Stephen A. Smith and Michael Wilbon have been longtime colleagues together at ESPN.
They are also two of the most prominent Black faces currently working at the network, and regularly speak highly of each other public.
That made it a surprise on Wednesday to hear Wilbon label Smith “not a journalist” when the “Pardon The Interruption” host appeared on an Awful Announcing podcast.
It is not rare to hear Smith, analyst and executive producer on daily ESPN morning show “First Take,” fall back on his journalistic credentials when he is challenged by athletes or other media members in public.
Wilbon himself has occasionally appeared alongside Smith on “First Take” this year, but he held no punches when disagreeing with Smith’s characterization of himself as a journalist.
“Stop, you’re not a journalist anymore. You’re not doing what you did at the Philly Inquirer,” Wilbon said during his interview with Awful Announcing. “Stop, dude. I know what you did there because I was shoulder to shoulder with you at press row and in press boxes and at practice.”
“Stephen A. is a show,” Wilbon added. “He knows it. He wants to be the show, and he’s doing a damn good job at it. That’s what he wants to be. He has now spawned a whole generation of people who want to be the show. Good for Stephen A.; he knows that.”
Of course, Smith then used his own podcast, “The Stephen A. Smith Show,” to fire back at his ESPN colleague.
“I wasn’t trying to imply that I’m a journalist meaning I’m in the locker room being accountable to the people I talk about every single story or every single angle that I take,” Smith said. “I don’t have the time. I do 22 hours of live content per week, over 900 hours a year.
“I am universally recognized, if for nothing else, my hard work. But because I’m not a beat writer anymore in the locker room, folks want to say I’m not a journalist. You don’t get the right to say that.
“Mike Wilbon does, because Mike Wilbon has done it. And I get where Michael Wilbon is coming from, because he’s speaking in a literal sense about what I do right now.
“When I say to an athlete that will come at me or anybody else in sports that I’m a journalist, I’m talking about by trade and nature. I’m talking about a body of work that spans decades. No, I don’t have to do that anymore. I’ve graduated.
“There are journalists, there are columnists. There’s columnists and there’s commentators and radio hosts. Everything comes with it, but the point is responsibilities change, but the nature of who you are isn’t.”
“I don’t just come on the air and bloviate out the mouth. I make phone calls, I have resources, people educate me about what’s going on all the damn time,” Smith said. “I’m just not in somebody’s face immediately upon talking about them because I don’t have the means to be able to do that.
“I gotta be in studio mic’d up, et cetera. Different responsibilities. But the nature of what we do as pundits, as commentators, as radio hosts, etcetera, emanates in my case from years of journalism at the New York Daily News, at the Philadelphia Inquirer, at CNN, at Fox Sports, at ESPN, at SiriusXM,” his recitation of his CV continued.
“That’s my career. It comes from some place. But Mike Wilbon’s answering that question because it’s presented to him in a fashion that says, ‘Stephen A. always says he’s a journalist, but this is what he is doing,’ as opposed to me saying, ‘I’m a journalist based on what I’ve done and what my nature is.’ I don’t just talk, I get intel, I cultivate sources, I network.”
Despite the public nature of this back-and-forth, it is unlikely to affect the personal relationship between Smith and Wilbon going forward.
Smith went on to say that he would still give Wilbon a hug and love him if Wilbon “cussed” him out and told him he was not a journalist to his face.
Perhaps that is why Wilbon felt no hesitancy about doing just that in front of the entire world on internet.
