Mark Purdy hanging it up

[HanSenSE]

San Jose Mercury News columnist since 1984 to call it a career in August:
Purdy: Why I'm hitting the exit ramp for my sports column

 

[DanOregon]

Man - nice to see a sportswriter retire on their own terms. Didn't know that was possible anymore.

 

[Fredrick]

That was a very good column. I tip my cap to pros like this. I'm sure he has done a great job with video and instant 24/7 news as he talked about. The pros adjust no matter their age. Problem is the 24/7 era and some of the hassles he mentioned eventually make a talented veteran pro like him say, "**** this. I'm out." I'm sure the news group wanted to keep him as he suggested, but hey they certainly aren't crying over shedding his salary you can bet that to be the case. Anyhow, very good piece he wrote there. And congratulations to him on a fine career and getting out as this business continues to near extinction.

 

[Spartan Squad]

Him and Ann Killion were my favorites at the Merc. Both were thousands of times better than Skip Bayless and at times a much better read than Kowakami who gets a little full of himself these days. Will be sad to not see his columns any more but glad he's moving on willfully.

 

[CAsportshack]

Good on Mark Purdy! He was always a good guy toward me when I worked in the Bay Area and shared press box space. My lasting impression came from a simple tag line from a radio ad that came in just after he started...

"Mark Purdy is in the Mercury News. Mark Purdy will change the way you look at sports."

He definitely did. We're all better off for the efforts.

 

[Joe Williams]

He was spot-on in declining a once-a-week column presence, for the reason stated: It's more work to play catch-up when you haven't been immersed in this crap all week and even then you don't feel you're writing with authority. The once-a-week scribes rarely are relevant and it's nice to see Purdy didn't just grab for the dough.

 

[DanOregon]

It's odd to think that the (almost) daily sports columnist as a thing of the past. Most markets still have them of course, but these days they don't tend to "set the agenda" like they once did. More likely its the former big dog columnist who is now a talking head on a local radio show and/or cable outlet who says something outrageous when someone serves him up one of those "games" like "Buy or Sell" - Over or under, Win Lose or Draw, FMK...(kidding about the last one, but I'm sure someone has adapted it to sports talk. ) It used to be these voices offered well-reasoned insight or analysis of a local team - now they are responding to some producer making slightly more than minimum wage who rips off content from national shows he listens to.

 

[Joe Williams]

It's odd to think that the (almost) daily sports columnist as a thing of the past. Most markets still have them of course, but these days they don't tend to "set the agenda" like they once did. More likely its the former big dog columnist who is now a talking head on a local radio show and/or cable outlet who says something outrageous when someone serves him up one of those "games" like "Buy or Sell" - Over or under, Win Lose or Draw, FMK...(kidding about the last one, but I'm sure someone has adapted it to sports talk. ) It used to be these voices offered well-reasoned insight or analysis of a local team - now they are responding to some producer making slightly more than minimum wage who rips off content from national shows he listens to.

National outlets have that have specialists on their sites per sport or outlets entirely devoted to one sport have made the local general sports columnists largely obsolete. Readers want "insiders" and experts on their favorite team/sport, not one person who tries or pretends to have the best insights, sources and opinions across all the teams and leagues. That might have been and still might be fine for casual sports fans, but we've all seen how a columnist who is great at one or two sports might be borderline at best writing about a third, fourth or fifth. They can handle the human-interest stuff, but it doesn't seem that stuff is what the hardcore audience gives two craps about most of the time.

 

[Fredrick]

It's odd to think that the (almost) daily sports columnist as a thing of the past. Most markets still have them of course, but these days they don't tend to "set the agenda" like they once did. More likely its the former big dog columnist who is now a talking head on a local radio show and/or cable outlet who says something outrageous when someone serves him up one of those "games" like "Buy or Sell" - Over or under, Win Lose or Draw, FMK...(kidding about the last one, but I'm sure someone has adapted it to sports talk. ) It used to be these voices offered well-reasoned insight or analysis of a local team - now they are responding to some producer making slightly more than minimum wage who rips off content from national shows he listens to.

Excellent post.
I've heard most sports talk radio stations have one host, maybe two out of their lineup of five different shows a day that make "fairly good" money, but 2-3 shows have talent basically making about 20,000 a year. True?

 

[LanceyHoward]

I thought that in a prior thread many posters said that the lead columnists at their paper would receive more clicks than any article in the section. Is this true?

 

[Fran Curci]

I think it's true that a columnist focused on one sport or a hot team will do better than most general columnists on the web. Of course there are still exceptions. But in the Bay Area, for example, a beat writer or columnist focused on the Warriors or Giants or 49ers (well, maybe not the 49ers lately) would do a lot better on the web than Purdy.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

@DanOregon FMK is alive and well in sports talk radio, sadly (using a euphemism for the F part for radio, of course).

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

It's odd to think that the (almost) daily sports columnist as a thing of the past. Most markets still have them of course, but these days they don't tend to "set the agenda" like they once did. More likely its the former big dog columnist who is now a talking head on a local radio show and/or cable outlet who says something outrageous when someone serves him up one of those "games" like "Buy or Sell" - Over or under, Win Lose or Draw, FMK...(kidding about the last one, but I'm sure someone has adapted it to sports talk. ) It used to be these voices offered well-reasoned insight or analysis of a local team - now they are responding to some producer making slightly more than minimum wage who rips off content from national shows he listens to.

New York still has Mike Vaccaro at the Post. He produces well-written pulse of the fanbase columns several days a week. Never a hot take, and not coincidentally, he never screams at you from the radio, either.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Another one follows:

 

[HanSenSE]

Another one follows:

Waiting to see what this is, and do they fill both spots?

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

Kawakami is apparently going to The Athletic

 

[ChrisLong]

... and I saw the other day that Art Spander got axed from the SF Examiner, while he was at Wimbledon. His tweet revealed the ouster and asked if anybody needed a columnist with experience and awards.

 

[Fran Curci]

I would bet Art Spander had to pay his own way to Wimbledon. The Examiner is not the old Examiner.

 

[HanSenSE]

I would bet Art Spander had to pay his own way to Wimbledon. The Examiner is not the old Examiner.

Is he covering for Newsday as well this year?

 

[DanOregon]

Art has summered in Europe for years - been freelancing for the last 15 or so, probably paid per article by the Ex.