Janele Hill speaking at the 8th annual Norm Brewer First Amendment Lecture on March 12.
The University of Memphis Department of Journalism and Strategic Media hosted the 8th annual Norm Brewer First Amendment Lecture on March 12 and featured award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic Jemele Hill.
Hill is nationally known for her work with ESPN, most notably co-anchoring “SportsCenter†with Michael Smith. She remained on campus for most of the afternoon spending time giving interviews to student journalist and lecturing in a few classes before she took the podium later in the evening to discuss her career in the sports journalism world.
Hill, a Detroit native, has been a journalist for 21 years. She started her journalism career as a high school apprentice for the Detroit Free Press, where she met University of Memphis and Hardin Chair Professor Otis Sanford and other journalists. While at the Free Press, she became a member of her local National Association of Black Journalist chapter from a recommendation by the facilitator of her apprenticeship. Hill said that year spent with the Free Press and NABJ served as the foundation for her career.
“The program is one that turned out to be life-changing because there were two events that happened at once: one being a part of that apprenticeship, and the other part was that the National Association of Black Journalist convention was in Detroit the same year I joined in 1992,†Hill said.
She received the Journalist of the Year award from NABJ at its national convention last year in Detroit, which she said brought her “full circle.â€
“I was an outlier in the sense that I knew what I wanted to do when I was in high school,†Hill said. “I knew I wanted to be sports editor. I started working for my high school newspaper. I went to college and worked for my college newspaper and had five internships.â€
Hill spoke to a crowd of UofM students and faculty as well as local media about her career and life experiences.
While her focus from a young age was to primarily work in print journalism, she said the evolution of today’s multimedia world has changed that.
“At that time in journalism, you could focus on one thing,†Hill said. “If you just wanted to be a broadcaster, that’s what you did. If you just wanted to be a newspaper journalist, that’s what you did.â€Â
After her college graduation, she worked as general assignment reporter for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. She primarily covered the Atlantic Costal Conference men’s and women’s sports for two years. After that, Hill returned to the Detroit Free Press, where she worked as a beat writer for her alma mater Michigan State. After six years there, she transitioned from the Detroit Free Press to the Orlando Sentinel, which she said she had two reasons for.
“One, they had a good reputation for developing young writers,†Hill said. “Two, the opportunity with the columnist I knew was going to open the right doors… The doors were much broader if you wanted to be a columnist, and I came from the Free Press, where the was a guy named Mitch Albom… who’s one of the best sports columnists ever.â€Â
After a year as a columnist at the Sentinel, she was scouted by an ESPN executive to fill the role of Skip Bayless as a writer for ESPN.com, a process she said was “completely accidental.†Within a few months, she drew attention from colleagues who suggested her trying broadcast journalism.
“I did not take it very seriously, so it allowed me to be myself,†Hill said.
Throughout the next few years, she began to see her role at ESPN as more than 50 percent television. In September 2018, she left ESPN to serve her current role as a writer for The Atlantic and lives in Los Angeles. Throughout her lecture, she discussed many topics, such as issues revolving the NCAA, NFL, NBA and the political spectrum, and even made light of the breaking news trade of Pro-Bowl Wide Receiver Odell Beckham Jr. At the end of the lecture, she answered questions and gave insight to young journalists, entrepreneurs and students.
