Lynn Henning Retiring From Detroit News

Submitted by BursleyHall82 on January 20th, 2019 at 11:04 PM

Longtime Detroit News sports writer Lynn Henning is retiring after 40 years. His last day is Feb. 1. Victim of the newspaper industry's decline. LINK.

Mike Damone

January 20th, 2019 at 11:39 PM ^

Good writer - he had a very nice career and should be proud.

Probably better for him than what happened with Joe Falls.  He was allowed to stay around the Detroit News for years after he should have retired or forced to leave.  Was sad to watch how pathetic his columns became after he got old, cranky and out of touch with reality...

Grampy

January 21st, 2019 at 8:30 AM ^

If I remember correctly, Joe Falls got picked up for solicitation in the latter half of his career at the Free Press.  I don’t think it directly led to his retirement, but I’m a little fuzzy on the sequence, and I seem to remember it was in either the late 70’s or early 80’s.  I also remember that the first question we had was “was it a boy or girl?”

StateStreetApostle

January 21st, 2019 at 12:38 AM ^

Notice the buttery-smooth setup as Henning slips into the folds of his La-Z-Boy. His high-octane adverbs, as if a baseball scout sprang from the head of Athena spouting hyperbole, routinely baffle minor league readers.

Gone will be his borderline Mapplethorpic prose on the physical attributes of Adonis-like prospects; his strange, almost-but-not-quite-the-right-word command of the vocabulary, like a Joel Zumaya fastball, straight from the forges of the lame Hephaestus...

...

i'm sorry i can't even fake this any more without mouth-vom

outsidethebox

January 21st, 2019 at 7:44 AM ^

He could write...just didn't understand the game-like, really nothing about how the game is played. His defense of the Tiger organization, as the consummate homer, was indefensible. 

LSAClassOf2000

January 21st, 2019 at 8:09 AM ^

Lynn Henning was a pretty solid writer, but I also sometimes found his observations of the Tigers and their organization a bit quizzical, to say the least. Perhaps that is because he would occasionally take the philosophical road when a more mechanical analysis would be appropriate, but that's merely a stylistic quibble. 

He had a great career with the News overall, and hopefully he has a great retirement. 

befuggled

January 21st, 2019 at 9:36 AM ^

It's interesting to see the mix of reactions to his retirement. I see it pretty much as you do, but I haven't lived in the Detroit area for thirty years and for the last fifteen have really only come back for funerals. In recent years I only read him when somebody over here linked to one of his columns.

I do hope he enjoys retirement.

M-GO-Beek

January 21st, 2019 at 8:22 AM ^

I get that sometime his verbosity was a little overdone, but I will miss his minor league update articles every Sunday during the season.  They were a great, concise way to keep tabs on who was trending up/down in the Tiger's system. It was similar to reading Hello posts, except with follow up on how they are doing within the practices as the year progressed.  

Everyone Murders

January 21st, 2019 at 9:51 AM ^

I really enjoyed Lynn Henning's writing with respect to the Detroit Tigers and MLB in general.  He was knowledgeable, insightful, and clear.  I'll miss that writing.

I won't miss his auto-fellating of MSU in general and Mark Dantonio in particular.  Henning was an unbearable homer on the Spartan beat. I won't miss that writing.

Hotel Putingrad

January 21st, 2019 at 12:07 PM ^

OP buried the lede.

Gregg Krupa being reassigned sucks. He always gave it to you straight on the Red Wings. Also interesting that Riley is walking away. The Freep probably could keep everyone else in staff if they just dumped Albom.

As for Henning, I was never much of a fan. He always sounded like a parrot of the Tigers' front office, and his writing style was so overwrought. Classic case of a guy not understanding his audience.

Judge Smails

January 21st, 2019 at 12:38 PM ^

No one was ever wrong more consistently in the entire Detroit sports media than Lynn Henning.  There is not even a close second.  His rank speculation was presented as fact in his writings.  Remember David Cutcliffe allegedly turning down the Michigan job?  Yeah, right.  That was straight from the trap of Lynn Henning via his "source" Gil Brandt who hadn't been relevant in three decades prior.  Good riddance.