I get the feeling that he's going to start up his car in the garage and drift off to sleep.

>>>I'll try to ignore the fact that Kornheiser conveniently waited until HIS retirement to say that the medium is dead and just focus on his words.<<<

he's been saying this on his radio show for some months. and he's right -- to a degree.

papers have to change. in the meantime, they are losing cash quicker than barkley drunk in vegas. as a result, papers are cutting massive amounts of jobs (tampa tribune for example is cutting HALF its staff).

so in that respect, TK is right. papers -- as we knew them -- are (virtually) dead.

and, as TK has said on his radio show, the few dozens of sportswriters that survive will be writing for the "paper" online.

"these fingers don't type anymore"

Soooo, if he's not writing, can't write, has no interest in writing, then why would WaPo keep him on?

How can he complain about feeling useless when he's walked away from doing something essential to the newspaper business?

He nailed it. The whole issue between bloggers and the MSM. No one is doing any real reporting anymore. Everyone has become a commentator. Maybe if the MSM went back to it's roots and did it's job as classified by those highly regarded pieces of paper that say "Degree in Journalism", then there would not be such an issue.

Case in point the Boston Herald's inability to verify a source's story. Oops. Let's turn that into a sales bonanza instead of firing every single idiot involved. Commentary instead of accountability. More opinion than fact.

It's the tar-baby principle: you become what you hate, what you fight.

The problem with so many of Kornheiser's comments is that they derive from his increasingly narrow view of the world, not that he's always wrong. I listen sometimes to his DC radio show, and it's depressing to compare his current blow-hard egomania (usually coupled with ignorance of the facts at hand, a la Limbaugh, etc) to his persona years ago on the radio. Somewhere along the lines, he became the boor he used to ironically. Complete now with lackeys who laugh hysterically at every word he utters. Ugh.

While I don't agree that TK conveniently waited until his retirement to comment on the newspaper medium, I'll agree that these are the most unflichinly pessimistic remarks he has made about newspapers that I've heard. Contrary to the post from "Awful Announcing" I think this is admirable, it would have been inappropriate at best for Tony to have made such unequivocably dire predictions about newspapers when he still worked at one. He has a responsibility to his employer, and it has always been obvious that while Tony was realistic enough to realise that the world may not think of him as a newspaper man, he always has.

To make a snide remark implying that somehow the fact that Tony waited to retire from newspapers to proclaim the medium dead is, I think, an unfair cheap shot. There is nothing self serving or convenient about Tony's remarks, they are the remarks of a man who is obviously sad that not only is an era of his life ending, but the medium that he most holds dear is coming crashing down.