The Athletic keeps growing .......

Thanks, Matt. Good stuff to ponder there.

 

Serious question. Is The Athletic sticking with basic great coverage of the teams (like newspapers back in the day) and letting TV have video and radio have podcasts? Or is The Athletic copying newspapers and playing the ridiculous "make our reporters do the work of three people and shoot and edit video and do podcasts and facebook broadcasts" all the time?

 

Good question but hell no is the answer. You think the newspaper chains care what The Athletic is doing? They are in their own little worlds. They are not trying to compete with anybody. They are interested in a.) cutting staff. b.) cutting staff. c.) selling all assets like the building and land the newspaper sits on. d.) cutting, cutting, cutting.

 

They'll cherry pick the good ideas that are cheap (like the morning newsletter if they don't already have one) - but I agree. Newspapers aren't even looking at ways to increase revenues at this point, it's all about cutting staff, maximizing resources and finding ways to do things for less than they paid for them the year before.

 

I haven't seen much for podcasts/videos, at least in my closest market. A couple of the guys still do the podcasts they had before The Athletic, but that's about it.

 

I'm interested to see what markets they go in next, especially for baseball since they're close to covering every team.

 

Kansas City will be next, perhaps sometime this week.

 

I was surprised Rustin Dodd left the KC Star. Makes me curious what these guys are getting paid because it has to at least be as much if not more than they're making at these major papers.

 

We’ll learn more in the next couple years. It’s always pure journalism out of the gate.

 

KC is in the midst of a soft launch, but I don't know how aggressively its looking to expand past Royals coverage just yet. I've heard the Star isn't particularly worried about losing more people in the immediate future.

On the surface, DC seems like a market they'd want, but there must be a reason it wasn't a priority.