The Athletic keeps growing .......

How far did the boots one get? That one was in the abby normal category.

 

Would The Athletic ever consider starting a site in Iowa or Nebraska? Or maybe Boise or Spokane?

 

I think if the Athletic is to succeed it will need to add writers in palces like Nebraska and Idaho. Populations are smaller but costs are lower.

Let's use Nebraska as an example. How many staffers would you need to cover teams in Nebraska. I would think three. Two to cover the University of Nebraska and one for Creighton basketball. I don't think jobs in Omaha would be be big money gigs but let's say that total costs are 100K each, or 300K total.

So at 60 bucks a subscription you need 5,000 subscribers. Nebraska has about 770,000 households so you need to add about 5,000 subscribers to pay for the extra help. That is less than one percent of Nebraska households. And I think that the Athletic needs to get to at least a one percent level of penetration, or 1.4 million subscribers to make it.

 

Why is it that when The Athletic poaches a reporter, suddenly a newspaper editor, for the first time, cannot just go out and immediately find someone just as good and just as cheap?

The notion that a reporter can be easily replaced has been around for years, so working conditions and wages didn't have to improve. Now reporters are leaving in droves for something that appears to be better, and some newspaper editors evidently can't stand it. That's funny.

 

The loss of institutional knowledge is bad for newspapers and their websites. But, theoretically, The Athletic should be helping create new jobs, or rather fill vacated jobs, across the industry.

Will all be filled? Sadly, no. But many will. another reason to root for The Athletic to succeed.

 

Asking for a friend?

 

The Atlantic? The Athletic? Are they merging?

 

Haven't had my coffee yet.

 

No worries. To be honest I did a double take too!

 

But The Athletic doesn’t care about college sports.