The New York Times to Disband Its Sports Department

[Déjà Bru]

It was inevitable, I guess. The duplication of effort was apparent on the NYT home page, where they would have a section for internal sports reporting and another with links to The Athletic articles.

The irony for me is, with this change, I will be unable to link to NYT sports articles in order to share them here using their Gift Article feature. The Athletic does not have that capability, and I will not post a link to a subscription-based website without it.

So, possibly for the last time:

The New York Times to Disband Its Sports Department

Gift article; available 30 days; does not count toward your allotment of free articles.

[Ty Cobb]

People still read the New York Times? Wow.

[Gruber_Tagged_Him]

I feel the Athletic has gone downhill pretty quickly over the last year, roughly correlated to when they sold out to the Times.

[Amazin69]

That is possibly the stupidest move ever.

"The Paper of Record" will no longer have local writers covering local sports, just links to a generic website? What a complete fail.

The Nets deserve someone who lives, eats and breathes Brooklyn, rather than some AP-style hackery aimed at Kevin in Kankakee, who was actually looking for the Pacers coverage. And ditto for the other 10 pro teams in the market.

There's a place for national coverage, but there's no reason for it to supersede local journalism, in the biggest and most complex sports market in the nation. Bananas.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

People still read the New York Times? Wow.

Wow this.



The new subscribers, who do not include the roughly one million who came with the acquisition of the sports website The Athletic last February, bring The Times’s total number of paying subscribers to 9.6 million. The company has set a goal of 15 million by the end of 2027.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Gruber_Tagged_Him

I feel the Athletic has gone downhill pretty quickly over the last year, roughly correlated to when they sold out to the Times.

I don't mean to shill for the NYT or TA, but I have had the opposite reaction at times; I have encountered some rather comprehensive and enjoyable stuff over there.

[Marinersfan51]

Originally Posted by Gruber_Tagged_Him

I feel the Athletic has gone downhill pretty quickly over the last year, roughly correlated to when they sold out to the Times.

Yeah I recently gave up on The Athletic. They had essentially abandoned the idea of having beat writers covering most teams in favor of just doing generic aggregated news stories that were riddled with errors and the occasional interesting article. I can get summaries of tweets and press releases elsewhere for free.

It felt like they were getting rid of a lot of the more interesting writers who would actually cover stuff I was interested in and focusing more on the handful of teams that I don't care about. Everything was Lakers, Yankees, and Cowboys. They really are just becoming another ESPN with everything driven by SEO.

There are still some good writers there, but their work was getting tougher to find in the sea of tired trade gossip and surface level observations.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

That is possibly the stupidest move ever.

"The Paper of Record" will no longer have local writers covering local sports, just links to a generic website? What a complete fail.

The Nets deserve someone who lives, eats and breathes Brooklyn, rather than some AP-style hackery aimed at Kevin in Kankakee, who was actually looking for the Pacers coverage. And ditto for the other 10 pro teams in the market.

There's a place for national coverage, but there's no reason for it to supersede local journalism, in the biggest and most complex sports market in the nation. Bananas.

I have a couple of reactions to this.

First, the move does make sense in one respect; The Athletic continues to lose big money. Just in this past first quarter, the loss was nearly $8 million. Granted, NYT is now covering these losses but to have a major division hemorrhaging money like that is not going to go down well with investors and stockholders. Especially when TA's efforts are being somewhat duplicated by the NYT sports desk. Better to absorb TA further to tidy things up on the net income report and balance sheet. Savings will come from job elimination, no matter what the NYT is saying now (they say, none; all 35 people are to be reassigned).

Second, I take issue with your statement about NYT's coverage of local sports. Even before acquisition of The Athletic, there had been this:

In recent years, with the rise of digital media, The Times’s sports department began to downsize, just as many other national and local newspapers did. The section lost its stand-alone daily print section. Not every local team was assigned a beat reporter. Box scores disappeared.

It was quite noticeable; it's one reason why I also subscribe to Newsday which does a first-class job of covering local sports.

[Déjà Bru]

Still, I will grant one thing: I would have expected the reverse. That is, I would have anticipated The Athletic to be downsized and absorbed into the NYT sports desk, with TA's name, website, and customer base being the major reasons for the acquisition, all eventually subsumed into the NYT.

[pilight]

The NYT sports desk was unionized, The Athletic is not. So it's not shocking that it went this way and not the other.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by pilight

The NYT sports desk was unionized, The Athletic is not. So it's not shocking that it went this way and not the other.

Corporate greed trumps consumer need? I am so, soo, sooo shocked, I tells ya!

(And the NYT may well have been headed downhill lately, but I was speaking of the ideal they should IMO strive for. This isn't it, AFAICT.)

[Ty Cobb]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Wow this.

Attachment 958159

The new subscribers, who do not include the roughly one million who came with the acquisition of the sports website The Athletic last February, bring The Times’s total number of paying subscribers to 9.6 million. The company has set a goal of 15 million by the end of 2027.

…and I guess they did on that. Personally, I don’t pay for subscriptions to anything except my vpn. Yeah, that includes software. Of course, I got a flat rate price for 2 years of the vpn, not even sure that qualifies as a sub.

As for the Times, I’ll keep my opinion to myself (I hear the audible gasp already!&#128518 and move along. Thanks for the heads up on their numbers though. Keep me from looking foolish somewhere else. Y’all have a great day now.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

…and I guess they did on that. Personally, I don’t pay for subscriptions to anything except my vpn. Yeah, that includes software. Of course, I got a flat rate price for 2 years of the vpn, not even sure that qualifies as a sub.

As for the Times, I’ll keep my opinion to myself (I hear the audible gasp already!��) and move along. Thanks for the heads up on their numbers though. Keep me from looking foolish somewhere else. Y’all have a great day now.

Now, realize that this is growth in digital subscriptions, not the print edition which probably continues to shrink. And sure, sometimes I grouse about how, years ago, I paid less to have the newspaper delivered to my home.

But, I keep in mind a few things these days:

1) I no longer need to go out in my bathrobe and slippers on a rainy morning to retrieve a soggy newspaper that the carrier (deliberately?) threw into a puddle, or only half-bagged.

2) Nor do I fear the newspaper that is buried by a foot or more of snow. Why would I fear it? Newspapers are not compatible with snowblowers. "Rrrrrrrr . . . snork!"

3) The success of the New York Times is unusual in the world of journalism these days. Most traditionally-based newspaper outlets are suffering if not already out-of-print. Only those with the clout and resources to make the transition to an online subscription-based presence are surviving. Even so, most of them are not doing as well as the New York Times.

4) Most importantly, any democracy and in particular our democracy right now depends on a well-informed populace. That's what the "fourth estate" has always been about. (What are the other three estates? I have to look that up when I am done here.) Without reporters and editors following the shenanigans of our industrious leaders, digging up the truth behind their demagogic lies, democracy will die.

It is for those reasons that I subscribe without complaint to the NYT (and Newsday because number 4 applies to local news which is also very important; movements have grassroots and congressmen are elected in local districts). Without trusted news sources like these, we would be forced to get our "news" from garbage sites like Facebook and Twitter. We have seen how that works.

So, if NYT wants to throw its sports desk out the window (figuratively, not literally), I shrug. The Athletic, while not ESPN, is not that bad. Just today, I read another article about the resurgent Cincinnati Reds and this wunderkind Elly De La Cruz. I wanted to share it but, as I mentioned previously, TA does not have a gift article feature.

I will provide the NYT feedback on that, however.

[Ty Cobb]

You make good points.

[Syd Thrift]

The three estates is an old, old concept I think, going back to the Middle Ages. In a nutshell, the three estates are the noble, the clergy, and the laity, or, colloquially, “those who fight, those who pray, and those who work”. Obviously we’ve undergone some societal transformations since then but those are, classically, the three estates.

[Déjà Bru]

Thanks, Ty and Syd. So, I have been "third estate" most of my life but have now achieved "fifth estate"; that is, comfortably retired!

[Amazin69]

Better Fifth Estate than Fifth Column!

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Better Fifth Estate than Fifth Column!

Yes, the only subversive activities that I engage in these days involve wear and tear on my recliner, laptop, and TV remote.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Yes, the only subversive activities that I engage in these days involve wear and tear on my recliner, laptop, and TV remote.

Now where's the fun in that?