ESPN personality Jemele Hill will reportedly be leaving the network at the beginning of September according to reporter and author of Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside The World of ESPN, James Miller.
According to Miller, making the revelation in a tweet, Hill’s exit is an “amicable departure/buyout,” adding that it’s “been a long time coming.” This news arrives at the tail end of a move made by Hill to request a meeting with Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN’s president, says Miller.
According to The New York Post, Hill’s buyout of her alleged $2.5 million per year contract has been completed and she’ll pack up her desk on Friday, August 31st, at the sports news giant.
Hill first joined ESPN in 2006 and has moved around in various roles since with her most notable being her role on SC6, the 6 p.m. edition of SportsCenter. In October 2017 she was suspended for two weeks after publishing a series of tweets that called for an advertiser boycott of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones after Jones said that players would be benched if they did not stand for the national anthem.
Pitaro, who took on the role of president in March, has notably wanted to distance the network from any semblance of politics. “Our focus is on covering the news in an exemplary fashion. To be fair, balanced and making sure we have the facts right," Pitaro told Sporting News in May.