U of Kansas beat in Kansas City?

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Brady has been uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter tonight. DeArmond is retiring off the Mizzou beat this year as well. The college coverage will look a lot different at the Star.

 

I'm fairly familiar with the paper, and anyone who can report and write their ass off may want to get their stuff in quickly, as in yesterday. This isn't going to be a long process.

 

DeArmond's replacement wrote an open letter to Tigerboard, the Mizzou fanboard, introducing himself, and promised that he's not a Jayhawk fan.

Frankly, as a (somewhat former) journalist, I'm not sure how I felt about that. On the one hand, it helped answer a ton of questions in the minds of a good chunk of his most devout readers...but on the other hand, it seemed a bit like pandering to the blogosphere.

 

He may have done that because the KC Star's current beat writer for Kansas State is a KU grad. That ruffled some feathers among K-State fans who claim he's biased, even though he does an honest, accurate job reporting on the Wildcats.

 

Is this an actual opening or a predicted one? McClatchy site doesn't have anything.

 

Word on the street is, send your resumes.

 

They've already sent out feelers to a few people.

Would this be the safest of the college beats at the KC Star? These days you just never know when they're going to start sharing content and eliminating beats.

 

I don't know... If you're the football writer for a SEC school at the local paper, I think it's safe to say your job will never be eliminated or outsourced. I think those are the safest sports jobs in the country.

That said, the paper can fold.

 

What would be the order of the top five beats at The Star?

1. Chiefs
2. Royals
3. KU
4. Missouri
5. K-State

I remember there was a stretch in the 1990s where it seemed like The Star would cover every Big 8 football game. I'd pick up the paper and unless it was Okie State-Iowa State, they seemed to have a staffer there. Then again, this was when Colorado and Nebraska were consistently the best two teams in the conference, and between them and three local teams, there was a lot to cover.

 

Yeah, even if the writer from KC is 10X as talented as the guys from the hometown paper, that's still tough when they have that many people there...