Flo Anthony, the entertainment journalist who broke ground as the first Black woman in the New York Post's Page Six and sports departments, died on Thursday, 6 August, after a battle with cancer. She was 74. Her death was confirmed to Variety by Jack Hirsch, the biographer of her husband, former light-heavyweight boxing champion Michael Spinks (Variety).

Born Florence Anthony on 4 March 1952 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she graduated from Howard University and began her working life not in newsrooms but in boxing. She was a publicist to fighters including Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Mike McCallum and Spinks himself, before pivoting to journalism in 1985. That year she joined the New York Post as an agate clerk — a junior role compiling sports statistics — in the sports department, where she became the first woman on staff. She later moved to the paper's entertainment and Page Six departments, again as the first Black woman to hold the position.

At the Post, Anthony broke hundreds of celebrity stories, many centring on the marriages of figures such as Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Mike Tyson and Robin Givens. She went on to become the first Black woman to write for a supermarket tabloid, penning the "Eye on the Stars" column for the National Examiner. Her own column, "Go With the Flo," became a fixture in Black media, and she served as editor-in-chief of both Black Noir and Black Elegance magazines (Harlem World Magazine). She was also a longtime columnist for the Amsterdam News (Amsterdam News).

Anthony's reach extended well beyond print. She co-hosted E! Network's "The Gossip Show" for six seasons and appeared regularly on "Inside Edition," "The Insider" and "Entertainment Tonight." Her television credits also spanned CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and Court TV. She was a regular contributor to TV One programmes including "Unsung Hollywood" and "Life After," and appeared on talk shows hosted by Joan Rivers, Ricki Lake and Rolonda Watts. As recently as 2025, she featured in CNN's three-part documentary series "American Prince: JFK Jr."

Through her company, Dottie Media Group, Anthony produced syndicated radio shows "Gossip on the Go With Flo" and "Flo Anthony's Big Apple Buzz," keeping her voice on the air alongside her columns and television appearances.

Anthony married her longtime partner, Michael Spinks, in January of this year. Funeral arrangements were pending as of the announcement of her death (Amsterdam News / Facebook).

What made Anthony's career unusual was not any single scoop but the number of doors she walked through first — in sports reporting, in tabloid journalism, in syndicated radio and on national television — often as the only Black woman in the room. She kept working across all of them at once, right up to a CNN documentary appearance within the past year.