The New York Times Will Cover Sports without a Sports Desk, Replaced by the Paper’s Subscription Site, The Athletic
COM’s A. Sherrod Blakely on the paper’s decision to farm out coverage to its sports site, The Athletic
Is the New York Times sports department’s demise really about better journalism, or rather, about saving money? Photo by Spenser Sembrat via Unsplash
Can the New York Times Cover Sports without a Sports Desk?
COM’s A. Sherrod Blakely on the paper’s decision to farm out coverage to its sports site, The Athletic
It was, a commentator said, “one of the dumbest quotes in the 21st-century history of the media industry.” He was referring to a cofounder of the start-up sports site The Athletic, boasting to the New York Times in 2017: “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.”
Pomposity from a journalistic newcomer, the commentator argued, while conceding that the words proved not to be total bluster. The Times dropped $550 million last year to buy The Athletic, operating it as a subscription site alongside the paper’s sports desk. Now, the Times has axed that desk, shunting its 35 sportswriters to other departments and handing daily sports reporting to the 400-staffer Athletic.
In an email to the NYT staff, editors said the move would improve all coverage. With its former sportswriters probing sports angles in business, culture, fashion, etc., they went on, “We plan to focus even more directly on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large.…We will scale back the newsroom’s coverage of games, players, teams and leagues,” duties now being assigned to The Athletic.
The Times has employed storied journalists to cover the city’s storied sports franchises, as well as global athletics, including the first modern Olympics in 1896. Is the sports department’s demise really about better journalism, or rather, about saving money? “You really can’t separate the two,” says A. Sherrod Blakely, a College of Communication lecturer in journalism. “There’s a direct correlation between journalism and the economics that often drive such decisions.”
While he takes a wait-and-see attitude about how the decision plays out in coverage, Blakely sees potential downsides. He is creator and cohost of The A-List Podcast, which covers basketball and the Boston Celtics, and he has written about basketball for Ebony.com, Bet.com, and the Bleacher Report.
Q&A
with A. Sherrod Blakely
BU Today: As The Athletic far outmans the Times sports desk, will it provide more extensive coverage for sports readers? And will farming the current sports reporters out to other desks enhance coverage of the sports implications of news in business, culture, and so on?
Blakely: In theory and on paper, the New York Times should benefit from having a wider swath of stories than are told now. But there’s a certain amount of institutional knowledge lost when these deals occur. And more likely than not, there will be a moment when this very point manifests itself. What’s happening at the Times is, unfortunately, one of the realities of our industry and a key factor in its overall evolution.
You need to approach journalism with a growth mindset, knowing the day may come when you’ll need to pivot—not necessarily because you want to, but more because you don’t have a choice if you intend to survive in this industry. That is why here at Boston University, I talk to my students all the time about filling your toolbox of talents with as many different skills and talents as possible. Because you never know which skill will land you a job, or in this instance, keep you employed.
BU Today: One media analyst has said this move is part of the Times’ “bundling” strategy to make the newsroom one content creator among many—from news to recipes to crosswords—and then making that bundled content the only available option for subscribers. Is this the direction news outlets are, and must be, taking to survive?
Blakely: There have been some rumblings that this may be the model that some newsrooms may adopt in the future. But this is a dangerous strategy that has some clear and present dangers of blowing up badly. When it comes to news consumption, society has been pretty consistent in its desire to consume content on an à la carte basis. While it’s smart to make bundling an option, deciding to make it the lone option is a recipe for failure. In fact, doing so would not only impact negatively a news organization’s brand, but could also potentially bolster their competition, especially if the competition chooses to not bundle.
Will they deliver content that’s more akin to traditional journalism that leans more on the ability to write, and do so from a more balanced perspective? Or will they lean into their inner fanboy and write features and fluff pieces?
BU Today: As a sports journalist, teacher, and fan, what questions do you have about the Times’ new approach going forward?
One of the great challenges news organizations have now is figuring out what makes for a great fan experience, and to do so while maintaining a certain degree of journalistic balance. The latter does not seem to be as much of a concern now as it has been in the past. And because of that, often stories will not only provide a fan’s perspective, but actually be written by folks who are unabashed fans with little to no objectivity when it comes to the not-so-nice underbelly of journalism.
The Times will now have the people power to create and connect, on a much larger basis, with fans. Will they deliver content that’s more akin to traditional journalism that leans more on the ability to write, and do so from a more balanced perspective? Or will they lean into their inner fanboy and write features and fluff pieces that for the most part don’t have a lot of bite to them? How the Times approaches game coverage going forward will be interesting to watch.
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