05/16/24
July 10, 2023
SportsFilter: The Monday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
I recently got my auto-renew email from them and my subscription resets at the end of this month. I still generally like The Athletic even though they've long since jettisoned most of the writers that I signed up for and are lacking beat writers for a couple of my teams, but I'll have to keep an eye on this in the next couple of weeks and see if I really want to give them another year or not, even at my fairly reasonable .edu rate.
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:07 AM on July 10, 2023
I tried cancelling my sub last year, but they hit me with an awesome retention deal of only about $20 for another year. But I'm in the same boat as you, ufie. My Hurricanes have only a part time beat writer and some out of market writers filling in the gaps. They have excellent reporting on all issues surrounding sport, but I have to cut costs somewhere and since I'm the only person in the house that gives a rip about The Athletic, that one has to go. I can't imagine how badly my daughter would take cancelling HBO instead of a sports website.
posted by NoMich at 11:25 AM on July 10, 2023
The Wash. Post is reporting that the NY Times is planning to shut down its Sports section and use The Athletic for all it's sports coverage.
Since The Athletic is losing money, I thought that maybe they'd go the other way and consolidate the outside reporting into the NYT newsroom.
In-house memos are apparently flying and no doubt the Times sports staffers will not take the changes lying down.
I hope no one becomes desperate enough to be willing to sit across from Skip Bayless to keep their career afloat.