Van Valkenburg to ESPN The Mag

Kevin Van Valkenburg, the exceptional storyteller at the Baltimore Sun, announced that he's moving to ESPN The Mag, and presumable the dot-com as well. Good hire for ESPN, big loss for the Sun, although with the shrinking news hole, the Sun never played up to his strength, which is longform storytelling.

 

Awesome news. Great guy, great writer. Congrats to Kevin. Although I will miss 5 Things We Learned, even though I don't care at all about the Ravens.

 

Congratulations to KVV.

 

GA opening at Sun? GA closing at Sun?

 

This is the best news I've heard in a long time. Love Kevin, and I always felt he was in a no-win position at the Sun. He'll have the opportunity to do what he does best at the Mag. With he and Jones both on those pages now, I'm going to have to subscribe.

 

Less than a year ago, Kevin Van Valkenburg wrote for Chris Jones' blog about a trip to Elaine's when the New York City bar closed. At the gathering Van Valkenburg recalls were: Esquire's Chris Jones, The Boston Globe's Charles P. Pierce, The Baltimore Sun's Kevin Van Valkenburg, ESPN.com's Jeff MacGregor and ESPN: The Magazine's Wright Thompson.

Now, every member of that group works for ESPN in one way or another. Jones writes for Grantland and The Magazine, Pierce writes for Grantland and Van Valkenburg writes for The Magazine. I happen to like (albeit to varying degrees) the work of all five men. I respect all five greatly. But it's a good lesson for the kids: Sometimes, who you know is pretty damn important.

I do very much agree with those who feel the Sun rarely used Van Valkenburg to his full potential. Then again, that's the newspaper that decided to lay off Rick Maese and David Steele and keep Peter Schmuck and Mike Preston as columnists.

 

Word on the street is some of those guys can bend an elbow, too.

 

Congrats to Kevin. Anytime I've read his work I've been very impressed.

 

The Baltimore Sun has had a few notable departures in the past six or seven years. Baseball writer Ken Rosenthal left for Fox in 2005. John Eisenberg went to work on books and write for the Ravens' website and CSN Baltimore. Maese and Steele were laid off and are now at The Washington Post and Sporting News. And Van Valkenburg joins excellent former Ravens beat writer Jamison Hensley and former Maryland beat writer Heather Dinich at the World Wide Leader. Hensley is the AFC North blogger and Dinich the ACC blogger for ESPN.com.

If you gave me the Sun's sports staff in 2005 and asked me to rank the writers, those seven names in some order would all be among my top eight. And the sports copy desk has taken a few huge hits in that time frame, as well.

(Edited to include Rosenthal and Dinich.)

 

I can't even pretend to be impartial about this. Kevin was awesome to me before I even knew how awesome he was, and we shared a couple beers at a gay bar in Rehoboth Beach. He's a good man and a better writer than the Sun deserved for as long as he was there. They wasted his talent, putting him in spots where they needed him but not where he could excel.

Now, he can do the pieces he wants to do, in depth and amazing, and we'll all be better for it.

Much love to KVV, and I could not be happier for him and his family.

 

Wonderful news! Great hire. I understand he likes him some pop culture, too, so I'd love to read his stuff in that realm as well as sports.