Oh, no! Now who will churn out daily “The Sky Is Falling” missives, hyperventilating regularly during a September with both Chicago teams in pennant races? Now that incessant, braying columnist Jay Mariotti has left the Sun-Times – where can I go, to repeatedly learn of my favorite squadron’s impending doom?
Wait, I prefer shallow columns cut-and-pasted from sometime in the 1980s.
No, how ’bout something entirely scribbled in hasty, one-sentence paragraphs?
Maybe a “national baseball writer.”
Wait – could he be completely clueless?
Like everything else he writes, Mariotti’s abrupt, murky departure appears borne as a result of a tantrum. Clearly he’ll surface somewhere else, on some national Web site, probably within the week.
Despite what you may think, this isn’t another victory for cyberspace in a phony battle of Web vs. print sportswriters. I’m inclined to disagree with The Big Lead, and perhaps most bloggers, who assume each departure from staid print ranks equals a victory in the Web’s (or their own) march toward relevance. I don’t believe each newspaper columnist bolting from a newsroom signals defeat.
Rather, it opens the door for newer, fresher voices writing for newspapers that actually learn to straddle Web and print lines. Maybe writing on typical deadline, maybe not. Maybe short-form, maybe long. Maybe investigative, maybe a blog. Old-boy, dinosaur columnists who leave simply chasing a paycheck, or their presupposed relevance, may open the doors for younger, tech-savvy scribes. Perhaps even writers whose columns don’t make us want to punch them in the face.
While typical columnists like Roberts, Reilly, Wojiechowski (urp), Jemele Hill, Mariotti, etc. may seek greener pastures online and away from large newspapers, it’s possible they compromise any or all of their cache in the process.
Sure, Yahoo and ESPN boast burgeoning stables of respected columnists – but who has time to digest – or find – all these folks, writing from whichever angle every single day? For every Jeff Passan or Pat Forde, who shoehorn nicely into expanded hit counts – there exists a Wojiechowski, with grating attempts at humor, or Skip Bayless, relegated fully to TV, or Woody Paige, exiled back to Denver.
There’s also a dime-a-dozen talented columnists like J.A. Adande, who effectively toiled in the shadows of Bill Plaschke and TJ Simers at the LA Times. Now, however, he toils in the shadows of Bill Simmons, Marc Stein, Buster Olney, and Len Pasquarelli. What’s really changed for him? He now faces less column shelf-life, and less individual panache.
And while newspapers face declining circulation and a reinvention of the entire business – they aren’t going away, (Except maybe the Sun-Times…) including stalwarts like the New York Times, Washington Post or Chicago Tribune – all of which incorporate effective web-only content. Someday, more newspapers will “get it,” effectively blurring lines between Web hits and ink stains. This will be in part because of younger columnists getting their chances now – not overpaid, irrelevant gasbags who cashed in and damned the industry.
On the plus side, the mad rush of local hacks under one roof at ESPN, Yahoo, SI or elsewhere simply encourages us to avoid those sites further. Sick of Bayless, Wojo, Hill, Scoop Jackson, or Rick Reilly? You’re in luck! You only need delete one bookmark! So be careful what you yearn for, larger-than-life hometown columnists, if the .coms dangle your champagne dreams and a sudden chance to bolt your stomping grounds. Your local audience may actually share the same wish.
