(we can safely say the gentleman on the right had some colleagues over the years who were cooler than others)
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?
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. – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, August 28, 2008
That’s awesome.
When Roger Ebert is gone only then will we realize that he was the soul of the movie business.
I don’t mind anyone heaping scorn on Mariotti for his ineptitude and mediocre reporting, but for Ebert to jump on him for bad manners in light of who they worked for and how outmoded the newspaper business currently is looks ridiculous. That is, you can work for Murdoch or Blacl who devalues your work and the paper and the responsibility a newspaper claims it has to a city — but for Mariotti to leave because he thinks the business is dead and to say so publicly is as low as it gets? Whatever.