The Athletic keeps growing .......

Agree. And beyond the hires right out of college, they're hiring average writers with greater frequency as they grow. That is not surprising. But they've been hiring at such a pace, you wonder how much they are really vetting these new hires.

 

Why not hire someone better from another market? Yes, you'd have some relocation costs, but look at the cost of getting stuck with someone mediocre.

 

Why would they be stuck? Just cut that person loose and find someone else if they aren't satisfied. I'm sure they've done that already in various places.

If we're still talking about the guy on the Mizzou beat, I've been reading him a little bit (alum here) and he is getting the job done. The hire is fine. They wouldn't have done better hiring someone more experienced and moving them into town.

Whoever came on here to anonymously trash a college student has some major psychological issues, I know that for sure.

 

One thing I have noticed is they’re now hiring for some copy editors and a fantasy sports writer. So I wonder what they’ll pay for those spots and whether the copy editor spots will be remote or in a “hub” somewhere.

 

It’s a chicken and egg argument. Which came first, the media person with the big following or the place that person worked at?
But as I said before, most of these newspaper people the Athletic hired developed good-sized twitter followings because they were/are associated with their favorite team.
Then, they got a lot because their newspapers were formerly the dominant media outlet in town, for the most part. And their content was most likely free.
It’s easy to develop 10-15k followers on twitter in that case.
Now? Sure, the Athletic now owns those people and their twitter followers. But how many of those followers will make the leap with them and pay money to read them?
The average will probably be 10%, give or take a couple points.
New people will come along to those papers, develop the same kind of following and then the Athletic will be looking around saying “why the hell did we spend so much money on writers that had artificial followings?”
Check out many of the new Athletic writers’ links to stories on twitter. A large majority of them get little feedback.
The title of this thread should be renamed “The Athletic just keeps spending.”
Maybe I’ll be wrong. I don’t care either way.

 

And no offense Elliotte, because I think you do great work. But if you were off HNIC tomorrow, someone would take your place and hockey fans would still tune in at the same rate I imagine.

 

I believe The Athletic's copy editors are remote based on the ad, but those who work for the site probably know better.

Agreed.

Given the history with dimwits on the phone (er, in my email inbox), I don't think most people pay attention to who wrote the story, or if they're local vs. wire. Maybe on social media they do, but supposedly the clickthrough rate on Twitter (and even Facebook) is very poor.

Also, given the thread about the Roanoke Twitter account, can all these reporters take the existing accounts (and heaps of followers) with them and only change the username? Personally, I'm not sure of my work account's status.

 

I've heard that the copy editors will work remotely.

 

In some cases they're doing that. They just hired the Nuggets beat writer from the Denver Post to cover the Phoenix Suns. (They hired the Suns beat writer from the Republic to cover the Cardinals.)