WASHINGTON - Busy with "Monday Night Football" and his many other jobs, Tony Kornheiser essentially stopped writing columns for The Washington Post long ago. Thus it only seemed inevitable that he tell the world that he's taking the newspaper's buyout — while on the radio.

Kornheiser on Wednesday announced the end of his full-time association with the Post, which began in 1979.

"It just feels odd," Kornheiser said on his morning show on Talk Radio 3WT. "It feels odd and it feels bad. It doesn't feel sad, there's no sadness to it, it just feels wrong."

Kornheiser's funny, sarcastic and sometimes poignant columns in the Sports and Style sections were once must-read material in the past, but he began writing less in the 1990s when he branched into radio and television. He has been the co-host of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" since 2001 and became a booth analyst on the network's "Monday Night Football" in 2006.

All the while, his full-length columns shrunk into what he called "columnettes," then eventually disappeared altogether. His presence in the paper now consists mostly of transcribed quotes from comments he makes on camera for the newspaper's Web site.

Executive editor Len Downie said Kornheiser will retain a desk in the Post's offices and will continue to appear on the Web site.

"By and large what he was doing before he will continue to be doing," Downie said, "but he will no longer be a full-time employee."

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