May as well make it official…
Kansas City Star sports columnist Sam Mellinger has totally eclipsed heavy duty forebears Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock.
Mellinger’s column yesterday about weed wonk Dwayne Bowe was the best of both worlds. A bit of the colorful elocution-like wordplay of JoPo – but more cutting edge contemporary. Along with some of the blustery bombast of Porkchop, sans the unnecessary pimping of the readership.
You know what?
Looks like the Star has (finally) completed the breakup.
The last Posnanski column I see on its Web site ran Friday, April 30. Guess they finally came to the somewhat obvious conclusion that feeding print readers day-old missives off Posnanski’s personal blog was a poor substitute for original content.
And so just like that a decades-long era in Kansas City sportswriting is dead, buried, all-but-forgotten and merrily down the road.
With one exception.
For whatever reason, the newspaper continues to list and link – incorrectly, I might add – Posnanski’s personal/non-Star blog on its main Web page as one of its “Star Blogs.”
Funny, Whitlock’s blog didn’t make the cut for some reason…
fourwheeler tires
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist
spew
Hmm…Grave Dancing at The Kansas City Star of Spewing Bitter Bile at The Kansas City Star? Sounds distinctly like the latter.
You’re trying to interpret ever single move The Star makes as something of massive consequence. Maybe there is a reason. I can guarantee you it ain’t necessarily so.
Maybe Posnanski is busy.
Will we be able to mark the second anniversary of your layoff with something particularly venomous?
Rick in PV
Mellinger’s fine, but he’s no JoePo …
PucKChaser
Mellinger is really good.
Irene
The flow on this weak gotta throw it down hard.
Cliffy
“… Mellinger has totally eclipsed heavy duty forebears Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock.”
What a stupid comment. Mellinger is doing really well, but come on ….
Markus Aurelius
I agree — Mellinger isn’t bad but he is not as good a writer as Posnanski, at least not yet. He also isn’t as good (yet) at taking on a hot button issue like Whitlock. I don’t think many people think of Mellinger’s columns as “must read” yet — maybe some day but I think you’re a bit quick with the trigger on this one.
Dexter Morgan
Mellinger is far more tolerable than Posnanski’s Norman Rockwell paintings/columns. Whitlock jumped the shark years ago and is just coasting on his rep and name recognition while his writing has lost the punch it used to carry.
Just goes to show that writing sports columns is a hugely overrated skill. Be entertaining, pace your thoughts well and make a valid point by the time you reach the last paragraph. The ‘be entertaining’ part is the catch though – yet in today’s society where everyone is on Twitter and Facebook and posts on messageboards like this one, you have to be blind, deaf and dumb to not be able to recognize what’s funny and what isn’t these days.
Quick wit, observational humor and thoughtful insight are coincidentally also traits of a good personality…and like good writing professor’s will tell you – write what you know.
Unfortunately for most writers saddled with a deadline, the ticking clock tends to haunt their craft. For others, a self-absorbed view of the world is the albatross around their pen…er, keyboard.
smartman
@Dexter, AGREED!
If I were the publisher I’d clean house every 7 to 10 years just to keep things fresh and keep (some) people from getting too big for their britches.
Very few people have the skill and passion to crank out 3 to 4 columns a week about local interest stories, in the same market, without getting boring and long in the tooth.
Jopo should be writing Harlequin Bromance Novels and JW should go to work for The Dirty.com
MoCrash
Comparing Mellinger to JoPo and Pork Chop is like discussing the relative merits of apples, oranges and kumquats (Big Sexy being the kumquat, of course). Mellinger is not as polished as JoPo, but he’s got an edge as a columnist that JoPo never possessed. Mellinger may not be as hard core as Whitlock, but he’s a lot more palatable. It all comes down to individual taste. For a one-columnist sports section, I think Mellinger gives The Star the forthrightness needed while an easy-to-digest writing style. He’s a good fit.
______________
HC: Well said, MoCrash
Ed Connealy
Some define Intelligence as the ability to hold two contrasting thoughts or opinions at the same time. What an axe you have to grind. Mell is quite solid, but eclipsing the now nationally renowned Jo-P and Whitlocke? I will continue to not take you seriously…at all.