Stephen A. Smith responds to Michael Wilbon suggesting hes no longer a journalist
Credit: Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY SportsMichael Wilbon, the longtime host of ESPNsPardon the Interruption, joined Brandon Contes on the Awful Announcing Podcast this week to discuss a wide range of topics about the industry, but there was one comment in particular that caught the attention of his ESPN colleague Stephen A. Smith.Asked by Contes about whether what Smith does on his daily showFirst Take can be considered journalism in the same way a reporter who goes into locker rooms every day is considered a journalist, Wilbon decided to take a page out of Stephen A.s book and give a fiery opinion about his colleague.Stop, youre not a journalist anymore. Youre not doing what you did at the Philly Inquirer, Wilbon said. 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. He knows it. He wants to be the show, and hes doing a damn good job at it. Thats 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.It didnt take long for Smith to respond on his SiriusXM show, defending his credentials as a journalist, but explaining that what he does on First Take is much different. Amid some shots at Awful Announcing, which he called slick for the line of questioning given to Wilbon, Smith explained hed graduated from the daily grind of locker rooms and press boxes.I wasnt trying to imply that Im a journalist meaning Im in the locker room being accountable to the people I talk about every single story or every single angle that I take. I dont have the time. I do 22 hours of live content per week, over 900 hours a year, Smith said. I am universally recognized, if for nothing else, my hard work. But because Im not a beat writer anymore in the locker room, folks want to say Im not a journalist. You dont 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 hes 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 Im a journalist, Im talking about by trade and nature. Im talking about a body of work that spans decades. No, I dont have to do that anymore. Ive graduated. There are journalists, there are columnists. Theres columnists and theres commentators and radio hosts. Everything comes with it, but the point is responsibilities change, but the nature of who you are isnt.I dont just come on the air and bloviate out the mouth. I make phone calls, I have resources, people educate me about whats going on all the damn time. Im just not in somebodys face immediately upon talking about them because I dont have the means to be able to do that. I gotta be in studio micd up, etcetera. 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 thePhiladelphia Inquirer, at CNN, at Fox Sports, at ESPN, at SiriusXM. Thats my career. It comes from some place. But Mike Wilbons answering that question because its presented to him in a fashion that says, Stephen A. always says hes a journalist, but this is what he is doing, as opposed to me saying, Im a journalist based on what Ive done and what my nature is. I dont just talk, I get intel, I cultivate sources, I network.Smith, to his credit, offered some great clarity about why he labels himself as a journalist, making a distinction between what he does on First Take and what he did at newspapers to begin his career. And as he points out, he still does many of the things that trained journalists do, particularly maintaining relationships with sources that can provide information and context about the stories hes covering each day. Its just that his medium has changed. Hes graduated.Whether or not that means Smith is a journalist now, at this very moment, is beside the point. To him, he earned the label through years of working his way up in the business. Becoming a television pundit, in Smiths estimation, doesnt take the journalist label away. It just means hes using the skill set in a different context.The post Stephen A. Smith responds to Michael Wilbon suggesting hes no longer a journalist appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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