Media Monster

Michael Wilbon Looks Back On Newspaper Career Before Leaving For Good

Last month, it was announced longtime Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon would leave the paper to pursue a TV career full-time. And while it was no doubt a sound business move (read: tons of money) for Wilbon, when you work somewhere for 30 years, as he did at WaPo, it can be tough to say goodbye. Today, in his final column for the paper, he did just that.

If there’s one thing the column proves, it’s that when grizzled newspaper vets lament the demise of print media, it’s not just because they hate the future – it’s that they have a genuine, heartfelt connection to these papers. Especially at an establishment like the Washington Post, where Wilbon talks of starting out when Robert Redford would still visit the newsroom to see Bob Woodward, it’s understandable those feelings would be strong.

So even if you think Wilbon is, say, “a haughty gasbag who is decades removed from being in touch with normal sports fans,” can you really begrudge him for holding a soft spot for the place that allowed him to do this:

There was nothing quite like being invited one night to the Hollywood Hills home of the one and only Jim Brown to join members of the Crips and Bloods who had accepted his invitation to stop the violence for at least one night to talk about their differences.

And to Wilbon’s credit, he uses his farewell column to focus on the positive, only really addressing the future of newspapers when he thanks bosses past and present “for giving me the green light to do television at a time when TV and the Internet had newspapers pinned on the ropes while landing one haymaker after another.” And since he’s leaving for a full-time career at ESPN anyway, he must count himself among those landing the haymakers he’s talking about.

Wilbon’s was a classy tribute the focused on the positives of his tenure – because according to him, it seems like the positives were about all there were. He decided he had more of a future in television – that sports reporting had more of a future in television – than newspapers.

He’s probably right, but he’s also right to look back fondly on his time at the Post…because from the sound of it, he got to do some pretty great things while there. That, we think, more than bloggers being the ruin of civilization, is why newspaper reporters – even the ones who leave – look back wistfully on the old days. And when you’re afforded opportunities like Wilbon was at the Post, we can’t totally blame them.

[SportsNewser]

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