The Athletic keeps growing .......

1) That was just one example of additional sources of information.

B) The Athletic’s bosses certainly should lose sleep if there’s not enough fans that want to pay for their services.

 

But apparently they still read him.

 

Are you sure? Dedicated, hard-core sports fans would seem to be the target audience for The Athletic.

 

Paul Fichtenbaum is the person “running” The Athletic. I have respect for him and think he is a good journalist.

The fact that it’s owners project a considerable vibe or smugness and arrogance is off-putting. In fact, I find their attitude trickles down into far too much of the tone of The Atheltic’s social media promotion. I realize, as a start up, you need to sell your product. You want to convince people you’re worth paying for when there are other free options. But I often see posts – “You won’t read a better summary of UMBC’s historic win over Virgina anywhere than this one!” – that make me roll my eyes a little.

I’ve seen The Athletic compared to The National on this thread, or as a replacement for SI, and frankly ... I just don’t get it. If I’m into the Reds, you bet your ass I’m going to want to read Trent Rosencrans. But if I’m a general interest fan, what national writer at The Athletic am I putting down money to read? They ought to go hard after Wetzel.

 

Bottom line on The Athletic: It's healthy for Journalism because The Athletic's premise is to hire the name writers who already have a following, the same folks the ill-trained (in Journalism), ill-advised, obnoxious suits (lapdogs to the money grubbing CEOs of newspaper companies) have so eagerly shown the door. The Athletic higher-ups see value in the byline and the work of the byline. Newspapers are trying their best to get rid of all significant byline$$$$$. So thank you Athletic. However ... it remains to be seen if the owners of The Athletic are in it for the long haul or a.) will just shut it down one day amid monetary losses or b.) sell it to make a huge profit and the new owners would immediately run it like a newspaper (fire half the staff the first month, etc).

 

Why not be smug and arrogant? It's healthy that they want to tell the world newspapers are disgracefully bad in firing the writers they are so eagerly signing. You are just used to a world in which the suits devalue the byline, treat the veteran who has a following like scum, so to speak. Forever, the suits have thought kids making 25,000 can do just as good a job as the columnists with a following who make 200,000. The Athletic is laughing in the face of that and paying the name journalists good money.

 

Did Fredrick write this episode?

 

An example of why the Athletic shouldn't be smug about much of anything right now: the Bryan Colangelo story was unearthed by the Ringer. The scoop about him stepping down was by Woj of ESPN. Both free sites. Their roster of Sixer, high-paid talent at the Athletic's Philly site was beat on the story from soup to nuts.

 

I predict in five years The Athletic will no longer be independently run