“All I ever wanted to be was a newspaper writer.”

Those were the self-eulogizing words of Tony Kornheiser upon accepting a buyout from his newspaper home of nearly three decades, The Washington Post, in mid-May. Truthfully, the bon vivant known to fans as “Mr. Tony” had long since surrendered his perch as the top sports columnist in the nation’s capital for the increased riches and visibility of the electronic media. Aside from his high-profile spot in the Monday Night Football booth, Kornheiser also fronts a three-hour syndicated daily radio show and co-hosts Pardon the Interruption on ESPN. That schedule, and Kornheiser’s focus on national sporting affairs, didn’t leave much room for columns for local readers about the Redskins and Wizards. The Post, bleeding readers and ad dollars like the rest of the newspaper industry, belatedly decided that the occasional piece it got from Kornheiser didn’t justify his huge salary (even if his online chats and other WaPo-related work undoubtedly drove traffic to the paper’s Web site).

Days before Kornheiser’s buyout was announced, another big-name columnist (and occasional PTI host), Dan Le Batard of The Miami Herald, announced that he was leaving for a yearlong sabbatical. Like Kornheiser, the cherub-cheeked Le Batard is a multimedia opiner, working on TV and radio in addition to his column. And like Kornheiser, who famously says he goes to sleep long before most games finish and mocks anyone who bothers to know a great deal about sports, Le Batard seems to have grown disenchanted with the fun and games that have made him rich. In his farewell column, Le Batard wrote, “I’m doing you, the reader, a disservice when I go to write from an NFL draft that could not possibly bore me more at this point in my life.”

In other words,...

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