Around 18 months since The New York Times acquired The Athletic, the sports department staff at The Times wants clarity on their future.
There are between 40 and 50 writers and editors in sports at The Times according to the Washington Post. There have been calls for more integration between the paper’s sports staff and The Athletic staff since the digital publication was purchased last year for $550 million. There have been fears that the section on the newspaper side won’t survive.
The Athletic’s publisher David Perpich wouldn’t comment on the ongoing situation between the sports staff at The Times and the company in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal.
But a company spokesperson told the Washington Post that they don’t have anything to divulge.
“We’ve had conversations since we bought The Athletic about what it means for the future of our sports coverage,” the statement said. “We’ve rolled out some changes, such as including Athletic stories on the nytimes.com home screen. As with any coverage area, we have been closely evaluating how to deliver the best possible sports journalism for our growing audience. We’ll update when we have more to share.”
The company last month eliminated around 20 positions at The Athletic. There are some 400 employees of the publication, and Perpich told the Wall Street Journal that the focus is trying to provide coverage of teams with broader appeal rather than dedicated beat writers. But the beat writer role isn’t going away.
“In the end, we’re still going to have over 100 reporters who are beat reporters covering teams,” he said. “We’re just not able to make it work everywhere.”
Some 28 members of the paper’s sports department sent a letter to executive editor Joseph Kahn and New York Times Company chairman A.G. Sulzberger demanding answers on what’s happening with their jobs.
“We have watched the company buy a competitor with hundreds of sportswriters and weigh decisions about the future of sports coverage at The Times without, in many instances, so much as a courtesy call, let alone any solicitation of our expertise,” the letter stated.
“The company’s efforts appear to be coming to a head, with The Times pursuing a full-scale technological migration of The Athletic to The Times’s platforms and the threat that the company will effectively shut down our section.”
The employees on the paper side are also under a union contract, and the letter reminded the company that the New York Times Guild has jurisdiction over newsroom jobs.
“Do those promises still hold?” the letter asked.
