Media Nation is going on sabbatical while we implement some upgrades to the back end. The plan is to move from WordPress.com to “real” WordPress, which should be more flexible and offer a few more features. I hope our hiatus will be brief.
Threads hits a speed bump
Mark Zuckerberg may soon have reason to regret pushing Threads out the door before it was ready. Lindsey Choo reports for The Wall Street Journal (free link, I think; apologies if it doesn’t work) that user engagement has fallen by 70% since its July 7 peak.
No doubt Zuckerberg wanted to take advantage of Elon Musk’s Fourth of July weekend freakout, when he limited the number of posts you could read on Twitter (especially if you weren’t a paid subscriber), cut off access to individual tweets for non-members (thus blowing up our news feed at What Works), and killed off classic TweetDeck in favor of a new, lesser update.
But Threads is frustrating to use. The biggest problem is that you can only access it on a mobile device. Also missing: a reverse-chrono tab of accounts you follow, thus clogging up your feed with brands and celebrities you don’t care about, as well as no lists and no hashtags.
Mastodon has been my first stop since Musk took over Twitter last fall, but its decentralized nature presents problems of its own. It’s difficult to find what you’re looking for, there are parts of the unfortunately named Fediverse that are invisible to you, and most of the people and accounts I need to follow just aren’t there. Bluesky is still invitation-only and has had problems of its own.
I realize this is of little interest to most people, but for those of us whose work depends on social media to some degree, it’s been an interesting — and frustrating — nine months.
A new bill would boost local news with tax credits for advertisers and publishers
I’ve written quite a bit here about the possibility of government assistance for local news. Though it’s not an idea I’m enthusiastic about, I think the indirect assistance laid out in the Local Journalism Sustainability Act is worth trying. The LJSA, which would provide tax credits for subscribers (or donors), advertisers and publishers, died at the end of the last congressional session despite having some bipartisan support.
Now a new, similar measure has surfaced. The Community News and Small Business Support Act would create five years’ worth of tax credits for advertisers and publishers, but not for subscribers. The bill is being sponsored by Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., and co-sponsored by Suzan DelBene, D-Wash. The trade publication Editor & Publisher has gone all out in covering the story, and I emailed a few of my thoughts to E&P’s Gretchen Peck.
As I told Peck, the new bill, like the LJSA, is worth supporting for two reasons: the tax credits are indirect enough not to interfere with the independence that news organizations need to hold government to account; and the publishers’ tax credit for hiring and retaining journalists gives even the giant chain owners like Gannett and Alden Global Capital some incentive to do the right thing.
That said, it’s hard to imagine the bill emerging intact from a House that just this week featured Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene waving around revenge porn starring Hunter Biden and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., indulged by the Republican leadership, denying that he made the antisemitic and racist comments we had all heard him make.
Steven Waldman, president of the Rebuild Local News coalition, has written an op-ed for E&P endorsing the Tenney-DelBene bill and hailing its emphasis on local news outlets and advertisers. “This will directly help the small businesses, many of which had to cut back on their marketing spending because of COVID and then inflation, to get customers in the doors,” Waldman writes. “It makes sense because saving local news should not be about saving journalism jobs per se. It should be about strengthening communities.”
The bill is also far better than the misguided Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would extract revenues from Google and Facebook as compensation for the news content they repurpose.
There is no substitute for news entrepreneurs on the ground, for-profit and nonprofit, doing the hard work of building sustainable local news organizations. But a little bit of indirect assistance from the government wouldn’t hurt.
Marty Baron’s forthcoming book on Bezos and the Post gets a boost from Kirkus
The first review of Marty Baron’s forthcoming book is out, and I’m relieved. According to Kirkus Reviews, The Washington Post that Baron describes in “Collision of Power” is the same one I saw on display when I was visiting the Post and conducting interviews — including with Baron — in 2015 and ’16.
In “The Return of the Moguls,” I wrote about a news organization that had been reinvigorated by new owner Jeff Bezos (by his money, of course, but also by his energetic work on the consumer and technology side) and executive editor Baron, whose staff was relentless in exposing the truth about then-candidate Donald Trump’s fraudulent charity and, later, the existence of a tape on which he’s heard boasting about sexual assault. Most important, Bezos was described by everyone, including Baron, as respecting the independence of the newsroom and not interfering with editorial decisions.
So why am I relieved? Although it seemed unlikely, I harbored some worry that Baron was being overly diplomatic with me, and that now, after he’s retired from the Post, he was going to tell the world what it was really like to work for Bezos. The Kirkus review, though, makes it clear that there’s little distance between what Baron told me and what he’s written in “Collision of Power,” subtitled “Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post.” According to Kirkus:
Although focused on metrics and finances, Bezos staunchly supported editorial independence and journalistic integrity, a stance that put him on a collision course with Donald Trump, who expected Bezos to rein in the Post’s coverage of him and his administration. When that did not happen, he unleashed the “raw abuse of power” for which he was notorious.
The review concludes that Baron has written “an impassioned argument for objective journalism.” This is going to prove controversial at a time when objectivity is under attack. But in an address at Brandeis University earlier this year, Baron defined objectivity in its truest, most Lippmann-esque form. It is, at its best, fair-minded, independent truth-seeking. It’s not quoting “both sides” and letting the poor reader try to figure it out.
“The idea is to be open-minded when we begin our research and to do that work as conscientiously as possible,” Baron said at Brandeis. “It demands a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn — and an awareness that there is much for us to know.”
I’m not sure whether Baron would agree, but I’m going to take it a step further and argue that even opinion journalism can be objective if it’s undertaken in the right spirit. I tell my students that if they’re producing an opinion piece, they need to acknowledge differing views and inconvenient facts and address them. If they do that, then they’re being objective. After all, Walter Lippmann himself worked the opinion side of the street for most of his career.
Baron’s book comes out Oct. 3.
Here’s a free link to that New York Times story on Trump’s plan for one-person rule
I’m spending a few days in Graceland with my daughter, an Elvis fanatic who’s wanted to visit for many years. But I want to make sure you’ve read The New York Times’ astonishing report on Donald Trump’s explicit, publicly stated plan to convert the presidency into authoritarian one-person rule. Here is a free link.
As you’ll see, Trump would eliminate any meaningful congressional oversight on the grounds that such oversight would somehow violate the separation-of-powers provision in the Constitution. At the same time, the president would be free to ignore spending directives passed by Congress. I would call it a path to dictatorship except that we would presumably still have elections. Oh, wait.
Trump has a non-trivial chance of being elected president in 2024. Everyone who’s concerned about the future of our country needs to read this.
From ‘Spotlight’ to a spotlight on local news: A conversation with Walter Robinson
In the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Walter Robinson, a longtime investigative journalist and editor of The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team. Robby, as he is known, was instrumental in uncovering the clergy sex abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in Boston and beyond. The series won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. The team’s work was captured onscreen in the movie “Spotlight,” where Robby was played by the actor Michael Keaton.
Robby is a former colleague — he was a Distinguished Professor of Journalism here at Northeastern. He was also a 1974 graduate of Northeastern’s journalism program and participated in co-op.
Robinson covered and edited local news at the Globe. But he ranged wide. He reported from 48 states and 33 countries. He covered the White House during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. He was also the Globe’s Middle East bureau chief and covered the first Persian Gulf War.
In recent years, Robby has been focused on the local news crisis in a big way. He has been deeply involved in the New Bedford Light, an impressive nonprofit digital news outlet. He lives in Plymouth, so it’s perhaps no surprise that he is a key adviser to the board of directors at the new Plymouth Independent.
I’ve got a Quick Take on developments in the junkyard known as Twitter. Ellen reports on a new podcast out of Memphis called “Civil Wrongs.” It’s produced by a Report for America corps member that examines a racist massacre in the aftermath of the Civil War.
You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
Al Giordano, 1959-2023
On Monday evening I received some sad news: Al Giordano, who was the political columnist at The Boston Phoenix in the mid-1990s, had died in Mexico, where he’d made his home for many years. The cause was lung cancer, according to retired Boston Globe editor Matt Storin, who was Al’s uncle.
For a time, I was Al’s editor at the Phoenix, so I had the honor of working with him directly. He was difficult and brilliant, a unique voice that we needed then and need even more now. Later I followed his journalism at NarcoNews.com, which covered the misguided U.S. war on drugs from the Mexican point of view. He kept up his political punditry as well, and trust me when I tell you that it was good stuff. He and I stayed in touch sporadically, and he had a standing invitation to speak to my students on one of his periodic forays to the States; sadly, we were never able to make that happen. Al was 64 at the time of his death.
Al wrote a vibrant 4,000-word essay about the importance of the Phoenix shortly after it folded in 2013. You can (and should) read it here. Below is a tribute to Al written by his friends at the Fund for Authentic Journalism, another one of Al’s projects. I don’t believe it’s still in existence, but if I find out otherwise, I’ll let you know. The tribute, by the way, was published in a friends-only post on Facebook, but his board has given people permission to share it publicly.
***
Al Giordano, 1959-2023
(En español abajo)
Al Giordano passed away Monday evening, July 10, in Mexico. He was at home, in his own bed, with friends at his side, as a hard rain came down on the land.
Al was a gifted journalist and organizer with a keen mind and the courage of his convictions. Those talents, and a lot of hard work and lived experience, allowed Al to seemingly see around the corners of history to place himself at the headwaters of seismic world change.
Al did this repeatedly over the decades, in the U.S., Latin America and beyond, often at great personal risk, but never without a sharp sense of strategy aimed at the goal. He was the John Reed of our era. He was there when the world shook to tell us why it was shaking.
Al was an active participant in some of the most consequential moments of political and social change of the last 50 years as an organizer, a journalist or an advisor. As a young organizer in the 1970s, he helped freeze the expansion of the nuclear power industry as part of the “Clamshell Alliance,” which staged successful anti-nuclear demonstrations at the then-proposed Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. The campaign overcame great odds and ignited a “No Nukes” movement that inspired similar alliances and actions against proposed and existing nuclear power plants nationwide.
Al went on to work on John Kerry’s first Senate campaign, before becoming legendary organizer Abbie Hoffman’s apprentice in the trenches — working on organizing campaigns in Pennsylvania, Nicaragua and elsewhere. He was among the first U.S.-born journalists to document the Zapatista Army for National Liberation’s 1994 indigenous uprising.
To support that effort and to document the failed U.S. War on Drugs in Mexico and throughout Latin America, Al created the online newspaper Narco News. The trailblazing news service scored a historic victory for online press freedom in the United States when Citibank unsuccessfully sued Al in a New York court over his drug war coverage. In its ruling, the court established precedent extending the same freedom of speech protections to online journalists as enjoyed by traditional print media.
For over 14 years, and with the support and participation of dozens of collaborators, Al also ran a workshop for journalists and organizers to share strategies for the effective and strategic coverage of social movements, an effort that created effective networks with global reach among its participants, which remain active to this day. Al also garnered substantial attention for his prescient coverage of the “Obama paradigm shift” in the runup to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, and he created an online manual for nonviolent revolution after his in-country coverage of the uprising against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Al’s death is a shock in the sense that he left us far too soon. But Al had been dealing with ongoing health issues for some time, even after beating back cancer several years ago. Death is never comforting, but it is relief for those enduring serious, chronic health problems. The journey, which includes both emotional and physical pain, is the hard part.
Al lived life hard and fast. That’s how it came at him. But every moment of it mattered to Al, as did winning the good fight. He literally changed the world with his organizing and journalism work. The list of his great accomplishments is long, and his impressive legacy only now launched on a journey of its own.
Even Al couldn’t outrun the reaper. None of us can. But damn, he gave life one hell of a good ride.
Al died on his own terms, still speaking his truth to power and working to organize other people to do the same, so that an even bigger truth rises. His work will live on far past his critics’ last gasps.
All we can do now is use our grief as inspiration for doing what Al would surely want us to continue doing — living authentically and in pursuit of a better world for all. We should also definitely find some time now to honor Al’s life in a manner that works for each of us, to celebrate what Al has left behind for us to build upon.
We all have to keep pushing forward for as long as time permits. Al once said as much, “Authenticity is not the easiest path in life, but it’s the only path that leads forward.”
Al Giordano ¡Presente!
Friends of Al
And the board of directors of the Fund for Authentic Journalism
Doug Wilson, President
Bill Conroy, Treasurer
Wendy Foxmyn, Fund Administrator
———————-
Al Giordano, 1960-2023
Al Giordano falleció la pasada noche del lunes 10 de julio en México. Estaba en su casa, en su propia cama, con amigos a su lado, mientras una fuerte lluvia caía sobre la tierra.
Al fue un periodista y organizador talentoso, con una mente acuciosa y el coraje de sus convicciones. Esas habilidades, junto con mucho trabajo arduo y experiencia vivida, permitieron que Al aparentemente vislumbrase los giros de la historia para situarse en la cabecera de transformaciones mundiales de gran impacto.
Al hizo esto en repetidas ocasiones a lo largo de las décadas, en los Estados Unidos, América Latina y más allá, a menudo enfrentando grandes riesgos personales, pero nunca sin un agudo sentido de la estrategia dirigido al objetivo. Fue el John Reed de nuestra era. Estuvo presente cuando el mundo tembló para contarnos por qué temblaba.
Al participó activamente en algunos de los momentos más trascendentales de cambio político y social de los últimos 50 años, ya sea como organizador, periodista o asesor. Como joven organizador en la década de 1970, ayudó a frenar la expansión de la industria de la energía nuclear como parte de la “Alianza Clamshell”, que llevó a cabo exitosas manifestaciones antinucleares en la entonces propuesta planta de energía nuclear de Seabrook en Nuevo Hampshire. La campaña superó grandes obstáculos e impulsó un movimiento “No Nukes” que inspiró alianzas y acciones similares contra plantas de energía nuclear propuestas y existentes en todo el país.
Posteriormente, Al trabajó en la primera campaña al Senado de John Kerry, antes de convertirse en el aprendiz del legendario organizador Abbie Hoffman en las trincheras, trabajando en campañas de organización en Pensilvania, Nicaragua y otros lugares. Fue uno de los primeros periodistas nacidos en Estados Unidos en documentar el levantamiento indígena del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) en 1994.
Para apoyar ese esfuerzo y documentar la fallida “Guerra Contra las Drogas” de Estados Unidos en México y toda Latinoamérica, Al creó el periódico en línea Narco News. Este innovador servicio de noticias obtuvo una histórica victoria para la libertad de prensa en línea en Estados Unidos cuando Citibank demandó infructuosamente a Al en un tribunal de Nueva York por su cobertura de la guerra contra las drogas. En su fallo, el tribunal sentó un precedente que otorga a los periodistas en línea las mismas protecciones de libertad de expresión que disfruta la prensa impresa tradicional.
Durante más de 14 años, y con el apoyo y la participación de docenas de colaboradores, Al también dirigió un taller para periodistas y organizadores con el fin de compartir estrategias para la cobertura efectiva y estratégica de los movimientos sociales; un esfuerzo que creó redes efectivas con alcance global entre sus participantes, que siguen activas hasta el día de hoy. Al también obtuvo una atención considerable por su presciente cobertura del “cambio de paradigma de Obama” en la antesala de las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos de 2008, y creó un manual en línea para la revolución no violenta después de su cobertura presencial del levantamiento contra el dictador egipcio Hosni Mubarak en 2011.
La muerte de Al es impactante en el sentido de que nos dejó demasiado pronto. Sin embargo, Al llevaba un tiempo lidiando con problemas de salud persistentes, incluso después de haber vencido el cáncer hace varios años atrás. La muerte nunca es reconfortante, pero sí es un alivio para aquellos que sufren problemas de salud graves y crónicos. El viaje, que incluye tanto dolor emocional como físico, es la parte difícil.
Al vivió la vida intensa y rápidamente. Así fue como se le presentó. Pero cada momento fue importante para Al, al igual que ganar la buena batalla. Literalmente cambió el mundo con su trabajo de organización y periodismo. La lista de sus grandes logros es extensa, y su impresionante legado apenas comienza a emprender su propio viaje.
Ni siquiera Al pudo burlar a la parca. Nadie puede. Pero vaya que le dio a la vida un paseo impresionante.
Al murió en sus propios términos, aún diciendo su verdad al poder y trabajando para organizar a otras personas para que hagan lo mismo, para que surja una verdad aún más grande. Su obra vivirá mucho más allá de los últimos suspiros de sus detractores.
Lo único que podemos hacer ahora es tomar parte de nuestra tristeza y canalizarla en lo que Al seguramente querría que continuáramos haciendo: vivir auténticamente y buscar un mundo mejor para todos. Definitivamente también deberíamos encontrar algo de tiempo ahora para honrar la vida de Al, de la manera que funcione para cada uno, para celebrar lo que Al nos ha dejado para construir.
Tenemos que seguir empujando hacia adelante mientras el tiempo lo permita. Al alguna vez dijo: “La autenticidad no es el camino más fácil en la vida, pero es el único camino que conduce hacia adelante”.
Al Giordano ¡Presente!
Amigos de Al
Y la junta directiva
del Fondo para el Periodismo Auténtico
Doug Wilson, Presidente
Bill Conroy, Tesorero
Wendy Foxmyn, Administradora del Fondo
There he goes again: Patrick Soon-Shiong delivers another paper to Alden Global Capital
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the wealthy surgeon who owns the Los Angeles Times, has delivered yet another daily newspaper into the greedy hands of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Soon-Shiong announced Monday that he’d sell The San Diego Union-Tribune to Alden’s MediaNews Group. By my count, the Union-Tribune becomes the 10th paper that Soon-Shiong has helped turn over to Alden. As Sara Fischer and Andrew Keatts report for Axios, the new owners immediately announced cuts to the newsroom.
When Soon-Shiong bought the LA Times in 2018, the Union-Tribune was thrown in as part of the deal. Soon-Shiong was hailed by optimistic media observers as someone who, like Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post and John Henry at The Boston Globe, would provide his papers with the runway they needed to become self-sustaining enterprises.
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It’s been a mixed bag. Soon-Shiong’s main interest has been the LA Times, but he’s gone back and forth between investing and cutting. By no means has the Times been hollowed out as if it had been owned by, oh, let’s just say Alden Global Capital. But he’s run a lean ship, with the Times announcing just a few days ago that the recent sale of its press meant that game stories, box scores and standings would be eliminated from its print edition, according to Andrew Bucholtz of Awful Announcing.
Selling off the San Diego paper to one of the worst possible buyers is reminiscent of John Henry’s decision to sell the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester to a Florida chain back in 2014. As I recount in my book “The Return of the Moguls,” folks at the T&G thought Henry had promised not to sell unless a local buyer could be found; Henry told me his only promise had been not to sell to GateHouse Media. In any case, GateHouse managed to acquire the T&G within months and immediately began hollowing it out. GateHouse later morphed into Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain with about 200 dailies, which is notorious for its cost-cutting.
Alden Global Capital’s two newspaper chains, MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, make it the second largest owner with about 100 dailies. Alden is often described as the worst newspaper owner in the country, denounced as “vulture capitalists” who slash news coverage and sell off real estate in an attempt to squeeze out as much revenue as possible. Locally, Alden owns the Boston Herald, The Sun of Lowell and the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg.
Soon-Shiong was perhaps the central player in Alden’s acquisition of Tribune Publishing. Whereas MediaNews Group comprises mainly smaller papers, plus a few large dailies such as The Denver Post, Tribune owns eight of the largest, most iconic papers in the country, including the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and, closer to home, the Hartford Courant.
In the spring of 2021, Tribune, then comprising nine papers, was up for grabs, as it had been many times before. Stewart Bainum, a Baltimore hotel magnate, was attempting to buy the chain and sell off some of its properties to what he hoped would be public-spirited local owners. His main interest was in saving the Sun. Also bidding for the papers Alden. The hedge fund actually offered less money than Bainum, but its offer was reportedly less complicated as well.
The Tribune board ended up voting to sell the papers to Alden — a move that could have been halted by just one board member. Soon-Shiong, who was on the board, abstained, and he did so in a way that mean his vote essentially counted as a yes. As The Washington Post reported at the time, Soon-Shiong submitted his ballot without having checked the “abstain” box; if he had, his vote would have been counted as a “no.”
Bainum went on to found the nonprofit Baltimore Banner. Tribune, meanwhile, spun off one of its most prominent papers, the Daily News of New York, which remains part of the Alden empire as a separately owned entity.
So what’s next for The San Diego Union-Tribune? Nothing good, you can be sure. Voice of San Diego, a nonprofit news site, headlined its story “LA’s Richest Man Sells Union-Tribune to Feared ‘Chop Shop.’” Will Huntsberry and Scott Lewis interviewed the news-business analyst Ken Doctor, who predicted that San Diego will not be rid of Alden anytime soon.
“People get confused because these people are cut-throat capitalists,” Doctor told them. “But their papers are making money and they’re holding onto them for the time being.”
The Portland Press Herald and its 21 other papers are sold to a national nonprofit
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The news about the news doesn’t get much better than this: The National Trust for Local News will acquire Maine’s Portland Press Herald and its affiliated four daily newspapers and 17 weeklies. The deal was announced earlier today. Although not all details of the sale are known, early indications are that the papers will remain for-profit entities under nonprofit ownership. The papers, known collectively as Masthead Maine, will continue to be managed by chief executive officer Lisa DeSisto.
According to Rachel Ohm of the Press Herald, the National Trust emerged as the buyer after the recently formed Maine Journalism Foundation, or MaineJF, fell short in its efforts to raise enough money to buy the papers on its own. MaineJF, also a nonprofit, then started working with the National Trust. Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, the co-founder and CEO of the National Trust, told the Press Herald that the two organizations are continuing to work together, although it was unclear what ongoing role the foundation might have. The foundation, by the way, would have reorganized the papers as nonprofits; based on Ohm’s story, it sounds like that’s no longer on the table.
The papers were purchased in 2018 by Reade Brower, a printer who acquired them from billionaire owner Donald Sussman. Brower built a reputation as a solid steward who nevertheless was not averse to making cuts in order to stave off losses. Hansen Shapiro would not disclose what the National Trust paid, but it’s likely that Brower could have gotten more from a corporate chain looking to swoop in, gut newsrooms and squeeze out revenues. If that’s the case, then Brower deserves credit for putting his legacy above making every possible dollar.
The independently owned Bangor Daily News remains the only daily in the state that isn’t part of Masthead Maine.
The governance structure of the new ownership has yet to be announced, and maybe even the principals don’t quite know what it will look like yet. The National Trust is best known for rescuing a group of weekly and monthly papers in suburban Denver back in 2021, and now owns them in conjunction with The Colorado Sun, a well-regarded for-profit digital startup.
Earlier:
- A new wrinkle in the quest to convert the Portland Press Herald into a nonprofit (July 3)
- A new group in Maine would reorganize the Portland Press Herald as a nonprofit (April 23)
- Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro tells us about her national campaign to invest in local news (“What Works” podcast, Aug. 4, 2022)
Why is The New York Times outsourcing its sports coverage to The Athletic?
The New York Times’ purchase of The Athletic last year was starting to look ill-advised. The sports website continued to lose money after the Times paid $550 million for it, and it recently went through a round of downsizing. A new emphasis was announced: more trends and broad strokes, less coverage of teams and games.
Few, though, could have predicted what came next. Earlier today the Times said that it would actually do away with its own sports department and instead, in what you might call an act of internal outsourcing, turn over sports coverage to The Athletic — some of whose stories will now appear in the Times, both in print and online. It was a shocking move. Even though no one will be laid off, it marks the end of a small but high-quality operation that has won its share of Pulitzer Prizes over the years. Alexandra Bruell has the story for The Wall Street Journal (free link).
Speculation began to mount that such a move might be in the works over the weekend, when Ben Strauss of The Washington Post reported that the Times’ sports staffers had sent a letter to executive editor Joe Kahn and chair A.G. Sulzberger that said in part: “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.”
A Times spokesperson told the Post, “We’ll update when we have more to share.” Hours later, the hammer came down.
Although it’s hard to know exactly what Times management is thinking, you have to wonder if The Athletic’s status as a nonunion newsroom has something to do with it. Those of us with long memories can recall that some tensions were created when The Boston Globe launched Stat to cover health and life sciences — and stories from Stat, initially a nonunion shop, began running in the Globe, which, like the Times newsroom, is represented by a union. (Stat journalists joined the Boston Newspaper Guild in 2021.) Athletic publisher David Perpich told Bruell of the Journal that he’d respect a decision to unionize. Maybe so, but that’s generally not how it works.
The Times has been enormously successful at selling digital subscriptions, and The Athletic has been offered as part of its All Access offering — a higher-priced subscription that includes extras such as Cooking, the consumer-advice site Wirecutter and puzzles. It would appear, though, that The Athletic was not a major contributor to goosing those All Access subscriptions. And now this.
Tom Jones, a former sportswriter who’s now the media reporter for Poynter Online, expressed his misgivings just before the Times’ sports department was vaporized, writing:
It would be a real shame if Times leaders decided to alter the current Times’ sports section by cutting staff and/or integrating the coverage into The Athletic. They are two distinct sports outlets.
In a perfect world, both The Athletic and Times sports section would co-exist, each doing what they do best. For the Times, that’s deeply reported stories, superb writing and topics that you aren’t going to find routinely on most sports and/or news websites.
The Times is a juggernaut, the last great American newspaper that continues to grow and prosper. The idea that an outlet like the Times can’t support a sports section without a jerry-rigged system involving its own subsidiary is just absurd. This has all the appearance of a face-saving solution aimed at papering over its own poor decision to buy The Athletic in the first place.
Even if it seemed like a good idea to a lot of us at the time.