The Athletic keeps growing .......

OK, I trust you guys. Sorry. You would know better than I would but I saw a tweet at one point a few months ago in which she said she never saw the sport before being given the job and I thought there have to be better places for people to follow for coverage and so I stopped and paid more attention to others from that point on.

 

Not that this answers the questions of how sustainable they are, but I have heard that they aren't paying as much as you'd think they are for some of the biggest national names (Rosenthal, Glazer, etc.) because those guys have big TV deals that pay most of their salary and the Athletic is getting them at somewhat of a discount just to write, while reaping the benefits of having their names on the marquee.

 

I agree with all of this. I've never figured out how to make the Athletic numbers add up, and that's even with the assumption that the majority of their writers are making a lot less than many of us are assuming.

That being said, they are attracting a lot more subscribers than I'd figured, and that worries me. They've been spot on in hiring. Frankly, they seem to have a better understanding of the local newspaper's talent/appeal than the newspaper itself. That's par for the course. Today's SE has no idea what the modern, educated sports fan wants to read. They have no idea how to market their content. They have no idea how to market their strongest voices. Their idea of great coverage is still anything that might win an APSE award or make for good print design/art. How much time are SEs still spending on special/preview sections?

Instead of trying to fight back against the Athletic, to emphasize some of the content that the Athletic is emphasizing, to incorporate some of institutional voice that the Athletic is featuring, they're just sitting back and going about their business as usual. Lead, notes, file by first edition, hey, go do a sidebar, you, a column, who cares about what, as long as it makes deadline.

 

Man, I feel this vibe, but The Athletic ain't that different from a local rag. I subscribe too. I read. There's some good stuff. It's not Jackson Pollock discovering the drip painting.

 

What are the latest subscriber numbers of the Athletic?

 

Comparing it to The National to The Athletic is apples and oranges.
The National had horrid production. It was ugly. The graphics they tried failed miserably because they couldn't get the color in register. Some of the graphics had elements that wound up in the gutter or on the next page. But its biggest problem was delivery. It is the same problem print faces now, getting the damn thing to the doorstep. They couldn't get it delivered.
The Athletic does not have to deal with production or delivery.
The Athletic is falling short in a lot of areas. Although I am not as negative as Reddy, I try to take his/her criticisms to heart before discounting them.
I have seen a lot of poor work in The Athletic. There are a lot of Q&As, which are the laziest form of journalism.
The one on the Johansen-Kesler squabble was so superficial is was almost unreadable. It had a screaming headline about a Twitter war. In the text, that issue was dealt with in a one-sentence quote by Johansen and not mentioned again. Very lazy story.
Rosenthal's Q&A with Dusty Baker was packed with quotes, but was not organized very well and needed some simple editing.
There was another one on the post-career life of Saku Koivu. It did not mention that he was traded from Montreal and played his last few years in Anaheim. Significant omission.
C'mon guys/gals, give us some well-written stories.

 

When you have a chance at a great intellect like Jay Glazer, you have to take it.

 

Love it. East Coast bias.

 

I think—especially at the pace they’re expanding—quality is likely to be highly variable. The guy covering the Mets seems to take advantage of the platform—lots of analysis supported with charts, GIFs, and videos. I’m sure other writers, though, are much more traditional. It seems to be very writer driven and so what you get will be highly dependent on who is covering the beat (as compared to more editor driven publications that have more of a consistent voice and tone).

 

Double Down brought up Netflix before, and I agree The Athletic doesn't have that kind of endless VC money, I wonder if the approach is similar.

Cast an extremely wide net at first. Offer everything. Then as you get the data on what subscribers are actually consuming, spend your money there and get more aggressive about cancelling shows or cutting resources to certain sports/beats.

 

That is true. But she's worked pretty tirelessly to gain an understanding of the nuances of the sport. She knows enough to be competent in the Xs and Os, and I've noticed her knowledge of the sport has increased exponentially in the last year or so. Hockey's weird anyway because if you get too deep into the nerd stats, you'll lose everyone. I'm a diehard, and I still only have a basic grasp of the fancy stats. I would think most hockey fans are in a similar boat.