by Ethan Greenberg
It’s hard to understand what former Chicago Sun Times sports columnist was thinking when he decided to leave his job after he covered the Olympics, saying that all the internet media in Beijing lead him to believe that print media is near extinction. It’s easy to prove that, since less and less people are subscribing to print newspapers, and you can include sports magazines with that because many magazines are equipped with functioning websites as well. People under the age of 40 aren’t renewing their newspaper subscription; they’re turning on their computers and firing up the old reuters.com or cnn.com or what have you.
The thing Mariotti doesn’t understand is that the Chicago Sun Times will be in business for many years to come, because it’s pretty clear that the Sun Times, like many newspapers, also have online articles. So if there is a point in time when the Sun Times ceases to come out with printed newspapers, they will still be thriving off of online articles. So, did Mariotti make a good career choice? Experts say no, but what do experts know that the casual observer doesn’t?
You should also consider that Mariotti did not get along with his colleagues, and maybe he just made up a dumb excuse so he could start another job- God knows where that’s gonna be. Mariotti does have a nice resume so he should be back writing for someone soon enough, despite his harsh attitude towards sports and politics and life in general. Chances are if you get along with Mariotti, you have no soul. [that was a low blow, but not many people really like Mariotti it seems like]
Mariotti will continue to be on Around the Horn, the show of competitive banter, the only difference being in the background behind Jay, you won’t see that glass board with Chicago Sun Times marked all over it. Mariotti and Woody Paige do make a really nice argument tandem, so it’s good that ESPN isn’t firing him from the show. I actually thought the only qualification for being on that show was you had to write sports for a major newspaper, but I guess Jay is the excpetion.
However, Mariotti didn’t really go into detail about what he was thinking when he saw media people in Beijing, but it’s easy for us to agree that news websites are growing and growing. It is easy to tell that other countries are relying heavily on internet media, not just tv and radio and magazines and newspapers.
Pretty soon, you will make a Google search for a team or a player an you’ll get over 200 million article results. Is it good that we have so many internet outlets for our sports news, or is it just irrititating that there’s too much to choose from and it will take you hours to find out the opinions of all the important news outlets? Is Mariotti making a form of protest, as if he’s saying that longtime print newspapers should cease production and make way for other news sources? Only the future will tell us.
yea mariotti doesn’t always know what hes talking about, not the smartest chip off the old block