Baseball

A graduate of Pepperdine University, Housley played on the 1992 National Champion College World Series baseball team, and in 1992 and 1993 played collegiate summer baseball with the Harwich Mariners of the Cape Cod Baseball League.^[3][4][5] He was also a Junior Olympic All-American baseball player as a pitcher and hitter.^[6] He received a double bachelor's degree in political science and telecommunications from Pepperdine University. He was a two-time media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and received his MA in international relations from the University of Arizona.^[7] Prior to his career in television, Housley played professional baseball. He was drafted by the Montreal Expos, and played for both the Milwaukee Brewers and the Detroit Tigers minor league organizations, pitching in 97 games.

Journalism

Prior to joining Fox News, Housley served as a reporter at KTXL-TV (Fox) in Sacramento, California from 1999 to 2001. He received an array of awards, including the 2001 Regional Associated Press Reporting Award and a Regional Emmy Award. In addition, he was the lead reporter for KFTY-TV from 1998 to 2000, an independent station in Santa Rosa, California. Prior to that, Housley was a reporter for KCPM-TV (NBC) in Chico, California from 1997 to 1998, where he won a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Award for capturing a wanted 50,000-acre arsonist. Housley began his career as a reporter for KVON and KVYN radio stations in his native Napa, where he developed and produced newscasts.

Housley reported during the Iraq War from Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Jordan and the Persian Gulf. He has spent time covering the War on terror from Pakistan and in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He was on air in Kuwait when the first missiles and warning sirens began on March 20, 2003, and earlier that month boarded ships in the Persian Gulf along with U.S. Special Forces as they looked for illegal shipments of weapons into Iraq. His reports also came via video phone from the deck of USS Milius a destroyer that would eventually fire the first missiles into Iraq to begin the war.^[8][9]

During his tenure, Housley was also the Fox News lead reporter for Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2003 campaign and has covered six hurricanes, including Katrina and Rita, and filed more than 45 stories from Mexico–United States border.^[10]

In December 2005, Housley was one of the reporters selected to witness the execution of murderer Stanley Williams at San Quentin State Prison.^[11]

Housley also reported live on the shooting at the Los Angeles International Airport, the suspension of New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, and the aftermath of the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 live from the San Francisco Airport. Previously, he covered the 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire, Colorado^[8] In April 2013, he secured an exclusive interview with a special operations whistleblower regarding the 2012 Benghazi attack on September 11.

Housley has covered stories in six Latin American countries: Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador, Colombia, Mexico, Chile and Guyana (reporting on the "war on drugs" and interviewing the Sandinista National Liberation Front leader Daniel Ortega). He was also live on air when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez shut down Latin American broadcaster RCTV, and spent two weeks covering the unrest.^[12]

He received a master's degree in international security from the University of Arizona in 2014.^[13]

Business owner

After a career in baseball and news, Housley helped to found the family's winery, Century Oak in 2000. Housley's family had been involved in the wine grape growing business since 1969. The winery opened a tasting room in Napa named Housley Napa Valley in 2020.^[26][27] Housely and his wife established a Coffeehouse named Barnhouse Napa Brews on the same block in Napa in 2021.