Van Valkenburg to ESPN The Mag

Lots of (deserved) love for his Ravens work but I like KVV's stuff on the ponies. He's thes young guy in the country on the horses.

 

No love for former Maryland beat jockey Heather Dinich?

She was part of the first wave of ESPN conference bloggers.

 

I used to read The Sun pretty regularly when Maese was there. I'm sure there arr other good writers there, but if I've read The Sun in the last few years, it's a safe bet I was reading KVV.

I could not be happier for Kevin.

Congrats man...

 

This brings up a salient thing to discuss. What is Publication A's responsibility to Talent A? When the concept of a paper putting its best talent in areas where they're needed is apparently contrary to being, well, the right thing to do, what should Paper A do? Hand Talent A an Apple/iPhone bundle, a passport and ask for occasional magic?

Because that's what ESPN seems to be doing these days. I don't mean that facetiously, either. There are lovely writers and thinkers involved with ESPN, but they - I think of one - has written some stuff in the last eight months that belong in a literary magazine. I love reading it, but if I were their editor at a paper, and they were the best I had on a staff of, oh, 15, I can't have literary hour. I need, you know, excellence in 900 words on deadline.

But ESPN, bankrolled by cable subscriber fees that are held hostage by Disney, just sort of trucks this stuff out there and pays writers handsomely for it. I don't begrudge the writers one bit for accepting the job, either. You can't. You shouldn't. If I get paid more to write less about subjects I could blow out into all sorts of intellectual and philosophical paradigms and all anybody ever tells me is how good it is, I mean, shit.

 

Those ESPN bloggers are glorified link farmers and list generators. Some are better than others.

 

Most of the NFL guys are pretty good. Some of the college guys are exactly what you said... link farmers...

 

This sentence makes my head hurt.

Much-deserved congrats, KVV.

 

I don't disagree with you. The Baltimore Sun and ESPN.com/The Mag have different needs. And each writer should go where he/she can do his/her best work, in things they enjoy doing, for whatever they need. For some, it's at newspapers. For some, it's where they can write literary beauty.

It's all individual. Should the Baltimore Sun have handed Kevin a passport and asked for occasional magic? No. Should Kevin spend his life writing notebooks and gamers if it's not what he wants to do? No.

It's about fit.

 

If you're Kevin Van Valkenburg, that's great. You're very well-connected and very talented, and you'll get noticed by a place such as ESPN. There are many people who lack one of those requisite verys.

I don't think a newspaper should bend over backward to allow a guy to explore his whims and talents. There are daily chores that need to be fulfilled, and with massive staff cutbacks, those come first. I said earlier in this post that the Sun rarely used Van Valkenburg to his full potential. That didn't mean they weren't getting a lot out of him. If they had been using him to his full potential, if they had handed him a passport and asked for occasional magic, that wouldn't have suited the newspaper's needs.

ESPN is different. ESPN has so many talented writers on its staff, including the one I'm pretty sure you're referring to, that I don't think it's an issue at all to make sure they're using people to their full potential. And, if we're thinking of the same guy, I think you're underrating how often he handles a key story just because it's the massive takeouts on strange stories (which generate surprisingly strong Web mileage) that get discussed most frequently.

That's not to say ESPN always lets all of its staff writers go. Certainly, many of the NFL and college bloggers could knock a feature out of the park in their newspaper days. Certainly, many of their better people for the dot-com were better writers than TV commentators, and by asking them to do the latter so often, you're cutting into their time to write great features.

It's a luxury few newspapers can afford these days. The New York Times allows Bill Pennington to shine as a features writer and occasional columnist, but there is still golf to be covered. The same could be said for The Washington Post and Barry Svrluga or Mike Wise.

It's exciting, I'm sure, to get a chance to do what you know you're best at and you know you most want to do. Few writers get the opportunity, in large part because few employers are in position to allow that to happen.

Oh, and Heather Dinich was another complete oversight. She got seemingly every big story in her time on the Maryland beat.

 

I think you were agreeing with me, but I'm not sure.

 

Congrats to KVV.

The news also reminded me of his Elaine's blog on Jones' site. (Though, I think Jones himself was absent for that gathering.) His hiring did almost seem inevitable, though I'm sure it didn't always seem that way to him, and he should be rightly proud of himself for landing such a prominent job.

 

I was agreeing with you and Alma on separate points. Not every writer has the opportunity to do what Van Valkenburg did in making the jump to a place that would let him have more freedom to do what he wants. That doesn't mean that newspapers need to bend over backward pleasing their talented writers.

It's great to see Van Valkenburg go somewhere he can truly shine, but the Sun wasn't misusing him. They just didn't have the resources to allow him to fully display his talents. The same could be said for many, many writers at many, many newspapers (and websites).

But yeah, I did get a little ramble-y.

And YankeeFan, Jones was there for that Elaine's night, according to the post.