The Athletic keeps growing .......

Lotta staff turnover is what happens when you aggressively build without a sound market strategy. They’re buying a lot of twitter followers with the hires they make but don’t have any plan of attack for how to convert those followers into subscribers. Just recycling an introductory “why I’m joining The Athletic” puff piece accompanied with a discount subscription offer is not a strategy. “Let’s do a podcast” is not a strategy. Letting your writers write about whatever in blue hell they want, whenever they want, however often or infrequent they want, is not strategy. This is a social experiment with someone else’s money, like 90 percent of the other startups out there.

 

But why such the bee in your bonnet about them? What are they doing that negatively impacts your livelihood? I mean, just ignore them if they suck so bad. Don't subscribe. I do for now because I find a lot of quality in the writing about teams I follow, including Red Sox and Steelers.

 

Free goddamn country pal, I’ll say whatever I want

 

Who was saying you can't? Jesus, what a fucking turd you are. Good day.

 

Ok. But they made three big hires to produce high-end digital content and at least try to imitate some of the 60 Minutes style of video storytelling....and then they don't put any real marketing muscle behind it? Seems very odd because I would think a couple of well-done videos, even segments of videos, could open The Athletic up to a much greater audience then hoping a couple thousand Twitter followers tags along with a beat writer.

 

What would your strategy for The Athletic be?

 

We have no idea if the “print” strategy has worked well on a large scale. Investors throw money at it, they don’t know.

Hope it works. No clue if it will.

 

Video gets very few views. The suits that demand video on newspaper sites have absolutely no clue. It's just busywork for reporters.

 

Is Zack Greinke one of their investors? They ran another "here's all the weird things Zack says and does" oral histories this week, which I wouldn't do with a guy who has every obvious sign of autism, but I'm not the boss.