I currently read suntimes.com, chicagotribune.com and sfgate.com daily. I believe this is the way most of my contemporaries get their news. A contributor to the newspaper demise? Maybe. But if there were a "keep your city newspaper alive fund" or "help save your local paper group" I would take part to keep them alive! My love comes from the long hours I dedicated in college to making the Northern Star get out the next day and the satisfaction I had seeing my work in print and starting a conversation with my fellow student through ink. I also looked forward to breakfast and my morning paper delivered everyday growing up in parents house.
So who has the plan to keep these massively important part of our history alive? Are journalism majors in college going to be able to find jobs? Should people major in this form of writing anymore? I'm still looking for answers and the outcome of these hard times in the newspaper world.
Famed Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti recently quit his job and on his way out the door he took several jabs at the newspaper business - which has been his bread and butter for many years. He is shooting his fat mouth off claiming it's a dead industry and that is why he is getting out. What a total numbskull! I encourage you to read Roger Ebert's letter to Jay below.
Ebert, a truly dedicated journalist, defines what a newspaper man should be. He will take his love for the industry to the grave. He is someone to admire and look up to.
Mariotti on the other hand needs to fall off the face of the earth. Maybe we will all get lucky and someone will sew his mouth shut so we all don't have to listen to his whining anymore. He was annoying when he had his sports column and now I am glad he is gone. I hope ESPN and every other sports news outlet have enough sense to run far away from him and his devilish antics!
Roger Ebert's letter to Jay Mariotti:
Dear Jay,
What an ugly way to leave the Sun-Times. It does not speak well for you. Your timing was exquisite. You signed a new contract, waited until days after the newspaper had paid for your trip to Beijing at great cost, and then resigned with a two-word e-mail: "I quit." You saved your explanation for a local television station.
As someone who was working here for 24 years before you arrived, I think you owed us more than that. You owed us decency. The fact that you saved your attack for TV only completes our portrait of you as a rat.
Newspapers are not dead, Jay, and this paper will not die because you have left. Times are hard in the newspaper business, and for the economy as a whole. Did you only sign on for the luxury cruise?
There's an old saying that you might have come across once or twice on the sports beat: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
Newspapers are not dead, Jay, because there are still readers who want the whole story, not a sound bite. If you go to work for television, viewers may get a little weary of you shouting at them. You were a great shouter in print, that's for sure, stomping your feet when owners, coaches and players didn't agree with you. It was an entertaining show. Good luck getting one of your 1,000-word rants on the air.
The rest of us are still at work, still putting out the best paper we can. We believe in our profession, and in the future. And we believe in our internet site, which you also whacked as you slithered out the door. I don't know how your column was doing, but we have the most popular sports section in Chicago. The reports and blog entries by our Washington editor Lynn Sweet have become a must-stop for millions of Americans in this election year. After a recent blog entry I wrote about the Beijing Olympics, I woke up at 5 a.m. one morning, when North America was asleep, and found that 40 percent of my 100 most recent visitors had been from China. I don't have any complaints about our web site. So far this month my web page has been visited from almost every country on earth, including one visit from the Vatican City. The Pope, no doubt. Hope you were doing as well.
You have left us, Jay, at a time when the newspaper is once again in the hands of people who love newspapers and love producing them. You managed to stay here through the dark days of the thieves Conrad Black and David Radler. The paper lost millions. Incredibly, we are still paying Black's legal fees.
I started here when Marshall Field and Jim Hoge were running the paper. I stayed through the Rupert Murdoch regime. I was asked, "How can you work for a Murdoch paper?" My reply was: "It's not his paper. It's my paper. He only owns it." That's the way I've always felt about the Sun-Times, and I still do. On your way out, don't let the door bang you on the ass.
Your former colleague,
Roger Ebert
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