Joy-Ann Reid got fired on her day off, but ultimately, it was for the best. Last February, the acclaimed author and journalist got word that The Reid Out, her highly rated, award-winning weeknight show, had been cancelled as part of a major shake-up with the network she now comically refers to as “the artist formerly known as MSNBC,” now known as MS Now.
However, aside from hosting a nightly news show, Reid had always had her hands in other projects, such as podcasting, writing books, and her production company, Image Lab Media Group, with her husband, Jason, since 2008. The latter had urged Reid to go independent, but the comforting allure of having a nice corporate job, especially one in cable news, made her hesitant.
“I was happy in my very comfortable kushy corporate media job and felt like I was taking chances that made it meaningful, that I was platforming stories like Gaza and other things that people wouldn’t have been able to get onto mainstream media otherwise,” Reid told EBONY. “I felt good about that, and felt like I was taking chances that were reasonable, and I thought it was fine. I didn’t think I was gonna get fired. I knew it was risky, but I figured I could fall back on my other skills.”
Then, the day came when Reid got news that The Reid Out was cancelled in a major shakeup with “the artist formerly known as MSNBC.” The network’s name, leadership, and lineup changed, but life goes on, and a few months later, The Joy Reid Show was available on YouTube. Reid is in good company. Some of her colleagues, such as Roland Martin, Don Lemon, Tiffany Cross, and others, who also held highly coveted jobs at major media outlets, experienced similar fates before her.
This is part of a larger and unsettling trend in media, where journalists, who are good at what they do, are being let go in droves from legacy media outlets that are shifting in favor of bothsidesism, and handling what historians agree is the fascist takeover of the United States with soft reporting, and stifling information that makes the government look bad. Billionaires are buying conglomerates and effectively neutering the truth.
However, legacy media’s luminary casualties are thriving independently and have a camaraderie that makes the laborious work of independent journalism easier.
“We cross-pollinate, we cross-post with each other. It’s really great because these are the things you can’t do in network and cable, because those are your rivals. I could never have interviewed Abby Philip because she was on another Network now,” Reid said. “So, we can work with people who are from quote-unquote rival networks because none of us are rivals in independent media, we’re all out here fighting the same fight, which is to preserve journalism, to tell the truth, to remove the corporate filter, unfiltered the way people deserve to hear it and to put journalism first, not some other bullshit corporate interest that has to do with currying favor with the president.”
What’s happening with the consolidation of media, most recently illustrated by the Paramount-Warner Bros deal, in the United States mirrors what has happened in other storied oligarchies around the world. Reid points out Russia, Korea, and Hungary as examples. It’s oligarchs using the media to court fascist leaders and to make more money through their other businesses.
“This is an oligarchy. We are already in an autocracy, and Americans just need to wake up and face it. There are no oligarchs in Russia who care about having newspaper, radio, and television journalism. They care about currying favor with Vladimir Putin and making, whatever enterprises they own, do that,” Reid said. “Legacy media is owned by oligarchs who really don’t care about journalism. They care about Donald Trump. They have one person they need to please every day, and that’s him.”
Image: courtesy of Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn
Independent life means there’s less money and less people power to produce shows, but Reid and her husband’s small but mighty team have been churning out The Joy Reid Show live, three nights a week. Joy also contributes to her Substack and generally enjoys social media as a free agent, which she wasn’t able to do under the corporate overlords.
In the difference that a year has made, Reid hasn’t skipped a beat, with nearly half a million subscribers on YouTube, and 206,000 subscribers on Substack alone, plus more projects on the way from her production company, but that doesn’t mean it has been easy. The best thing that anyone concerned about the state of media can do is follow the voices they believe in.
“Follow the people you care about. It’s not enough to just say, ‘I really loved you on MSNBC.’ That’s nice, but you have to follow the platform I’m on now if you really want to continue to hear my voice,” Reid said. “A very simple way to do it that doesn’t cost you is to follow me on YouTube and follow me on Substack. Those algorithms respond to it, and people really don’t realize the power of that, just following the people that you support.”
In the event that what Reid refers to as “enshitification,” a term she couldn’t say on cable, that refers to what happens when social media platforms —think Twitter, TikTok, etc—that were once great sources of fellowship and information get bought, overrun by racist trolls and disinformation, and subsequently buried, happens, we’ll just keep migrating to the next most effective platform.
“There used to be a MySpace. We don’t have MySpace anymore, but what I am committed to do what a lot of us in independent media are committed to doing, is to keep telling the truth,” Reid said. “Even if we have to switch platforms, then we’ll keep switching platforms to make sure we bring you the information that you deserve and the journalism that you need and that you critically must have.”