Athletic, Axios talking merger?

Didn't the NYT own and ruin an early search engine, like Ask Jeeves or similar?

The Athletic buys itself back in three years, at a massive discount.

 

Considering the LA Times sold for $500m AND had California real estate - it's a nice turn of a buck.

 

The Times is in a much better state financially than when it ditched the search engine, and the TV stations, and the regional papers, and whatever else it sold off.

 

OFFICIAL:

The New York Times Company - News & Events - Press Releases

 

I wonder if the NYT will start a sports syndicate built around Athletic content.

 

Sales are often scary, but I hope this works out well for Moddy and all others.
I am still amused that the hedge fund bros who beat their chests about putting all newspapers out of business were forced to capitulate and sell to a -- gasp -- newspaper.
Of course, they're laughing all the way to the bank. That's fine. I ask them to tone down the gleeful rhetoric about putting thousands of people out of work with their next bro-ish venture.

 

Ray Ratto nails it
https://defector.com/the-athletic-to-be-swallowed-by-industry-it-aimed-to-kill/

Alex Mather, one of the two creators of The Athletic, knew this 2017 quote, “We will wait out every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them,” was a bad idea almost a soon as he said it, and he tried several times to walk it back. Now that his creation is inside the whale he wanted to harpoon, the echo must be deafening.

In the years since its founding, The Athletic’s plan to be the last ones standing was edited to read “latest one swallowed,” selling itself for $550 million to, of all companies, The New York Times. At least that’s the reporting; sale prices often have a healthy squirt of helium to them, and Mather’s plan with co-founder Adam Hansmann to sell their little dreadnought for enough money to buy a Caribbean tax haven will simply have to be applied to their next scheme. That’s probably too cynical, but hey, you came to this shop and you get this level of service.

There was a point when Mather and Hansmann were true believers in the project, which was no less than recreating The Sporting News at internet speed. They would be local everywhere, with a small (probably too small, with hindsight) national view, and they would live on a subscription model. If you had a team, they had a reporter for you.

At least that was the original plan. The plan changed, though, several times, and it went from too small to too big, decentralized to almost neo-Stalinist in its centralization, and went from seeing a gap in the market for hockey reporting to having most of its water carried by its European football reporting. It still has undisputed talent and value, but having set the parameters for success, Mather must see the irony in being consumed by the national paper that paid relatively little attention to sports that he overlooked while he was trying to destroy the little ones that all had separate sports sections.

True, he’s got a $275 million divan (minus stockholder shares which comes out of somebody’s end) upon which to recline and reflect on what can safely be called a financial success, and one should feel no remorse for him. He won, at least at the game of early retirement.

What the Times does with The Athletic is another matter, and how many people end up streetward and their beats left uncovered is still to be seen. We assume nothing. This might end up just as bad for sports journalism as Mather’s initial vision stated, but it might also be a genuine boon. We prefer more worthy things to read rather than fewer, even if that isn’t the way to bet.

What we know now, though, is this: If you’re trying to bring an industry to its knees, you should always be mindful of the ones who fly overhead. The Athletic was a potential revolution that was eventually subsumed by something called The Old Gray Lady, and the ones who planned to eat the entire table ended up on the old menu anyway, a new item right below Appetizers and above Entrees.​

 

That is terrific. Ray Ratto is way too be good to be at Defector. At least there's always been an authenticity to him.

And the irony of The Athletic getting sold the week Twitter is roasting the site for not actually having a Devils reporter is *chef's kiss*

 

NYT is lucky to have the oreo Tweeting kid now and shouldn’t question the coverage. At least thats what I read online

 

The more I think and read about the sale, the better it looks - the bulk of the value is the subscriber list - not sure how revolutionary the tech involved is. And it isn't like the new owners will have a hard time keeping salaries in line, considering the bulk of that cost I imagine was borne by the initial VC money. Now that the name writers are on board - the NYT can use their product as part of its wire offerings to papers - and given the sports journalism market - where else would writers go? Where else would they want to go? SI is a shadow, ESPN is cutting. With the NYT you get a higher and wider platform as a writer.

 

Check your emails for the wank-inducing email from Adam & Alex.