” Reid told AM Joy viewers. “But I can definitely understand, based on things I have tweeted, have written in the past, why some people don’t believe me,” she said. “For that, I am truly, truly sorry.”
Asked by the Times this week about that incident, Reid replied, “It’s two years ago, so I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about that old blog. What I genuinely believe is that I truly care about the LGBT people in my own life. I care about being a good ally, a good person, and making sure that my voice is authentic, that I can make a difference.”
On MSNBC, Reid will now lead into a prime-time lineup that includes Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell, and she will do so with a brand-new competitor on the horizon. Earlier this week, CNBC, a sister network, said that it had hired the former Fox News anchor Shepard Smith to host a new nightly news program at 7 p.m. That show will launch in the fall, the network said.
Reference: Vogue