The Athletic layoffs

I’ve never noticed that. Can you share some examples?

 

Gannett has 15 pages of job openings.

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Lancey-

Everyone who goes online is an opinion writer. It's a joke to think it was once an ironclad assumption that columnists could sway public opinion.

 

I used to love SI's NFL "gamers" - and this was way back in the day. Their writers had a real knack for pulling out facts, trends, history, a quote you didn't read in the AP story on Monday - just phenomenal writing.

 

The Athletic is selling expertise. The Internet has exposed general columnists as closer to sports-talk hosts than experts. This isn't a slam. It isn't reasonable that one columnist could be well-sourced and well-informed in everything. I mean, who do you want your baseball takes from, the likes of Passan and Rosenthal or the likes of Lupica and Reilly?

 

It's a little more than 15 pages. Get up to page 8 and it starts to expand. Only two pages of "sports" openings, though, including ASEs at DFP, Louisville and Columbus, which I believe have been posted on spj already.

 

What I mean by the “bent” is, the way national outlets cover the NCAA issues, the merging of specific progressive politics into sports, etc. I use the word “vague” in part because, in many sports, it doesn’t really apply, and it’s more of an undercurrent in the work.

And I mean this, too: The Athletic is never going to be, you know, mean. Or really funny. Or dangerous. Deadspin was villainous at times. It also knew how to tell an owner that needed to fuck off to fuck off. Barstool...don’t like it...couldn’t even tell you that much about it...but it meets cretinous fans where they are.

The Athletic is classy - which I appreciate as a journalistic staple - but I haven’t any idea whether that makes money.

at any rate, The Athletic’s editorial content, while good often, is good in the way that lots of places would be good. Chad’s argument about the Athletic being a one-stop shop for all your favorite teams is legitimate, in a sense, but, in my experience, readers (especially millennials) embrace an al a carte approach. ESPN, for example, has excellent LeBron coverage. If you’re a LeBron guy, you’re reading Ramona and Brian Windhorst and the like.

 

Once upon a time, Reilly. At least I knew he could be funny.

Mind numbing academic credentialism has in part landed us in this place where we prefer wonks to wordsmiths. Sue me. I like people who can write, pithily and pointedly, and, on occasion, humorously.

 

Fair point but I’d argue that users didn’t embrace it so much as accepted it. As more and more places put content behind a paywall, people aren’t going to pay for everything. But the value of The Athletic subscription is that it gets you everything from across their verticals.

 

Their college writers tend to be very sympathetic to players getting paid and being outspoken on social issues. Which hey, I fall into that camp too, but it isn’t hard to see how that would grate on those with a traditionalist mindset.