Sewing named Chronicle’s first Black news columnist
With a new incoming mayor in Houston, a state takeover of the city’s public schools and post-pandemic life taking shape throughout our region, change will no doubt be the norm for Houstonians in 2024. The Houston Chronicle is making a change to help readers make sense of it all.
Joy Sewing, a Houston native and veteran journalist, is taking on a new role as a news columnist. Chronicle readers have come to know Sewing for her takes on people — especially people of color — and cultural topics that make our city tick.
Sewing will be the first Black news columnist in the Chronicle’s 122-year history. She’ll report and opine on issues including social justice, politics, education, health care and inequity, with an eye toward getting readers to help her right wrongs and lift each other up.
Sewing also will tap into her personal experiences. A foster parent turned adoptive mother of two, she has written extensively about navigating the Texas childwelfare system. She was the Chronicle’s lead journalist covering Houston’s response to the murder of George Floyd. In 2021, she was honored by the Society for Features Journalism, which called her culture columns “touching works about humanity.”
Besides her work for the Chronicle, Sewing is the author of “Ava and the Prince: The Adventures of Two Rescue Pups,” a children’s book about her own rescue boxer dogs, and is the founder of Year Of Joy, a nonprofit that provides educational and cultural experiences to children from underserved communities, including an annual ice-skating party.
A former competitive ice skater, Sewing became Houston’s first African American figure skating coach while a college student.
She’s a National Press Foundation Spanish Language fellow, during which time she lived in Mexico; an Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies fellow in which she studied racism in Cuba; and a Poynter Institute Diverse Voices fellow.
She serves as vice president of the Houston Association of Black Journalists and has been adjunct journalism professor at her alma mater, the University of Houston.