Athletic, Axios talking merger?

NOOOOOO! Say it's not so!

 

Not really about The Athletic except for the premise, but I wasn't sure where to put it so this will do.
Jay Mariotti has lots and lots of thoughts:
THE ATHLETIC WANTED TO DO A PROFILE ABOUT ME — UNTIL IT DIDN’T

(Hadn't thought about Jay in ages until the other day when I thought I saw him. That led me to wondering what became of him ... and that led me to his substack. This part was especially interesting to me because we both worked at AOL FanHouse and covered those Vancouver Olympics together, and it's the first I've heard of something so bizarre. Perhaps other FanHouse survivors can clarify it:
Jay wrote: "I'll never forget being ordered to take a red-eye flight to northern Virginia, where I was asked by an AOL security guy/former FBI agent why my editor hadn't filled out company travel forms for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Uh, you wasted my time and your money on something that could have been asked over the phone? They were trying to get rid of my boss, and I refused to cooperate.")

 

Stunning to me that there’s no job in sports journalism for the man who predicted the rise of digital AND invented The Athletic.

And, yes, those are “lots and lots of thoughts.”

 

This is just a tangent. Jay was talked about so much here long ago.

It appears the first reference to him here at SJ was on 6/8/06 courtesy of JBHawkEye:

In some ways Jay Mariotti is the arc of the newspaper and sportswriting business the last 15 years.

 

tl/dr: still needs counseling

 

My god, that guy is insufferable.

 

That was a great, might even say refreshing, read. And the guy can still write.

 

Well, except for the domestic assault.

 

Holy shit, what the hell was that?

"I'm surprised how little I cared," he wrote in words 6,813, 6,814, 6,815, 6,816, 6,817 and 6,818 of a 6,883-word BLOGGGGGG about how The Athletic did but didn't profile him.

 

Jonah Keri says hi.

 

Thanks for checking in, Jays.