THE BEST SPORTS MEDIA HIRE IN AGES: ANDREW MARCHAND AT THE ATHLETIC
Those in charge of editorial messes should take note of Marchand, who breaks more stories than anyone in a dying business and was hired away from the New York Post by the Times, which needs his punch
For hedge funders, artificial intelligencers and editors who still exist, the only future of sports media is Andrew Marchand. The future, in his case, also is the past. He breaks stories, more than any reporter at a time when leagues and teams control editorial output. And as long as humans emerge from wombs knowing less than others, informing them will continue to sell the pap serving a gloomy business.
Finally, a publication steals a news dealer. The Athletic, which continues to lose millions, finally realized what I’ve said for some time: It’s too soft and shy. The site has plenty of nice, interpretive writing on its daily web pages, but professional and college sport is headed toward a trillion-dollar worldwide threshold. To be read by aficionados and liberated subscribers, not to mention fans and gamblers, it must advance a significant watchdog swath within a massive industry — a 2018 hockey scandal should be part of a regular fare. Marchand became a hound dog in first-releasing information about broadcast media at the New York Post.
Ask Pat McAfee. Ask Tony Romo. Ask Al Michaels.
Ask any of them.
How about old-school trickery? The New York Times snakes a hot reporter from a “lowly” shop across town. It should continue to make similar, hard-clutching moves to make sure The Athletic survives in a morass of industry failure. Again, any serious national columnists on site? Anyone to write four or five times a week on relevant subjects and make people think, smile and get mad? Wouldn’t that element make the same impact as Marchand’s hire?
By no surprise, his first two stories this week were listed among the most popular reads. He explained why the network-ballyhooed streaming story about a new ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery venture “won’t solve much, at least not yet.” While other outlets were praising it as a game-changer, Marchand suggested it was the “Great Rebundling” of cable. Then he swung back and broke news about “The NFL Today” on CBS — host James Brown will return, but he expects J.J. Watt and perhaps Bill Belichick to replace interims such as Nate Burleson, Phil Simms, Bill Cowher and/or Boomer Esiason. That quickly, he cracked more stories at the site than the slogger, Richard Deitsch, who befriends every director to slobber over stadium-truck performances but can’t break a toenail with a corkscrew.
Those in charge will recognize how breaking stuff brings credit from other sites, the best way to earn a customer’s eyeballs. Marchand has secured more credit-card payments this week than Deitsch has in years of doing media. Look, before I became a general columnist and commentator, I wrote sports media in Detroit at age 21, fresh out of college. I broke stories without trying. The Athletic’s executive editor, Steven Ginsberg, should growl if he wants to run the profession. Marchand growls.
Every so often, on rare occasions when I’m not writing sports, I take on media in an attempt to save the craft. I’ve done it since I was 18, so why stop now? The new hire replaces an odd comment made in the Chicago Tribune by writer Rick Kogan, 72, who was praising current sportswriter Paul Sullivan as a 21st-century compliment to legendary Ring Lardner. At this point, Sullivan might try to be Scoop Jackson first. He thinks baseball remains a “national pastime” platform when, in Chicago and elsewhere, the order of column-writing attention is football, football, football and football — when he writes 80 percent about baseball as the paper’s only remaining “In the Wake of the News” columnist. Does Sullivan, 60-something, realize the NFL has 30 of the world’s top 50 most valuable teams after the Washington Commanders sold for $6.05 billion and the Denver Broncos for $4.65 billion? Does he know the NBA, which has three of the top 15, approved $4 billion deals for the Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks?
Does he know the Baltimore Orioles were sold last week for … $1.725 billion?
And that an owner he writes about too much, Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox, refuses to say how he plans to build a new stadium when he’s spending no money? The Cubs matter, between April and September. Does he ever write about the Bears between September and April? At this point, Taylor Swift’s boost of brand value for the Kansas City Chiefs — $332 million — might be worth more than baseball clubs.
This is where Marchand should take over the Tribune’s sports editorship, now that he has supplied punch to The Athletic. Growl, people. Save the damned business.
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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.