First off, congratulations on your free trip to Beijing courtesy of the Sun-Times. We hope it was a grand going-away gift. Your departure from the Sun-Times sports desk last week after 17 years of “work” caused quite a stir, which we know you disliked because you hate the spotlight.

Apparently, while covering the Olympics, you discovered the Internet. This discovery sparked a revelation: Newspapers are dying. A light bulb, no doubt, that shone as bright as your stardom in your own mind.

Well, Mr. Mariotti, we have news for you. As the future of the newspaper industry, we aren’t going anywhere.

But that isn’t to say that newspapers aren’t changing. And maybe our failure as an industry to embrace and welcome the World Wide Web has made you think that we aren’t adaptable. But, like you, we’ve come to understand that the Internet isn’t an enemy or a competitor, rather a modern means of distributing information.

Papers like your former employer and its direct competitor are using the Web and the written word to tell people important stories. No matter the medium, that has always been the goal. That is journalism, and we believe dearly in our work.

Of course, honorable journalism was never your strong suit. You slammed coaches and players from behind the cowardly confines of your computer. Journalism teaches accountability, but how can you hold anyone accountable when you don’t have the decency to at least show your face in the locker room the day after one of your patented “everyone sucks” columns? So similar was it to the way you quit – an e-mail to your boss and a rant on TV.

You were read because you were hated, but newspapers, online or in print, are read because they are needed. There will always be a need for citizens to be informed and for a watchful eye to keep higher powers in check. And there will always be a need for writers, reporters and story tellers to bring that information to the people. Journalism will never die.

As your former colleague and Daily Illini editor Roger Ebert pointed out in his own open letter to you, the country has economic troubles, and the newspaper industry feels it just as hard. But newspapers are changing to cope with the times and live beyond the nation’s financial woes. You could only see newspapers as a tangible thing in its most literal of meanings. But newspapers are just as much a concept – a dedication of the people to bring news to the people.

And whatever that evolves into in the upcoming years, we’re just glad that everyone’s not a Jay Mariotti.