Journalist Jemele Hill tweeted on Friday that it was her last day at ESPN after a tumultuous last few months that saw her suspended for speaking out against President Trump.
“Over the last several weeks, there have been a lot of rumors about my job status. Today is my last day at ESPN,” she said in a tweet.
“This was the place where I became the best version of myself, both personally and professionally,” she wrote. “However, the time has come for me to begin a new chapter in my life.”
During her time on ESPN’s flagship evening show, “SportsCenter”, Hill was censured for her tweets calling President Donald Trump a “white supremacist” last September. She was suspended for two weeks a month later for violating ESPN’s social media guidelines when she suggested that NFL fans should boycott some of the NFL’s advertisers.
In January, Jemele Hill asked ESPN leadership to be moved from “SportsCenter” to “The Undefeated”, the sports journalist admitted.
“I requested this. They were more than happy to support me,” she told Variety. “I was the one who wanted to do something else.”
“The function of ‘SportsCenter’ is not necessarily built for anchor commentary. So much of my career at ESPN – almost exclusively at some points – has been in commentary,” she continued. “They hired me as a columnist. I’ve been giving my opinion since day one,” she added. The “SportsCenter” gig, she says, “really wasn’t my calling.”
In her farewell tweet, Hill thanked her colleagues at the network where she spent 12 years of her award-winning career. But she specifically singled out her former “SportsCenter” co-host Michael Smith, who she called “friend” and “brother.”
“I love you and you made me better in every possible way,” Hill wrote. “I’m proud of everything we did, because nobody sold tapes out the trunk quite like us.”
The National Association of Black Journalists named Hill its 2018 Journalist of the Year earlier this year.
