NY Times to buy The Athletic for ….

[Max Fischer]

12 hours ago, Demongyz said:

NYT is complete trash.  ESPN has proven their brand of crap doesn't belong in sports...

 

I don't think NYT will understand that.

 

Bye Bye The Atheletic

So you will cancel your subscription based solely on what exactly?

 

[dave mcbride]

13 hours ago, Inigo Montoya said:

1.)  I'm a subscriber of The Athletic.

2.)  I think it's fantastic.

3.)  I will never subscribe to the NY Times.

4.)  If the NY Times tries to insert any of its crap into The Athletic, I'm gone.

 

 

I have subscribed to the NY Times and have for 30+ years. 
 

I would never subscribe to the Athletic.

 

If this means I get free Athletic content, excellent.

[buffalonian]

13 hours ago, Inigo Montoya said:

1.)  I'm a subscriber of The Athletic.

2.)  I think it's fantastic.

3.)  I will never subscribe to the NY Times.

4.)  If the NY Times tries to insert any of its crap into The Athletic, I'm gone.

 

 

What “crap” are you concerned about? Just curious, I’ve subscribed to the NYT for many years and have generally found it to be a good newspaper, not perfect, but really good. 

[dave mcbride]

1 hour ago, GunnerBill said:

 

It really isn't, but sure. Let's do it in PPP.

 

Please take it over to PPP so I never have to look at this thread again!  

[GunnerBill]

2 minutes ago, dave mcbride said:

Please take it over to PPP so I never have to look at this thread again!  

 

I meant to. But it accidentally ended up on Off The Wall. I am lost once I am off the main board 🤣

[aristocrat]

The athletic has bled money since it opened.35 mil in 21,  41 mil in 2020, 54 in 19.  NYT gave them a gift 

[Inigo Montoya]

10 minutes ago, buffalonian said:

What “crap” are you concerned about? Just curious, I’ve subscribed to the NYT for many years and have generally found it to be a good newspaper, not perfect, but really good. 

 

Hey buffalonian,

 

By "crap" I mean politics.  When I'm reading a sports article I don't want politics in it.  I'm a news junkie, I've always been interested in politics and I'm a consumer of lots of political info from all sides of the political spectrum.  ( I really recommend a website called Realclearpolitics.com which is a clearing house for news articles and it always provides both sides of every issue / argument so you can read both and make up your own mind) 

 

When I need an escape from that world I turn to sports.  I think the Athletic is fantastic sports journalism and I don't want it tainted by an organization that might see it as another avenue to push a political agenda.  

 

I hope it doesn't happen. 

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Inigo Montoya

[atlbillsfan1975]

5 hours ago, Doc Brown said:

"The Athletic will continue to operate as a standalone site, the Times said in its announcement. New York Times Company CEO Meredith Kopit Levien told investors on a call following the news that they would initially offer The Athletic as a separate subscription and ultimately offer it as part of a “broader Times bundle.”

 

Give it a year or two before you can only get it in a packaged deal.

100%, when projections aren’t being met the NYT will pivot and up the subscription rate, but now you get access to the NYT as well. 
 

[GunnerBill]

5 minutes ago, aristocrat said:

The athletic has bled money since it opened.35 mil in 21,  41 mil in 2020, 54 in 19.  NYT gave them a gift 

 

This was always the plan I think. Prove there is a market for the product then exit without having to prove you can run it profitably. 

4 minutes ago, Inigo Montoya said:

 

Hey buffalonian,

 

By "crap" I mean politics.  When I'm reading a sports article I don't want politics in it.  I'm a news junkie, I've always been interested in politics and I'm a consumer of lots of political info from all sides of the political spectrum.  ( I really recommend a website called Realclearpolitics.com which is a clearing house for news articles and it always provides both sides of every issue / argument so you can read both and make up your own mind) 

 

When I need an escape from that world I turn to sports.  I think the Athletic is fantastic sports journalism and I don't want it tainted by an organization that might see it as another avenue to push a political agenda.  

 

I hope it doesn't happen. 

 

 

The Athletic already covers the politics within sport. 

[buffalonian]

4 minutes ago, Inigo Montoya said:

 

Hey buffalonian,

 

By "crap" I mean politics.  When I'm reading a sports article I don't want politics in it.  I'm a news junkie, I've always been interested in politics and I'm a consumer of lots of political info from all sides of the political spectrum.  ( I really recommend a website called Realclearpolitics.com which is a clearing house for news articles and it always provides both sides of every issue / argument so you can read both and make up your own mind) 

 

When I need an escape from that world I turn to sports.  I think the Athletic is fantastic sports journalism and I don't want it tainted by an organization that might see it as another avenue to push a political agenda.  

 

I hope it doesn't happen. 

 

The NYT has had a pretty minimalist sports section for several years now. But I don’t recall politics ever surfacing much it in sports news reporting; maybe in some sports-related editorial content but I think that is to be expected in any publication. My guess is that acquiring the Athletic is an effort by the NYT to seriously bolster its Sports content, which has been nearly non-existent for quite some time. 
 

I don’t subscribe to the Athletic.  Does it publish editorial content? Would it, for instance, publish opinionated pieces on a topic like Colin Kaepernick, or other topics where sports, politics, and culture intersect? 

[DCOrange]

13 hours ago, hemma said:

I wonder if the writers have stock options/grants & get a piece?

 

If yes, I really should have said nicer things about Buscaglia.

 

I would bet almost anything that at least the bigger name writers with The Athletic are getting a decent chunk of this. I know some of the writers are already counting their money.

[Inigo Montoya]

2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

The Athletic already covers the politics within sport. 

 

Hey Gunner,

 

Some sports stories have a political angle.  No argument there.  When those stories occur I want the facts of the situation from the reporter, what used to be know as "straight reporting" not proselytizing.  Over the last several years it seems harder and harder for reporters to keep their personal views out of the story they are reporting on.  They are not reporting so much as providing their own commentary on the situation. 

 

I read The Athletic for info on the Buffalo Bills, the Buffalo Sabres, the NFL as a whole, and fantasy football to a lesser extent.  I have not found any stories in The Athletic that are presented with an overt bias or slant, even when covering stories where politics and sports merge.  That's why I pay for a subscription.  I really think it's the best sports journalism out there.  I hope that doesn't change.

 

[BMWR100RT]

I watch football on Fox and hold my nose. Same thing. Eventually the news will come from the Eye of Sauron and you'll all think you won while toiling in a pit. 

[GunnerBill]

1 minute ago, Inigo Montoya said:

 

Hey Gunner,

 

Some sports stories have a political angle.  No argument there.  When those stories occur I want the facts of the situation from the reporter, what used to be know as "straight reporting" not proselytizing.  Over the last several years it seems harder and harder for reporters to keep their personal views out of the story they are reporting on.  They are not reporting so much as providing their own commentary on the situation. 

 

I read The Athletic for info on the Buffalo Bills, the Buffalo Sabres, the NFL as a whole, and fantasy football to a lesser extent.  I have not found any stories in The Athletic that are presented with an overt bias or slant, even when covering stories where politics and sports merge.  That's why I pay for a subscription.  I really think it's the best sports journalism out there.  I hope that doesn't change.

 

 

I think it is the best sports journalism out there too. But it already does a lot of political and some of that commentary on the context within which the story arises. The reporting on the stadium has particularly been so. What you are talking about is different you are talking about slanted reporting. I have no idea whether the NYT does this, I have never read it, but slanted reporting and politics are not the same thing. 

1 minute ago, BMWR100RT said:

I watch football on Fox and hold my nose. Same thing. Eventually the news will come from the Eye of Sauron and you'll all think you won while toiling in a pit. 

 

The same. I hate just about everything Rupert Murdoch stands for and he is the absolute master of slanted, one-sided coverage. 

[DCOrange]

19 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

This was always the plan I think. Prove there is a market for the product then exit without having to prove you can run it profitably. 

 

Yep, companies looking to acquire in a case like this don't really care if you're profitable as long as you're showing revenue growth. It's similar to all those stories about the NBA losing money every year where it's technically true, but being profitable isn't the goal.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

5 hours ago, Doc Brown said:

"The Athletic will continue to operate as a standalone site, the Times said in its announcement. New York Times Company CEO Meredith Kopit Levien told investors on a call following the news that they would initially offer The Athletic as a separate subscription and ultimately offer it as part of a “broader Times bundle.”

 

Give it a year or two before you can only get it in a packaged deal.

 

That would be unfortunate

[Inigo Montoya]

4 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

 but slanted reporting and politics are not the same thing. 

 

 

Fair point Gunner.   I could have been more precise with my choice of words.

[Mr. WEO]

Lost in all this....is this:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/sports/the-athletic-newspapers.html

 

By the time you finish reading this article, the upstart sports news outlet called The Athletic probably will have hired another well-known sportswriter from your local newspaper. In a couple of years, once The Athletic has completed its breakneck expansion, perhaps that newspaper’s sports section will no longer exist.

 

 

“We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing,” Alex Mather, a co-founder of The Athletic, said in an interview in San Francisco. “We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.”

 

 

lol....tech bros

[WotAGuy]

 Between this and the dome threads, we need a whining emoji 😩

[dave mcbride]

30 minutes ago, buffalonian said:

The NYT has had a pretty minimalist sports section for several years now. But I don’t recall politics ever surfacing much it in sports news reporting; maybe in some sports-related editorial content but I think that is to be expected in any publication. My guess is that acquiring the Athletic is an effort by the NYT to seriously bolster its Sports content, which has been nearly non-existent for quite some time. 
 

I don’t subscribe to the Athletic.  Does it publish editorial content? Would it, for instance, publish opinionated pieces on a topic like Colin Kaepernick, or other topics where sports, politics, and culture intersect? 

As a close reader of the Times for decades, their sports section is both bad and very politically oriented (to be sure, they do have a couple of excellent writers like Tyler Kepner on baseball). For years, they led the “war on football” (they published the first concussion stories), but they seem to have given that up in the last couple of years given the sport’s continuing resounding popularity (i.e., they seem to know they lost the “war”). They also treat sports that very few in the US care about -- the premier league, the WNBA, etc. — as the equals of major US sports. They treat soccer in particular as somehow major, as if they possess the power to push Americans to embrace the world’s true global sport. It’s kind of laughable. It’s all quite political and fairly obvious too. That said, the paper’s reporting on politics, its international coverage (especially), its coverage of culture, the economy, etc. remains second to none when viewed as a totality.

Edited January 7, 2022 by dave mcbride