The Athletic, the subscription sports website owned by the New York Times, announced Monday that it was laying off nearly 20 reporters, or about 4 percent of its journalistic staff. The news was delivered in an email to staffers from The Athletic's publisher David Perpich and editor in chief Steven Ginsberg.
The note said an additional 20 reporters would be moved from their current team beats to new ones, including regional coverage or general assignment roles.
That strategy marks a departure from the one-time mission of the outlet, which was to cover every team from every major league across the country with a dedicated reporter. The Athletic has been successful editorially, with millions of subscribers, but that coverage — and the travel and staffing associated with it — is expensive.
"The Athletic has generally viewed every league in a similar manner, with similar beats and offerings. But our growing body of research and our own understanding of the sports we cover compel a more nuanced approach," the note said, adding, "There is no perfect formula for determining which teams to cover, but we are committing dedicated beat reporters to the ones that most consistently produce stories that appeal to both large and news-hungry fan bases, as well as league-wide audiences."
The note described an evolving approach to coverage. The NFL and English Premier League dominate reader interest, it said, and staffing for those leagues remains mostly unchanged. Because NHL and Major League Baseball audiences are more local, those leagues will have some beats eliminated. The company's overall investment in the newsroom would still grow this year, according to the note, and the company will still have more than 100 beat writers covering specific teams. But a new focus of the site will be stories that appeal to wider audiences.
"Our data shows that the stories that are of greatest interest to our subscribers — and draw in the most new readers and subscribers — are often the ones that provide revelatory information about players and teams that resonate with fans across an entire league," the note said.
The New York Times bought the Athletic last year for $550 million in cash to buttress is subscription business. The Athletic now has around 3.3 million subscribers, more than double when it was acquired. But it has been a drag on the company's bottom line. Last year, it lost $6.8 million in February and March and another $12.6 million in the second quarter, according to the Times public filings. It lost $7.8 million in the most recent quarter.
"We've reorganized The Athletic's newsroom to ensure we're structured to enact our strategy to cover the most compelling stories that matter to fans across all the teams in a given league daily," said a New York Times spokesperson. The spokesperson said the Times expects The Athletic's newsroom "to be larger at the end of this year than it was last year."
