The Athletic keeps growing .......

To the person who asked if The Athletic is worth the price:

Yes.

I signed up for Bulls coverage at first because they announced The Athletic Chicago move. Then The Athletic hired Rob B. for Pirates coverage. Then Larry Holder for Saints coverage. So they have prominent beat writers for all three of my favorite teams.

They aren't doing gamers, at least from my experience with it. It's good, 21st-century daily-beat journalism.

I came into this thread to say this: The spree of hiring beat writers from print shops is a good sign for youngsters at newspapers. Do well enough, climb up the ladder, and maybe The Athletic will notice you. At least there is an end-game now.

 

There are too many reporters who use Twitter as platform for their hot takes, some of whom actually get in trouble.

 

https://niemanreports.org/articles/sports-journalists-battle-for-relevancy/

 

Maybe. But who are the many great reporters who are not on Twitter?

 

One of the things that continues to be interesting is the disparity in how markets approach coverage. In the market where I live, the NFL team played a 1 pm game. It's after 11 and The Athletic has nothing published.

Based on the way the season has gone, the writers who travel with the team will publish a 3,000-word piece that has lots of subheads at some point overnight and then something else that is shorter in the early AM.

They likely then won't write again until Thursday or Friday, although there has been an occasional midweek piece or Monday afternoon piece.

Other markets seem to produce more content. Seems like it varies from place to place rather than an overarching strategy.

 

There's always a lot of debate in different places about when you should post a story; no traffic on weekends, everyone goes on the web in the morning, etc. Still -- it feels odd to have nothing about a 1 p.m. game at, say, 10 p.m. This site expanded so quickly, I wonder if they even have a consensus about editing workflow and the like.

 

While The Athletic is overarching site, I believe each market is largely run as its own entity. That's why there's not market-to-market consistency in posting schedules.

 

I agree, especially in small, college towns, when most people will read about football the Thursday, Friday and morning before the game.

In other markets, where football isn't a big concern, the posting schedule would be totally different.

 

Everybody knows who won the game. One of the reasons The Athletic is stealing top talent from newspapers is the writers are so overworked. Do the Athletic writers have to produce some gosh-awful story immediately after the game? Do the Athletic writers have to do some podcast right after the game?? Do the Athletic writers do much video? Hmmm ... The Athletic pays more than newspapers with 1/3 of the workload. Who wouldn't leave newspapers for The Athletic? Common sense to join forces and leave the newspaper which makes you work 60-70 hours and get paid 40.

 

Yeah, the idea at The Athletic is to do features and enterprise, with some breaking news sprinkled in. How that's done exactly is left up to each site and each beat, as the best approach varies from market to market.

The concept is to get away from the day-to-day paint by numbers crap.