Chicago's long nightmare is over

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-080826mariotti-resigns,0,1339701.story
Jay Mariotti, long-time coward and general blemish to humanity, resigned from the Chicago Sun Times this evening.
I've disliked this douchebag for a long time. His hypocrisy, cowardice and blatant plagiarism have long plagued Chicago sports journalism.
Essentially, this guy's shtick was to be a complete contrarian, even if it meant angering a lot of folks. That in itself isn't so bad. But his complete refusal to even confront the folks he wrote about in person took away from his severely limited credibility.
You can't have much "courage of conviction" if you don't have the courage to face the people you criticize.
To me, the difference between journalists and folks like us lowly bloggers is the amount of access you have. Any no-talent hack can copy and paste AP quotes and steal stuff from a beat writer. Hell, Deadspin does that all the time, and I like Deadspin.
Mariotti, allegedly, is a journalist. To have the amount of access he did and not actually interview folks either by phone or face to face is a disservice to journalism.
Hell, even on the rare occasions he did interview someone, he made himself the focus of the story. Oh, look at Jay and what a courageous individual he is.
Mariotti had more feuds with colleagues and local athletes than a gangster rapper typically has over an entire career. He got run out of Denver for calling John Elway a "greedy, scared punk." Of course, there's his beefs with Ozzie Guillen, Ken Harrelson and Jerry Reinsdorf. More recently, he accused his former Sun Times colleagues of being soft.
Funny, considering they actually spoke to the people they wrote about from time to time.
To my fellow Chicago sports fans, I raise a toast with you tonight. Good bye and good riddance to the city's long nightmare. May what passed for Mariotti's career rest in pieces.