The Athletic keeps growing .......

Since this is the catch-all thread for Athletic commentary/compliments/criticism....

The '35 under 35' package reeks of the stuff newspapers used to do in the old days...doing a "series" for the sake of doing a series...beat sweeteners that no one has any interest in except the subject and his immediate family.

The Athletic should be better than that. And usually is. This tells me they have editors with too much time on their hands or someone who is already looking to pad submissions for the awards calendar.

**Disclaimer: I have not read all of the stories in the series, and I'm sure some of them are interesting and well-written.

 

I do think it's interesting they added 100K subscribers in about two weeks.

 

There are a lot of stories on there that are just the writer trying to justify his existence. Projecting the Columbus Blue Jackets lineup for 2022?? How a former Tampa Bay Lightning player is trying to work his way back into the NHL in the Minnesota Wild system.

 

The initial story said they passed 500,000 subscribers in June. Today's story said they passed 600,000 in August. So it's two months, not two weeks.

 

Would any of us be surprised if it came out that The Athletic was doing some dishonest stuff to pump their subscriber numbers? This is Silicon Valley after all

 

They also just made a big push into English soccer, so I'm sure they added several thousand there.

 

One reason for the bump may be that is the Athletic is offering a lot of introductory, teaser rates. I know of no evidence they are but a 20% jump in two months seems to be to good to be true.

 

They just hired every soccer writer known to man, several of which have 250K+ followers. I'd be more concerned if they didn't add 100K last month.

 

I'd love to know how much those soccer writers are getting paid.