The Athletic layoffs

I’m sensing a lot of insecurity on this thread. I guess that makes sense considering it was created to celebrate people losing their jobs (while ignoring the fact The Athletic has hired more people than it has let go in the last year).

Print only has a few years of profitability left, if even, and newspapers aren’t equipped to succeed once that happens. So let’s all accept that and embrace the people building something that could be viable in the future. Otherwise we’re all screwed!

 

We've now entered the "LOL HATERS" portion of the discussion. Always good for a laugh.

 

I think I would pay folding money to see an Athletic employee come in and tell Chad he's laying it on a little too thick.

 

Most venture capitalists don't play that long a game. The Athletic launched in 2016 and expanded into other markets in 2017-18. The usual time frame for a VC return (or, at least, a sure path to one) is three to five years.

I suspect they'll figure out which beats and which sports sell subscriptions and which don't, and they'll cull the ones that don't.

 

Whoo, man. Catching up on the thread and some of The Athletic defenses on here are some of the most mind-numbing I've ever seen.

Again, The Athletic didn't invent anything that hadn't already been done before. They just put a new look on what recruiting websites/numerous other outlets have done for decades and marketed it as a unique product. Good on them. And we all hope it works.

 

The Athletic’s first brand slogan was stupid. “Fall in love with the sports section again”. LOL the good ole days when you’d open the sport section over morning breakfast and read a 2000-word piece about the quality of the hot dogs in the Montreal press box

 

The first wave of Athletic hires were the OG instagram influencers. “So pleased to make this announcement BTW GET 15 PERCENT OFF A SUBSCRIPTION USING THIS CODE”

 

I think everybody on here is in favor of the Athletic succeeding. There are a lot of great individuals working for The Athletic. How can somebody not wish them all well?

 

First, I'm not jealous or envious of The Athletic. I'm gainfully employed and would not seek, nor would I accept, a position with that outlet unless my current gig vaporized. I know (at least) two former colleagues who I believe are still employed there. I wish them the best and respect their work.

I'm overjoyed that the emergence of The Athletic allowed hundreds of people to re-enter or pivot within the sports journalism industry. That is wonderful. We should cheer that, and we should lament when anyone loses his or her job.

I like very much some of The Athletic's content, such as that from Pierre LeBrun and some hockey prospect writers.

I am neither the deepest nor the broadest consumer of The Athletic's content. But a couple of observations:

--The Jets coaching search: I would guess 90 percent of the real estate dealing with who was interviewed was basic biographical information that was hardly unique – and hardly the product of exceptional reporting. If The Athletic has personnel who bring something different to the table – and wasn't this the outlet's primary source of chest-thumping? - this is the type of story I would think such an advantage would be evident. Where is the deep sourcing around the league and with agents and front office personnel to get unique information about the candidates? Why the reliance on aggregated box score stats (yards per game, points per game, et al.) about a candidate, stats that a more sophisticated fan knows aren't that revealing?

--A reporter covering my favorite team writes as he talks, and boy, does he like to hear himself talk. Nearly every sentence has the same flow and format – and I can't read it. Varied sentence length, various rhythms in a paragraph – those are key elements of writing that keep a reader hooked. I think this speaks to a criticism of the outlet that has been voiced since Day One: The "talent" need editors who have the authority to say, "Here's what I'm doing with your article. Here's why. … If you don't like my suggestions, please take another run at it – and bring it home about 500 words shorter and 100 percent less repetitive. Just because we're not print means you get to dump your voice recorder."

--YMMV, but efforts to be "smart" or "better than a daily scribe" fall flat from my experience. I remember some pieces in the walk-up to the 2020 NFL draft. Some apparently wanna-be Mensa reporter tried to adduce some sort of connection to draft round and some yardage threshold in the NFL. Maybe he wrote it for fantasy players, because most of the players who reached that yardage threshold played for teams that didn't make the playoffs in the prior season. But "Analyzing stats! We're different!" … That was a fail.

Let's drop the references to the hot dog review at wherever the hell arena it was. I'll forgive the site for that. But thinking that not having gamers (or, that having gamers perfumed as something different) makes this site revolutionary is pretty much self-indulgent crap.

 

Law (or curse) of dimensionality. Track enough data points and eventually you will find a statistically significant relationship even if there is none. A lot of MLB teams suffer from this. It’s how you get teams like the Red Sox signing guys with a career 9.50 ERA in 9 starts because they like his spin rate.

And no, I’m never dropping the hot dog column. That was embarrassing.

 

good post.

 

We were running featurized gamers as early as 2003. I am glad someone with enough industry clout came out and admitted they were badly dated.