When Bob Kravitz got let go by The Athletic, he took some time to think about what he wanted to say. A month later, he wrote the first column for his new Substack page, which was a scathing recap of his time working for the company.
This week, Kravitz was a guest on the SI Media Podcast. He told host Jimmy Traina that he felt an obligation to talk about how miserable his experience there was.
“I just felt morally compelled to write something. For my own sanity, if nothing else, I just had to get it out there.”
One of the lines of Kravitz’s column that got the most attention was about the way he was treated following quadruple bypass surgery. He wrote “I felt it in my bones, ‘They don’t give a f**k about me as a human being.’”
He told Traina that the feeling stemmed from being put on probation following his surgery because he was not generating enough subscriptions for The Athletic during Covid.
“I understand that big corporations don’t care about their people, but they talk a good game about being different,” Kravitz said. “And I just felt badly about the whole situation. It made me feel like, screw them, you know, I’m doing the best I can. And, you know, I have a quadruple bypass and it doesn’t seem to have any impact on the way they approach what they’re doing.”
Kravitz acknowledged that plenty of others let go in the recent round of layoffs at the company did not lash out like he did. He told Traina that he considered staying quiet, but ultimately decided against it.
“I went back and forth and I ultimately decided just be honest with the readers. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who said, ‘Well, thanks to The Athletic for a wonderful experience,’ because quite frankly, that would be a lie.”
