The Los Angeles Kings’ move, last week, to hire Rich Hammond as their own newspaper-style reporter continues to make news … this time in the Planet’s Paper of Record, the New York Times.

This is good for Rich Hammond. Not only is his mug now up on the NYT Web site (and yours and mine are not) … it announces to the entire country that the Kings are committed to giving him editorial freedom. Which may keep them from wavering that much longer.

That editorial-freedom vow is the precedent-setting aspect of this move. Bringing in a real newspaper guy (from the L.A. Daily News) to do newspaper-style reportage without direct team oversight/meddling … that’s new and different. And now we have NYT concurring.

It also is good news for the Kings. It’s a wee bit embarrassing to admit to the country that no one covers your team … but it shows that Kings management is attacking the problem with imagination. Some organizations would just let the problem fester.

As I wrote earlier, if this works out, let’s hope it becomes a trend, and other teams follow, and some good newspaper people find one more potential outlets for the talents newspapers increasingly don’t seem to need.