Three splashy, diverse newspaper hires is one way to grab attention at the start of a New Year. AOL Sports, which lost Jason Whitlock to FOX Sports last year, has just secured the serves of Lisa Olson, formerly of the NY Daily News, who was essentially ousted last year by insecure colleague Mike Lupica; Kevin Blackistone, who used to toil in Texas, but moved to DC a few years ago and now is a fixture on the still-unwatchable Around the Horn; and a perpetually angry man who is allergic to locker rooms and probably was detested on the sports scene in Chicago as much as Blago is on the political scene. This man needs no further introduction: Jay Mariotti.

Not entirely sure what to make of the move. Are they going to be internet columnists, or be feature-column hybrid writers that Yahoo’s writers have successfully pulled off? Obviously, that is the key. Being an internet columnist is difficult these days – opinion is everywhere, and unless you’re on the ground working sources or actually speaking to athletes, it is very difficult to set yourself apart from the masses.

If the comments are any indication, one of two things will happen rather swiftly: Mariotti, whose ego was bruised when he quit his job at the Sun-Times, and thought he’d instantly be in high demand, but wasn’t, will either grow thick skin, or make AOL no longer accept comments on his column.

Jay Mariotti is a narcissistic, egomaniacla piece of garbage. (I wish I could use a stronger word, but it would probably be censured.) He has absolutely no journalistic integrity, preferring to be nothing more than a loud-mouth bully. He was a disaster in both Denver and Chicago with his confrontational style of writing (not journalism) who never let true facts get in the way of his juvenile rant.The best thing the Sun-Times did was accept this jerk’s resignationI am disgusted that AOL would give this contemptible little weasel a sounding board for his vitriolic musings. I look forward to the day when AOL will come to its senses, realize its mistake, and fire this disgusting piece of rubbish!

Well, then. We’ll give these kids a grace period to get settled in to the wacky world of the web. More importantly, we’ll monitor the comScore numbers in the coming months to see if these three are making a difference. Our guess is that there will be an initial bump in January and maybe February, but then the numbers will return to normal after the honeymoon period ends.