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After The Flood
And, lo, there was much rejoicing in the Windy City.
Yes, Chicago, our long sports journalism nightmare is over. Jay Mariotti has left the Sun-Times to "pursue other opportunities." Mariotti was at the S-T for 17 years, for good and for (mostly) ill. He's also been one of the intolerable screaming heads on ESPN's Around the Horn for several years. And his resignation comes on the heels of his re-upping with the S-T through 2011 and his successful barley endurable stint in Beijing. So what gives?
Sayeth Jay (to the Trib, of all sources): it's all about the internets.
Just back from Beijing where he wrote about the Summer Olympics, Mariotti said in a phone interview Tuesday night that he decided to quit after it became clear while in China that sports journalism had become "entirely a Web site business. There were not many newspapers there.'' He added that most of the journalists covering the Games were "there writing for Web sites.''...He said that he "is talking with a lot of Web sites'' and added that the future of his business "sadly is not in newspapers.''Sad trombone. Jay added, "I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete. Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high stakes competition in Chicago are over. To see what's happened in this business...I don't want to go down with it.''
We anxiously await your resume, Jay (sorry, Benjy).
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I think I'll go out and buy a Sun Times just for the hell of it tomorrow.
This is the only scene playing out in my head right now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfHX3mAbyrs
It is like a car alarm that has stopped going off, the serenity and peace brings a tear to my eye.
A quote from Ozzie, please.
It is a happy day at our site. I wanted to thank you folks for all your support in our great cause. Now, if we can keep him* off the internet since he* could screw up a porn site, all will be wonderful.
As always, Jay Mariotti is a trend setter. He's right, you know. There just might be something to this internet thing.
Is that photo of Marrioti from a 1980's-themed costume party?
Wow, this is like Christmas.
Oh my God, that hair........
Is that photo of Marrioti from a 1980's-themed costume party?
I still prefer my MS Paint version of Mariotti.
http://chicagoist.com/2008/06/10/who_doesnt_hate.php
I came to work knowing that something about today was going to be special, but wasn't sure what it was. Know I know.
Jay would be perfect for some random internet sports blog. They don't go into locker rooms either.
I could care less about him either way, but he's dead right about the future of sports journalism.
Another tool bites the dust. Funny thing about the internet though....if you don't like something you simply go somewhere else. In order to be successful out there you have to keep folks interested. That would entail writing quality stuff. I don't think he has ever really done that, or is even capable of it.
Pretty safe bet he will be eating cat food by the holidays.
Pretty safe bet he will be eating cat food by the holidays.
LOL... If I had been drinking coffee I would have spit it on my monitor.
As for Mariotti, aka The Human Weather Vane ("The Sox are an embarassment to Chicago"...two weeks later, "Kenny and Ozzie are geniuses".), oh well. I give the guy credit for doing the one thing all columnists strive to do. Create controversy and be talked about. What's the point of writing a column that no one even cares enough about to get pissed off by it? (*cough*Carol Slezak*cough*)
I like the fact that the Sun Times put up a simple paragraph announcing his departure and then left it wide open to the readers to bid him good bye. The comment section has been disabled at the end of his columns for a long time. Curious to see how he plans on making millions of dollars off the internet.
The thing is, what website would want him? My guess is ESPN because there's no way he's breaking in with any of the big blogs and sites like FanHouse and Yahoo Sports are much more savvy than the WWL in terms of popularity (see: Skip Bayless). Plus, his existing contract with ESPN is an incentive and he'll be the resident "Chicago" expert for the baseball playoffs when the Cubs and Sox are playing in October.
Marcus, I think he's definitely headed to espn.com under the exact same setup as Bayless. Nobody is really going to espn.com to read Bayless (and likely won't for Mariotti), but ESPN pays a set amount and uses them to write columns for the website as well as all the talking head nonsense across every program. Personally, I can't wait to see Kornheiser and Wilbon's reaction to their new colleague, given that neither have been subtle in their hatred of all that Mariotti is.
tc3 - Despite the issues I've had in the past with Wilbon, I'm a fan. And I would love nothing more than to see him chew Mariotti up and spit him out if Jay were to sub for Tony on PTI. That would be amazing.
The talking head thing for ESPN is the worst thing to happen to that network since Chris Berman. Bayless, STEVEN A. SMITH, Woody Paige, Mariotti, Steve Phillips, Lee Corso, etc. Across all sports, all platforms. In completely detracts from the guys who, you know, actually know what they're doing (Fowler, Ravetch, Reese Davis, Gammons, etc.) but, of course, there is no end in sight...
The talking head thing for ESPN is the worst thing to happen to that network since Chris Berman. Bayless, STEVEN A. SMITH, Woody Paige, Mariotti, Steve Phillips, Lee Corso, etc. Across all sports, all platforms. In completely detracts from the guys who, you know, actually know what they're doing (Fowler, Ravetch, Reese Davis, Gammons, etc.) but, of course, there is no end in sight...
Oh yes, guys like John Clayton and Peter Gammons are reduced to bit players among some of the absolute fucking clowns they put on that network. Not to mention the fact that MNF on ESPN sounds a lot like the inside of a henhouse.
Nice mullet, dude.
IT"S A WIG!