- 3 months ago
LaChina Robinson talks with Jemele Hill and Cari Champion about being women in sports journalism.
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00:00Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Essence Festival of Culture Beauty Carnival.
00:10Our conversation today is called She Calls the Shots, Sportscasters in Safe Spaces.
00:17I am your host, LaChina Robinson, and today we are going to explore how our two outstanding
00:22panelists have been challenged by industry favoritism towards the mainstream view of
00:28beauty and an unlevel playing field. I've admired, learned from, and been mentored by both of these
00:34women in various ways, and I will say that they have definitely weathered the storms and forged
00:40their own path while being unapologetically Black. Please join me in welcoming our first guest,
00:47Jamel Hill. Jamel is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, co-founder of Lodge Freeway Media,
00:53writer for The Atlantic, and host of the podcast, Jamel Hill is Unbothered, which is fire. Prior to
01:01joining The Atlantic, Hill co-anchored SportsCenter with Michael Smith, which debuted in February 2017
01:05as a more personality-driven approach to the traditional 6 p.m. SportsCenter. In 2018,
01:13the National Association of Black Journalists named Hill, the Journalists of the Year. Please join me
01:20in welcoming Jamel Hill. What's up, Jamel? Hey, how you doing? I'm so happy to be here. Yeah,
01:26we repping the red, you know what I'm saying? I know, right? We are on the same page. Hey,
01:31for more Black Journalists, that's what we're doing. Yes. Our next panelist is Keri Champion. Anchor,
01:38sports journalist, and host, Keri Champion spent nearly a decade at ESPN, where she served as a sports
01:45center, anchor, and host of ESPN2's First Take. Champion hosted a weekly podcast with ESPNW called
01:53Be Honest With It, Keri Champion, where she took an honest look at the world of sports and pop culture.
02:00Champion will return to serve as co-host on NBC's championship competitive series,
02:07the Titan Games, for season two. Champion empowers audiences with her unique perspective on women in
02:15the male-dominated world of sports, race, and ethnicity in sports media. Also, she talks about
02:21how to overcome personal and professional adversity, and she has an amazing program called
02:27Brown Girl's Dream. Please welcome Keri Champion. Welcome in, ladies. This is just a treat for me to
02:34be with the two of you. Yes. So let's get down to business here. My first question is, what influenced
02:41you to get into the field of sports journalism and broadcast media? And we'll start with you,
02:47Jamel. Well, for me, you know, it was my love of sports. And back when I was an athlete, I had a few
02:54more wheels when I got out. You know, I love to play sports. I love to watch sports. And so I feel
03:01really fortunate because I've known I wanted to do this since I was in like ninth or seventh grade.
03:05And a lot of it came from, you know, me watching sports and having to follow sports in the newspaper
03:10because you had to read one of those back in the day, right, to keep up with your sports teams. And so
03:15that allowed me to develop not just a love of language, but a love of sports journalism in
03:19particular. So this is the only job that I've ever really wanted to do. And especially considering how
03:26horrible I am at math was the only thing I was actually suited to do was to write and report and
03:32to discuss sports. I love it. And it's been great to see the evolution of what's happened in sports
03:39journalism, where you might start off as a writer, and then you turn into a television personality,
03:43right?
03:43Yep. I joined the dark side.
03:48Carrie, how did you get into this business?
03:50Oh, gosh, my story is a lot more personal. I don't believe in reading newspapers. First off,
03:55no, I'm kidding. I grew up in LA. I've been here all of my life. And when I was a kid, the way that I
04:02would bond with my grandmother was going to Laker games because she's a diehard Laker fan. But no one would
04:07go with her because we would have to catch the bus. So she would take me when I was six or seven
04:11years old, and we'd go to the Great Western Forum, no longer the home of the Lakers. But not only did
04:15I become a fan of the Lakers, I became a fan of basketball. That was my entryway into sports.
04:21A lot of life lessons for me. And it was also a rite of passage in my house that you have to love
04:25the Lakers. So just growing up a diehard Laker fan, I was very passionate. I think a lot of people who
04:32enter the world of sports either have played or they're passionate about one particular sport,
04:36you learn to love them all, but you're very passionate. And it just reminds you of so many
04:40parts of your life. You can literally narrate your life based on when your team won or lost.
04:45You know what I mean? Win or lose, go home. You think about different times. You're like,
04:48oh, when I was this year's old, today year's old, they won the chip, they lost the chip,
04:52whatever it may be. And it really influenced my life. It was, and it's anyone who has grown up in
04:58Los Angeles can tell you this story in a very different way, but still that same hallmark of just
05:03loving your team. And then I ended up working for the Tennis Channel, believe it or not.
05:08And that was an adventure for me because it was a single sport network. And so while I was working
05:14there, I was like, I should just really do this at ESPN. And then, you know, that was my vision.
05:19And I spoke it into existence. And then there I was working at ESPN. And, you know, by way of
05:24background, this young lady by the name of Jamel Hill tried to befriend me. Because for the folks who
05:31don't know this, we were up for the same gig. We were up for the same job. I ended up getting it
05:36and the world tried to pit us up against one another. Jamel being the forever gracious,
05:42loving woman she is, refused to let that be the narrative. And we have been fast and furious
05:46ever since. She overlooked that part about how she ignored me for like,
05:50I didn't want to put that in there because this is a time of love with COVID. And people want to love
05:57one another and were bringing each other to come out. Only because she didn't know how to work her
06:00email. It wasn't intentional. See, she looks like she don't check her email very often. I definitely
06:05wouldn't. Well, and Carrie, to your point, we often feel like there's only space for one of us,
06:11right? Like that's what happens. Like we're going for the same job and which can make it difficult.
06:16We'll get into this a little bit later to really find your true cheerleader because they make it feel
06:21like if we have one black girl, then we've got enough, but we don't, we don't get into that.
06:26For both of you, and Carrie, I'll have you start with this one. What obstacles did you encounter
06:31as a woman of color in the beginning of your career? In the beginning, the same obstacles I
06:36encounter now. I think what, what happened is that I've, I've grown more confident in myself.
06:41Those obstacles look like, as you mentioned, being the only one, being the only one is really,
06:46really difficult. And at the time that I came to ESPN and Jabel's vouched for this,
06:50I was an outsider. I was, I had already worked in local news. I was a journalist in my own right.
06:55I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, farm raised, as they say, I didn't come out of, to them,
07:00I came out of nowhere, but I had already earned my chops in local news. And I had been around,
07:05but working there, especially at that time, women weren't allowed to be women. Women had to dress
07:10like men. Women felt like they had to be more tomboyish on air and it could fit in. So they,
07:16there was a lot of, I'm holding my beauty back. So I walked on air,
07:20and I didn't care. I was like, I'm going to be cute. I'm going to wear a little skirt. I'm
07:23going to wear high heels. I'm still smart. Like I didn't, I didn't have those issues about who I
07:28was on air because none of that bothered me because I knew who I was and my character. And I knew who I
07:32was as an intelligent journalist. And so many women struggle with that in a dominated male industry.
07:39You feel like you can't be yourself. So that was one of the things that I was constantly struggling
07:44with. Like I was always being accused of being, you know, a tart, if you will, that's a better
07:50appropriate word. Right. And you did all this shaming associated with what you look like. And
07:55it's like, why can't I be both? Why, why do I have to be one thing? We are multi-dimensional women,
08:01especially black women. We have so many sides of us and it's okay to express all of those sides.
08:06So that was one of the things I was told I couldn't wear heels. I was like, get out of here. Like,
08:09that's crazy. I can do whatever I want to do. Men can be anything on air, but women cannot like,
08:14get out of here. Um, and, and then I also wasn't heard. My, I, a black woman's voice is not heard
08:21in this world, but today we have changed. It is a new day. The time is up. We are out of it straight.
08:26No chasers is what I like to say. Um, but I wasn't heard. Like I was ignored. I was neglected.
08:32I feel like Michael Max right now. And people thought as if, you know, not protected. And people thought
08:38that what I had to say didn't matter. And then I'll, and I'll pass it to Jamal in this sense.
08:43She had come from a different background and she was able to, I mean, when I tell you, this is a
08:49perfect panel, she was able to help build what I'd like to call my credibility. People wanted to say,
08:54I wasn't fit and I wasn't fat. And she's like, ah, I think you got that wrong. And then all it takes
08:58is, you know, cause this, this world is so full of followers. All it takes is one person with some
09:02credibility to put you on. And then everyone decides, okay, okay, I'll give her a shot. You know what I mean?
09:06Yeah. You bring up an important point, Jamal, before you start, like as black women, we have to deal
09:12with, okay, questioning your, your feminism, right. That like that whole part, the gender side and the
09:18race side, like we're the double minority that has to deal with both. But, um, Jamal. Um, so my
09:24experience, um, it was, I was facing sort of the opposite in, in many respects is that, you know, as I
09:31mentioned, um, when you asked about my background in terms of why I got into sports, I was a typical
09:36neighborhood tomboy. You know, I used to, um, do backslips off garages on dirty backslipses.
09:43You know, y'all know about that hood. Like y'all know about that. Yeah. That was our entertainment.
09:47Slip and slides.
09:49You know what I'm saying? Playing freeze tag in the middle of the street. You know what I'm saying? Like all
09:53kinds of stuff. So I had, I came from where, um, um, you know, a neighborhood tomboyish kind of
09:59approach to things. I was in print journalism, so that's obviously not a visual medium, but what you look
10:04like kind of didn't, you know, necessarily matter. TV actually turned me into a girl because I wasn't,
10:11I was real. It's real. I wasn't somebody who wore makeup. I wasn't somebody I didn't even have,
10:15when I first started at ESPN, I didn't even have my ears here. Like it was, it was, it was me.
10:20All right. And so, um, so I had to kind of learn about, uh, a TV look and that sort of thing. And then
10:26once I started to learn these things, I started to look around and see that there was nobody on TV that
10:31necessarily, you know, looked like me. I mean, as Carrie can attest, it's like, you look at certain
10:36networks and even at ESPN at the network we were at, at the time, like all you saw was blonde. I was
10:42like, somebody up in here loving some blonde boy. I'll tell you that. And, um, a lot of the standard
10:47that I think women period are judged by, but it can be particularly harsh for black women is that
10:51executives make decisions based off who they think appeals to who their base consumer is. Their base
10:57consumer they think is a white guy. So obviously, you know, even though we know it's a white guy
11:03is a little black women, but in their mind that they're thinking that the only type of woman that
11:08would appeal to a white male sports fan is a white woman, particularly a blonde. And that's why you see
11:15them all over TV. So based off what I looked, uh, what I look like, I mean, I have braids, um, uh, you
11:22know, I'm pretty straightforward in how I approach things. You know, as Carrie said, straight up,
11:27no chaser, there was nothing that indicated that I would ever get a television show based off
11:32what I look like and what my general, you know, kind of approach was, especially coming from the
11:37newspaper side where I've been a columnist and covered Superbowls and done all this stuff. I had
11:42a, you know, cover two Olympics, had this resume, but they were really focused on kind of the outside.
11:48And that's not to say that I don't think I'm cute, but I did not fit a particular mold.
11:53And so I had to kind of, I like to think so. I clean up all right. You know, so I had to overcome
11:59kind of those stereotypes of like what a woman is supposed to look like, um, you know, on, on
12:04television. So I never thought it was, it was going to happen. Cause we, as we know, television
12:08is a copycat industry. And unfortunately you have a lot of producers and executives who walk around
12:12like they invented television and all they do is see if something else is successful and they feel
12:17like it'll work if they've already seen it, which is what's the glory and never challenging the
12:22status quo or, um, coming up with an idea for yourself. So if they see blind white woman teeing
12:27up, uh, players, you know, black players, that's the motto. That's what it is. Or in Carrie's case,
12:33when they see moderator middle of two men, she doesn't get to talk. They get to have their opinion.
12:38She's silent. Like, so they, in their mind, this is what's successful. And that's what they continue
12:43to do. So you have to, um, break the mold, unfortunately. And it was not easy to do. I mean,
12:48I say this to people all the time, you know, we wound up getting a TV show, his and hers and then
12:51sports center, not because some executive was like, Hey, you know, it'd be really smart. And
12:55like, if we put black people on TV, who know what they're talking about? No, we won the war of
12:59attrition. It literally happened by, it wasn't, our talent wasn't accidental, but the situation we
13:05were in very much, it was a confluence of being at the right place at the right time. Not because
13:10somebody had the foresight. Yeah. And then they always want to take credit for it. Right.
13:14God. Yeah. They're like, Hey, this is what we thought of the truth is you didn't mind.
13:20So, okay. This is happening exactly the way we thought it would. Well, and something you
13:25mentioned is why I have so much respect for both of you is that, um, yeah, they thought
13:30their primary audience or their most important audience was the white male. But when you two
13:35hit the screen and we're starting to get more opportunities, black people were coming out
13:39of the woodwork. Okay. I mean, athletes, you know, fans across the board, it was like all
13:46of a sudden, Oh yeah, we do have an audience. And it's like, what comes first to chicken or
13:49the egg? Like give us the opportunity and you'll see that we have not. Okay. Your first
13:56day on national television as a black woman, what were those first moments like? Were you
14:01nervous and were you worried about being accepted? Ooh, you go first. My, mine was
14:07horrid. You go first. Um, well, you know, cause I realized I had a couple different experiences
14:14because I started as somebody who gave their opinion. Right. And so, um, I, I done little
14:20hits for outside the lines. I used to go outside the lines with no makeup on. I'm not even kidding.
14:24I did not know you were not supposed to do this on television and nobody told me until I think
14:29somebody may have mentioned, like, you know, you look like a ghost right now on TV because
14:33I didn't have any makeup on. But again, that goes back to you saying you were a tomboy.
14:39You, you were like, what's up? Wake up. Time for TV. I love that about you though. Like
14:45that to me is an endearing quality. Um, endearingly stupid, but that's okay. I was naive and I
14:53pray to God they burn those tapes from outside the lines and will not show me in my pasty face
14:57looking like I'm crazy on TV. And I was like, we're trying to roll please. Roll it. Roll it.
15:01Roll the tape right now. So I wasn't so much worried about that, but then I had a separate
15:07journey. Um, because, uh, the two, the two experiences that stick out the most is the first
15:12time I did sports reporters. Um, because sports reporters was the show of record. I mean, before
15:17there was around the horn and PTI and some of those sports discussion shows, sports reporters
15:21was the first one. That was the first time I saw somebody black on TV talking about sports.
15:25And that would be Ralph Wiley, the late Ralph Wiley. And I was like, Oh, they got black
15:29people on this show. So it made me tune in the first time I did sports reporters. I was
15:32so nervous and they did not use teleprompters. So you had to memorize your parting shot, which
15:36is the commentary that closes the show. And I think I must have, I must have had to do
15:42about 55 takes to get this right. Cause I was not accustomed to having to remember things
15:48on TV. And mostly I knew that there was not a lot of black women that actually sat in
15:52that seat. I don't think I was the first, but I don't want to know that I wasn't. I
15:56mean, to be honest, to be on sports reporters. So that was like a huge deal, you know, for
16:01me. And the first time I ever hosted, I heard, I hosted, um, first take and I will never forget.
16:07It was me and Michael Kim and the teleprompter came out and I had been, you know, going over
16:12the scripts and everything teleprompter came out and what nothing in there. And I had nothing
16:16to say, God bless Michael Kim. This is why I love him to this day. Michael, he just went
16:25in and took over and I was like, Oh yeah, that's what we supposed to be talking about.
16:28I was horrified. I was like, they are never going to let me host anything ever because
16:32I totally froze up on national TV. But the beauty of my ignorance, if you will, in terms
16:38of television is that I never knew it was something I wasn't supposed to be doing. And because I
16:43didn't take TV seriously in the beginning, I was just always myself. So I didn't have
16:47time to second guess, you know, how I was, how I looked or what I did. You know, I didn't
16:53second guess any of that stuff. I was just on there, just being me. And it wasn't until
16:57I started to learn more about the industry that I was just like, Ooh, um, okay. So this
17:02is, this is what this is supposed to be. So I've learned a lot of lessons and I'm sure
17:06Carrie's experience was probably far smoother.
17:09No, no, no. Sounds all familiar. But I do want to say this, Adina, now look at her with
17:14her lashes. You can't tell them now.
17:16I know. I mean, she's the most done up one.
17:17She, she, she, she, yeah, she doesn't care. Oh, I don't, I didn't know anything about makeup.
17:22I know. I'm a quick friend. I'm a quick friend.
17:24You guys can make more for the day.
17:26Well, okay. Beat down.
17:28My experience, national television, I did local TV for years. So I was comfortable with being
17:36on TV. And what she said, a lot of success for anybody is due to the naivete. Like you
17:43have to be naive. You have to be confident and you have to be naive and you have to be
17:47a combination of the two at different points. So I didn't realize one, um, what was happening,
17:52me taking over first take as a black woman. I didn't understand what that came with the
17:56responsibility. I did not know that I was the first Monday through Friday, black woman
18:01hosting. That was of this complexion, right? I was for everybody. I would always say, you're so
18:06pretty for a brown skin girl or a dark brown girl. And I'm like, what the hell? Who said
18:09that? That's the craziest thing ever. Um, and it may not appear that way to you, but for people,
18:13I did, I wasn't mixed. I wasn't, I didn't have this exotic thing going on in a way in which
18:19seemed acceptable. And people were so consumed with that when I first came on TV. So I always
18:24remember this story, my first day, first take, um, same thing with the prompter. They didn't have it
18:31because TV was new to them too, believe it or not. I don't care how people want to call it the
18:35worldwide leader. They have the prompter sitting up so high and I was reading like this. And then
18:40every time I would go to commercial break, I was like, is that normal? Is there any way they can
18:43bring the prompter down? They only wanted to hold one shot. And when I got, and I would ask these
18:48questions and then I got comfortable enough saying, hi, can you just bring the prompter down so I could
18:52read it? But the reality was there were a lot of names I didn't know. I wasn't going to tell you I knew
18:56all sports. I was very new. I didn't know certain sports. Well, I listened a lot. I learned a lot,
19:01but I would pronounce reporters names wrong. It was this. And as you well know, Jamel, the Twitter
19:07followers for first take are the most aggressive people in the history of the world. And I had,
19:13I literally had maybe 200 followers as I was getting on air for my very first show.
19:18At the end of the show, I had 5,000 and they were all telling me how horrible I was. They not only
19:23followed me. They followed me to tell me I sucked. And then they would not let up. They told me how
19:29awful I was. They told me I sucked. They told me I needed to go away. They hated me. They wanted Jamel.
19:36It was really a wonderful welcome experience. And then on top of that, two guys sitting next to me
19:41refused to talk to me, you know, during commercial breaks or after the show. They were like, what?
19:46They just were going about their day. I was sitting in a world where I felt like I would be talking to
19:50someone and no one would be talking to me back. And it was, it was an incredibly lonely existence
19:57for my very first two hour television, national television intro, right? Two hours. I'm two
20:05hours on TV and I'm talking to myself and thinking of topics and maybe saying someone's name wrong.
20:10And, you know, people are just figuring it out. And I remember just feeling, going home thinking,
20:14okay, this is a wrap. Like I hate it here. I'm in Connecticut. I don't know what I'm going to
20:18do. I don't know how long I just thinking, let me just get through these first two years
20:21and I'll be fine. But it was, it was very sad. It was, um, humiliating. Um, it was exhilarating
20:27because again, I was so naive. I didn't know that I was bad. And I was like, they tripping, whatever.
20:34And I thought my personality would ultimately went over my two co-hosts, you know, and skip
20:38it to Stephen A. Smith. That didn't always work. And I was just like, okay, let's just keep doing it.
20:42Cause you know how we are as black women. We don't have any quit. We don't have a second option.
20:46We don't have a backup. We gotta, we have to hang in there no matter what. Like it did,
20:51quitting was just not an option. It's never been an option. Uh, although I did try to quit. Jamel
20:56will tell you, I picked her up one day. I talked her out of it. And I, she was moving to Connecticut
21:02and I was like, so I'm quitting on Monday. She was like, what? No, I was like, yeah,
21:05tomorrow's my last day. It was Sunday. I was like, tomorrow's my last day. We had a nice,
21:10we had a nice talk about it. I just was defeated. My spirit was so defeated because not only my first
21:15day on national television, but my first few months was, it was really painful. It was exhausting.
21:20Um, I was getting beat up in front of the camera and behind the scenes and I just couldn't take
21:24it. And by beat up, I mean, I was treated less than my voice didn't matter. I was told I wasn't good.
21:29If I did something good, nobody, and you know, I, Michael Smith, you know, the great Michael Smith
21:34came up to me one day and I was sitting in the makeup room and he said, listen,
21:37you used to be all smiley when you first got here. He said, why you stop smiling? And I was like,
21:45Michael, I just, I, my joy is gone. And he said, oh, they got, they got to you, huh? He was like,
21:49that's their sole purpose. Whoever they is is to steal your joy. He was like, what was it today?
21:54They didn't like your lipstick. He was like, and it's true. It was like those kind of,
21:58those kind of comments. Oh, so you think you, they see, he's like, they see you happy. They see you
22:02thriving and they just want to let you know they didn't like your haircut today, or they didn't like your
22:05lipstick, or they didn't like the way you turn to the left, or the way you hold your computer.
22:10All of these things were amazing.
22:14Shout out to Michael Smith. Shout out. So quickly on this one, but can you tell us about
22:21how you handled maybe the first time you experienced racial prejudice while at work?
22:28Dang, I, I have to, I'm like, I'm thinking the first, I'm like, you mean all the time?
22:31I'm like, honestly, I mean, I, um, right now, today? No, I'm kidding.
22:38Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, no, right? Uh, 10 minutes ago? No, I've been at ESPN.
22:45I, it's, it's much like a lot of places in corporate America. I don't want to make a scene
22:50that ESPN is especially unique. But the thing about TV is that TV is very hard on women. It's
22:54exceptionally hard on black women. And there are plenty of producers, like, you know, Carrie just kind of
22:59alluded to this, that will just tell you some things to their face that, to your face, that
23:04would get them beat up somewhere else. And they have no problem just telling you, they have no
23:08problem just like kind of saying it. And, you know, I remember, um, you know, there's so many
23:14microaggressions and like, especially when, once we got the sports center, I mean, it was like a daily
23:19fight, um, where it was, you know, I remember sitting in meetings when they were talking about our
23:25ratings. And as you mentioned, Latina, like we brought in like our, the sports center,
23:29six o'clock audience that the black audience grew to 41%. I think the only other show that had more
23:35of a black audience than us was first tape. And so we're in this meeting and they're breaking down
23:39the ratings and everything. And then they showed how in the non-white, uh, or non-black category,
23:46how those have been decreasing. And they basically told us your show is too black. I mean,
23:50that's essentially what was the whole message of the meeting. And it was just like, oh,
23:54so it's too black because it's our fault. Cause that's what we can't come back tomorrow and be
23:57white. So I don't know what to tell you about how to get more white viewers. And they started
24:02changing our show. I mean, they, to make it, I think more appealing, suddenly there were certain
24:07white voices that had to be in the show. You know, suddenly they like, oh, have Kirk Herbstreet
24:11in every week. And it was like, wow, I'm dead serious. I was like, wow, that's really insulting.
24:18I mean, not to say that's not a distant Kirk Herbstreet, but like that was their response
24:22to doing that. And I was like, wow, what does that say? I mean, we had a personality wall
24:27in our studio that had like Biggie, our pictures with Obama, John Carlos, Tommy Smith. And then they
24:32were like, um, no, that's gotta come down. They made, they made a second down because it was too
24:38overtly black in their mind. I was like, so they just trying to screw up any bit of blackness and our
24:42identity out of this show. And it was, it was a struggle. I mean, it was a real fight. I mean,
24:46that was probably the most egregious experience I had, you know, at, at ESPN. Um, but it was plenty
24:53of, of, of things and issues I had, you know, with producers, like we were naming our top five
24:58quarterbacks for a show we did on his and hers. And they, one of the producers who was white was
25:02like, I had Warren moon in my top five. He's like, did you just put him on there? Cause he's white.
25:06I was like, no, it happens to be because this man is not for his career, uh, not for the NFL,
25:12uh, not to have, allowing him to be a quarterback in their league. You know what his passing yards
25:17might've looked at. He might've been one of the, he might've been the top passer of all time.
25:20Mm-hmm. Right. But I just picked him because he was black. And so stuff like that, you're just
25:24like, wait, did he just really just say this to my face? Right. Yeah.
25:28All of it is just very constant where, as Carrie talked about, like you have to,
25:33you're, you're going into every day preparing to do battle on some level. And it's just,
25:38unfortunately the existence for a lot of black people, especially a corporate America and,
25:43and definitely at ESPN. Yeah. I will say that, um, just adhering and revisiting some of the things
25:50that both of you had to deal with it. You guys really fought the fight. So people like me could,
25:56could have opportunities, could have space. And so that we could even see an ESPY like we had,
26:01you know what I'm saying? Like you guys were on the, on the ground level, like really the foundation
26:06of it all. And we don't have a lot of time. Uh, I'm definitely get the week getting the,
26:10we got to go, but in the vein of inspiring, um, for young black women who want a career
26:16in sports journalism, what are three personal traits that they need to be successful? And this
26:21has to be quick. Cause I also want to get to something that you guys are doing together.
26:24Three personal traits that they need. I think, I think that, I think that, um,
26:31they need to be, they need to find an ally. It's not a disruptor that doesn't look like them.
26:37So that means that you need to always make sure that that'll teach you how to play the game.
26:41Cause sometimes we just don't even know how to play the game. And so, and, and, and by playing the game,
26:45it allows you to get to a place where you don't have to play it anymore and be in a power position
26:49that Jay and I are in now. I think that you have to be okay with being determined. And that's a
26:55consistent determination that you are great no matter what, cause people will constantly tell
26:59you that you are not, you will always have to show your resume and that is exhausting,
27:03but it is something that people need to understand. Um, and, and last but not least, um, I don't ever,
27:09ever, ever, and this is my journey. I don't ever want anybody to feel like they can't be themselves.
27:13I was like, especially now and the movement that this country is in be okay with making them
27:18uncomfortable as opposed to us being the only ones uncomfortable in the room. We stay living
27:22uncomfortable. We are comfortable with being uncomfortable, being okay with making them
27:26uncomfortable and asking them questions, being the journalist that you are, because they ultimately
27:31will have to answer to you at the end of the day. And you can go to sleep that way.
27:35Okay. Um, so my three, uh, in no particular order would be, be resilient. Don't let anybody outwork
27:43you because you can, there's a lot of things you can't really control. The one thing you can always
27:47control is how hard, uh, that you work. Um, and, uh, the last thing, um, that I would say is know
27:54your worth. It's a lot of times we, we cut ourselves short, um, with what we think our abilities are,
28:02what our potential is. We cut ourselves short. So like knowing your worth and knowing your values,
28:07you'd be shocked at what that gives you. And to that point of what Carrie said about discomfort
28:12within knowing your worth, don't be afraid to ask and demand things just like anybody else would
28:17read that as white people. Okay. So don't be afraid to do that. Absolutely. Well,
28:22you both have used your platform to give others opportunities. Um, Jamel, we've seen what you
28:28have done every time you and Michael were out of his and hers. You had some young black journalists
28:32in the seats, filling in, giving them exposure. Brown girls, Brown girls dream carry is amazing.
28:38We don't have time to get to the endeavor that you guys are getting into together.
28:42Um, actually we might have a second. Tell us about it.
28:45All right. Go ahead.
28:46Jamel and I have, uh, we have a new show coming out on Vice. Um, it's a working title. We haven't
28:51quite had the title, but this is the first time that two black women will be driving the opinions
28:55of a show that talk about politics, sports, culture, and everything else. Um, it is going to be
29:00something special. And when Jamel talks about knowing your worth, we came in there knowing our worth,
29:05and it was a beautiful thing. And it is a beautiful thing. We are both EPs on the show.
29:09I literally want people to understand that you can have it all. You can demand it and you can have
29:16it because it is our time and we're not going back. Go ahead, Jay. After that, I got nothing to add.
29:21You said it so succinctly.
29:22When you said know your worth and that y'all came to the table, all I heard was ching, ching. Okay.
29:27We got new titles to EP. That sounds what we deserve. Ladies. Thank you for who you are,
29:36how you've done your jobs, how you stood up for others, how you've used your platform. We love you.
29:41We appreciate you continue to be beautiful in all the ways that you are beautiful and for paving the
29:47way for so many of us. We appreciate it. Thank you. We're out. Thanks for joining us.
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