Columnist / former TV analyst / PDF publisher Jay Mariotti, he of the burned bridges at the Chicago Sun-Times, ESPN and many boasts of the impending death of traditional media prior to an all-too brief tenure at AOL Fanhouse, has been hired as “sports director” by the San Francisco Examiner, a paper the San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli points out, is “an outlet not recently known for its sports coverage.”
“I’m not looking at it like, ‘Wow, this newspaper needs help,’” Mariotti told The Chronicle Friday. “I’m a story guy first. How can you look around here and not be excited?”
Mariotti has largely fallen out of the national spotlight since two highly publicized 2010 incidents involving charges of domestic violence and stalking of a then-girlfriend. He pleaded no contest to stalking and assault-related charges in exchange for a judge reducing the charges to misdemeanors and completing community service and probation. A court expunged those charges from his record in 2013. His attorney said Friday he expects an expungement hearing for remaining charges to be scheduled soon.
Mariotti was confident that he would be accepted in San Francisco, where accusations of domestic violence — later dropped — against Ross Mirkarimi nearly ousted him from the San Francisco sheriff’s office in 2012.
“If people take the time to investigate the finality of this case, they will understand what truly happened and not judge me from false, reckless allegations from four years ago,” Mariotti said.
In 2011, Mariotti detailed his legal case and career in an e-book, “The System: A Manual on Surviving Liars, Loons, Law, Life.” He devotes a substantial portion of his personal website to correcting all the “falsehoods” that have been written about him over the years.