When Jemele Hill joined the High School Journalism Program at Mumford High School in the early 1990s, she knew she wanted to be a writer but hadn’t narrowed down exactly what she wanted to do.
“Writing was always my favorite thing to do, but when I joined the program I realized I could write for a living,” Hill said.
Today, Hill is the co-host of ESPN2’s “Numbers Never Lie,” which airs weekdays at noon. Before her TV career, she was a sports reporter for the Detroit Free Press, Raleigh (N.C.) News-Observer and Orlando Sentinel.
“The program had everything to do with bringing me to where I am today,” said Hill, who graduated from Michigan State. “It exposed me to a dream that I hadn’t had before and allowed for me to do something I loved to do.
“It was easy for me because I was naturally attracted to telling other people’s stories. Being in the program gave me something tangible to hold on to. It taught me how to be a journalist.
“My favorite memory from the program was being on my high school staff and actually going into the newsroom to put the paper together,” she said.
As one of the sports writers for her high school paper, Hill wrote a story about probably the hottest topic in sports at the time.
“The Chris Webber timeout story was definitely my favorite one,” she said. “His mom was actually a teacher at my school so I had the chance to ask her about the kind of flack he was getting and how he was handling it. That was the closest I came to writing a big story in high school.”
King Staff Writer
