Josina Anderson is a sports writer with the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network in the United States (ESPN). She discovered her calling as an announcer for her high school basketball team, having established a passion for athletics early in her childhood. She also took up track and field sprinting and eventually enrolled as a student-athlete at the University of North Carolina. She interned with WTEM on WPGC-FM radio’s ‘The Tony Kornheiser Show’ and ‘The Donnie Simpson Morning Show’ before earning her first job as a sports news anchor/reporter at the CBS affiliate in Coos Bay, Oregon, after graduation. She’s worked for Fox 31, Showtime, and local cable sports shows in her home state of Washington since then. In 2009, Anderson won a Heartland Emmy for her reporting about quarterback John Dutton and his wife Terina’s trip to Ethiopia to adopt their son Miki. When she joined ESPN in 2011, she realized a lifetime dream of becoming a national sports reporter.
Career of Josina
Josina Anderson’s career took off in the right way when she was employed by the CBS affiliate news station in Coos Bay in 2000, after a good year interning for numerous reputable radio news shows. She was one of the few journalists ever recruited so soon after graduating from college. She was already thinking about the next stage in her career, despite her more-than-decent new position, and she was motivated by ambition and a healthy desire to succeed. She made copies of her resume and tapes of her work to send all across the country.
None of them, however, led to a better employment opportunity than the one she had at the time. So, after almost a year in Oregon, she returned to Washington, D.C. It was difficult to adjust to life in the capital for the first several months. She had to move out of her parents’ house and go back to work as a personal trainer, using her track background. She’d charge her clients $100 for track training during the day, and she’d cover the city’s numerous sports teams (Redskins, Wizards, and Mystics) as well as Georgetown and University of Maryland basketball teams for local cable news shows at night.
She joined Fox 31 in Denver, Colorado, in 2005. She had auditioned for the same position at the station two years prior but had been unsuccessful. She spent the next six years with them, breaking several major stories, including NFL players testing positive for steroids (October 2008), NFL stars Ricky Williams and Travis Henry testing positive for marijuana (July 2008), and Charles Woodson and the Packers agreeing to a contract extension (July 2008). (September 2010).
She was a correspondent for Showtime’s Inside the NFL during her last year with Fox. In 2011, she accepted a job offer from ESPN and relocated to Chicago, beginning a new chapter in her career. In 2014, she received a Salute to Excellence award from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) for ‘Outside the Lines and The Sporting Life: “Chamique Holdsclaw”‘ alongside Greg Amante, Brandon Lowe, Carolyn Hong, and Dwayne Bray for ‘Outside the Lines and The Sporting Life: “Chamique Holdsclaw.”
Scandals & Controversies
Josina Anderson was widely chastised for her on-air revelation in August 2014 about former St. Louis Rams defensive end Michael Sam’s showering practices. She was reporting from St. Louis, where Sam had survived the initial round of layoffs, and said she had been told by an unnamed player that Sam, the NFL’s first openly gay player, would not shower until all of his teammates had done so.
Following the incident, both she and ESPN were widely chastised. From Sam’s teammates to LGBT activists to other journalists, everyone was outraged by the section. Jeff Fisher, the Rams’ coach, went so far as to label it “fabricated,” accusing Anderson of being “unethical” and “unprofessional.” ESPN, for its part, first defended the segment until issuing a public apology.
Personal Experiences of Josina
Josina Anderson was born in Washington, D.C., to Lloyd and Yasmin Anderson on August 15, 1978. In addition to her, the Andersons have a son who works as a film producer. She attended Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she worked as a Blazers announcer. She subsequently went on to the University of North Carolina, where she competed in track and field events in the 200 and 400 meters.
At the AAU Junior Olympics, she even earned a gold medal. She had back-to-back internships with two of the most iconic radio shows in the US capital, ‘The Tony Kornheiser Show’ on WTEM and ‘The Donnie Simpson Morning Show’ on WPGC-FM radio, both in 1997, after graduating with a degree in Exercise and Sports Science. Anderson is also a former ballet dancer who has performed with the Dance Theater of Harlem and the Pennsylvania Ballet. She has also performed with the American Youth Ballet as a soloist.
Estimated Net Worth
Josina Anderson has a net worth of $2 million dollars as of 2022. The days were gone when only men controlled the sporting arena and women did not have equal possibilities and chances as their male counterparts.