Steve Kelley has decided he has had enough at the Seattle Times. At age 63, he said “the thrill is gone.”

From Rick Anderson of Seattle Weekly:

The repetition of sporting events had something to do with it –  the loopy Groundhog Day effect of look-alike games and legions of coaches and players droning on about “execution” and “taking them one game at a time.”

“I find myself at a lot more games thinking ‘I’ve written this story 411 times now. Isn’t that enough?'” says Kelley, who came to the Times in 1982 from The Oregonian, with earlier newspaper stops in Olympia, Centralia, and Pennsylvania. “It’s more and more a challenge to find a different way to write it.”

But also give some credit to his detractors – anyone who writes for a living has them – for driving him out.

“The reader comments section, it’s a free-for-all,” Kelley says. “The level of discourse has become so inane and nasty. And it’s not just at the Times, it’s ESPN, everywhere – people, anonymous people, take shots at the story, writers, each other. Whatever you’ve achieved in that story gets drowned out by this chorus of idiots.”