Jay Mariotti, legendary sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times for the past 17 years, has resigned. Mariotti told the Chicago Tribune that he quit after returning from the Beijing Olympics where he realized that sports journalism had become "entirely a Web site business. There were not many newspapers there." Most journalists at the games were "there writing for Web sites." The future of sports journalism is "not in newspapers."

The writing was on the wall for Mariotti: "to see what's happened in this business... I don't want to go down with it."

Mariotti told the Trib that he would continue appearing on ESPN's "Around the Horn" and that he is "talking with a lot of Web sites." It's a bad sign for newspapers when their star columnists bail, but perhaps, not an unexpected one. Especially in sports, where minute-by-minute updates, blog posts and columns abound online -- and on ESPN shows like SportsCenter, Pardon The Interruption and Around The Horn -- fewer and fewer readers are getting their sports news from the physical newspaper.

"I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete," said Mariotti, commenting on the downfall of the newspaper industry in general. Of the Sun-Times and the Tribune, the two big newspapers in Chicago, he said "everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high stakes competition are over."

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