IF THE NEW YORK TIMES IS KING, WHY IS THE ATHLETIC ON A DEATH PATH?
Amid layoffs and $43 million-plus in operating losses, the site is trying to remain “sustainable,” a euphemism for potential failure until leaders execute a new formula — less content churn, more fire
The New York Times is a powerhouse for a reason. It’s damned interesting, as my touch screen knows during my morning sign-in routine and return visits. This is not a paid commercial announcement. It’s an acknowledgment that at least one news site in this country engages me, holds the powerful accountable and captures the world in all its raw and unprecedented volatility, wonderment and possibility.
So, why is the New York Times Co. sending its sports offshoot down a death path? Why is The Athletic, by comparison, so dull and predictable? I see talent. I see opportunity. I don’t see much dynamic leadership or extraordinary work.
At no time in American history has the sports industry, careening toward a $1 trillion valuation, been so compelling to the senses and vital to the nation’s entertainment needs and financial bottom line. Coverage in The Athletic should showcase the entire gamut — sharp-edged examination of the most prominent athletes and teams, regular investigations of a grimy underworld infected by legalized gambling, and fiercely independent columnists who explain it all as watchdogs sans editorial interference. With ESPN imbedded in business with the leagues and enterprises it no longer covers as much as promotes, there is no reason The Athletic shouldn’t brandish the same authority and reach of its parent owner.
It fails. Instead, it generally is allowed to exist in a sandbox — as in, the traditional rejection of a sports section as life’s toy department. Instead, it’s a vertical that comes at me like a loosely strategized daily blog — a content mill, like others out there — and doesn’t grab me with prominently positioned and appropriately potent stories and commentary. Also, there are no designated stars beyond, perhaps, Ken Rosenthal, whose TV visibility makes him stand out in a sport, baseball, that has slumped to No. 4 in the national pecking order. A sports section without a star is not a sports section worth reading, once again citing Sally Jenkins at the Washington Post, Dan Wetzel at Yahoo Sports and Bill Plaschke at the Los Angeles Times as reasons to read those sites.
I’ve spent decades of my professional life as such a section-leading notable — a basic fact, not an ego boost. As a topical and relentless columnist — call me what you want, but you can’t say I’m lazy — I’d like more Athletic writers to lure me in and make me eagerly push the button when I see their work. Only 15-20 percent fit that description, in part because no one has been designated as The Voice of the operation, a generalist prepared to weigh in at any time on any sports topic. Recently, Jim Trotter was named a national columnist, but, so far, I’ve seen no reason to look for him. He took an admirable stance as a Black journalist at the NFL Network, standing up to commissioner Roger Goodell about newsroom diversity and eventually resigning. That doesn’t mean he’s an elite columnist who will sell The Athletic.
Making such decisions, comparable to drafting the wrong quarterback in the first round, could impact the site’s ultimate survival, now that the Times is disclosing additional gushers of red ink. Even with an expanded subscriber base since acquiring The Athletic in January 2022, total operating losses have exceeded $43 million in that period. It’s hard to believe that the site, which has been around since 2016, would gain many more subscribers when it already has dropped introductory prices to as low as $1.
The question becomes: How long until the Times, after another round of Athletic layoffs, begins to view its $550 million acquisition as a lost cause and a drain on the whole of the company?
As a sportswriting lifer who easily attracted column readers, ESPN debate viewers and radio talk-show audiences for three-plus decades, I was blown away when the site’s leaders uttered the dirty media word — sustainable — in a staff memo obtained Monday by Front Office Sports. Publisher David Perpich and executive editor Steven Ginsberg said the latest job cuts were part of a strategy to “reach a broader audience of fans and build an even more sustainable business.”
To sustain the site and commit more resources, the bosses must decide what they want The Athletic to be. Right now, despite the presence of around 400 content providers, too many weeks pass minus anything that qualifies as a national blockbuster. Too many idle writers go without an impressive post for too many lengthy stretches. Drawing from my 17 years in Chicago, where I dominated the sports scene and branched out nationally, I can say I’ve read one staff writer who excites me there: Mark Lazerus, who mostly does hockey but should be highlighted as a regular local columnist who attracts readers in a town of passionate, often angry fans who want to sound off. The current site leader, Jon Greenberg, writes casual features and puff columns with minimal reaction from the core of an 8.9-million populace. If any city should be exploited by The Athletic, it’s Chicago, where both newspapers have fallen into irreversible irrelevance — the Sun-Times is relegated to non-profit status that requires soft coverage for political sluggers such as Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose family foundation funds the paper; and the Tribune is owned by a New York hedge fund that guts and kills papers. Somehow, The Athletic allows both to suck oxygen, and America’s No. 3 market continues to be underserved. How many other major sports hotbeds suffer from the same lack of passion and guidance from the site?
The mission of the original founders, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, was to execute a coup of local sports coverage. The Athletic hasn’t succeeded. In LA, the Times remains the leader. In Boston, it’s still the Globe. In New York, it’s still the Post. In Washington, it’s still the Post. I could go on. I’d prefer to offer solutions.
I suggest Perpich and Ginsberg start cracking whips. To simply dispatch beat writers for the usual daily doings — and assigning nicely written feature ideas to an assortment of storytellers — won’t get it done. Too many skilled writers are on the roster. Turn them loose, early and often. I hope this is a start: In mourning the job casualties, they announced “a significant reorganization” in which more emphasis will be placed on bigger ongoing stories. “This does not mean dutiful stories on each team daily,” they wrote. “It means breaking more exclusives and looking across the landscape of a given league, seizing opportunities to tell distinctive stories off the news. Our goal is to own the storylines that interest readers.”
You do that by outworking, outwriting and outthinking the competition. At the Sun-Times, I wrote five and six columns A WEEK because a maniacal sports town demanded it. As a regular panelist on ESPN’s “Around The Horn,” I usually appeared five days A WEEK for eight years.
The result at the Sun-Times: Weekday circulation at the city’s No. 2 paper peaked in the aughts at about 400,000. Today, it’s listed at 57,000 with no web subscribers after the removal of a paywall.
The result on ESPN: “Around The Horn” viewership peaked at around one million daily. Today, the show has lost two-thirds of that previous audience. I run these numbers whenever applicable and will keep doing so.
In short, I know what I’m talking about. I cultivated a sports following, every day for a long time. Like it or not, it became a habit. Since I departed those operations, both have lost gravitas and identity. I was an outspoken columnist and commentator — still am. Until the end of time, here’s what will sell sports media content: (1) tell the audience what it doesn’t know; and (2) make the audience think, scream or laugh. But never, ever bore them. This is sports. Why are so many writers trying to prose-masturbate? There are times to write pretty, such as when paying tribute to Nikola Jokic and why he’s a godsend to a socially disrupted NBA. And there are times to write provocatively, such as when the wormy PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, sells out to Saudi influences and makes us wonder if America is still America in the world order. Those were my last two columns before this one.
The Athletic has published its own versions. Sam Amick, the basketball writer, has sung the praises of Jokic and the Denver Nuggets for months. When the Tour announced its nuclear merger with a terrorist Gulf monarchy, Brody Miller produced a superbly pointed column. Since then, The Athletic — taking the lead of the Times — has glorified the unlikely merger of the warring golf parties. Trotter, the one writer listed as a national columnist, should have pounced with a robust piece eviscerating Monahan. Rather, as if following a company line, he wrote the merger “was the only logical outcome” … before the Times published a breathless narrative of how the deal came about. Closer to the truth, no one is sure at this point when or if the alliance will happen.
In this case, having the access to tell the “behind-the-scenes” story — never mind if it was a geopolitical hot potato — was more important to the Times than a declarative point of view. Herein lies the biggest problem in sports media today. As ESPN, Fox, NBC and others pay billions for broadcast rights to the NFL and every other sports entity, those networks, by extension, also acquire access to everyone involved in those enterprises. Independent media shops should counter by prioritizing watchdogging and commentary. The Athletic doesn’t lean that way, to its detriment. Too many local shops think similarly, as seen in Chicago, where they don’t dare go beyond tweaking a controversial two-team owner who uses legal tentacles to control coverage — hello, Jerry Reinsdorf — but they do take willing shots at the McCaskeys, owners of the Bears, who aren’t part of the city’s power paradigm and don’t make on-high phone calls like Reinsdorf and his minions. Thus, coverage in the Sun-Times, Tribune and The Athletic is mushy, and few are reading.
I get the vibe that Perpich and Ginsberg aren’t exactly channeling Ben Bradlee, the famed Washington Post newsroom boss who rejected Nixon’s men when the Watergate phone calls came. If a billionaire owner wanted someone reprimanded or fired, would The Athletic leaders bend? Or is the editorial climate such that no one dares to take on the lords of sports? I challenged corrupt editors in Chicago. Nigel Wade smacked me with a forearm shiver and resigned shortly after. Michael Cooke screamed at me and practiced smear campaigns. John Barron, a White Sox fan, killed what he viewed as a negative column — about unruly fans who abused the significant others of the Houston Astros during a World Series on the South Side. Don Hayner lectured me instead of pursuing the possibility that a popular sports figure was leading a double life — another bow to Reinsdorf. Those editors were in bed with the people I was trying to cover as a columnist. When I resigned from the paper and disgustedly handed back $1 million in guaranteed salary, the paper trashed my character after giving me the contract in the first place. Editors wanted me to be a rabble-rouser and ignore their own dirty dealings. When I blew the whistle, they became unhinged, and the paper quickly sank toward bankruptcy.
It’s a twisted business filled with rotten people — in sports and in the media. More than ever, editorial backbone and wherewithal are necessary to cover it all. Big-money owners and hand-chosen commissioners have more power and longer tentacles than ever. Does The Athletic even want to go down the road of challenging them? Maureen Dowd and other columnists are part of the Times lifeblood. None could write at The Athletic with the same tone and vigor. Why not throw money at Sally Jenkins and let her take on the NFL establishment? Nah. It’s easier this way.
Don’t confuse my piece as a plea for a gig. I’m playing a more important role writing about struggling media sites than writing for them. Besides, I’ve already talked to The Athletic, years ago, when I met with Mather and/or Hansmann four times in the dining room of the Four Seasons in San Francisco. That was Ground Zero for the Silicon Valley venture capitalist set, and, in the end, they seemed more interested in me as a conduit to gain an audience with Larry Baer, CEO of the Giants and a local clout-wielder. I remember a mention of “equity,” and nothing materialized. My suggestion then: They should hire the best 100 reads in sportswriting. They chose to hire more than 400, many of whom wouldn’t qualify among the top 100.
Before long, Mather was telling the Times, “We will wait 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.” About four years later, he and Hansmann cashed out to the Times. In retrospect, they bailed and let a bigger operation do the heavy lifting. The Athletic is said to have 3.27 million subscribers, but if circulation stalls, will they keep absorbing substantial financial losses? When about 20 more employees were sacrificed Monday — including Bob Kravitz, one of the nation’s premier columnists for decades — it reminded me of the Stephen A. Smith formula.
His daily show, “First Take,” drew only 346,000 viewers last Friday on ESPN — hours before Game 4 of the NBA Finals — and just 107,000 more on an ESPN2 re-air. That gave him the 329th- and 528th-rated U.S. television shows, per the USTVDB data base. As with Smith, I must ask the Times this about The Athletic: If 335 million people live in America, why are two major sports media initiatives tapping into miniscule percentages of a sports-mad country?
How well are you actually doing when 332 million Americans aren’t subscribing?
The answer is self-evident, or good people wouldn’t be out of work.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.