📡 New York Times announced it is disbanding its sports department.

 

[PurlJam]

They had a sports department?

 

[252BAMA]

The Times can't afford anymore inaccurate reports by a sports department.

https://www.si.com/college/alabama/basketball/alabama-walk-on-sues-new-york-times-alleges-defamation-gaither

 

[TerryP]

The Times can't afford anymore inaccurate reports by a sports department.

If you've missed the story, this is directly related to their acquisition of The Athletic and all its problems.

 

[RTB X Bot]

 

[24and7]

Well, at least they don’t have to lie about sports too.. like they do everything else…

 

[SnakeDoc]

They had a sports department?

My first thought, as well.

 

[SnakeDoc]

If you've missed the story, this is directly related to their acquisition of The Athletic and all its problems.

What problems does The Athletic have?

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

What problems does The Athletic have?

They are basically The Atlantic version of sports coverage. They overvalued themselves in terms of their subscription model and then made things 1000x worse when a lot of their writers decided it was in their best interests to dive head first into political waters... then they made sure and knock all the dominoes down during Covid when they actively, and gleefully, used their positions to try and halt the sports world... and openly scoffed at anyone who thought that wasn't the right call. They did have (and still have a few) good writers, but they are heavily outnumbered by bad ones who were given jobs based on everything other than their abilities... In the last couple of years, they've been bleeding subscribers instead of gaining them (from what I understand). Even when they offer their deals for like 6 months for a $1 promos on Twitter, I'm not sure how many bites they get... but it is telling that they turn off comments to the ads/tweets. Above all else, they have beta simp Stewart Mandel in charge of football coverage, the very thing that should have been their cash cow. All other reasons aside, they deserve to sink for that alone.

 

[TerryP]

What problems does The Athletic have?

In the last couple of years, they've been bleeding subscribers instead of gaining them (from what I understand).

A little deeper into this ...

Brandon is correctly pointing to the C-19 effect. When they saw it the most was in the slow growth of their subscribers (reported by several outlets.) In roughly a year and a half they grew by 200,000 after seeing three times that growth the year before (12 months.) While the spin was sold as "slow growth" the reality was they were churning subscribers.

Also ... this was all supposed to be ad-free. A couple of years ago they announced they are going to diversive with a newsletter with revenue based on ads. It was all supposed to be great content, no ads, subscription based revenue.

They still have a majority on their half price plan. As mentioned, they were advertising a month for $1 recently.

All the while receiving MILLIONS in capital investment/seed money. NTY was the latest to take the bait.

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

A little deeper into this ...

Brandon is correctly pointing to the C-19 effect. When they saw it the most was in the slow growth of their subscribers (reported by several outlets.) In roughly a year and a half they grew by 200,000 after seeing three times that growth the year before (12 months.) While the spin was sold as "slow growth" the reality was they were churning subscribers.

Also ... this was all supposed to be ad-free. A couple of years ago they announced they are going to diversive with a newsletter with revenue based on ads. It was all supposed to be great content, no ads, subscription based revenue.

They still have a majority on their half price plan. As mentioned, they were advertising a month for $1 recently.

All the while receiving MILLIONS in capital investment/seed money. NTY was the latest to take the bait.

I subscribed for 1 year, back in 2019. If I remember correctly, it was a July 4th deal where you got a 1 year subscription for 76% off the regular rate which equaled about $1 a month at the time.

 

[64Tide]

Satan having a bad day....thousands of lies that won't get printed...