Hand wringing and howls of protest have been customary the last decade or so every time The Star has laid off more veteran reporters.
With less fanfare, however, the revolving door has been working both ways at The Star, especially for young, talented sports writers, several of whom have built nice portfolios of “clips” and then parlayed them into bigger, better-paying jobs.
The latest to do so is Maria Torres, who early this year became the first Spanish-speaking reporter to be assigned to cover the Royals.
That was in February. Now, severn moths later, she’s gone. I’d noticed the last couple of weeks that other reporters had been writing about the Royals, and today regular reader Bill Hirt posted a comment on a recent JimmyCSays post, saying Torres had gone to work for the Los Angeles Times, covering the Los Angeles Angels.
Maria Torres
It’s a bit unusual for a baseball reporter to pick up and go to another paper, covering a new team, in mid-season, and I don’t know what precipitated the move. But I do know it was a great opportunity for Torres, who could still be in her 20s. She’ll be in the second largest metro area in the country; she’ll be making more money; she’ll be covering a team that is consistently more competitive than the Royals; and she’ll be positioning herself for perhaps bigger and better career moves down the road.
Sam McDowell
The Star’s new Royals’ reporter is Sam McDowell, who has been covering Sporting Kansas City, as well as some prep sports. McDowell, who is in his early 30s, has gone in short order from covering high school sports to one of the three most important sports beats at The Star, the others being the Chiefs beat and the college sports analyst (Blair Kerkhoff).
Torres succeeded Rustin Dodd, who covered the Royals for a few seasons before jumping to a sports website called The Athletic. (I believe he is still in town and covering the Royals for that website.)
The Chiefs’ beat has also seen significant turnover in recent years.
Terez Paylor
Remember the name Terez Paylor? That young man covered the Chiefs for five years and earlier this year bolted to Yahoo Sports, as a “senior” NFL writer. (I put senior in quotation marks because Paylor is still in his 30s.) Like Dodd, he has continued to live in Kansas City.
Adam Teicher
The beat writer who preceded Paylor, Adam Teicher, also left for greener pastures when he accepted a job covering the Chiefs for ESPN in 2013.
What all this means is that even the biggest sports beats at The Star and most other major metropolitan papers are no longer the destination jobs they used to be. When newspapers were riding high, the people who made their way to those vaunted positions typically held them for many years. The late Bill Richardson, for example, was the Chiefs’ beat writer for 16 years and then wrote about them part time for another 16 years.
It’s much different now. The combination of the newspaper industry’s downward spiral and the proliferation of sports websites has opened up a multitude of opportunities for good sportswriters, especially women and non-white men. (Torres’ prospects are even better, being female and a Spanish speaker in a sport with many Latino players.)
The number of opportunities in sports seems to outnumber those in news. I think one reason for that is some of the big sports websites, like The Athletic and ESPN, want reporters in every city with an NFL and/or MLB team. On the other hand, very few news outlets, regardless of size, want or need news reporters in every major metropolitan area. News reporters can be “parachuted in” as needed.
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Brooke Pryor and Lynn Worthy
This summer, The Star introduced with great fanfare its new two-member team that would be covering the Chiefs. They are Brooke Pryor and Lynn Worthy.
It will be interesting to see how long they hang around.
On the other hand, it could be a neck-and-neck race between how long they stay and how long it is before the paper’s corporate owner, McClatchy Co., is sold or declares bankruptcy.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I learned today that Gatehouse has closed the Carthage (MO) Press after 134 years of operation. Gatehouse promises that significant Carthage news will be carried in another Gatehouse property, The Neosho Daily News, that publishes twice weekly, Tuesday and Friday.
Maybe Neosho will have an opening for a Carthage correspondent…
While The Star has always had members of their sports staff move on to bigger and better things, as Jim mentions, it is accelerating now.
Andy McCullough, the beat writer for the 2015 Royals, left after that season to become the Dodgers beat writer for the LA Times. Rustin Dodd, already on staff, succeeded him and left in the winter break before the start of this season to The Athletic. Maria, who was already on the staff, took over the Royals beat, and now has left for the LA Times for the Angels beat.
I don’t blame any of them. They are all young, have (hopefully) long careers ahead of them, and looking for security. It is also apparent that The Star has decided game stories are not that important as the amount of space devoted to them has shrunk dramatically. Why not look to a different venue that will allow one to tell more of the game stories as well as other events surrounding the team?
That today’s paper depended on a local story written by Pete Grathoff on Danny Duffy’s injury quoting from Jeff Flanagan’s MLB.com story (another ex-Star reporter/columnist and early layoff) tells one a lot about the current commitment by The Star to cover the Royals.
How management thinks they can sell a $30, sports-only subscription cribbing portions of articles from free Web sources is beyond me if this is any indication how they plan to do things.
And do they really need three writers covering KU sports? They only have one each on the K-State and Missouri beat.
I also noticed that the game story was from the Associated Press. That makes me wonder if they’re trying to save money, at least for the rest of this season, by not sending the beat reporter — McDowell — on road trips.
The Star has two reporters covering KU sports on a regular basis — Jesse Newell, who does all the football and, I think, some basketball — and Gary Bedore, who is billed as the “KU insider” for basketball only.
They also have two reporters covering MU sports — Alex Schiffer and Aaron Reiss.
Blair Kerkhoff is the overarching college sports reporter and analyst. He writes about anything and everything.
I think you’re right about K-State…The Star and the Wichita Eagle share the services of Kellis Robinett, who covers football and basketball.
I read somewhere recently that they were down to one MU reporter. If you look at all of the articles for the past few weeks, they have all been written by Alex Schiffer.
I just checked Aaron Reiss’ Twitter account, and yes, he has left The Star for The Athletic covering the Houston Texans. It seems like anyone they hire recently are gone in less than a year for other media.
McDowell is 33.
Thanks, Kenny. I’ve corrected it…
Jorge Castillo, the Spanish-speaking Washington Nationals beat reporter for The Washington Post, also picked up and left Friday for The Los Angeles Times to cover the Dodgers. Guessing The Times, which is on a hiring binge throughout the paper, deliberately went after two of the few Spanish-speaking baseball beat reporters. Probably offered more money as well as the chance to work and live in LA. I wouldn’t read too much into it in terms of The Star.
Good to know, Steve. It’s a natural move, looking for reporters that speak the language of so many players.
Bill, there is a trend developing with game stories. Some news organizations are rethinking whether they need them at all and if not, what replaces them. During a game, I can follow along on my phone to the stats and tweets, including those from the beat writer in real time. The scoreboard gives additional data. After last night’s Nats game vs. the Cardinals, for example, I knew most everything I needed to know about the game before I got home. People watching at home could do the same, or look it up later. The players and managers are interviewed after the game so I get their take. If I happen to miss a big game, I can always find it to watch later. We don’t need to read a traditional game story any more. What we do want is analysis and big-picture perspective of a game or a single play or an athlete’s performance. That’s the story direction many sports sections are taking.
Bill — Good research on Aaron Reiss…I’m not on Twitter, but I just found out I can Google somebody’s name and Twitter and usually find out who they’re writing for. Thanks for the up-to-date info.
Mehl & McGuff
Whitlock and Posnanski
Golden Ages never to be seen again
Sports isn’t alone in losing staff, I see that Max Londberg is now in Cincinnati as a breaking news reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Well, I’ll be damned, John. Yes, I Googled him and there he is.
That’s a Gannett paper. I hage Gannett, but from its relatively stable financial footing, it’s probably a better spot for a young reporter than any McClatchy paper. All these young people The Star has hired should be building their “clip” portfolios and preparing to bail as soon as possible.