A couple thoughts:
First, I'm not sure Mallory Rubin and Juliet Litman fit the role of sports journalist as people would normally define it, but I think their inclusion is instructive. Rubin is a TV/movies writer/podcaster primarily, and while she's really (really) good at that, I don't think she's what The Athletic is trying to hire. Litman...she's listed as managing editor, so, in the classical sense of that word, I suppose she's behind the scenes managing as much of the sports content as she is writing about the deep dive into the timeline of Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson's relationship.
But I don't want to grade The Athletic on the Bill Simmons curve.
Now The Athletic. If there's one thing that web site tried to do, it was hire existing beat writers in markets. That was a wise decision from a branding and training standpoint - "just keep doing what you're doing, only for us" - but, I would agree, there aren't nearly as many women team beat writers. And I think it's fair to wonder why that is. My sense is good ones are hired up and/or promoted upward quickly and there's this big yawning gap right in the middle/upper middle of the market. That gap exists, IMO, in part because:
>>People get entrenched at that level and stay. And the entrenched are generally white men. So you'd either have to fire or demote all that institutional knowledge or wait until their salaries are bought out.
>>talented women and minorities just don't stay at those shops very long very often. They move up - fast - hired by companies such as ESPN, which has the bankroll and scope and cool factor to hire away such people, who often feel no particular connection to a place even if it's home. (The same is true of white men, mind you. It's true of most of us.)
And that's not to say talent shouldn't get promoted. It should. But it creates a gap. Two of the Athletic's national college writers started at USA today and ESPN out of college, and are now national reporters for The Athletic. But while they'd be excellent one-team beat writers, my understanding of The Athletic's approach is they wanted to pick people already covering those teams.
And there aren't a lot of women doing that day to day. (That simultaneously fit into the Athletic's pay range.)
Some of it, yes, is women need those opportunities. And some of it is that really talented women get fast-tracked to the top. And there's not a heck of a lot a mid level paper, or a Rivals can do about it.
