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Last week's cover. Irony is funny. |
10. As of this morning, the
Dallas Observer is out of the sports business, at least on a full-time basis. Though I'm not technically being fired ("laid off" is supposedly less damning), the paper and its owner, Village Voice Media, have decided to eliminate its full-time sportswriting position. It's called downsizing. And yes, it sucks. Sources close to me indicate my farewell column -- a staple of the paper since September 2005 -- will appear in this week's edition. I'll pause a second while some of you pick your jaws off the floor, and others organize a celebratory parade.
9. I didn't exactly see this coming.
Hard Impossible to envision going from emcee of Brew at the Zoo one week, to writing the paper's cover story the next week, to ... poof. But it's another sign of the terrible, terminal disease rotting newspapers to death. One minute your blog is a prototype; the next, the fat that must be trimmed.
8. I would like to sincerely thank VVM for a generous goodbye, and also offer a tip of the cap to my loyal readers and sharp-tongued commenters who both kept me on my toes and kicked me in the crotch. Now it can be told: Being a sportswriter, I always wear a cup. No hard feelings.
7. My
first Observer column was about the Rangers. So was
my last, a cover story fittingly adorned with the screaming headline "The End is Near!," a reference to the regular season's end and last week's apocalypse-themed Best of Dallas issue. Overall
I wrote 310 ditties in the paper and won 13 national, state and local writing awards for stories like
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this and
this.
6. Couple weeks ago we learned to live without
Entourage on Sunday night, and last Friday Mike Modano began life without hockey. This morning I woke up -- for the first time since accepting a job on the staff of UT-Arlington's
The Shorthorn in 1983 -- without a newspaper job. Unsettling, to say the least.
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