Lynn Hoppes to ESPN

True, but everyone is struggling out there, wondering if they'll have money to pay the rent, and his response is, "Be loyal and feed your passion!" It struck the worst possible chord at the worst possible time from an organization that people were looking to for guidance.

 

Great hire by ESPN, but they're wasting Lynn's talents.

Put him in charge of finding talent. That's what he does best.

(Although several years ago he somehow missed me)

 

What makes someone a helluva sports editor?

 

Anna Maria Della Costa is disappointed her name wasn't included.

 

WFW.

 

But a lot people who've met Lynn or know Lynn think he's full of shit and always has been. I would never take him seriously. He is a schemer, he is a hypocrite, he's a lot of other things but he knows how to play the game. He has made the right connections and always put himself in a position to capitalize. The people who he's brought into the Sentinel, many have went on to bigger things and he knows how to use their success to his advantage.

 

Yahoo slashed some 1,500 jobs in 2008.

Take away ESPN the cable network cash cow and let the highly paid, "well staffed" Web site survive on its own . . . and then get back to me.

 

OK, I'll take a stab.

I don't think anyone is arguing that Web site reporters and writers do much of the same type of work, or that online reporting/writing is the way of the future. We all know that. Quit sounding like we don't.

The fact is, we all will be making career moves in that direction at some point, because there will be no choice, what with it being the only direction to go in in which any jobs will survive, or certainly, thrive, before too long. And again, I think we all realize that.

I've worked on a freelance basis, and applied for staff jobs, at a couple of large Web sites, and gotten interviews at some, too. No doubt many others on here have done so, as well.

The problem, though, is that these sites will hire less than a third of all of us who are now out of work, or who soon will be. That will leave many more scrabbling for anything, and having to resurrect, or completely re-invent, careers -- and lives -- often in middle age, without the outlets in which to best do that, than it will leave people who can say, 'Yeah, I was smart, visionary, opportunistic and fortunate enough to make myself look good, and like I was being forward-thinking, etc.'

You know what? I'm that way, too, more so than some people who are now working more regularly than I am.

And, those adjectives would describe many reporters and editors, both those in the print industry, and those now outside of it, or else, forced onto the fringes of it because they were laid off, fired, made miserable or otherwise run out of jobs -- jobs, and journalism, that most of us loved and cared about just as much as Lynn Hoppes or anyone else ever has.

ESPN hires names, and that's what it has done here.

I hope that, someday soon, it might hire me, too. But so far, I have nowhere to go -- let alone anywhere really good, where my standard of living wouldn't drop one iota.

And, after all the "carnage" -- yes, that's the right word -- there are many, many more people in that life-changing (not in a good way) situation than there will ever be hired by ESPN or any other Web site.

How's that?

Because that, or, something along those lines, is what people are upset about, not the fact that Hoppes made a move that all of us, at this point, or maybe even long ago, would have made, too, if the opportunity arose.

 

Finding talent.

For finding young writing talent, there are only a couple I know of who were better.

 

Crickets.

 

Well, to play devil's advocate. You could be the best at spotting talent in the world, but if you worked at the Podunk Press with an opening every 3 years, who would ever know.

Orlando had a great deal of talent consistently come through there before Lynn was ever in charge.

He did keep tabs on good, young folks, though.

 

Maybe Lynn can have bring some tangible changes to Page 2, which I still think is in need of vision, direction and perhaps re-invention. ... It should be THE destination site for irreverent and required reading in online sportswriting, and it's not even close right now. Page 2 does nothing for me.