Michael Russo: Russo leaves Star Tribune; to join The Athletic

[Minnesota]

Russo just got voted best NHL beat writer (sorry I can't do the tweet here at work). Well deserved.

Voted on by which outlet? I haven't seen any stories, and Russo hasn't tweeted anything.

 

[GopherState]

Voted on by which outlet? I haven't seen any stories, and Russo hasn't tweeted anything.

The PHWA (Professional Hockey Writers Association) AKA his peers.

 

[NHL1674]

Congrats to Russo.

://www.thephwa.com/news_article/show/840603

 

[TaLoN]

Congrats to Russo.

://www.thephwa.com/news_article/show/840603

Just FYI - When linking an article, you can type out what you want the link to say, then just highlight what you typed out and then click on the link tool and paste the url into the popup window, it will then turn that text you highlighted into a link for the address you want...

Like this

 

[gphr513]

The Athletic published an article with their main NHL writers (LeBrun, Custance, Dellow, Bourne, etc) picking their Stanley Cup champions, awards, and other predictions about the season. A solid 75% of the comments section is people clamoring for Russo

 

[Dee Oh Cee]

Hahahah that is great. Just looked through it.

 

[Wild11MN]

Did an army just go and comment or something? The comments seem a bit disingenuous. People are saying they subscribed to see stuff like predictions from Russo? That seems highly unlikely. They subscribe for the team coverage.

 

[ThatGuy22]

Did an army just go and comment or something? The comments seem a bit disingenuous. People are saying they subscribed to see stuff like predictions from Russo? That seems highly unlikely. They subscribe for the team coverage.

They did get a pretty ridiculous bump in subscribers from basically just getting Russo on board. They got like 10,000 subscribers from MN in the two weeks following Russo's announcement. Pretty impressive given the Vikings, Twins and Timberwolves coverage is basically still non-existent.

 

[123TripleDoge]

I like how there's still no way to remove the scores from your main feed on the app. For people DVR'ing the game, it makes the app unusable once the puck drops. Why is nobody else annoyed by this? Do I have to unfollow the team on game days so i can read articles without getting the Wild game spoiled?

 

[tomgilbertfan]

Why is nobody else annoyed by this?

I'd wager because the number of people that DVR a game is small compared to those that watch it live. If I miss a game i'll watch the highlights and read about it, I'm not going to watch it later.

 

[Goose312]

The Athletic published an article with their main NHL writers (LeBrun, Custance, Dellow, Bourne, etc) picking their Stanley Cup champions, awards, and other predictions about the season. A solid 75% of the comments section is people clamoring for Russo

OMG checked it out of curiousity, had to stop like 5 times so I didn't just bust out laughing hysterically at work.

 

[gphr513]

I like how there's still no way to remove the scores from your main feed on the app. For people DVR'ing the game, it makes the app unusable once the puck drops. Why is nobody else annoyed by this? Do I have to unfollow the team on game days so i can read articles without getting the Wild game spoiled?

Yeah, like tgf said I think the number of people who DVR the game, and watch it in full later, without knowing the result, is pretty small.

If I can't watch a game, I just follow along live on Twitter or other apps, and watch highlights, so it doesn't really effect me.

Although I do find it odd that their app has scores when the site doesn't.

 

[Dr Jan Itor]

Would turning off the push notifications do the trick?

 

[dBoon]

One thing I have noticed; since Russo left, there is almost never a link to a hockey story on the S-Trib home page. You have to dig into sports, even the morning after a game.

 

[BigT2002]

One thing I have noticed; since Russo left, there is almost never a link to a hockey story on the S-Trib home page. You have to dig into sports, even the morning after a game.

Noticed that too. Not sure they are getting the same type of coverage they got before with Russo. Or if they are just gun shy with the new guy.

 

[TaLoN]

 

[gphr513]

The Strib found their new beat writer, from AZ.

 

[Summer Rose]

I hope you like your beat writers of the milquetoast variety, because that's all that Sarah McLellan is.

 

[gphr513]

I hope you like your beat writers of the milquetoast variety, because that's all that Sarah McLellan is.

Well, as long as Russo is still in Minnesota, she will be similar to Mizutani (sp?) at the Pioneer Press when it comes to Wild coverage in this state, a distant afterthought.

I give her credit though, it's gotta be a little intimidating to fill those shoes. I gave her a Twitter follow, and will try to check some of her stuff out; wish her well here.

 

[Summer Rose]

Well, as long as Russo is still in Minnesota, she will be similar to Mizutani (sp?) at the Pioneer Press when it comes to Wild coverage in this state, a distant afterthought.

For us, she was a slightly more reliable source of line combinations/starting goalies than dailyfaceoff.com (but the difference was miniscule since dailyfaceoff.com often cited her Twitter account for what they put up) but that's about it. Her articles about the Coyotes never said anything that wasn't reasonably obvious to an informed fan.

I mean, if you didn't follow the team closely, what she had to say could have been news, but I'm biased because I follow the Coyotes pretty obsessively and from a personal standpoint she never published anything that was news to me.

 

[ThatGuy22]

I hope you like your beat writers of the milquetoast variety, because that's all that Sarah McLellan is.

As i'm sure i'm not the only one that will have to do this...
milquetoast

[milk-tohst]
noun, (sometimes initial capital letter)
1.
a very timid, unassertive, spineless person, especially one who is easily dominated or intimidated:
a milquetoast who's afraid to ask for a raise.

 

[ThatGuy22]

For us, she was a slightly more reliable source of line combinations/starting goalies than dailyfaceoff.com (but the difference was miniscule since dailyfaceoff.com often cited her Twitter account for what they put up) but that's about it. Her articles about the Coyotes never said anything that wasn't reasonably obvious to an informed fan.

I mean, if you didn't follow the team closely, what she had to say could have been news, but I'm biased because I follow the Coyotes pretty obsessively and from a personal standpoint she never published anything that was news to me.

Part of that could be role at the paper(website). Looking at her work, seems like she wasn't solely Coyotes focused. Has a little bit of everything(Cardinals, Coyotes, Diamondbacks). With the Strib, she probably will have zero other focus beyond the Wild.

 

[Summer Rose]

Part of that could be role at the paper(website). Looking at her work, seems like she wasn't solely Coyotes focused. Has a little bit of everything(Cardinals, Coyotes, Diamondbacks). With the Strib, she probably will have zero other focus beyond the Wild.

That's fair to say. If you only do hockey in Arizona, there's just not a lot of money in it. For example, Todd Walsh is part of our broadcast crew (and most of us hate him because he's stupid, but that's beside the point), but he's employed by Fox Sports Arizona, which is our local cable sports network that attempts to cover the Diamondbacks, Suns, and Coyotes simultaneously (the NFL being the NFL, it doesn't include the Cardinals at all). Semi-on-topic rant; Todd Walsh is just as much of an idiot when he's with the Diamondbacks or Suns.

Tyson Nash does only Coyotes coverage, but he's a former NHL player so he's probably not in it for the money, though.

 

[XX]

The Strib found their new beat writer, from AZ.

She is pretty unprofessional in interviews and if she has writing chops, we haven't seen them. In five years, I can count the number of times she dropped actual informational nuggets in her articles on one hand. Information about all the drama with the Coyotes was falling out of the trees and she managed to pick up on basically none of it. She was easily outdone by a guy who lost his full time beat gig when Fox Sports downsized a bit.

It's a pretty bad sign when your articles are hard to separate from an AP auto generated text story. I wish her luck in your market because she is going to need it.

 

[AMostlyWildPerson]

feelsbadman, he's been there for me on my path to becoming a hardcore fan, best of luck to him.