To Get Coverage, a Team Hires Its Own Reporter.

If your business depends on free publicity from newspapers, what do you do when the papers can no longer afford to send reporters to cover you? In professional sports, the answer, increasingly, is hire your own. The Los Angeles Kings hockey team last week hired Rich Hammond, who had covered the Kings for The Los Angeles Daily News, to write about the team for its Web site, kings.nhl.com. Michael Altieri, a Kings spokesman, said the team had given Mr. Hammond a multiyear commitment and complete autonomy to post reporting or commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]