Whether you like it or not, since her eventful departure from ESPN, Jemele “Juice” Hill has been a locomotive plowing through the game, taking on new projects, remaining the unsilenceable mouthpiece for an entire generation while elevating from celebrity talking head and elite Twitter jouster to multimedia power broker.
Her latest leap into the major leagues involves fellow, former ESPN employees John Skipper and Dan LeBatard
That trio has joined forces in a joint venture called Meadowlark Media. Along with Michael Schur, a popular and renowned television producer, and writer.
In January, LeBatard and Skipper began looking for investors to finance between $10-15M of their new venture. Rather than one backer, the duo preferred multiple backers for the venture, and adding Hill and Schur is huge for the project.
Hill, who spent over a decade with the Worldwide leader in various roles before leaving for The Atlantic in late 2018, is joining as a creative advisor. The still-forming media outlet will be an “independent” content company emphasizing the work of individual contributors, with its focus being on sports.
Schur, one of the writers and producers of the hit NBC comedy “The Office” will be joining Hill in a similar creative advisory role. Schur and LeBatard have been allies since 2018 when Schur visited him in Miami to write a feature piece for Slate.
Hill mentioned how excited she was to work with Skipper again, and Schur says he’s elated to join such a team of talented professionals.
” Skipper was one of my biggest champions while at ESPN, and I have such deep, unconditional respect for Dan and his boundless creativity,” Hill said. “At this stage in my career, I just wanna be aligned with creative people who are like-minded. That doesn’t mean we always have to agree, but there is a core belief system that we share. The partnership checks every box for me.”
Even if you tried, you probably couldn’t go through an entire day of television and social media check-ins without at least seeing the name Jemele Hill mentioned in somebody’s mentions.
And while her historic battle with Donald Trump and ESPN and the venomous attitudes some of his supporters displayed towards her are in the rearview, she never came close to crashing and burning.
RELATED: Jemele Hill Calls Donald Trump A White Supremacist And Is Vilified
With or without the ESPN machine, she was going to get hers.
Her fan base is thicker and louder and way more bassier than the racist rants that her detractors spew from their feeble, mini megaphones.
Jemele Hill Is “Unbothered” podcast is a hit.
.@AnthonyMackie might be the only actor might be the only actor in history to have played Tupac and MLK.
Here's how the star has avoided being typecast… pic.twitter.com/JNA7Ro54NK
— Jemele Hill Is Unbothered (@JHillUnbothered) March 26, 2021
Cari & Jemele (Won’t) Stick To Sports (Vice TV) was groundbreaking.
In the past year, Hill has done a Playboy interview and hooked up with her best friend Kelley Carter, and Gabrielle Union, on a comedy series called “New Money” to run on Showtime
READ MORE: Best Takes From ‘The Playboy Interview’ With Jemele Hill
“New Money” was brought to Union by Hill and Carter (Lodge Freeway Media) and it represents their company’s first foray into the scripted market.
The series is centered around Black women who have solidified their careers, achieved financial independence and moved past the awkwardness and money struggles of their twenties. Now firmly in their 30’s, the show’s central ladies must deal with the repercussions their “new money” brings – including hangers-on, false friends, unwanted media attention, and greedy relatives – while also navigating the treacherous world of dating.
Political beliefs aside, Hill is the kind of success story that America’s been built upon. Her journey from a young Black girl growing up in Detroit to a walking EF Hutton is what everyone strives for regardless of race, creed, gender or color.
This latest venture proves it. Give Jemele her damn respect.
