The Athletic keeps growing .......

Nothing against Richard, but is sports media coverage such a draw that it’ll bring subscribers?

 

It must be the women's basketball.

 

I think so. Or at least it will be part of the value add.

In the last year, he had exclusive content about Jemele Hill that was quoted far and wide, and he had some other scoops as well.

This question always gets asked in one form or another: Who cares about the media? But every time there's a controversy or a reporter feud, people are really really interested.

 

I love them. I make my sports communication students listen to an episode every semester for takeways from the area they are most interested. I've never had one who couldn't find some guest of interest.

 

Richard is a huge advocate of women in sports journalism. Maybe he'll have an impact on the co-founders' hiring practices.

 

I find sports media coverage interesting because I am interested in the media coverage of "race" and nowhere is that more intersectional than in sports journalism. I would subscribe to read Jemele Hill and/or Jason Whitlock write about sports media. Dietsch is more of an inside the lines traditional reporter as opposed to a commentator, he gets scoops but does not have a lot of entertainment value for me.

 

The hiring of Deitsch, another established reporter of some repute, doesn't check off any diversity boxes either. Hope he thus spares us from opining on such practices, because such hires often begin right where the person in charge's or the critic's ass ends. And BTW, heard that the Twin Cities bureau of The Athletic tried hard to hire LaVelle E. Neal, longtime Twins writer who happens to be black.

 

Newspapers have been ditching value adds for 15 years now. When was the last time you saw anyone besides ESPN making a value-add move?

 

sports media coverage -- especially of tv types -- snuck up on everyone because we all thought, 'the media isn't the story....' but the fact is, the way we consume sports over the last 40 years changed all that. you watch a game, and you're spending as much time -- far more, actually -- reacting to joe buck or gruden as you are to tom brady. just listen to fans during a broadcast: half the comments are about play on the field and half are about the personality/knowledge/attitude/looks of the talking heads. they are part of the story today, as most of us digest it, and sports media content reflects this. i'd bet my house that deitch's podcast/stories regarding tv types get far more traffic than anything he does with print folk....

 

I looked at his podcast guests for the past few months. He’s had on one person (Paula Lavigne of ESPN) whose main job involves writing, not counting those roundtables. P.S. Any episode with Jimmy Traina on it makes my brain hurt.