Joel Anderson talks challenges and triumphs in navigating the field of journalism

Award-winning journalist Joel Anderson said reporting on the unrest in Ferguson changed the direction of his career.

Anderson’s work, which he discussed with students in Wallis Annenberg Hall Tuesday, started with a focus on sports. The former TCU football player always knew he wanted to write. He noted one pivotal moment being when he found himself at a bookstore in Texas, where a book of essays altered his perception of writing.

“I just never read anybody … talking about sports like that,” Anderson said. “I came up with this saying: ‘If I can’t play in the Super Bowl, I want to cover one.’”

Despite his love for sports coverage, Anderson said he has always “had a foot in news.” He started his career covering city hall meetings for the Tampa Bay Times, before an editor encouraged him to apply to be a senior sports reporter for BuzzFeed.

He was there for just six months before BuzzFeed shut down their sports section, and he was given the opportunity to try a different type of reporting.

After unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown was wrongfully shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in 2014, the city of Ferguson, Missouri, broke out in uproar. Anderson was sent to cover the story.

Since then, Anderson’s widened scope has allowed him to embrace new mediums. Last year he hosted season six of Slate’s “Slow Burn” podcast about the 1992 L.A. Riots. Part of his motivation was the opportunity to tell the relevant story of police violence in a new way, including the use of archival audio. He said the story was very personal, and something he’d been wanting to do for years.

“It was really, just probably the hardest I’ve ever had to work in my life, but it was also the most gratifying work I’ve ever done,” Anderson said. “I think we did a good job.”

Anderson faced racial struggles within his own life, he told the audience Tuesday. He discussed how he grew up in a Black neighborhood but was sent to a predominantly white school, where he was often the only Black student in the classroom.

“I have a little son right now… and I’m already thinking about how I can prevent him from being the only one in the room, in his neighborhood,” Anderson said. “I got to arrange my life in such a way that he never feels alone in class.”

Anderson said he strives to connect current racial issues to the stories he has covered in the past and seeks to make sense of the world through his reporting as best he can.