Stephen A. Smith responds to Michael Wilbon suggesting he’s no longer a journalist
· Yahoo Sports
Michael Wilbon, the longtime host of ESPN’s Pardon 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 show First 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.
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“Stop, you’re not a journalist anymore. You’re 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 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.”
It didn’t 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 he’d “graduated” from the daily grind of locker rooms and press boxes.