When The Athletic cut 4% of its newsroom in a larger reorganization – which followed in The New York Times announcing the dissolution of its individual sports department – longtime journalists and reporters were left in shock. Among those cuts was Indianapolis-based columnist Bob Kravitz, who recently launched his own Substack and expressed his candid thoughts on The Athletic.
Kravitz, 63, previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, along with local outlets such as The Indianapolis Star and Rocky Mountain News. Readers have come to appreciate his journalistic style and detail in his reporting, making his departure from The Athletic all the more harrowing for consumers. When he was “whacked” by the outlet in early June, Kravitz began to experience what unemployment felt like and was blunt in his disdain towards the feelings it engendered. He is now back on the job as a contributor for the magazine, Indianapolis Monthly, while building his Substack titled “Musings of an Old Sportswriter.”
“I was kind of hoping to ride The Athletic into retirement a couple of years down the line,” Kravitz said. “I also thought I’d retire at WTHR. Wrong again. Never should have left The Indianapolis Star. Never ever ever ever. Ever.”
When Kravitz was laid off by The Athletic, he felt that his confidence to write took a hit and was hesitant to resume his career in journalism. Yet as time went on, he felt like he needed to make a contribution to his family despite battling impostor syndrome and mulling the cessation of his 41-year career.
“Back in the day, I derived great joy from sitting down at the computer and immersing myself in a column or a story; time would pass and I wouldn’t even notice,” Kravitz said. “It was all about the words and it was a pure joy. I was in my element. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, what with being a starting goaltender for an NHL team being slightly beyond my ability level.”
During his time at The Athletic, everything changed – especially when he had to work with “lousy” editors, despite some good ones along the way, totaling four editors through his four years with the outlet.
Over the years, he began to second-guess some of his story proposals and ultimately learned that he was laid off because of the outlet choosing to prioritize national coverage. Kravitz had already developed a level of acrimony towards the outlet when they required him to cultivate 395 subscriptions after he was put on probation a few months following a quadruple bypass amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That’s absurd, unfair and outrageous, especially given my health situation,” Kravitz said. “Well, I survived, producing more than 400 subs by working myself half to death, a great idea after open-heart surgery. But that soured me on the place forever. I felt it in my bones, ‘They don’t give a f**k about me as a human being.’”
Since being acquired by The New York Times Company in early 2022, the outlet’s subscription base has steadily increased; however, it has yet to turn a profit. Instead, The Athletic continues to garner operating losses and is thusly altering its approach to more quality storytelling over the quantity of coverage.
“The Athletic makes a really big deal about the importance of mental health, and that’s great, but I think I’m speaking for a majority of current Athletic writers, the primary of metrics (subs, unique views and the rest) had a deleterious impact on our collective mental health as a staff. There was nothing more dispiriting than working your ass off on a story, only to look at the metrics and see one subscription and 2,000 unique views. It was soul-sucking, honestly.”
