By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

Proving that ill-timed departures aren’t the sole domain of the Boston Globe’s Sports Desk, the Providence Journal is about to lose one of its most recognizable writers, in the talented, Tom E. Curran.

Several Patriots’ beat insiders have confirmed to Shots that Curran will be leaving the ProJo by September 1 to take a job with the fledgling NBCSports.com. (Currently, if you got to www.nbcsports.com, you are re-directed seamlessly to www.msnbc.com’s (largely lame) Sports page. That is supposedly changing at the start of next month as NBCsports.com begins to brand itself around its newly-christened Sunday Night NFL package.)

Curran, featured in this 2003 Football Outsiders Interview (by Aaron Schatz), has been at the ProJo since 2002 and in recent months has distinguished himself as a true, five-tool player in the areas of writing/reporting/TVing/Radioing/Interneting. His recent WEEI 850 AM radio stints have been stellar and he’s shone on the tube at both CBS4’s “Sports Final” and for FSNNE’s “Sports Tonight.”

Curran was not available for immediate comment, but the news of his imminent departure is already common knowledge to at least a few ProJo co-workers, several of Curran’s fellow Pats’ beat writers and a few Patriots personnel.

He becomes the second Pats’ beat writer in two weeks to head for seemingly greener pastures, following Jerome Solomon, who is winding down his days at the Globe before returning to his hometown of Houston for a combination web/print role at the Houston Chronicle.

It is expected that other ProJo writers will combine on the beat, as many have already been doing. That roster includes Kevin McNamara, Shalise Manza Young and Carolyn Thornton.

A 1985 Silver Lake High School grad and a Saint Anselm Alum from 1989, Curran (now living in Lakeville, with three “Es”) will most likely start out as nbcsports.com’s national NFL writer. That would be a role that could have unlimited potential as NBC commences its six-year, Sunday Night NFL package. For a husband and father of three children under-10 – as Curran is – the security that comes from being with a rising, NFL-infused website as opposed to a stagnant, trying-to-keep-up, daily is incalculable.

It’s not to say that the ProJo is going to shrivel up and die, but it is to say that all indicators are pointing toward better job security and better opportunities on the Web. Curran is reading the same tea leaves that many others in the business are reading, or at the very least, trying to decipher.

Yahoo! Sports is a prime example of a national website turning to print talent (NFL beat mean, Charles Robinson and Jason Cole, to name two) to help fortify its web presence. It is, by the way, a trend all across the board and permeates through the sports desks, where copy editors and photography specialists are being plucked by web site operators as well.

Curran has established himself as a hard-nosed, insightful observer and has been riding the wave of the Patriots’ success and popularity as well as anyone in the market. His blogging evolved incrementally from its early days and his flare and bravado have never waned. You need look no further than this post-preseason opener rip-job on the tight-lipped Pats (and a PR flack), to see the kind of teeth nbcsports.com is adding to its stable. It’s a super move for both sides and one that positions Curran nicely for the remainder of his career.

. . . Just guessing here, but Curran’s WEEI appearances should be unaffected by the change in employer, but his TV work, including FSNNE and appearances on CBS4 could be deemed semi-conflicts for a guy drawing a paycheck from NBC. However, when newer sites are attempting to gain a foothold, any additional exposure for their personalities should not be frowned upon. Let Curran keep all his extra gigs to help get the word out that NBC Sports is more than just Bob Costas and Notre Dame football. After a while, you can keep him exclusive if need be.

. . . Curran is another in the seemingly endless line of local talent who, at one time or another, passed through what is now the MetroWest Daily News (he was there from 1997 to 2002).

Old friend, Matty Vautour and I like to kid that the early 1990s UMass Daily Collegian sports desk was a breeding ground for sports journalists, but that Framingham broadsheet sure was pretty damn fertile itself.

. . . So far, about the only reference to nbcsports.com floating around the general web is in reference to a fantasy show that the site will be hosting.

There’s also some limited mention of the site here.

. . .The NBC.com sports page is brutally lame in its current state and the Sunday Night Football is almost equally empty (wallpapers, buddy icons, MySpace codes – ugh). But the encouraging news for nbcsports.com is that the network had some good experiences running its Torino Olympic Site and if that’s part of the skeleton used for the all-sports model, NBC (and Curran) should be in good shape. (There’s also that fantasy aspect that will surely drive traffic to the site.)

And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of consumers who will be bombarded with scoreboard bumpers and announcer drop-ins urging TV viewers to check out the “NEW nbcsports.com” or, quite likely, “NFL insider-type, Tom E. Curran” at nbcsports.com.

. . . The timid, almost laughable, current MSNBC.com sports page has at least two familiar names to Boston media (or Globe) observers: Ron Borges has been a regular Contributor over there as well as the site’s “Golf Expert,” Jim McCabe, who has also been earnestly blogging a bit from Medinah for the Green Boxers.

• We’re hearing that the Globe has pulled the plug on its Metro-branded “GameDay” giveaway, with this Yankees’ homestand serving as the swan song for the paper that launched only after the All-Star break.

Reached via email late Thursday evening, Metro Sports Editor Christopher Price responded to the Shots’ request about the end of potential end of GameDay thusly:

“I am extremely proud of GameDay and the response it’s received. An All-Star roster of reporters and columnists like Alex Speier, Joe Haggerty, Mike Petraglia, Jeff Howe, John Molori, Bob Halloran, Mike Salk, Ed Berliner and Sarah Green have all done tremendous work in helping produce the only program distributed around the ballpark that has fresh content every single home game. Our top-notch group of promoters have been great about getting it in the hands of the fans. And the fans have clearly responded – our numbers are going up every homestand. In fact, it has done so well that is has inspired another local pro team to contact us about producing a GameDay-style product for their franchise, and we are in talks to do so.”

Price said he was not aware of any plans to cease publishing GameDay, which if it is killed off, would have been given less than 25 issues to prove itself. Perhaps the Metro brand-name isn’t quite established enough yet to be doing spin-offs. Remember, the Globe also did a fair bit of in-house advertising to support the hand-out, but, if Shots’ spies are correct, even that cross-promotion might not have been enough to keep the Good Idea/Bad Timing experiment from flopping.

We’ll have to wait for the next homestand to get the final answer.

. . . Just FYI, if you’re reading between the lines, common sense says the 8-game home schedule of the Patriots wouldn’t quite lend to the established model for GameDay (and they already have PFW), so Shots is guessing it’s either the Bruins (doubtful) or the Celtics (probable) who Price is referring to when he says there might be another franchise looking for a similar product.

• Yes, yes, it’s okay to scream it one more time: TONY BARBEE FOR THREEEEEEEE! Having been to El Paso, having sat at the knee of The Bear and having tasted the tequila of the border, we can tell you this: Tony is in for one heck of a ride. And the story has a nice Umie twist, with Bob Stull doing the hiring.

All you Minutemen faithful just became Miner Men with this hiring. And that’s an order!

• Let us be a bit early in saying “You’re With Me, One-Year-Old, Deadspin.com” and/or Happy Birthday, Will. Hope your cake is as tasty as this one. . .

Sorry – you’re the one that taught us all about shock value, so you kinda had it coming to you. . .

• Shots managed to catch up with all-time SID Legend, Ed Carpenter, outside of Fenway this week. The former BU SID who retired after almost 30 years in the business is now a Fan Ambassador for the Sox, giving tours of the park. The smile, the easy conversation and the joie de vivre are all still there for one of my guy, Howie Davis’s, most contemporary, contemporaries, and a man I had the pleasure of learning from when I was a little SID-in-training.

• We knew we never had to worry about the Fenway Sports Group’s ability to sustain itself, but we weren’t prepared for them to outgrow their Fenway digs so quickly. FSG is taking up space across from the Tiki Room on Ipswich Street. It’s the outer edge of a triangle that is screaming for further Red Sox expansion/takeover/improvements and one that club officials are, not surprisingly, actively pursuing.

So take THAT “New” Yankee Stadium! You might be breaking ground on a more modern venue, but the Sox are creating their very own Neighborhood. “Mr. Henry’s Neighborhood.”

• CN8 begins its transition from the now-defunct “Sports Pulse,” 10 p.m. show (which aired for its final time on Thursday evening) to the Sept. 5 launch of an 11 p.m. entry, which will share the Network’s recycled, “Out of Bounds” moniker.

The next two weeks will be used to re-design, test-out and tweak the Brookline Amory Street studio. That means programming during the 10 p.m. slot will, according to CN8 spokeswoman, Robin Moleux, be filled with “concerts and other special entertainment programming.”

When it does re-launch with its new time slot, “OOB” (from Boston) will be the night cap to OOB (from Philadelphia with Greg Murphy), which will go from 7-8 p.m. each weeknight. John Carchedi and Phil Burton will co-host the show from Brookline and we are told the effort should have more of an “Around the Horn” type feel to it.

(Carchedi and Burton shared the table for Thursday’s final show that had some outstanding (and comic) elements, highlighted by Jeb Fisher’s Invincible movie package. Fisher had himself quite a week with his Cape League vignettes and it would be wise for the new “OOB” platform to use some of Fisher’s obvious talents on-air in addition to his control room work.)

With the new show reaching all throughout CN8’s footprint along the eastern seaboard, there have also been logical murmurs of bigger name locals being included in the mix as regular guests for the show. [We’re thinking local radio “stars” and higher-profile writers than what Sports Pulse was able to snag (like Shots, for instance).] Moleux indicated that information will be forthcoming on both shows in the next week to ten days.

We’ll do our best to get you that information in a timely fashion.

• A shots Loyalist who knows a bit about the entertainment world, has directed us to “Ravin with Ravens at the Lowell Sun’s web site.

The Sun, in fact, has a few worthwhile Blogs in its line-up and you’ve got to like it when a local paper starts to turn some resources to the Web-side. Now, as for the regular Sun site – still a work in progress. . . and still featuring the picture of a writer (the Eagle Tribune’s Rob Bradford) who is long gone.

• In light of Shots discussion of the region’s lily white sportswriters in last week’s installment, a few readers did want to point out that the ProJo is a fairly good example of a paper whose sports desk tries to be diversified. The aforementioned Manza Young is both a minority (technically bi-racial) AND a female and the paper also has a minority high school writer in Robert Lee.

It should also be noted that often overlooked but never out-performed, Dan Pires was born in West Africa (Tapume, Brava, Cape Verde Island).

Shots didn’t mean to start a minority report card for the region, but if that’s one of the upshots of discussing the issue, so be it.

• You already know how we feel about the Jimmy Fund and especially the Dana Farber folks (especially the Pawtucket branch) if you’ve been paying attention over the past three years-plus. You know what to do, so do it. Or, as Starsky might say, “DOOOOITTT! DO IT!”

This year’s Shots’ pledge (which will be some derivative of today’s total page views) is in honor of Bishkie, of course, but yours can pay tribute to whoever you know that has valiantly fought the good fight.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. And can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom