[3] While attending Shaker Heights High School, Smith wrote for the student newspaper, The Shakerite, for four years,[5] as well as participating in the wrestling and track teams[3] and the school's Minority Achievement Community program, where black upperclassmen with high grade point averages mentor black freshman and sophomore boys with lower GPAs.

[21][22] Smith joined The New Republic in January 2015, part of a wave of new hires following the 2014 removal of editor-in-chief Franklin Foer, which prompted the departure of 55 staff members and contributors.

[32] After layoffs at MTV News in June 2017,[32] Smith became a freelance reporter and opinion writer, writing (among other works) "The Revolutionary Power of Black Panther," the cover story for Time magazine’s February 19, 2018 issue;[33] this made Black Panther the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film to be featured on Time's cover.

[34] In his analysis, Smith argued the film was culturally significant as proof that African-American narratives can be commercial successes with all audiences, as well as that "making movies about black lives is part of showing that they matter.

[41] He called for Joe Biden to drop out of the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries in September 2019, for lacking "even the vocabulary to engage in an antiracist conversation".

[42] Smith contributed an essay entitled "She Can't Breathe" to the anti-rape anthology Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World,[43] published in January 2020 by Seal Press.

"[15] For his Time cover story on Black Panther, Smith received the Arts Reporting award in May 2019 from the Deadline Club, the New York City chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

According to the judges' comments, “Jamil Smith’s TIME cover story ‘A Hero Rises’ managed to approach an extremely well-covered topic from a fresh angle and in an intimate voice.