Kornheiser Takes Buyout

The reader comments on the blog item were not, shall we say, entirely complimentary.

 

When Tony's attention wasn't divided, few had his touch or reach.
You guys can pick all you want, but another newspaper star won't be read anymore.
That saddens me. It saddens me that the immediacy of the spoken word carries more weight, more strength, more puissance in today's society than the written word.

 

I'll echo the comments about when TK was on, he was the best in the business.

His columns used to be must-read items, no matter the topic.

 

Even sadder . . . it doesn't even have to be immediate.

Witness the popularity of the recently-found (but 16-year-old) Bill O'Reilly explosion. Or the endless loops of Rev. Wright sermons.

Seeing it and hearing it > reading it.

Sucks.

 

I have to add. When I first got into the business as a sports clerk, I remember sitting at an old ATEX terminal and basically reading anything even mildly interesting to come across the wire in between phone calls and after getting the agate page out. When that BC-KORNHEISER slug showed up, it was one of the high points of any night.

I don't know how much he inspired me, because I never was under any delusion that I could do what he did, the way he did it. But he sure wrote outstanding stuff, and newspapers need more of what he gave them.

 

He was much more open about it than that weeks ago. Talking about someone who might have to take a buyout (Isiah Thomas maybe?), he led in by saying, "As someone who's currently being offered a buyout ..."

 

I loved Tony when he was still a writer, but it's been a long time since he really was one. If nothing else, this will end the irritation people like me find when they got to the columnists page at the Post's Web site and see that he hasn't done shit since October.

 

Agreed. And his unapologetic stance on this has made my perfectionist self feel a lot better about not knowing everything about every sport. Plus it was always educational for me when Wilbon tried to give him reasons to care about certain things.

 

It's unreasonable to expect a Kornheiser to know everything about every sport. It was irritating to hear him say, with pride, "I can't name two players on team XYZ".

 

True.

He seems to have gotten away from that since the MNF move, but it was funny them both not knowing that Theo Ratliff was still in the league.

 

He's one of the main reasons I wanted to do this for a living. His "Bandwagon" columns during the Redskins '91 season should be required reading for all would-be sports writers, and I believe you can still find them on the Post's Web site.
I can still remember a WashPo commerical mid-80s with Wilbon, Mr. Tony, Boz and maybe Christine Brennan and Mr. Tony was in major mid-combover faze. He was wearing one of those hats, those 1940s-era hats, and it looked great (until the wind blew it away in the end, exposing the dreaded combover).

His Style stuff was great, and he never passed himself off to be more than he was.

I'm glad PTI has turned out to be such a success, though it pains me to see him interview athletes because he's never been much of an athlete lover, and if you want to look at the proliferation of print guys in other media, it started with his radio show back in DC in the early 90s. Instead of getting 5 lousy minutes with random team star, he'd call the beat writers and get them for 10 good minutes.

Like LeBatard's post on TBL, seeing Mr. Tony leave for good (even though yes, he's basically been out of it for a few years) is a sad day and makes me feel extremely old.

There have been some (like Joe Williams here) who have decried him "selling out" his abilities. Gimme a break. The guy has worked his ass off for years and wrote better stories in a month than I'll write in my lifetime.

To say "It does a disservice to every sportswriter who actually gets on airplanes, attends practices, cultivates sources and busts a gut writing compelling stuff for his readers" as Joe Williams did may be one of the more disrespectful things I've seen posted on this board.

Tony spent 30 years in the newspaper business before PTI started, and no one could provide more "compelling" copy than TK.

 

No doubt he really needed the money.