Jemele Juanita Hill ( ; born December 21, 1975) is an American sports journalist. She worked for the Raleigh News & Observer, the Detroit Free Press, and the Orlando Sentinel. She joined ESPN in 2006 and worked in various roles until 2013, when she succeeded Jalen Rose as host of ESPN2's Numbers Never Lie. The show was rebranded to His & Hers which she co-hosted with Michael Smith. Hill and Michael Smith co-hosted SC6, the 6 p.m. (ET) edition of ESPN's flagship SportsCenter from 2017 to 2018.
She sparked a controversy in 2017 with a series of tweets critical of President Donald Trump including describing him as a white supremacist. She was later suspended for two weeks for a second violation of ESPN's social media policy when she suggested fans of the Dallas Cowboys boycott the team's sponsors in retaliation for Jerry Jones' stance on players kneeling during the national anthem.
In 2017, she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding News Special for the ABC News Special The President and The People. In 2018, Hill left her role as co-host of SC6 and joined the ESPN website, The Undefeated. She left ESPN shortly afterward to work as a contributing writer for The Atlantic. From August 2020 to February 2021, she co-hosted Vice's Cari & Jemele (Won't) Stick to Sports alongside Cari Champion.
Hill is the co-founder of the film and production company Lodge Freeway Media and published her autobiography Uphill: A Memoir in 2022.
Early life and education
Hill was born in Detroit on December 21, 1975. Both of her parents struggled with drug addiction and she was raised by her single mother. She and her mother moved to Houston in 1980, then later back to Detroit. Hill graduated from Mumford High School in 1993, and from Michigan State University in 1997.
Career
Newspapers
Hill began her career as general assignment sports writer for the Raleigh News & Observer. From 1999 to 2005, she served as a sports writer with the Detroit Free Press, mainly covering Michigan State football and basketball. While at the Free Press, she also covered the 2004 Summer Olympics and the NBA playoffs. Hill worked as a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 2005 to 2006.
ESPN
Hill joined ESPN in November 2006 as a national columnist on ESPN.com. She made regular appearances on television, including SportsCenter and several ESPN programs, including ESPN First Take, Outside the Lines and The Sports Reporters. During the 2012 college football season, she worked on Friday nights as a sideline reporter with Carter Blackburn and Rod Gilmore.
During the 2008 NBA Playoffs, Hill was suspended from her post after referencing Adolf Hitler in an article about the Boston Celtics and the Detroit Pistons. In an editorial describing why she could not support the Celtics, Hill wrote: "Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It's like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan." The comments generated a negative response, and that portion of the editorial was taken out shortly after the column was published. Hill, a Pistons fan, wrote that: "to some degree it was about race. Detroit is 80 percent black, and as my colleague J.A. Adande stated in a fantastic piece on the Celtics earlier this season, the mostly white Celtics teams of the past had a tough time being accepted by black audiences. Boston was viewed by African-Americans as a racially intolerant city." Hill was subsequently suspended for one week and she issued an apology through ESPN.
The network drew criticism for its treatment of Hill, as another employee, former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, also made a Hitler reference in 2008 and was not suspended.
In July 2020, Hill wrote a long article detailing her deep regret for the Hitler reference. She wrote that she felt embarrassed about it immediately after she was called out on it, and still feels embarrassed about it more than a decade later. She concluded that her suspension from ESPN was "a punishment that I deserved."