By: E&P Staff Just two months after the Chicago Sun-Times ballyhooed his three-year contract extension, Chicago Sun-Times star sports columnist Jay Mariotti has quit.
The sudden resignation is the latest blow to the personality-driven tabloid. Its most famous writer, film critic Roger Ebert, has been disabled by health problems for the past three years, and its best-known political columnist, Robert Novak, has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
Mariotti, one of just two sportswriters the Sun-Times sent to the Beijing Olympics, told Jim Kirk of the rival Chicago Tribune that he had concluded while in China there was no future in newspapers. Sportswriting has become "entirely a Web site business. There were not a lot of newspapers there," he told Kirk, according to the report in Wednesday's Tribune.
Mariotti said he had no particular plans, but had been in contact with "a lot" of Web sites.
In addition to his columns, Mariotti has been a regular on ESPN's cable talk show "Around the Horn."
Mariotti is a controversial figure in Chicago sports. Chicago White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen famously called him a "fag" two years ago, and he has battled in print -- and once, in person -- with colleagues at the Sun-Times.
Mariotti began his column at the Sun-Times in 1991.
Last June, when the Sun-Times announced his contract extension, Editor in Chief Michael Cooke called Mariotti "a focal point of our strong, award-winning team that produces simply the best sports news in print and online anywhere."
But Mariotti told the Tribune?s Kirk that he no longer felt Chicago had the kind of bare-knuckled sports journalism it has been famous for.
"I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete," he said. "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 has happened in this business. ... I don't want to go down with it."
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