Ugly Thursday As Ed Hardin Let Go By The Greensboro N&R

We were really sorry to hear that the Greensboro News & Record finished gutting their sports room by letting Ed Hardin, Conor O’Neill, Jeff Mills and Patrick Ferlise go.

No offense to anyone else but Hardin is a real loss. He’s a gifted sportswriter - well writer - and really knows how to tell a story. He has an excellent BS detector and can apply it to himself which not everyone can do (trust us on that).

It continues a long term decline of course. We could run off a list of really great North Carolina sportswriters who have been forced to reinvent their careers rather close to retirement. Security marched the late Al Featherston out of the Herald-Sun offices despite the fact that he was a very honorable man and had made immense contributions to the paper rag.

It’s happened to newspapers everywhere although somehow, in Tucson America’s Worst Columnist, Greg Hansen, remains employed.

We send our best wishes to Hardin and his colleagues and hope they find a platform to keep working. The one thing we’re pretty sure of is that there is still an appetite for good sportswriting. At some point, the market will find a way to properly reward it.