My understanding is that Hammer has been working fulltime elsewhere for a very long time. I remember several years back, Hammer wrote that he'd no longer be Nuvo's music editor but would still do his weekly column. Steve's views are something needed in Indianapolis print media. As much as I love the work what many of the news stations in town have done, it isn't exactly a good fit for opinion columnists.

I have my nitpicks of Steve's writing and some of his views, but this isn't the time for that. Best wishes to Steve and his family with the move, and good luck to him for the job/promotion.

My understanding is that Hammer has been working fulltime elsewhere for a very long time. I remember several years back, Hammer wrote that he'd no longer be Nuvo's music editor but would still do his weekly column. Steve's views are something needed in Indianapolis print media. As much as I love the work what many of the news stations in town have done, it isn't exactly a good fit for opinion columnists.

I have my nitpicks of Steve's writing and some of his views, but this isn't the time for that. Best wishes to Steve and his family with the move, and good luck to him for the job/promotion.

I used to enjoy reading Hammer's columns. They had a certain clever Hunter S. Thompson. But a few years ago, Hammer lost the cleverness and his column became a liberal screed. Though for some reason he continued to be utterly and completely oblivious to the local problems with corporate welfare.

I have never met Mr. Hammer and only know about him from the relatively few columns I have read of his over the years.

However, something seems to be a bit fishy about this story. Someone pointed out on the comments space (in Nuvo) beneath his swan song column that Hammer claims to have been the one person out of 700 applicants to get a job as a corporate telecommunications analyist in Texas that he claims his is getting paid $70,000 more for than his previous job in Indy.

Now this is a guy who looks to be in his mid-50s (at least) and who spent most of his work life on the staff of an alternative newspaper - until he got fired from it a few years ago.

Could this entire story of his exit from a rough urban life in Indy to Texas fortune be a hoax? Or, could he have become a bit distanced from reality? Like I said, I don't know the man, but find this entire story raises a lot of questions. If this is discovered to be a hoax, or at least partially a hoax, will the Indy media admit that they got taken to the cleaners?

There is a chance that Hammer is all on the up and up in this, but as a journalist for many decades, I know the questions I would be asking him for a column I would be writing about his big fish story.

Hammer had a day gig. He was strangely personable in a misfit Hoosier kind of way. Not an Ullman, not a Keating, but a regular guy that could write.

Hammer's hyperbole and one-note tough guy outrage grew boring. And like Whitebeard, where do you go over-50 with his CV that pays much more bucks?

Dean Wormer's memorable admonishment to Flounder in "Animal House" that "fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son" is the only thing that ever came to my mind when I read one of his useless columns.