Even Jay Mariotti's Own Co-Workers Can't Stand Him

I had a post last week about how I'm amazed that a writer who no one seems to like continues to write articles on Ozzie Guillen that don't speak for the fans. Everyone chimed in and said that he speaks for no one in Chicago. Well today you can add Jay Mariotti's colleagues to the list of people that can't stand the guy. Via Teddy Greenstein at the Trib....

Now Mariotti is taking body blows from his own colleagues at the Sun-Times. The situation heated up to the point that Editor-in-Chief Michael Cooke stepped in last week to symbolically separate Mariotti from fellow sports columnist Rick Telander, after Sun-Times editors refused to run columns Telander filed for the Wednesday and Friday papers.

The conflict started after Mariotti wrote last week of Guillen: "As you may have noticed through the years, I am the Blizzard's only critic in the Chicago media, mostly because my soft colleagues either fear Guillen's wrath, enjoy how he rips me, work for one of the Reinsdorf-controlled broadcast outlets or are afraid of getting on the chairman's bad side."

The next day, Sun-Times national baseball writer Chris De Luca led his column this way: "The same critics who avoid ever stepping into the White Sox's clubhouse are calling the Chicago media soft for not skewering manager Ozzie Guillen. They want Guillen fired yesterday. Sounds tough, but the rhetoric comes up a little, well, soft."

Telander also believed Mariotti had unfairly impugned his reputation and fired back in a Wednesday column that got spiked, according to media insiders. The paper explained to its readers in a box that Telander was taking the day off.

"I'm a big boy and I can handle this," he said. "The people I feel sorry for are the hard-working, talented journalists at the Sun-Times like Chris De Luca, Joe Cowley, Toni Ginnetti, Gordon Wittenmyer, Carol Slezak and Greg Couch."

This whole situation continues to amaze me. NO ONE likes anything this guy does. Not a single person enjoys his writing or his nonsense on television. I know controversy sells more papers, but you can reach a point of diminishing returns. In this case someone from at a rival city paper is writing about the dysfunction at your paper. That should be a hint that there's a Cancer in the midst.

Mariotti is no Terrell Owens, Pacman Jones, or Jeremy Shockey. This would be like the Matt Gutierrez knocking out Tom Brady in the locker room seven times and still keeping his job. Unbelievable.

Sun-Times colleagues go after Jay Mariotti (Chicago Tribune)
Even Jay Mariotti's Co-Workers Hate Him (Fanhouse)