The Athletic keeps growing .......

Slate’s deep dive, including some info re: pay.

How Long Can the Athletic Grow Like a Tech Disruptor if It Reads Like Every Other Sports Page?

 

70k a year for average, former newspaper beat writers? Wow. They're going to go under even faster than I originally thought. Hey, more power to 'em. But, wow. Their whole angle, it's become more and more obvious, is to try and create some kind of buzzy sale to a deeper-pocketed conglomerate. But with places like ESPN, Fox, SI, Vice, Bleacher Report, Sports on Earth, Sporting News, all having virtually given up on paying for pure text-based, written "talent", who the hell would be a buyer?

 

From the piece: "More recently, some have begun to challenge the notion that the Athletic’s content is all that special. After the Athletic’s college football editor Stewart Mandel publicly declared a No Lavar Ball editorial policy (to prove its serious-journalism bona fides, in contrast to, say, ESPN), reporter Andrew Bucholtz surfaced several pieces about Lavar Ball. Recently, Deadspin referred to the upstart’s staff as being in a “mediocre-to-good” range. An emerging consensus among critics is that the “New Standard of Sports Journalism”—as its homepage declares to new visitors—looks a lot like the old one, right down to the bylines. It’s hard to argue with that assessment. The Athletic is a classic, old-school sports journalism reboot that, by its own admission, hires almost exclusively from the most established names in sports media. Readers will not be subscribing to the Athletic anytime soon for fresh voices or new perspectives."

Ouch.

 

Been out of sj for over a decade, but 70k is good for a newspaper beat writer?? For real? An NFL, NBA or MLB beat? Can't imagine that's good.

 

Thanks for checking in Rick Reilly

 

Was a finalist for an NBA job a year or two ago that I didn't get, and was later told by an acquaintance who had knowledge of the situation that the $60K I asked for (salary expectations were required during interviews) was too rich. He could've been just saying that, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was accurate.

 

hahhahhaa. dude you have issues. lmao.

 

Sounds like a good beat for a young writer. The Lightning coming up.

 

Not working at the Athletic seems to his biggest one.

 

*This* is a money quote.

Until this recent spate of hiring, the Athletic last made headlines for something its co-founder Alex Mather told the New York Times last year: “We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.”

But as one staffer told me more recently, “I, of course, do not want to drink the blood of local papers.” Every employee I spoke to (except Mather himself) mentioned the Mather quote without being asked. They also still expressed affection for former colleagues and hoped their old workplaces would survive.

 

I can understand the competitiveness, but maybe try to be at least a little realistic. I'm only familiar with NJ, NY, PA,
and 70k for a beat writer wasn't that good in the early aughts (think that's the correct word?). Wasn't a beat writer,
but knew guys who were. At least in the NYC market 70K wasn't real good. The Rick Reilly comment is even funnier
because I would think that guy laughs at 170k, let alone 70k. I wasn't laughing at it, just saying it really isn't good to
be getting 70k as a beat writer.

 

Whether you're in NYC or a small market, I'm not sure if 70k is enough when you consider how much you'll be on the road, how much time you're away from your family, lack of work-life balance, etc. It's not a punch-clock job. It's incredibly taxing.