Jesse Washington is a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker. Since 2015 he has been a senior writer for Andscape, formerly known as ESPN's The Undefeated, a platform for telling Black stories.
Jesse was born in Brooklyn to an artist father and social worker mother. His family moved to Poughkeepsie, NY, when he was in grade school, and he began his career covering sports for The Poughkeepsie Journal the summer after his freshman year at Yale University. The next summer he returned to the Journal and switched to local news. He got his first front-page byline on his 19th birthday, on a story about Louis Farrakhan’s visit to the home of Tawana Brawley.
While in college, Jesse became a DJ, pledged Kappa Alpha Psi, and played on the basketball team. He also worked for Business Week magazine, the Hartford Courant, The New York Times, and completed a summer internship with The Associated Press. He started a reporting job in AP’s Detroit bureau after graduating from Yale in 1992. A year later, Jesse transferred to AP’s national editing desk in New York City. In 1996, he became assistant bureau chief for New York City.
At the end of 1996, Jesse left AP to become managing editor of Vibe magazine. In 1998, he was named founding editor-in-chief of Blaze, a Vibe spinoff and the biggest music magazine launch ever. In the premiere issue, Jesse made news with an editorial describing how the artist Wyclef Jean threatened him with a gun over a negative album review. Jesse was hospitalized after another confrontation with a rapper angered over his coverage. He was fired in 1998 after a dispute with the owner of the magazine, who refused to publish Jesse's editorial about the acquittal of his friend in a high-profile Manhattan murder case.
Next, Jesse started a company with his father that published two coffee-table books, on the black artists Romare Bearden and Elizabeth Catlett. He co-founded the street basketball magazine Bounce and wrote eight cover stories for the Houston Press. In 2003, Jesse returned to the AP as Entertainment Editor, supervising a team in New York and Los Angeles covering film, television, music and celebrities. He made news in that position due to an experimental story describing how AP tried not to publish anything about Paris Hilton for one week, and again when news leaked that AP had prepared an obituary for Britney Spears.
Jesse's novel, Black Will Shoot, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2008. Later that year — three months before the election of the first black president — he began covering race for AP. In 2015, he moved to ESPN to help launch The Undefeated, which rebranded as Andscape in 2021. His work there has won two Best Feature awards from The National Association of Black Journalists, and he was voted one of the top columnists in America in 2019, 2020 and 2021 by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Past awards include a National Journalism Award from the Asian-American Journalists Association and Journalist of the Year from the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.
Jesse is co-author of I CAME AS A SHADOW, the autobiography of former Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson; and LUCKY ME, the forthcoming memoir of sports agent Rich Paul. In 2021, he was writer/producer of the NatGeo documentary MARCH ON WASHINGTON: KEEPERS OF THE DREAM; and directed his first documentary, BEARING WITNESS, about Darnella Frazier, the teen who filmed the murder of George Floyd. He is currently writer/producer of the forthcoming John Thompson documentary.
Jesse is married with four children and a member of the Baha'i Faith. He still gets buckets.
photo: Pam Ingram
Jesse was born in Brooklyn to an artist father and social worker mother. His family moved to Poughkeepsie, NY, when he was in grade school, and he began his career covering sports for The Poughkeepsie Journal the summer after his freshman year at Yale University. The next summer he returned to the Journal and switched to local news. He got his first front-page byline on his 19th birthday, on a story about Louis Farrakhan’s visit to the home of Tawana Brawley.
While in college, Jesse became a DJ, pledged Kappa Alpha Psi, and played on the basketball team. He also worked for Business Week magazine, the Hartford Courant, The New York Times, and completed a summer internship with The Associated Press. He started a reporting job in AP’s Detroit bureau after graduating from Yale in 1992. A year later, Jesse transferred to AP’s national editing desk in New York City. In 1996, he became assistant bureau chief for New York City.
At the end of 1996, Jesse left AP to become managing editor of Vibe magazine. In 1998, he was named founding editor-in-chief of Blaze, a Vibe spinoff and the biggest music magazine launch ever. In the premiere issue, Jesse made news with an editorial describing how the artist Wyclef Jean threatened him with a gun over a negative album review. Jesse was hospitalized after another confrontation with a rapper angered over his coverage. He was fired in 1998 after a dispute with the owner of the magazine, who refused to publish Jesse's editorial about the acquittal of his friend in a high-profile Manhattan murder case.
Next, Jesse started a company with his father that published two coffee-table books, on the black artists Romare Bearden and Elizabeth Catlett. He co-founded the street basketball magazine Bounce and wrote eight cover stories for the Houston Press. In 2003, Jesse returned to the AP as Entertainment Editor, supervising a team in New York and Los Angeles covering film, television, music and celebrities. He made news in that position due to an experimental story describing how AP tried not to publish anything about Paris Hilton for one week, and again when news leaked that AP had prepared an obituary for Britney Spears.
Jesse's novel, Black Will Shoot, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2008. Later that year — three months before the election of the first black president — he began covering race for AP. In 2015, he moved to ESPN to help launch The Undefeated, which rebranded as Andscape in 2021. His work there has won two Best Feature awards from The National Association of Black Journalists, and he was voted one of the top columnists in America in 2019, 2020 and 2021 by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Past awards include a National Journalism Award from the Asian-American Journalists Association and Journalist of the Year from the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.
Jesse is co-author of I CAME AS A SHADOW, the autobiography of former Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson; and LUCKY ME, the forthcoming memoir of sports agent Rich Paul. In 2021, he was writer/producer of the NatGeo documentary MARCH ON WASHINGTON: KEEPERS OF THE DREAM; and directed his first documentary, BEARING WITNESS, about Darnella Frazier, the teen who filmed the murder of George Floyd. He is currently writer/producer of the forthcoming John Thompson documentary.
Jesse is married with four children and a member of the Baha'i Faith. He still gets buckets.
photo: Pam Ingram