Whatever Happened To Your Favorite MTV VJs?

Back in the glory days of MTV, when you could still catch a music video playing no matter what time of day, the channel's VJs (or "video jockey") were a ubiquitous presence. Many of them were there for some of music history's most iconic moments, presenting from the front lines at events like the Video Music Awards, the Spring Break Houses, and more.

Although they're not quite as visible or influential anymore, many of them are still making their way in various fields. Let's check in on some of those familiar faces and see what they've been up to.

VJ and host of TRL and The Hot Zone Ananda Lewis made quite a name for herself when she decided to speak openly to YM Magazine in 1998 about going celibate for six months. Her career at MTV took off, with The New York Times describing her in a 1999 profile as "the hip-hop generation's reigning It Girl... a woman whose looks and attitude have made her perpetually in demand at clubs and parties." After leaving MTV in 2001, Lewis went on to to start her own talk show called The Ananda Lewis Show, which unfortunately only lasted for one season.

According to Lewis' IMDb page, she worked briefly as a correspondent for The Insider in 2004, and also had a spot on the celebrity version of The Mole. For the most part, however, Ananda has gone off the TV radar, but you can check in with her at her Twitter page if you're so inclined.

Since she moved on from MTV, VJ Tabitha Soren went from appearing in front of the camera as a reporter for MTV News to working (and excelling) behind it. Soren realized a serious passion for photography and she's been making quite the second career of it. After accompanying her husband (and author of the best-selling book Moneyball) Michael Lewis on assignment, Soren started shooting baseball players. The project took on a life of its own, and even ended up as a book in 2017. According to KCRW, she also "won a prestigious journalism fellowship at Stanford (the Knight), and had three kids"

You can see more of Soren's work at her personal page.

According to ex-VJ John Norris' LinkedIn profile, he served as a correspondent for MTV News for 12 years, during which he interviewed the likes of Madonna, Whitney Houston, George Michael, R.E.M, and many, many more. He was rumored to have been a victim of MTV layoffs in 2008.

After working as a correspondent for CBS' Sunday Morning and 48 Hours, he briefly joined Fuse TV's Fuse News as a supervising producer, as reported by the New York Times in 2013. Since then, he's gone on to write for numerous outlets, including Vice, V Magazine, Billboard, and MTV.com.

For more Norris, you can also catch him on his Twitter page.

Arguably one of the quirkiest VJs of all time, the towering perennial fan favorite Jesse Camp (born Josiah A. Camp III) memorably beat Dave Holmes in MTV's 1998 Wanna be a VJ competition. Crowned the winner, he was offered a contract to be a VJ and for the next year appeared as a co-host of TRL.

After his contract was up, Camp kept working with his band and tried to get his music career off the ground with a 1999 album Jesse & the 8th Street Kidz (music video here), but unfortunately it never really reached cruising altitude. He returned briefly to MTV in 2016 as host of a segment called "TBTRL" on the channel's Snapchat Discover, where, according to MTV.com, "viewers can see clips of musicians from back in the day."

For some recent Camp-y antics, you can watch what happened when The New York Post caught him on camera discussing celebrity gossip in 2016; he's also still partying and posting regularly on his Instagram account.

The curly-haired, glasses-wearing Kennedy (real name Lisa Kennedy Montgomery) was a regular, occasionally controversial presence during her stint as an MTV VJ from 1992 to 1997. Her career has since taken a turn for the political, and she's now the host of a Fox Business Network primetime show aptly titled Kennedy.

According to her official bio, Kennedy joined FBN after hosting programs on Fox Reality Channel and the Gameshow Network. Kennedy explained to Cosmopolitan magazine in 2016 that she's a libertarian, and the show is "a quirky political talk show where I get to keep an eye on people who are inhibiting others' freedom and talk with interesting people about subjects that we find mutually fascinating, like music, parenting, economic liberty ..."

In 2013, Kennedy also published a behind-the-scenes memoir about her time at MTV and the pivotal music moments she witnessed and sometimes played a part in. You can keep up with all her going-ons at her Twitter page.

Dave Holmes may have come in second place to Jesse Camp in the first Wanna be a VJ competition, but he still managed to score a gig as a regular co-host on TRL and other MTV shows, like Say What? Karaoke, until 2001. After coming out in 2002, Holmes recorded a video for the "It Gets Better" project and candidly discussed his experiences being gay in multiple interviews.

These days, he's a writer-at-large for Esquire and Vulture, where he writes about politics and pop culture. He's been acting a little (perhaps most memorably on Reno 911) and has appeared as a host on FX, E!, and VH1. For even more Holmes, you can turn to his highly personal 2016 memoir entitled Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs, and also his Instagram feed and Twitter page.