Here’s a story out of Chicago this morning- Sun-Times star sports columnist Jay Mariotti has abruptly resigned.  His reason?

“It’s been a tremendous experience, but I’m going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,” Mariotti said, “I don’t think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive.

“To showcase your work … you need a stellar Web site and if a newspaper doesn’t have that, you can’t be stuck in the 20th century with your old newspaper.”

The Sun-Times, of course, has been plagued by scandal and, like every other newspaper in the country, plummeting ad revenues.

Editor Michael Cooke had this response:

“The reason Mariotti showed up at the Sun-Times 17 years ago was because the paper had the best sports pages in town. That was true then, and it’s true now.”

Possibly, but does it really matter if no one is reading?  Plummeting ad revenues signal the fact that fewer and fewer readers look to traditional newspapers to get their news.  Consumers vote with their wallets and their attention spans.  Fewer readers = less attention = less money.

Of course, the reality here is that this debate is over and done with.  Most of the world resolved this issue several years ago.  It still boggles the mind that the industry stalwarts don’t see it.  But, I suppose that’s always the case.  In most cases, industry leaders are the last to recognize new trends and only do so after the momentum is unstoppable.

Maxwell House should’ve been Starbucks.  American Express should’ve been Paypal.  RIAA should’ve been MySpace.  Barnes & Noble should’ve been Amazon.  The auto industry should’ve collectively been Autotrader.com.  The newspaper industry should’ve collectively been eBay and/or Craigslist.

But they weren’t.  None of them.  Each tried to hang on to their respective pieces of the pie, and each one wound up with a smaller piece.  Or, maybe their pieces remained the same size, but the entire pie became larger, meaning they held a lesser percentage of it.  Who knows…the analogy is played, but you get the point.

What personality trait is needed in order to see and respond to a seismic shift in the market?  Do you have it?  Or, like Cooke, are you sitting on the best sports pages in town with no one reading them but the old folks down at “the home”?

Mariotti is right.  That’s a no-brainer.  The only real surprise here is that we’re still having this discussion.