User Profile

Jesse J. Holland is a nationally recognized journalist and media personality from Washington, D.C., who for years has combined his work as a political reporter for the world's largest news organization, The Associated Press, with a love of African American history and news.

In addition to being responsible for coverage of the confirmation process of the last three Supreme Court justice candidates _ Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and failed nominee Harriet Miers _ Holland has written hundreds of stories about African American politics, history and news for newspapers like The New York Times in New York City, N.Y., and The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., Columbia, S.C. and Albany, N.Y.

His work has been recognized with several awards, including his being the only reporter named to Presstime Magazine's Top 20 Under 40 in 1997, the youngest person named as one of the University of Mississippi's Top 50 Journalism Graduates and the recipient of the 1996 Associated Press Managing Editors Association John L. Dougherty Excellence Award.

He has lectured about African Americans in politics and the media at the Government Policy Institute at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., Loyola College in Baltimore, Md., and the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.

He also appears as a regular guest on African American and Washington political topics on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, ABC's News Now and WHUT-TV's Evening Exchange with Kojo Nnamdi, as well as being the former host of The Wednesday Agenda radio talk show on WUMS-FM in Oxford, Miss., and former guest on the Inside Albany political television show in Albany, N.Y. and WIS-TV's Newswatch in Columbia, S.C.

In addition, he works with the Washington Press Club Foundation, an organization that promotes and provides funding for aspiring female and minority journalists as well as chronicling the history of women journalists in Washington, D.C. He successfully led the WPCF's major fundraising function, the annual Congressional Dinner, as dinner co-chairman in 2005 and 2006, as well as serving as the organization's vice president in 2006-07.

In 2004, Holland became the first African American ever elected to the Congressional Standing Committee of Correspondents, a congressionally created committee of journalists elected by their Washington, D.C. peers to represent the Congressional Press Corps in front of the Senate and the House of Representatives. As the committee's second-in-command, Holland also helped decide which journalists can be credentialed for daily access to the U.S. Capitol.

Holland also is a member of the National Press Club, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Washington Association of Black Journalists and one of the creators of the former newspaper comic strip, Hippie and the Black Guy. He is also a co-founder of two NABJ chapters, the University of Mississippi Association of Black Journalists and the South Carolina Midlands Association of Black Journalists.

Holland hails from Holly Springs, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi with a Liberal Arts degree with an emphasis in journalism. While at Ole Miss, he also was only the second African American editor of the daily campus newspaper, The Daily Mississippian. He now lives in the historically African-American section of Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Hill neighborhood with his wife Carol.

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