Joy Sewing becomes first Black news columnist at the Houston Chronicle
The newspaper has been in existence for 122 years.
Veteran journalist Joy Sewing has been named the first Black news columnist in the Houston Chronicle’s 122-year history, the newspaper recently announced.
The Chronicle said Sewing, a Houston native, will write about, among other topics, social justice, politics, and inequity in a city with a heavy minority population. People of color make up two-thirds of Houston’s population, with Black residents (23.1%) and Hispanic residents (48.3%) the largest ethnic groups.
Her biography notes she worked at the New York Post and Kansas City Star. She served as a correspondent at People magazine and freelanced at prominent publications, including Money.
In 1997, she studied Spanish in Mexico while on a National Press Foundation fellowship. She also studied racism in Cuba in 2010.
She was one of 15 journalists (out of 150) selected nationwide to participate in the Poynter Insitute’s Power of Diverse Voices: Writing Workshops for Journalists of Color, a four-day fellowship.
In addition to her journalism accomplishments, Sewing has been lauded for her efforts for children in adoption and foster care. She was a foster mother who adopted two children and, along the way, wrote about her experience with the Texas child welfare system.
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She also founded the nonprofit Year of Joy, which provides “joyful educational, cultural and confidence-building experiences for children from Houston’s underserved communities,” according to its website. The program has served more than 1,000 children between the ages of 5 and 16, the website said.
Sewing has won several awards for her journalism and community work, including the Houston Humanitarian Award in 2017 and the Houston Association of Black Journalists’ Trailblazer Award in 2023.
Sewing, according to her LinkedIn profile, joined the Chronicle in 2004 as a fashion editor/writer. She became a culture columnist at the newspaper in 2020 before taking on her newest role.
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