The Athletic keeps growing .......

Of course. But that's if they follow that model. More than likely they'll offer wall-to-wall coverage for specific teams or leagues not due thousands of dollars but, maybe, a ciuple hundred a year.

 

I think the Athletic in your words is "shredding" the newspaper industry for obvious reasons: It's paying substantially more in salary than the reporter is making at the newspaper; the reporter's work load is much less at the Athletic. Newspapers still are arrogant. They think reporters will do the work of 3 people gladly. The Athletic gives the reporter a realistic work load and is stealing the industry's best.

 

Boy, ain't that true. Meanwhile, our sports editor took six or eight vacations a year.

 

I guess I'm just surprised that there is nobody in the industry that saw this coming - not just losing beat people to The Athletic, but being stuck weeks before the regular season started.

 

There are so many newspaper people asleep at the wheel, it's actually not that surprising. At my shop, we lost two sports reporters last year and they dragged their feet replacing them, and before they did others had bolted. Tough to run a section under those circumstances, but the corporate folks didn't seem too concerned, as long as they it didn't affect their paychecks.

There was a publication in LA that lost its Lakers writer to the Athletic right before LeBron arrived, and seemed to be caught off guard by the timing. It shouldn't have been.

 

People will pay big money for something that provides a return on that investment. People pay for a Wall Street Journal subscription because they believe that the WSJ will help them make money. Lobbying firms and such will pay for a Politico Pro subscription because they believe that information will help better position those firms to make money. People who would pay big money for an Athletic subscription would be ... gamblers, I suspect.

 

Yes, and with sports betting being legal all over the country, there'll now be a need to follow spreads down to the minute.

 

Here in Columbus, that's happened twice to the Dispatch in as many years when it comes to the Blue Jackets. Last year, both of their guys jumped ship to the Athletic. One well before the season started (the guy who had covered the team since its inception and continues to own the beat), the other much later. This year, one of the beat guys returned to Florida to be closer to his family.
Whether they could have seen both guys leaving last year ... I don't think so. I did not envy them having to find *two* guys to fill that important beat basically right before everything got underway.

 

Well, then gamblers will be disappointed, because mostly all the Athletic does is write really loooooong features every few days, most with angles such as “How (insert player or team here) got (his/their) groove back”

 

That reminds me of Grantland (RIP).

 

I can only speak to how our editors did things. There was a meeting in October when it seemed obvious The Athletic would come to our market at some point. (It ended up launching in the spring.) We examined which staffers might be recruited by The Athletic. Then we made a list if each position were to be vacated who might be candidates to replace them. With a union wage scale, there was not a means to really match salary so it seemed apparent that we were going to lose people. The day after the departures, we started making phone calls and reaching out to the people on our list. Some of them had gone to The Athletic too from other areas or did not want to move.

That's not to say it moved as quickly as we hoped, but at least we were ready. Had the moves happened within the last month, even our preparation might not have gotten multiple slots filled. I agree, though, that it's unfortunate that some people seem unprepared.

 

That's pretty good preparation, although at union shops where I worked, we still could use merit pay (if we really wanted to do so) to keep prized people. In reality, most newspapers these days are so focused on merely surviving each day that they're not doing a thing to try to retain people. I doubt they are even thinking about it. And in some cases they may view it as a way to cut payroll. I'm sure sports editors are worried about losing people, but if they go to their executive editors to pose a warning, most would be ignored.