The Athletic keeps growing .......

All of this gives me bad flashbacks to my time at Patch, although admittedly, that organization had a lot of issues when it came to infrastructure and hiring the right people for the right roles. The Athletic has much better quality control, from what I've seen and read. But it still makes me nervous when the plan essentially seems to be, "We need to spend a lot of money now to scale up quickly, so that we can make a lot of money later," especially when that supply of burn-through cash can be yanked at some point.

 

I was a stringer for Patch for a few months. I made some easy money, but you could see there was no grand plan. Other than to pump out as much content as possible, and hope someone would find it.

 

Hold on … what emotion were you feeling when you typed this? Were you angry?

 

Empty. Weightless. Boundless. Everything changes. Nothing changes at all.

All the dreams

All the schemes

And all the beautiful scenes, that ever were

First never were

Then were forever

Then never, ever were again

 

But Matthew McConaughey.

Also I'm really glad all their writers are circle jerking on Twitter over how their new boss is McConaughey, that was really cool and endearing like all their inside jokes. (Yes I realize sportswriter Twitter was already one big giant circle jerk of inside jokes)

 

Sad to post this, although don't think they're be free agents for long:

Awful Announcing has learned of a shakeup at The Athletic that have seen a handful of high-profile individuals leave the company. Central to this shakeup is what is essentially a gutting of the company’s video team, a team that was announced in November 2018 to much fanfare. That announcement saw them bring in Armen Keteyian, Alan Goldberg and Victor Frank; all three are now gone. Also included is The Athletic’s national managing editor, Melissa Geisler.

 

This is only anecdotal, but I honestly never watched a single video from The Athletic. I read tons of articles and listen to a few podcasts. But never video.

 

same. I’m not a big video guy anyway, but I barely knew The Athletic was doing video.

 

Classic startup media. No strategy, just hire a couple of big names and see what sticks

 

Ya might wanna see a doctor. Your hard-on for The Athletic has lasted an unhealthy amount of time.

 

The video team did really good work. The stuff I watched was excellent. The Athletic has had a lot of turnover with staff in the last year.