A few thoughts on the Axios report on The New York Times maybe buying The Athletic:
- I’m as perplexed and surprised about this story as I think a lot of you are.
- It’s important to note that the reporting on this says The Times is “in talks” with the Athletic about buying them. “In talks” can mean a lot of things. My wife and I have been “in talks” about refinishing our back deck for like four summers now, that doesn’t mean it’s getting done this weekend (this summer, buddy, I promise) It’s like the Danny Concannon “is the president considering this” trick from The West Wing. It’s not to say there’s no fire here or that a sale won’t happen, but it doesn’t mean it’s imminent.
- That being said, I’m not surprised that The Athletic might sell. In informal conversations with people in and around sports journalism over the past four or five years — especially during The Athletic’s hiring binge in 2017 — there was kind of general thought that The Athletic was positioning itself for a big sale, for a big pay day for its owners and investors. That’s not a criticism or a bad thing. It just always felt like The Athletic was being built more like a tech company than a media one.
- Even if it is sold to The Times, I’m not ready for the What It All Means About Sports Journalism and Subscription Model discourse. To be totally honest, that’s what set off my Spidey Sense about The Athletic all those years ago, when I first started writing about it. It was not just a site, it was a vessel for all the What This Teaches Us About the Future of Sports Journalism discourse. I’m naturally skeptical of takes on this, even from my friends who are smarter than me, because not everything is about everything. Given The Athletic’s scope and scale, its size, its growth, its ambition, its nature, I don’t know how applicable its lessons have ever been to sports journalism or to digital subscription journalism.
- While news of a potential sale is not surprising in itself, The Times as a potential buyer is surprising. The Athletic prided itself, rightfully so, on its local coverage, it being in every market. Given this, The Times buying it makes no darn sense. I can’t imagine The Times is looking for Winnipeg Jets coverage.
- Here, I come back to a point that I began developing in a study Galen Clavio and I did on The Athletic a few years ago for the Summit on Communication and Sport. The Athletic has always framed itself as as reimagining of the local sports pages. But I think a more accurate way to think about it is as a modern version of Sports Illustrated. It’s not so much a daily sports section (with gamers, news stories, and day-to-day coverage) as it is a daily sports magazine, with the kind of longer form, analytical stories that are much closer to a magazine’s place in the sports media ecosystem than a newspapers. With that in mind, The Times makes a little more sense, given how it traditionally covers sports.
