Kurt Streeter leaving LA Times for ESPN

I keep hearing rumbles of prominent departures from the Los Angeles Times as the year comes to a close. One of the names being mentioned, Kurt Streeter, confirms that he is going to be a senior writer for ESPN. "After 15 wonderful years at the paper, at the end of the year I will be leaving for a job at ESPN," he tells me in email. "I'll be a senior writer there, working for ESPN magazine and espn.com. A great opportunity, and I'm excited to get back to sports. As happy as I am, it will be difficult to leave my colleagues at the paper. Words just can't express how much I admire and respect them."

Streeter has done big profiles and interviews, covered transportation and crime, and written a column for the Sports section. He's listed most recently on the staff directory as a religion writer on the enterprise desk and profiled Rabbi Leonard Beerman in November. Streeter has always written about sports too. Stories about a girl boxer from East LA and her struggling father, and the tale of an elderly boxing timekeeper, appeared in the Best American Sports Writing anthology in 2006. In October he wrote about the former USC star Todd Marinovich. Streeter has also written about being a ranked tennis player earlier in his life, and in 2012 did a nice first-person piece on confronting his fears to learn to swim with his two-year-old. I also enjoyed his piece on a 400-pound sumo wrestler training to run the LA Marathon.

Notable recent departures from the Times recently reported include op-ed editor Sue Horton, Washington reporter Neela Bannerjee, politics writer Maeve Reston, books writer Hector Tobar, investigative reporter Robert J. Lopez and editor-at-large Jim Newton. The Times also has recently re-hired Bob Sipchen for the California section and added Stephen Battaglio to the Company Town desk.

Photo: Kurt Streeter on Twitter