The Athletic keeps growing .......

Welcome to tech.

 

He's OK and seems like a good guy and I hate to see anyone laid off but he is certainly not one of the best NBA writers. He probably was done in by bad metrics on his stories.

 

Whenever a seemingly competent Athletic writer abruptly announces his or her departure (with no other job lined up), the answer is always metrics.

They're not selling enough subscriptions.

And if it's a "diverse" hire who suddenly departs, their numbers must be god-awful.

 

My guess is judging reporters on "numbers" will be seen as fricking stupid in a few months/years. Cmon. If a great writer like Richardson isn't getting views my guess is the reason is not the writer or what he's writing but a zillion other things. Just because some think tank genius came up with the idea of rating a reporter on how many subscriptions she/he bring, does not mean the idea is smart/accurate. Ridiculous to axe somebody over "metrics." Richardson got mistreated if this is the reason for his removal.

 

Richardson's most recent postings include a Q&A and a "seven observations" article. Not exactly metric-friendly content that would rank him among the best NBA writers.

On second thought, you're right....he might've been one of the 30 best NBA writers at The Athletic. He should be so proud.....

 

I have not met Richardson or read any of his stuff, so this isn't about him. But, if your business model is dependent on subscriptions -- that is, people paying because they want to read what you're writing -- and no one is reading what you're writing ...

Hopefully any outlet would work with a writer on using the metrics to shape coverage (no one wants to read a standard game preview, everyone wants to read an analysis of how the coach screwed up, etc.) or, if the beat itself turns out not to drive much traffic, shift the writer to a beat with more reader interest.

 

Some of the moves make no sense, though. C.L. Brown is an excellent college basketball writer and The Athletic got rid of him. I enjoyed a lot of his work with The Athletic. I can only guess that he didn't put up good metrics.

 

Fredrick doesn't believe in metrics. Just because some expert invented metrics as a way to judge a writer's productivity doesn't mean it's the correct way to do so. There are plenty of reasons metrics may be down on a story that have nothing to do with the story or the author. Some of the metrics stuff is simply irresponsible. Remember the people at the top deciding what's important and what is not in some people's minds (people like me) are incompetent to begin with. I contend this Richardson writer probably got unfairly replaced.

 

If people aren't reading somebody's work, they aren't going to pay to read it. Pretty simple. A few articles may not score well based on something other than the writer's content, but if a writer consistently does not get people to read at the same rate as the other people with the same promotion, the problem is on him, not the metrics.

 

I don’t have a subscription to The Athletic, so I can’t really speak to their operations. I do, however, log onto ESPN probably once a day, and if they did more analysis and less opinion opinion opinion, I’d read it more. It seems like three out of every four articles are either opinion or a prediction story, which is to say a fucking guess story. Hey, I can make predictions, too. Are the Ravens going to win the Super Bowl? Maybe! How about we let it play out first instead of telling me what you think?

Off my lawn, etc.

 

Yeah, but how much of it is that, and how much is it the difficulty of getting people to pay money to read about the Miami Heat, who have been utterly irrelevant since LeBron and Co. left (yes, I realize they're looking good this season). I look at some of the team-specific Athletic hires and think, "They could hire the greatest sports journalist in history and people still won't give a damn about this team, or at least enough of a damn to get them to subscribe." Really, you could say this about 90 percent of the NBA these days, and a sizable chunk of MLB.

Narrowing it down further, the Athletic's college basketball push always struck me as odd, seeing as how that sport -- apart from the blue bloods -- basically has a four-week window of relevance. I mean, you really think someone's gonna subscribe to read about Georgetown basketball in November? In June?

 

Athletic Reportedly Tried to Buy SI

The Athletic reportedly made a last minute offer for Sports Illustrated

Posting on both threads... K?