Page 2 Has a New Hire!
Uncategorized October 23rd. 2006, 7:08pm
Bit of news to break here: Sources tell us that Jemele Hill, a columnist at the Orlando Sentinel who we interviewed just two weeks ago, has been hired by ESPN.
Some of you may want to sit down for this: Hill reportedly inked a two-year contract worth an estimated $400,000. Sources tell us she’ll be writing for the increasingly-irrelevant Page 2, have a column in ESPN the Magazine and appear regularly on the tube. (Hopefully, as a rookie, she’ll perform better than Joe Schad. Love your print work Joe, but ESPN didn’t do you any favors by throwing you right into the TV fire.)
Not familiar with Hill’s work? Then go get educated. For the money she’s getting, we assume she’s going to bat second to Bill Simmons on the hurting-for-content Page 2.
We know what you’re saying: She’s filling the gaping hole left by Jason Whitlock. And hey, they’re both black, so that’s why they got her! And you’ll try to channel Dan Jenkins and say they money-whipped a young kid into a gig that she’s probably not ready for. And yes, we know you don’t want a female version of Scoop, Woody, or Skip. Either way, this is going to be fun!
Jemele Hill archive (Orlando Sentinel)
27 Responses to “Page 2 Has a New Hire!”
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October 23rd, 2006 at 7:34 PM
I always wondered what some of these writers make but $200,000 a year!! Oh crap I need to get in on that business.
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:37 PM
If she’s pulling $200k/year, how much is Simmons getting paid?
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:58 PM
i had no idea they got that much. a newspaper columist gets, what, about 90, i think. shit, ESPN is the way to go.
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:21 PM
i don’t know what to make of this, yet…i have read some of her work, and while it is fine….i dunno…it doesn’t seem special. i predict the novelty will wear off, despite getting all kinds of preferencial placement such….does she at least look good in a two piece bathing suit?
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:29 PM
oh…and i have to agree with the “increasingly irrelevent” page 2 comment…with blogs like this one and deadspin, those of us that enjoy a laugh with our sports have much better options…
October 23rd, 2006 at 11:00 PM
GO JEMELE!!!!!!! (And can I get a loan? No, really?)
October 24th, 2006 at 3:36 AM
OMG….this is hilarious.
If the creators of this website really want to have some fun, I suggest that you start looking for archives of Jemele’s editorial columns back when she was an undergrad at Michigan State University. She wrote for the State news (www.statenews.com).
When I was an undergrad there (93-97), my most favoritest thing in the world was my morning cup of coffee and the Snews to see what Jemele had written that day. Imagine your most hate-filled, jaw-dropping, anti-whitey, how-can-she-write-that-column that could fit into five paragraphs. EVERY DAY. Seriously. You need to do some research and check these out.
It’s been over 10 years since I’ve read them, so maybe they aren’t as funny now, but I remember them being an absolutel riot to read.
October 24th, 2006 at 6:24 AM
Funny… I was in a meeting with an advisor at school (Jouralism major at The University of South Dakota) and he specifically laid out the pay heirarchy for media scum (used effectionately of course). It went as such:
1. Print
2. Television
3. Radio
How about print and web? I think that is the new genre and it sits well above just print.
October 24th, 2006 at 9:15 AM
She’s black and she’s a woman and she “writes” about sports in much the same way Dr. Rev. Michael Eric Dyson Esq. writes about economics.
It’s all about those race checkboxes at big companies like ESPN.
The State News is about as predictably brain-dead liberal a paper as could be written. Not to mention that the quality of writing, spelling and grammar, is still awful to this day. It’s an embarassment, but coming from a seriously deranged Journalism/English department it’s as good as it can be,
October 24th, 2006 at 10:33 AM
Read a couple of her columns in the archive, not really impressed, honestly they read like a college essay, not exactly cutting edge. there are a few shock value lines but no particular unique style.
October 24th, 2006 at 6:37 PM
WTF? 400k?
How nice of ESPN. Fired the one black guy who made sense, now getting even more BOJANGLEY with Hill, who made her name with the asinine “ridin’ wit afaletes” pieces.
Good work.
October 24th, 2006 at 8:50 PM
I think one of the keys here is that she’s going to be on TV, not just writing for Page 2. That would explain the salary.
She’s young, she’s black, she’s female, she’s photogenic and she’s got talent (obviously some dispute the latter, but still…). They’re not paying her to write a column that some fat ugly white guy could write.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:07 PM
no they aren’t paying her to write a column some fat ugly white guy could write….but i’d be willing to wager that the bulk of espn viewers and readers are fat ugly white guys….who ain’t gonna relate real well to the musings of an “empowered” black woman…failure is imminent….or something like that….
October 25th, 2006 at 4:09 AM
What a cynical world we live in! I would love to see the day where we can learn how to congratulate each other in our successes. Jemele has worked hard to get where she is and deserves all the good things that are happening for her. She is a hard worker, has a passion for sports, is versatile for a multimedia market, but you want to know the best thing about her? She’s a good friend and she’s the most down-to-earth person.
If any of you ever had a chance to meet her, you probably wouldn’t judge her so harshly. Then again, most of you sound pretty simple-minded anyway.
Cheers to Jemele!
October 25th, 2006 at 2:59 PM
i don’t think anyone has wished her bad things…just observing that the bulk of the readers on ESPN.com are probably not the best target audience…if suggesting that a predominantly white male readership might end up not being too interested in her columns if she comes with the empowered black female angle and makes every thing a race commentary (like scoop) is simple minded…so be it…i think the fact you are her pal biases your view…not being able to see the whole picture and take into account the demographics and interests of the potential viewership because of personal loyalties is fairly simple minded as well….i hope she does well….i just don’t see it happening in this particular vehicle…
October 26th, 2006 at 7:20 AM
The fact that I’ve worked with Jemele and know her personally doesn’t make me biased, it gives me more authority to speak about her.
To put it in simpler terms for you, it’s kind of like when you’re covering a beat, the more firsthand knowledge you have of the subject the better. Does that make sense?
What makes you think that every column is an “empowered black female angle?” I read pretty much all her columns since she’s started and that’s simply not true. Sounds to me like you’re basing this simply on the fact that she’s a black female.
Then again, white males give white male perspectives all the time. I grew up listening up to many of those voices, but I’m not a white male. Surely you can’t be saying that only like people can understand each other. But according to you, women, blacks and probably minorities “won’t do well in that market.” Last time I checked, sports fans were more than just white make readerships. Some of those “white males” are actually intelligent and open-minded enough to want to hear about perspectives other than their sounds of their own voices.
You know I’ve seen the vicious things written about her on sportsjournalists.com and I don’t think I’m out of bounds when I say she’s attracted a ton of haters. A good portion of the criticism isn’t even directly linked to her work, it’s simply about her — many who probably haven’t even met her.
But in my opinion, I think there’s a lot of jealousy involved. It’s easier to hurl insults and criticisms at someone else rather than to work to improve ourselves.
And you know what? Let’s just say you were right, what does it prove anyway? What do you care? It’s not your life. She’s getting what she worked hard for and deserves.
And I would hope that you when you acheive the desired success in your chosen profession that you would have more cheers than jeers, more applause than boos, more friends than enemies.
Jemele’s written columns before that I haven’t necessarily agreed with or thought was award-worthy. But I don’t know anybody who can do that day in and day out. No one is without fault, but it’s our weaknesses that keep us hungry.
As a journalist, I understand and appreciate the need for criticism. But criticism without true compassion is cruelty. And I’m not talking about being a softie when I say compassion, I’m speaking of a compassion that transcends your own perspective and places you into another’s situation.
I don’t usually leave comments when I read these things, but enough is enough already.
October 26th, 2006 at 7:56 PM
Shannon
Your wasting your time. It doesn’t matter what you say or what Jermele writes, this group of “Experts” will be dismissive of her work regardless. I think its great to get a different perspective on sports from different people/backgrounds. But you have a group of predominately white males who have been trained to only accept white-male dominated journalism. So please don’t waste your time trying to explain her qualifications or her work because I’m sure Espn will overlook all that and give her 400 k just so they can have a black women on staff.
I think Mike Lupica is over-rated and Mitch Albom should of been canned a long time ago for being so unethical, but yet they persist and ESPN puts them on the pedestal as “Experts” and nobody questions it. Double Standard??
October 27th, 2006 at 4:52 PM
Did anyone read her Orlando Sentinal columns. They made less sense than gary busey on a box of wheaties. When she did provide facts, they were wrong. At least I will not have to suffer through them anymore…YEAH!
October 27th, 2006 at 8:17 PM
Good going Jemele, I still follow your career to this day.
October 28th, 2006 at 3:48 AM
Unfortunately, almost every single person who ever read her columns in Orlando despised those columns. They’re not just incoherent, they’re simply not worth noticing — especially by informed sports viewers. ESPN has REALLY dropped the ball on this and I mean REALLY dropped the ball — what kind of search process do you think they actually went through?
October 29th, 2006 at 4:31 AM
It’s funny to see how many people have said such negative comments about her work. The funniest thing is that you’ve had to read it all to not like it all.
She’s doing something right. And it seems at ESPN she’ll still have your attention.
November 1st, 2006 at 5:24 PM
so, if someone reads her work and isn’t impressed….or doesn’t think that she will do much to attract the interest of a large demographic….they should shut up, right?….or since they haven’t met her and have only READ her columns, then they aren’t qualified to find them to be nothing special, since those that KNOW her think she is special? Please…she is a WRITER…if she can’t impress someone with her writing, the fact you are her close friend and think she is swell is irrelevent. No one has commented on the TYPE of person she is…only that those of us who have read her work aren’t that impressed…AND bringing up Albom or Lupica is of no consquence…we were talking about Jemele…the double standard lies in the pitiful propogation of the idea that ONLY those that have met her or know her personally are in a position to comment on her WRITING…she a writer…every reader has the right to be a critic…if she is brilliant and wonderful…it should shine through in her writing…the fact you think she is brilliant and wonderful after meeting her and knowing her personally is of know consequence to the READER…and, in that, lies your bias and double standard….
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:37 AM
F U C K da hatas
Get ya money girl!!! Do your thang! Add your INSIGHT!
We need more sistahs in broadcast sports.
November 16th, 2006 at 5:01 AM
Quoting Shannon:
Jemele’s written columns before that I haven’t necessarily agreed with or thought was award-worthy.
…
As a journalist, I understand and appreciate the need for criticism.
Sentence Fragment.
Worst.Journalist.Ever!
November 21st, 2006 at 1:46 PM
Sadly I didn’t get to experience Jemele’s MSU commentary but I’m guessing it was very similar, if not identical, to other columnists of her ilk attemping (and failing) to disguise their anger, even hatred, behind some kind of forced, breezy, substitute-sarcasm-for-humor boilerplate. Kathy Wilson (who proudly titled her column ‘Your Negro Tour Guide’) in Cincinnati’s CityBeat alternative newsweekly is another example.
I call them “funnel” columns – any subject, any locale, any event discussed at the start of the column (the wide end of the funnel) will inevitably end up being yet another tired race rant (the narrow end).
I remember my first Jemele column. She must have seen the ESPN SportsCentury segment on Tiger Woods where Christine Brennan (the conscience of America) was basically unhappy that Tiger Woods wasn’t “doing enough” in charity and social endeavors (a fair point as long as you ignore the untold millions Tiger has spent/raised for First Tee and just about every other cause). Jemele picked up this thread and wrote an entire column grumping that Tiger won’t do an Ali or Ashe. Of course, she misses the entire point that this isn’t 1967 or 1970 and that many (most?) of us have moved on and don’t particularly care what race an athlete is – isn’t that supposed to be the goal? Not good enough for Jemele – she wants Tiger to call Al Sharpton on his mobile and get a good old fashioned march going – for what cause we’re not exactly sure but people like Jemele have nostalgia for things they never even experienced. Of course, they have been taught from day one that racism pervades society and that protest should be an everyday thing – even when it doesn’t and it shouldn’t.
November 29th, 2006 at 10:43 PM
Wow. You guys are ridiculous. Love and let go. And some of you — ahem, youknowwhoyouare — need to pray. Jesus is the answer. For real.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:49 AM
i love white people. i love black people. i am neither, but y’all fuckin hate each other. no joke.
jesus, just try to get along and don’t take this subtle shots at each other. it’s obvious that white people don’t like her in at least some minor fashion cause she’s going to use “the race card” and that black people like her because she’s another black female face in sports at a time where they are severely under-represented. the point is, both sides are making a case for or against her without really talking about her writing. i mean, look at these comments, some (not all) are just talking about meeting ESPN race quotas etc. You should all be ashamed of yourself.
Just an unbiased brown guy talking. Don’t kill me.