The management of the LA kings is horrible they dont need an expert writer that has history with the team to promote a loosing team. it starts with management getting players and getting goal scorers. people like action and if you ever been to a kings game the staple center is empty its pathetic it feels like a minor league game. i follow hockey and i could not care less about the kings new reporter, i really dont see how he is going to change a loosing franchise , no disrespect to rich Hammond

This is probably one of the best things a losing team could have done. Hire a professional writer who already has a little background with the team, to just strictly write about them as a whole. First it lets them get the coverage they need, that they might not get as a losing team. Second they did this very smart by not changing the relationship with Hammond he is still a journalist not a team up talker. He is still writing about the team as a whole and isn't going to be talking them up. well maybe a little since they are signing the checks. Still this is a great idea and I really would like to see what other sports teams pick up the idea.

This also happened a couple years ago with Patrick McManamon of the Akron Beacon Journal leaving his beat as Cleveland Browns writer to cover the team as an employee of the Browns. Then he left the Browns and returned to the ABJ. It would have been interesting to get his perspective (and to put the entire story into greater context).

Please! Have mercy. What can sports reporting possibly have to do with news reporting? A sports reporter has his/her "news" events scheduled for him/her, there is rarely any news value in what he or she reports (one team will win the other will lose, we know that in advance), and he/she regularly participates in staged media events where absolutely nothing newsworthy is said. Nice work if you can get it, regardless of who pays you.
Please continue to do your usual excellent post-modern 'commentary on the commentary' concerning news, and leave the ultimate oxymoron, "sports journalism" out of it.

Respectfully
d mataya

There is their something inherently silly to me about even considering a conflict of interest for a sports or entertainment reporter. Not to disparage these breeds of writer in any way (I was a big Red Barber fan) but it seems to me that sports and entertainment writers are by default part public-relations organs anyway, if not for a particular franchise then for their industry as a whole.

If my local news media decides to downplay city hall corruption, that is a serious breach of so called modern journalistic ethics. If local sports writers downplay say, steroid use by the home team it is disappointing but hardly something that affects me or my neighbors lives.

But then I don't hold sports or entertainment figures up as role models to my children.