About Joe Barber
Joe Barber, a native Washingtonian, has worked as an entertainment critic and pop culture journalist for a number of national and Washington based broadcast and print outlets for over 20 years. He currently serves as the Entertainment Editor for WTOP-AM/FM, Metropolitan Washington’s top rated all-news radio station and wtopnews.com, the station’s Internet site.
He can be heard there on Friday mornings doing live movie reviews, and Saturday mornings presenting live segments covering movies, theater, video/DVD releases and the club and concert scene. His “Quick Picks” features airing on Saturdays, recommends the best films and plays to see, videos to rent and concerts to attend during the weekend. His Sunday features, Barber’s Best Bets spotlights the best material in each area, as well as previewing the concert scene for the week ahead.
On television, Joe has been a regular panelist on WETA-TV’s award winning weekly arts review and discussion program, “Around Town” since 1994. He is also featured on WHUT-TVs (Howard University’s PBS station) long running talk show, “Evening Exchange with Kojo Nmamdi” presenting a regular segment on movies and the movie business with Tim Gordon, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of reelimagesmagazine.com, a website that covers popular culture from an African American perspective.
Joe has written a weekly arts column, “The Current Scene” for the “Current” chain of Washington based weekly newspapers since 1998. He recently began serving as the movie and video reviewer for “Outside Pitch,” a bi-weekly entertainment and lifestyle publication in Baltimore, Maryland. Written versions of “Barber’s Best Bets” appear on wtopnews.com and are updated weekly. He also serves as a theatre critic and senior writer for reelimagesmagazine.com.
Joe has been a frequent guest on a number of popular radio programs, including ESPN Radio’s “Tony Kornheiser Show,” West wood One/Mutual Radio’s “Jim Bohannon Show,” and WAMU-FM’s and National Public Radio’s Kojo Nmamdi and Derek McGinty Show His television work include appearances on NBC-TV’s “Weekend Today” where he presented a feature based on his video column for the Washington Post’s “Fast Forward “Magazine called “Back of the Rack” as well as CNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “Nine News at Five with J.C. Hayward”
Joe’s partnership with Bill Henry as “The Movie Guys” began in 1993, when they started appearing together on “The Derek McGinty Show” Under that banner, they’ve appeared on the “Fox Morning News,” “Live Line with Howard Kurtz” on WRQX-FM (MIXX 107.3) and at a number of Borders Book and Music stores in the Baltimore/Washington area. They’ve appeared on several editions of WNVC-TV’s “World Cinema Forum,” previewing and discussing various festivals at the AFI theaters. They have also served as host for a number of events sponsored by the Washington DC Film Society, the American Film Institute, the Avalon Theatre and Visions Cinema/Bistro Lounge (now Visions Bistro Noir).
