Last month, whilst discussing Mark Cuban’s ill-advised blogger ban from the Mavs’ changing room, PTI’s Tony Kornheiser described print journalism as “a dying medium”. While a similar comment resulted in the firing of Washington Post staffer Michael Tunison, Kornheiser’s departure from the paper presumably didn’t result in security throwing him out of the building, face-first, if we’re to believe the following item from Editor & Publisher :
Kornheiser, the Post sports columnist who gained national fame on Monday Night Football and other ESPN network programs, announced on his radio show Wednesday afternoon that he was taking a buyout after 29 years with the newspaper.
“It just feels odd,” Kornheiser said on his radio show, according to a transcript posted on the “D.C. Sports Bog” by Post sportswriter Dan Steinberg. “It feels odd and it feels bad. It doesn’t feel sad, there’s no sadness to it, it just feels wrong.”
Kornheiser said “all I ever wanted to be was a newspaper writer.”
“In my mind that’s what it says on the headstone, it says ‘newspaper guy,’ ” he added.
Hopefully, yeah, that’s exactly what it will say. It would take a pretty big headstone to include the line, “inspiration for the monumentally bad sitcom, ‘Listen Up’, and another nail in the coffin of Jason’s Alexander’s career”.