The Athletic layoffs

It also costs a lot to more to produce than a website, and the revenue from print is going to keep dropping by double-digit percentages quarter over quarter, no matter how good the print product looks. It's only a matter of time before it's no longer profitable to print.

 

yes, it’s more profitable to print right now than it is for most websites. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be any print left.

 

And The Athletic does it better.

There is no first-mover advantage.

 

Not for long. It won't be profitable for either soon. Journalism is dead.

 

Chad sounds like Fredrick if Fredrick was stanning for The Athletic.

Sorry to read about Mark Saxon. If I recall correctly, he did good work there. I guess he didn't get enough clicks on the Twitter machine. Good for him with the cold reference to "that enterprise."

The Athletic began ramping up in January 2018, so I suspect we'll see lots of these in the coming weeks as the tech bros figure out they didn't reinvent the wheel after all.

 

Yes, let's all root against the only media outlet that is hiring sportswriters.

 

Eh. A lot of employment opportunities were transferred over from newspapers to The Athletic. A lot of folks took those jobs under the auspices of “you won’t have to work like a rented mule over here.”

Increasingly, a lot of them are working that way. Yes, there are the usual boutique writers - how some become boutique God only knows - but they stand on the whatever of the beat grind that establishes The Athletic’s cred on ESPN scroll or whatever.

the end game at the beginning was to destroy local media, to raid its talent and disrupt it, and that may still happen. When The athletic said that out loud its workforce got all frowny, but that was the intent and you can bet that’s what’s said in investor meetings. And investors love hearing that. They want a great flattening.

 

If Gannett’s idea of “digital first” is viewed as some sort of thought leadership in this industry, we all deserve to lose our jobs and go sell insurance.

“Digital first” is not an anxiety attack of pop up ads, glacial loading times and choppy scrolls. It is not hasty iPhone videos of some some guy in his pajamas breaking down some story. It is not slideshow videos. It is not breaking up stories every two paragraphs to wedge in a “READ THIS NEXT” headline

 

Exactly! The Athletic is the only actual digital-first sports outlet in existence. Great user experience, no stories written just for the sake of “filling space.” They’re actually able to monetize digital, while newspaper chains still haven’t figured out how. When print is no longer profitable in a year or two, newspaper chains will be caught flat-footed without a viable digital product, both in terms of content and user experience.

 

Elsewhere in the expiring contract category:



Now I don't know how well he was paid, was his contract only part-time or something, but what I do know is: He was hired to do weekly film breakdowns on one (1) NFL team. He's English and if I'm not mistaken, he's still based in the UK, so no chance of locker room access pre-pandemic. No offense to the guy, because he's good at what he does, but even The Athletic probably couldn't have afforded to keep someone that niche around. They already have two very good beat reporters for the WFT.

Maybe going forward, as The Athletic "reaches middle age" as one headline put it recently, they're going to hire smarter and not go quantity over quality like they did when they were growing in every direction.

Also worth noting: Unlike Saxon, this guy makes it sound like he was left in the dark about his contract expiring. Ghosted by his employers, perhaps.

 

We've been told this for 20 years.
Maybe get a clue.

 

The Athletic didn't have any "legacy costs" (pensions, printing presses, unions, newsprint costs, etc.). They didn't have any transformation hiccups from one type of delivery/revenue stream into another. They didn't have to straddle between one and the other as the transformation to digital began gathering steam. There was no debt hamstringing them. On the contrary, there was venture capital money giving them a boost until they "figured out" how to actually make money on their own (are they even doing this yet?).

In short, there was nothing for them to "figure out." They started with a clean slate and some investors willing to roll the dice with them.