Ditto Kevin Roberts, the CP's balanced and topical lead sports columnist. Shockingly, gone in less than the 60 seconds it took to summon him to his personal rendition of the "Executioner's Song."
The Eagles had a huge game to play against the Giants in biting cold on hostile Meadowlands turf, a game dripping with playoff implications and loaded with subplots. But Eagles beat writer Sean McCann was not there with his take. Sean was booted into the street, part of a Gannett purge that could claim as many as 3,000 employees when the last journalist is jettisoned into an increasingly cluttered cyber world. Brother can you spare a gigabyte?
Last Friday, Newsday, once a writer's newspaper that gave us sportswriting giants including Stan Isaacs, Steve Jacobson and a wonderful, quirky sports editor/columnist named Jack Mann, pulled the trigger. And down went three sports columnists, including Johnette Howard.
The columnists who escaped the purge, including Wallace Matthews, are no longer sports columnists, however. That position has been eliminated. Writers who venture bold opinions in distinctive voices now will be called . . . what? "Next Victim" will do for now.
As the print-newspaper industry goes the way of clipper ships, gas lamps and horse-drawn trolleys, I thought about the powerful tug of the giants who dragged me into this endangered business.
I thought about Jimmy Cannon, a lonely, elfin man who wrote with power and street-smart clout. I thought about his most quoted line: "Joe Louis is a credit to his race; the human race."
In the New York City newspaper wars, Cannon played a boring-in Jack Dempsey to Red Smith's dancing Gene Tunney.
Cannon wrote: "A rabid sports fan is one that boos a TV set."
