Quit Writing? With a Face Like This?

Tony Kornheiser signed off from writing his Style-section column on September 30, 2001, with this line about his move to TV: “Television! With that bald head and that puss? The man looks like one of those souvenir coconuts with a tiki face carved into it.”

Since that day, Kornheiser has slowly disappeared from the newspaper. His sports column went from twice a week to once, then to what he called a “columnette,” a rehash of what he’d said on TV or radio. Last month, managing editor Raju Narisetti told him that his run as a sports columnist for the Post, which had began in 1984, was officially over.

Post Watch would like to note that Kornheiser’s departure means the loss of one of the Post newsroom’s most notorious and colorful characters. Love him or hate him, Tony K was mostly fun, obsessing his way around the newsroom, begging for good lines, whining about his lack of talent. Even as he became the talent that drew readers to the newspaper, his profile rose to the level of Monday Night Football and his income rose into the millions.

His compatriots—Mike Wilbon and John “Junior” Feinstein—still write for the newspaper. And you can still see or hear more Tony K than you may need on radio, TV, and podcasts. But he can no longer say his real job is sportswriting.

This article first appeared in the June 2009 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.   

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Harry Jaffe