Wednesday, September 17, 2008
News / News Bites Jay says he's not coming!
Posted by Michael Miner on Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 12:37 AM
The Tribune may have dodged a mullet. Jay Mariotti says he's not going there after all.
With rumors flying hot and heavy, the Tribune posted a headline on its home page Tuesday night that said, "Former Sun-Times columnist Mariotti not joining Tribune." The reason given by Mariotti in the single-sourced story was that for legal reasons he and the Tribune "both decided that we can't do what we wanted to do.'' His contract with the Sun-Times, the paper that let him quit last month, contained a noncompete clause, and "the Sun-Times' lawyer threatened me with a lawsuit in 64-point type" if he crossed the street. Mariotti said that before talks broke off, he and the Tribune Company "talked about television, about the Internet, about the newspaper.''
A Tribune writer told me, "Many of us are absolutely thrilled, as you can imagine."
The online article, written by Jim Kirk, made no mention of the deep dismay that washed through the Tribune when word spread that Mariotti might be coming aboard, nor of the role internal lobbying might have played in nixing the deal. Readers also had reason to wonder how reliable a source Mariotti is about his own affairs. When Mariotti left the Sun-Times he told Kirk that he was big and it was the papers that got small. "I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete," Mariotti said then. "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."
From Michael Cooke, editor in chief of the Sun-Times, and sports columnist Rick Telander, I heard a somewhat different story about Mariotti's departure.
So some wary Tribune staffers were uncertain how much faith to put in Mariotti's account of events this time around. They also understood that the noncompete clause will expire next August.
"It's a good night," said the writer quoted above, "but I'll be happier when he takes a job in Serbia."
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Mariotti's self-serving statement can't be taken at face value, for the reasons you specify. The revolt at the Tribune would have been massive, and there was a groundswell of opposition that even those outside the tower couldn't ignore. There are ex-Sun-Times people at the Trib who know where bodies are buried and were happy to exhume them for the purpose of convincing the bosses they couldn't have Mariotti on staff.
"The Tribune may have dodged a mullet." That is probably the best sentence I will read all week.
Things get nasty when white men argue back and forth. Dont forget who runs the Tribune; ignorant white men, including the man trying to lure Jay to Tribune. That would be Bill Adee, a bald skirt chaser. Gerry Kern is one too. Randy Michaels has that character flaw as well. It goes right up the ladder to Zell!
All this for a sports writer?
Thank goodness for the Trib and suck on it Jay.
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