Well, The Star made it official today: Jason Whitlock is leaving The Star after 16 years as a sports columnist and six weeks as an Op-Ed columnist.
After 10 weeks of being “on vacation” (the weekly explanation that The Star has been trotting out to readers), Whitlock is now free “to pursue other interests.”
I predicted here on July 22 — after his columns had been missing for six weeks — that he was finished. (By the way, my hunch has won me a lunch bet with my colleague Hearne Christopher of KCCconfidential.com.)
The latest signal, to me, that he wasn’t coming back came last Friday when he posted this message on his Twitter account at 7:33 p.m.: “I know I’m lazy, but how did Tiger’s Wood (stet) finish today?”
He was asking, in other words, for somebody out there in Twitter land to tell him what score Tiger Woods had recorded in Friday’s round of the PGA championship, held in Wisconsin.
It struck me immediately that if the guy was too lazy to go to ESPN.com, or any number of other Internet sites, and check a player’s score, he was by no means ready to return to real work.
There really isn’t much more to say. His obit has been written (see Aug. 2 post on this site), and he’s done about all he can do at The Star. He’s made a significant contribution to Kansas City sports coverage, and he helped catapult Sports Daily into the top ranks of the nation’s sports sections. The challenge for The Star now will be to keep the sports section in the top tier, especially with Star sports editor Holly Lawton’s recent decision to resign.
Clearly, though, the time is right for Whitlock to move on: The paper, like most other metropolitan dailies, is in flux; the Chiefs seemingly are headed for another dull season;and Whitlock obviously is sick of writing for The Star.
So, good luck, Jason. We’ll be looking for you under the arc lights.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
You were right, Jim, although I will miss Jason’s columns. He got me interested in reading the sports section. But I think Sam Mellinger is doing a terrific job.
But “Tiger’s Wood”!!??
Evidently he needed copy editors., like the rest of us.
Cheers,
Laura
Jim, Laura, I think the Tiger’s wood thing might have been a double entendre, but then my mind is always in the gutter.
Definitely not a slip-up.
I’m with Laura, becuz he has so many typos in his tweets. But it
Does work if you wish to
Give
Him the benefit of the doubt for being clever
Hearne, I can’t tell if your comment needs a thorough edit or if it’s just fine poetry..Guess I’ll just let it be.