Young, veteran media reporter John Koblin ditches all that to write about sports for Denton's Deadspin
John Koblin.
9:02 pm Mar. 16, 20123
WWD media reporter John Koblin is leaving Conde Nast to write for Deadspin, the popular Gawker Media sports blog, Capital has learned.
It's not as strange as it might seem that a media reporter for a fashion trade newspaper is moving to the sports beat. Koblin started as an intern in the Newark bureau of The New York Times before being recruited to The New York Observer to write for its commercial real-estate beat. Then he took over the Off the Record column there. But he wrote about sports on the side throughout his tenure at the weekly.
There was this profile of John Maine, and his annual U.S. Open blog for observer.com, which sometimes clocked 20 items a day. The paper ran a cover story by him on the misery of being a "with the Knicks" reporter in 2007 that ran to 2,400 words.
He even managed football and tennis stories in the pages of W.W.D. (Today's cover story: "Ralph's New Ride," about a new fragrance line.)
At Deadspin, Koblin will reunite with former Observer media editor Tom Scocca, who joined the site as managing editor last summer.
(Disclosure: I worked with Koblin at The Observer from 2008 through 2010.)
So sorry.
Yes! I love Koblin, but not enough to buy WWD. His John Maine piece was one of my favorite sports pieces on the Mets ever. I hope this move is part of Capital's plan to sign him on some day to supplement your already-awesome sports stuff.
Great. Plucky white boys writing about other plucky white boys.
Same old story.