Keep visiting Puckett's Pond, because our talented writing crew just got bigger! Photo by Kyle Terada-US PRESSWIRE

The Twins got off to a rocky start with a loss to the Orioles, but Puckett’s Pond is beginning the season on a great note. Two new talented writers have joined the staff. So let’s all extend a warm welcome to Shawn Berg and Dallin Burgener.

You may already have read some of Shawn’s work. He posted his 2012 AL Central predictions earlier this week, and he has previously been no stranger to online baseball writing, having contributed to Twins Target and his own blog, On the Road with Shawn. Shawn hails from Fosston, Minnesota, where he developed a 27 year long Twins-rooting habit, but he has spent the last dozen years elsewhere. He currently lives in New Hampshire.

Dallin was born in Coon Rapids, but like Shawn (and most of our staff at Puckett’s Pond), he is very well-traveled. He spent most of his childhood in Idaho, and he lived in Slovakia for a couple of years (your guess is as good as mine whether Slovakia has a professional baseball league). Shawn currently lives with his wife in Idaho and attends Brigham Young University, Idaho’s Construction Management program en route to a career in architecture.

We still are in need of a new primary voice on this site, a role that has been vacant since I stepped down from the post in mid-May, but we also need to retool our ranks of staff writers.

My administrative duties for the network continue to occupy more and more of my free time and as a result I will be unable to continue on in a formal role with this site and Kings of Kauffman. I remain a writer at heart so in the event you are a fan of my work, or if you enjoy reading about the minor leagues and prospects, I will still maintain a regular presence over on Seedlings to Stars. Since I have admin rights to all our MLB sites, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that I will drop in from time to time to publish a “bonus” article.

Due to a lack of time, Adam Krueger is also leaving the Puckett’s Pond staff.

So if you love the Twins and love to write, you just might be able to find a home here on The Pond either as an Editor or as a Staff Writer.

Make no mistake, the position of Editor is a significant time commitment but it can be very rewarding if you love to write and love baseball. The role requires no fewer than 30 published articles per month and well as some behind the scenes work with in FanSided’s MLB team. For all the hard work put in, our Editors/Lead Writers are eligible to receive monthly revenue sharing payments (think pizza and beer money) as well as some other perks that come along from time to time.

If you are looking to take on a smaller role, then the position of Staff Writer might be for you. This position requires you to publish “only” 1 article per week (4/month) but you are welcome to write and publish more if you want. It’s a good way to get your foot in the door, see what FanSided is all about and make some friends/contacts along the way while writing about a team and a subject that you enjoy.

As an organization we prefer to promote from within so if you decide to take on a larger role down the road, a step up to an Editor position on one of our sites could certainly be in the cards.

If you are interested, please take a moment to fill out our newly revamped online writer application.

I’d love to be the one to continue to lead this site, but that’s just not feasible given the demands on my time going forward. One of those demands is to spend more time working for FanSided in an “administrative” capacity as it relates to my role as the network’s MLB Director of Content, but others involve my wife, children and their respective activities.

That’s not to say I’m leaving the site. I’m remain dedicated to Puckett’s Pond and remain a writer at heart. As a result, I will still publish at least once a week here as a Staff Writer. I’ve also decided to return to my previous “haunts” on Kings of Kauffman and Call to the Pen in a similar role as well. That puts me “on the hook” for 3 articles per week, but it is still far less of a time commitment than the 7-10 articles I tried to publish each week.

All of the above is just a long winded way of saying that we are now looking for someone to join our network and become the new Lead Writer of Puckett’s Pond. If you are interested, but want to know the specifics all you have to do is just keep reading.

(more…)