Meet Michael Wilbon
Michael Wilbon will be our featured lunch speaker at our 2019 Annual Meeting and Trade Show!
Michael Wilbon
Pardon the Interruption Co-Host; NBA analyst and columnist for ESPN
Michael Wilbon is one of the nation’s most respected sports journalists and an industry-wide presence as a decorated sportswriter who broadened his career to include television, radio and new media. A co-host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption and an NBA studio analyst and contributor on ABC and ESPN, Wilbon left The Washington Post in December 2010 after 31 years to assume an expanded role as a host and contributor for ESPN.
Wilbon and his former Washington Post colleague, Tony Kornheiser, have co-hosted PTI since the show’s debut in October of 2001. Highlighted by the type of discussion and verbal sparring the two engaged in for years at The Post, the popular weekday sports news and commentary show features wide-ranging discussion of the day’s news and events. PTI earned Sports Emmy awards in 2009, 2016 and 2018 in the “Daily Studio” category and the show continues to increase its viewership, reach and impact each year.
Since being added to the NBA coverage in 2005, Wilbon regularly contributes to NBA news and information programming across ESPN platforms. He also appears frequently on SportsCenter and weekly on ESPN Radio 1000 in Chicago.
He began his career at The Washington Post in 1980 as a sports reporter after two summer internships at The Post, and was a columnist from 1990-2010, dealing as much with the issues of the day as they related to sports as what transpired on the fields or courts. During his years at The Post, Wilbon edited two books with NBA legend and Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, “I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It” and “Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man,” both of which made the New York Times best-seller list. For more than a decade Wilbon appeared as a panelist on WRC-TV-4’s “Redskins Report” and “Full Court Press” with legendary Washington, D.C. broadcaster George Michael.
In October of 2017, Wilbon received, along with Kornheiser, the National Press Club’s most prestigious prize, the Fourth Estate Award, which recognizes journalists who have made significant contributions to the field. In 2009, Wilbon was honored by the National Association of Black Journalists with the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Two years earlier, he and Kornheiser received The Post’s prestigious Eugene Meyer Award which recognizes employees who exemplify the principals embodied by the newspaper’s former owner/publisher. In 2001 he was recognized by Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, as the top sports columnist in America. In March of 2011, Wilbon was inducted into the D.C. Sports Hall of Fame for his coverage and commentary on sports in and around the Nation’s Capital. In 2015 he was inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame and the Northwestern University Athletic Hall of Fame in 2017. Last spring Wilbon received the fourth annual Sam Lacy-Wendell Smith award presented by the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism, which is presented to a journalist who has made significant contributions to racial and gender equality in sports.
Wilbon, born and raised in Chicago, is a trustee of his alma mater Northwestern, a member of the faculty at its prestigious Medill School of Journalism and resides in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife Sheryl and their son Matthew.
You can follow Michael Wilbon on his social media platforms:
Twitter: @RealMikeWilbon
Instagram: realmikewilbon
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