Jay Mariotti: Savvy?

In a move that is as shocking as it is pleasing, Chicago Sun-Times columnist and Around the Horn superstar Jay Mariotti has left the newspaper after a 17-year-tenure. His reasoning? Newspapers are on life-support:↵↵⇥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.” … ↵⇥

↵⇥↵⇥“To see what’s happened in this business...I don’t want to go down with it.”↵⇥

↵↵So, it seems that the Sun-Times sent Mariotti to Beijing, where he had some sort of awakening as he was pounding away on his typewriter in the media center, while surrounded by internet columnists, bloggers and the like. For many members of the old school (see: newspaper print media), this probably would have caused them to become more indignant towards the web, stubbornly insisting that newspapers shall never die. But, amazingly, Mariotti knew better. And for that – this pains me to say – he deserves some kudos. ↵

↵↵Mariotti has somehow managed to parlay his column writing into some level of sports media celebrity status. So, for him, there’s not much risk in quitting the newspaper business now, despite not having a clear future. In the short run, he can continue to milk ESPN for appearance fees. In the long term, he’ll dupe some site into overpaying him for content as he avoids going down with the newspaper industry. ↵

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