Ever since ESPN's Jemele Hill called Donald Trump "a white supremacist," the writing was on the wall with the sports media Goliath. The spilt ended up amicable, but only after a suspension and her removal from SportsCenter (where he friend and co-collaborator, Michael Smith, was gone a month later). That's to say nothing of the colleagues who directly and indirectly disparaged her reasoned critiques of 45. Oh yeah, that Swami Sez voicemail wasn't too great, either, but that was well before Hill fully immersed herself in the culture wars by speaking her mind.
Now, in her first interview since the split with ESPN, Hill tells The Hollywood Reporter why the parting with the Worldwide Leader has given her more freedom. Not to get another job, which is what ESPN was at the end, but to perform work that's more calling than vocation.
"So much has happened in the last year that I felt like this is as an appropriate time as ever to spread my wings in different ways that I hadn’t really thought of before, or that I knew were possible," she says. "I guess I was going through major FOMO—fear of missing out. There’s a wider playground that I can dabble in, and places where the discomfort is okay. I wasn’t going to be able to be happy with myself if I didn’t adhere to this calling that’s beckoning me right now."
The 42-year-old journalist and writer was careful to spell out that the decision to leave wasn't simply a bad time for her professionally, but a conscious decision to pivot towards the political and athletic enmeshment that's happening in the age where the President of the United States routinely brings sports into the realm of politics.
“I’ve been through difficult swings in my career," she says. But leaving "was about the fact that I can’t commit to something that I know isn’t right for me, that I know isn’t going to bring out the best in me, and that I know is going to be kind of a waste of time.”
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Part of that calling is her new gig as a staff writer at The Atlantic, which she starts on Monday. Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg tells THR she's "a Roman candle," who is "fearless" and "energetic." He also seems to cut right to what makes Hill such an intriguing hire as she moves away from the structured hierarchy of ESPN (emphasis ours):
"Jemele, I believe, will make all sorts of useful trouble."
