The Athletic keeps growing .......

Everything they do is based on what drives subscriptions. Video doesn’t do that. There are eleventy billion places doing video and not charging customers to watch it. The quality difference

Their bread and butter always has been local writers drawing in subscribers, and the national guys augment the local work enough to make them worth it. The NBA guy breaks a story involving the Celtics, it gives Celtics fans another reason to subscribe.

 

Video is part of the newspapers' demise. Not sure why suits are making their people do video in this hedge fund era. It's an annoyance for writers and adds to their overwork/burnout/hatred of the company just to brag to potential advertisers they have video, just like TV. Print outlets should concentrate on print or just merge with TV and radio stations. Quit making your reporters do all this work. In sports they already work 65 and get paid for 40 and don't need the headache for such little return. Videos are not watched. Videos do not make money. Videos do not draw views. Most shops it's just become routine. The editors demand video even on games that start at 10 p.m.

 

Somebody at The Athletic correctly surmised video is a waste of time.

 

Here's the thing: You don't need views to make money off videos. Six years ago, I worked at a shop that wanted video with everything. Why? The money for pre-roll ads on those videos was insane.

But I agree wholeheartedly that video doesn't drive subs. And since The Athletic has virtually no ad revenue, video can't be monetized.

 

Getting rid of award-winning contributors months before they win those awards. The Athletic is growing up so fast.

 

I hope it soon will realize that Twitter doesn't drive views either, as various studies have supported.

 

But ENGAGEMENT!

 

The Athletic isn't going for views. It's going for subscriptions.

 

Very well, but that's another problem.

I wish current numbers weren't being used for any sort of predictive analysis for how a business is going to do. We need to hear how a business will opt to navigate a post-COVID world. All of the Q2 revenue numbers are going to be shite, everywhere. Garbage in, garbage out. It's in my interest for this to keep succeeding, I'll leave it at that.

 

How about an almost unyieldingly positive and uniformly coherent comments section that definitely feels organic and not at all manufactured?

 

Great post. What's with the newspaper's infatuation with giving all its scoops to Twitter. Very odd.

 

I had never heard of Stevens so I looked up his bio. He appeared to cover lacrosse and mid-major college sports in the Baltimore area. I wonder if his departure is part of a move by the Athletic to narrow their focus to more prominent sports and leagues.