The Athletic keeps growing .......

Really, really great to hear. It might be time to pull the trigger and subscribe ...

 

Adding to my list of suggestions (hope someone who works there is reading this thread...): needs to sync across devices.

 

I love love love everything about The Athletic, but would love even more for it to be my go-to source for at-the-gun gamers. One of the best things about the internet for me is being able to read a game story a half-hour or so after the game ends. I know The Athletic is shooting for more lean-back reads, but game coverage is important too -- and with all that firepower on the staff, game coverage shouldn't be ceded to the local daily if they are indeed going to compete.

 

I don’t necessarily need (or want) a story right after the game ends. But it would be nice to consistently get analysis about them. I like the game coverage of the guy covering the Mets, for example. Goes a little deeper than your normal gamer, incoporates graphics and advanced stats when appropriate, etc. But I still haven’t figured out when I’m going to get a story or not. It seems like it’s usually not until next day, if at all. Two great games this weekend (win Friday night, loss Saturday) didn’t register a blip. Only a single story on Saturday from Carig about Harvey moving to bullpen—and regular beat guy had already done a nice job dissecting Harvey’s troubles the day before, when his move to bullpen was imminent.

 

I actually agree with this, as a writer, though most people don't seem to care as much about reading gamers as they used to. With league pass, highlights on television and on mobile devices, and social media, it's so easy now to find out what happened without reading a gamer. If done well, I still enjoy reading them, even after I've watched a game, but I'd doubt the audience is there to make it a priority.

 

I guess I'm in a minority, because I'm actually way more prone to read game coverage of a game I actually attended, and immediately after the game, I love having stats and context and I enjoy finding out whether the reporter saw the game the same way as I did.

 

Yeah, I'm the same way. In my recent experience, though, unless something really interesting or unique happens that requires some explanation, online readership on gamers isn't usually massive.

I think there is still value in writing gamers, and some have figured out different ways to write about a game that have appealed to today's readers. Most of The Athletic beat writers have written like 'Five takeaways from the game,' perhaps because they too are seeing the drop-off in readership for traditional gamers.

 

My understanding is a lot of (all of?) the writers went there at least partly because they wouldn’t have to file immediate gamers and such, and they could concentrate on writing that one good piece instead of three or four mediocre ones. I’m not sure we would be seeing the same quality of coverage if the Athletic had the gamer/update/notes/update delivery, because they wouldn’t have been able to amass that kind of talent.

 

Sorry, but I've been extremely underwhelmed by what I've seen of the Athletic so far, from the site design to the content.

 

Anybody hear anything about another hire for Boston?

 

Joe McDonald will move from Boston Sports Journal to Athletic, word on the street is, to cover Bruins

 

You've been consistently anti-Athletic since you joined. Seems like you're rooting for the thing to fail.