Wednesday, September 17, 2008

"No-Compete" clause prevents Mariotti from reaching new level of douchebaggedness


Whispers of former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti going to the Chicago Tribune have been officially silenced.

According to Deadspin.com and the Chicago Tribune, Mariotti could not clear the legal hurdles of a no-compete clause in his contract with his former newspaper. The Tribune was planning on using him as a web columnist, but the Tribune lawyers could not find a way that would allow the Tribune to hire him.

Deadspin had a great post about this when they responded to the following from the Tribune

Sources at Tribune Co. confirmed conversations with Mariotti had been held, but Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern would only say late Tuesday that "we have no plans to hire Jay Mariotti.'
with this:
It's good to know that the Chicago Tribune writer here, Jim Kirk, has "sources within the Tribune Co." That's some mighty fine reportin' there, Lou.
I laughed as soon as I read that. It's a little weird to hear the Tribune quoting an inside source from their own newspaper. It sort of raises a bigger question, why did the Tribune have to "report" on this? Couldn't they just release a statement about what happened?

As terrible as this could've been, the Sun-Times deserve it with how they treated Mariotti's departure from the paper. The Sun-Times apparently sent the Tribune a nasty letter from their attorneys threatening to sue if they hire Mariotti in any capacity. Anyway, it works out for the best that he gets to restart his career somewhere other than Chicago.



2 comments:

Scott Brodeur said...

That is one of the funniest unnamed sources uses I have seen in some time.

Adam said...

As soon as I read that story, I couldn't stop thinking about how absurd that sounds. What is the newspaper business coming to?