Tony Kornheiser ’70

Former Colonial News Sports Editor

Tony Kornheiser describes his time at The Colonial News, from 1967-70, as a ‘Hey kids, let’s go out back inside the barn and put on a show’ kind of thing. We were radical revolutionaries and bomb-throwers, and probably hardly responsible.’

Born and raised in Lynbrook, he was our sports editor and did music reviews too. After starting his career at Newsday and The New York Times, bachelor’s degree in English from Binghamton in hand, Kornheiser joined The Washington Post in 1979.

He’s written four books, including a novel, and was a 1997 Pulitzer finalist.

‘I took my daughter up there a few years ago, showed her the familiar red brick neo-penal architecture,’ he once wrote, ‘and she said, ‘Daddy, it looks like a drug rehabilitation center.’ I smiled and told her, ‘Sweetie, you don’t know how close you are.’

Kornheiser has hosted a radio show since 1992, and co-hosted Pardon the Interruption since 2001. He has been a Monday Night Football commentator and was portrayed in a CBS sitcom.

Kornheiser’s newspaper writing career effectively ended in 2008 when he left The Post. This is his coming out of retirement piece.

His actual retirement plans?

‘I’ll come up and live in Binghamton and teach something,’ he said last year. ‘I’ll just sit there and babble and yodel like I do now, just an old rabbi from the Talmudic era in the ninth century, and I’ll just yodel for people.’

Really?

‘Would I teach there?’ Kornheiser said. ‘Sure, if someone offered me a job after PTI is done for me.’

Newspapers are dead. Dead as old bones.

Even the ones that still print daily are dying and dying quickly. On my block there are only a few families that still get the newspaper delivered, and the average age in those families is upwards of 50.

People still read the news. But they read it online. People do everything online. If they could, they’d go to the bathroom online.

I grew up on newspapers. They taught me everything I needed and wanted to know. I learned geography from the American and National Leagues. I learned how to do math by computing earned run averages. I learned how to argue and cajole and persuade from the sports columnists. I learned about movies and art and fashion and celebrities and politicians ‘ in those days when you could still separate the celebrities from

the politicians.

I love the feel of a newspaper. I love the smell of it. I loved the smudges of the ink on my hands (when they still used ink). I loved being able to fold the paper and carry it with me. I loved being able to read it standing up on the subway, or sitting down on the Long Island Rail Road. I loved being able to throw it away when I was finished.

I wanted nothing more than to work for a newspaper. What a great profession that would be ‘ gathering the news and shaping it in the palm of my hand like some soft ball of dough. I got my first newspaper job at Newsday when I was 22 years old, and I thought I had arrived at the gates of heaven.

I spent the first five decades of my life writing for newspapers, starting in junior high on the student newspaper that came out once or twice a year. Then in high school, where the paper came out every month. Then at Binghamton, for The Colonial News, which came out twice a week.

Within a few months of graduating from college I got the job at Newsday. Then I moved to The New York Times, and finally to The Washington Post. And at every stop along the way I got the same thrill from seeing my name in print, from feeling the newspaper in my hands, from clutching it to my chest, from folding it over and carrying it under my arm.

I loved newspapers so much that I put some money into a newspaper scholarship at my college, this college. I thought then and I think now that there is no greater calling than to write something for a newspaper that hundreds and thousands and maybe even hundreds of thousands of people could read and enjoy ‘ to entertain them and educate them and influence them and give them something to fold up and carry with them in their hands and in their hearts and in their heads.

So it pains me to see newspapers die, and those dreams of mine to die with them. I’ll be the last person to stop subscribing, the last person to go out of my front door at 6 in the morning and pick up the paper lying against the fence. I’ll be the last person to carry the paper gently inside like a carton of eggs, and spread it out on the countertop and read it standing up. I’ll be the last person to start reading a story on the front page of the sports section or the style section or the metro section, and turn to the rest of that story on an inside page and read it all the way through, then go back to the front and start something else. That is the most treasured ritual of my life. I’ll be the last person to read the newspaper online.

Online, that’s not a newspaper. That’s just words.