Jay Mariotti is Back!

So I was between classes debating whether or not I want to read about defeasible estates for the third time when I realized what today was. It’s better than Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, and my birthday combined. Today is Jay Mariotti’s debut writing for AOL. I haven’t read it yet, so I figured we could take this magical journey together. I’m almost giddy.

Sunnier Times in New Mainstream Media

And if Jay is anything like he was while writing for the Sun-Times, sunnier times at Suffering Idiots too.

We all have our career flashpoints. Mine came in China, perhaps triggered by a near-death experience while climbing the Great Wall. Or the horror of Bill Plaschke, my TV sparring partner, trying the local delicacy -- animal penis -- and concluding, "I guess I like penis; it's very tasty."

Wow, and Jay comes out swinging for the fences. Is he trying to provoke another Ozzie Guillen outburst? As for Plaschke, well, I’m not surprised.

Or maybe the sight of Richard M. Daley, mayor of a cold and corrupt Chicago, rushing toward me with a beer at a Beijing function to discuss ... the White Sox?

At this point, Jay would like everyone to know that he’s a popular guy.

Whatever, the surreal seeds were in place last August for a professional epiphany -- one that has led me to America Online, where I'm thrilled to launch today as a national sports columnist, commentator and friendly neighborhood rabble-rouser. I should add I'm doubly thrilled to flee the darker corners of the newspaper business, which was reminding me of Marley the dog in his final days.

Why does he feel the need to label himself as a rabble-rouser? That’s basically saying that he’s going to be controversial just for the sake of controversy. I understand that’s how ESPN seems to operate, because evidently the sports themselves aren’t as interesting as whatever Terrell Owens is saying. But Jay is supposedly leaving that all behind. I guess I just expected better. Oh well, on to his epiphany.

To wit: A week into the Olympics, I was inside The Water Cube That Phelps Built when a voice-mail popped in. It was from the sports editor of the ailing Chicago Sun-Times, asking me to accommodate the newspaper's Paleozoic-era deadlines by doing something the readers wouldn't appreciate. He wanted me to write one column that had Michael Phelps winning that day's race and another column that had him losing. Both would be filed long before the event, which, in some quarters, would be considered an editorial directive to cook up fiction.

I’m not really an expert on newpapers, but this seems like something that would happen pretty frequently. And I’m not really sure there’s anything wrong with it. If it’s either that or nothing, I have to think that the readers would prefer the pre-written articles. They can always go online later to read an account written after the race if they’re interested enough.

I would insert blanks for the finishing times, which a copy editor would fill in, and the bulk would be a lot of jibber-jabber that worked regardless of the result. The editors would decide which column ran based on the outcome. In other words, processed lunch meat for your 50 cents -- and it wasn't the first time. I usually just dealt with these hideous requests. This time, I balked.

Yeah, so this has been done before, and Jay has done it. I think that he just didn’t want to spend the time writing two columns, preferring to get back to the animal penis.

"It's not fair to the readers. They're getting stale filler when we have time to give them live substance," I said.

Wait, what? I thought you said that this request was based off deadlines. Now there’s time to write a full report? I’m lost.

What if something dramatic happened that couldn't be conveyed in the prepackaged pap? What if Phelps had to out-touch a Serbian rival at the wall? What if a teammate bailed him out on a relay? What if his Speedo LZR Racer suit fell off?

Seriously, does anyone else think that he’s just taunting Ozzie at this point?

Didn't readers need DETAILS in their morning paper, having seen the race? And wasn't Phelps becoming, um, an American icon, watched by tens of millions each night? If the deadline was 10 p.m. in Chicago and the race would end shortly thereafter, couldn't we push it a few extra minutes? Why give up?

It sure is great of Jay to stand up for the little guy. But seriously, he worked for the Sun-Times for like 17 years, he has to be familiar with deadlines and the printing process, and I’m sure it’s constrained him before. Why whine about it now?

Then I looked across the table. Sitting there, relaxed and ready for action, were staff writers from a leading sports Web site. The columnist was flanked by the Phelps beat writer, and, nearby, an editor was leading the coverage. They had the luxury of analyzing the race, reporting afterward, waiting for the news conference, then writing the hell out of the biggest sports story of 2008. By no coincidence, several top national sites, including AOL Sports, all were read by staggering numbers of eyeballs during the Olympics.

Oh, there it is. He found a better job, jumped to it, and doesn’t want to look like the bad guy. I’ve been reading paragraphs of self-serving drivel. Oh well, might as well keep at it.

It occurred to me, then and there, that this is why so many print stragglers are wheezing -- and why Internet sites such as the one you're reading constitute the new media mainstream and business model. Failing newspapers are a victim of their own stubbornness, stupidity and lack of foresight in moving their news initiatives to the digital world. The large paper in Chicago, the Tribune, started a digital transition years ago and gave itself a chance. The Sun-Times? The owners became jailbirds, preferring to siphon profits rather than invest in the future.

Ok, now Jay is being more honest. He’s leaving a sinking ship, and I can’t really fault him for that. But at least be up front with it, don’t hide your actions behind some veil of fake nobility and animal penis references. It’s unbecoming. As for failing newspapers, that’s something to write about later, but there are an awful lot of interesting things there.

How do you keep fighting for a place that had stopped fighting? How do you work for any newspaper, save a select few, in 2009?

See, this is a legitimate concern. But why all the nonsense about fake columns or whatever? I’m sorry, I can’t get over that.

I resigned after the Games with a calm, professional letter,

Somehow I doubt that. I’ve seen too much ATH to believe that there were no histrionics in this letter.

a decision that came mere months after I'd signed a contract extension. I guess I hurt some feelings.

Yeah, that was kind of a dick move. Maybe this is why he added all that crap about caring about the readers.

The boys called me a "rat," forgetting those 5,000 columns through the years. They accused me of using Beijing as vacation time ("Hey, kids, let's ditch Hawaii and hang out in a Communist country."). They let a few staff writers, who should focus on doing better work, react with rage reminiscent of Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction." All because I handed back about a million bucks and wanted something more.

I don’t know why, but I love it when sports writers throw out how much money they make. It just seems so petty, like when Bill Conlin went off ranting about how he makes “ball player money” to write two columns a week. Settle down.

Know how nutty it got? AOL rated me 14th on its Most Controversial Sports Figures list, between Chad Ocho Cinco and the Steinbrenners. If my eventual new bosses knew about my torrid fling with Madonna, I'd have cracked the top five, I betcha.

Ewwwwwww. Not cool, Jay, not cool.

So I'm obviously jacked, at the start of a new year, to hook up with one of the largest and most-read content sites on the Internet. Just because papers are dying doesn't mean writers will die with them.

Ehh, I’m not so sure about this. Like, who is the online equivalent of a David Halberstam? Is anyone going to write anything like The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved? Bill Simmons? Yeah, not so much.

Many will keep moving onward to potent, ambitious missions such as the one at AOL, which has assembled some of the best in the profession -- columnist Kevin Blackistone, my "Around The Horn" colleague on ESPN; and Lisa Olson, among the elite columnists in New York during her lengthy run at the Daily News.

Um, these are far from the best. Neither of these writers make me want to go to AOL for sports news at all.

AOL also is fortifying its staff of dedicated writers and bloggers, many of whom, like Michael David Smith, break news on FanHouse and have a solid journalistic base. There will be a dynamic site relaunch on Jan. 13 and, I assume, attention about the continuing crossover of writers from print to cyberspace.

Same with these guys; as much as Jay would like it to be, FanHouse really isn’t that good. It pales in comparison to Deadspin and The Sporting Blog; there really isn’t anything that AOL provides that isn’t done better elsewhere. And, while I’m thinking about it, I really miss FJM.

I am here to bring you fiercely independent views about a multi-billion-dollar industry that is more complex than ever and, somehow, more fun than ever. The biggest Internet sites -- most importantly, those unaffiliated with leagues and franchises -- are in position now to do the best unfiltered work. Newspapers? I read where Mark Cuban wants the sports industry to form "a beat-writer cooperative." Yes, he wants leagues to hire the writers who will cover teams daily, a frightening thought. "I know this is in violation of all previous principles of editorial church and state," Cuban wrote, "but then again, watching papers going out of business and not even being able to give themselves away means it's time to start a new branch of that church."

Wow. I hadn’t heard about this before, and it’s a terrible idea. Beat writers are already biased enough, I guess because getting access depends on favorable portrayals, but this would be even worse. I was watching the Pens-Panthers game this weekend, the Penguin’s broadcast, and all the announcers were doing is whining about what they thought were missed calls. It was ridiculous, and pretty much unwatchable. Jim Jackson is often just as bad calling Flyers games. We don’t need that to become more pervasive. Save us, Jay Mariotti!

I'd rather not lose my religion, thank you. As it was, I worked at a paper whose editor once called and asked me not to criticize a particular team -- read: owner -- in the wake of a circulation-padding scandal. I ignored him.

Seriously guys, if you didn’t pick up on it from the beginning of this article, Jay Mariotti is a hero and a maverick. And he has out best interests at heart.

Expect me to zealously comment on national issues while spanning the country and world to cover events. Sometimes, my pieces will appear via video, so you get to know me even better than the guy who schools Woody Paige every day on ESPN.

I don’t think that beating Woody Paige in anything is worthy of being bragged about. It would be like Usain Bolt showing up and sweeping the sprinting/stumbling events at the Special Olympics.

The difference is, the column won't go through the 20th-century, ink-and-newsprint monkey grind where you hope the truck driver doesn't stop at Dunkin' Donuts and the delivery boy doesn't hit your dog on the ass. The column simply will go from my computer to an editor to you.

I’ve spent a pretty long time reading this, and I’m not going to lie; it would have been preferable if a truck driver had stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts and I had never seen this.

I'm working for a company, AOL, that attracted 54 million unique visitors to its programming content sites in November and ranks fourth in traffic among Internet news sites. As established writers keep moving Web-ward, it will cause consternation among a few members of the sports blogosphere, some of whom think they own the Internet when, as everyone knows, Bill Kurtis owns the Internet.

Bill Kurtis doesn’t own the Internet, he’s just really good at finding it.

I've never bought into this "mainstream media vs. bloggers" blood war because, in my mind, we're all writers.

And, as a member of the mainstream media, you were losing.

The best young writers provide compelling takes on sports. The losers wake up each day and attack (choose your ESPN target), an approach that can't attract much audience beyond a few neurotic souls in sports media.

What does it say about Jay that he’s the guy attacking those that are attacking whoever on ESPN? (Or me, that now I’m attacking him? Things are spiraling out of control here.)

Now hear this: I'm a bit too busy to hate bloggers or, really, anyone but terrorists and certain Illinois politicians. I just think they should be writing about Steve Smith, not Stephen A. Smith.

I disagree, as long as it’s well done, I’ll read about pretty much anything. I’d rather read Ken Tremendous writing about, well, pretty much anything, than a story about who Steve Smith punched in the face this week.

So it's off this week to the BCS title game in Miami, where Blackistone and I will do what we've always done: write 1,000 words about a major event. We'll just send our columns to a different place.
The place to be.

I can’t wait.