Washington Times Sports Section 'Got Mike Leach'd'

What was speculated over for the past few weeks became official on Wednesday: the Washington Times is eliminating its sports section, with the final edition running on Friday. It apparently all went down in Wednesday's afternoon meeting.

True story: With the "you're getting fired" packet, @washtimes was kind of enough to give a PINK sheet of paper with open jobs to apply for.

While newspapers closing down sections (or even shutting the doors altogether) became pretty common in 2009, it's important to remember the importance the Times sports section had in and around Washington, DC, something Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post did today in his post, "Goodbye to the Times sports section."

Aside from the general lament about so many good people losing their jobs in such a shoddy way, the worst thing about this news is that it hurts D.C. as a sports town. Sports towns have rollicking media contingents, packs of beat writers, inter-paper feuds and all the rest. They have columnists with rival sport-talk shows on at the same time, and they have beat writers whispering covertly into cell phones while talking to editors, and they have hurt feelings and back-stabbings, and they have drunken group dart games after playoff wins during midwestern road trips.

Sure, bloggers are rapidly filling in the holes, and the Examiner does a lot with a small staff, and various Web sites are beefing up their coverage, but that's no substitute for being a genuine two-paper town, with multiple full-time beat writers covering every team.