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The New York Times’ sports department on Sunday sent a pointed letter to the paper’s management asking for answers about the future of the column, fearing it could be shut down to further integrate the Athletic into the Times. The letter, signed by 28 writers and editors from the Sports Department, was addressed to Editor-in-Chief Joseph Kahn and AG Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times Company.
“For 18 months, the New York Times has failed its sports team,” reads the letter, seen by the Washington Post. “We watched the company buy a competitor with hundreds of sportswriters and weigh decisions about the future of sports coverage at The Times, in many cases without even a courtesy call, let alone asking our expertise.”
“The company’s efforts appear to be reaching a climax as The Times seeks a full technology migration from The Athletic to The Times’ platforms and threats that the company will effectively shut down our section.”
In a statement, a spokesman for The New York Times said: “Since we bought The Athletic, we’ve had discussions about what that means for the future of our sports coverage.” B. the inclusion of sports stories on the home screen of nytimes.com. As with any field of reporting, we have thought carefully about how to provide the best possible sports journalism to our growing audience. We’ll update when we have more to share.”
The Times last year acquired The Athletic, a subscription sports business, for $550 million and has since sought to integrate it into its package of recipes and games. The Athletic employs around 400 people across North America and Europe, providing extensive coverage of the English Premier League. According to two people with knowledge of the department, the Times employed between 40 and 50 sports writers and editors last year, although some have since left the department and have not been replaced.
Since the acquisition of Athletic, there has been significant overlap in sports coverage between the two companies, prompting Kahn to tell sports division staff earlier this year that the Times has more reporters covering sports than any other subject, and that a more integration is needed.
A complicating factor in any effort in this regard is the status of employment contracts in the two publications. The Athletic is non-union, but Times staff work under a new staff contract that was ratified earlier this year.
Sunday’s letter alluded to this issue, explaining that leadership had promised there would be no layoffs in the Times newsroom and that the company had also “recognized that the New York Times Guild would have jurisdiction over the posts.” in the newsroom and that every plan is treated as a bargaining chip for Athletic employees.” The work must be done in accordance with our union contract.”
The letter then asked: “Do these promises still hold?”
Several current and former Times sports employees said, on condition of anonymity, they feared some sports-related jobs could be axed, potentially forcing them to move to either the Athletic or other Times reporting divisions.
However the new deal plays out, staffers fear it could spell the end of the Times sports section, which has been a staple of the newspaper’s daily coverage for decades. The letter mentions the history of the Section, stretching back to its coverage of the first Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. Columnists Red Smith, Arthur Daley, and Dave Anderson won Pulitzer Prizes, as did John Branch in 2013 for feature writing.
The letter also highlights the sports department’s meaningful information and leading coverage of issues such as concussions in football, doping in horse racing, Russia’s incarceration of Brittney Griner and the Middle East’s billion-dollar injection into global sport.
The letter’s signatories included prominent baseball and NFL writers Tyler Kepner and Ken Belson; Jenny Vrentas, an investigative reporter who has written extensively on NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson; and Juliet Macur, who documented a soccer player’s harrowing journey from Afghanistan last year.
When reporters eventually join the Athletic, they will be joining a publication in transition. The Athletic laid off around 20 employees last month as part of a shift from employing beatwriters for most of the country’s major professional sports teams to becoming a more nationally-focused company. The Athletic grew on $140 million in venture funding and never turned a profit before it was bought by the Times. According to the Times, the company now has more than three million subscribers and has helped the company meet its lofty subscriber goals, but lost $7.8 million last quarter.
Several current and former Athletic employees have in recent days questioned whether further cuts could eventually come as the channel may need fewer reporters to fulfill its mission of less comprehensive coverage.
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