It's official: No more sports at Washington Times

If that's what a 21st-century multimedia company is supposed to do, it's gonna be a shitty century.

 

목사나 달이었습니다. 나의 희망은 다른 출판 돈을 따라 승리했지만 당일 이 놈 같이 갑시다 모델입니다.

 

I don't want to voice my support for anything that results in massive layoffs, but I can sorta see the Times' rationale. The Times has a niche it can cultivate better if it's not trying to be a general-purpose publication. "National conservative print and online voice" sounds better than "second-place newspaper in the D.C. Metro".

Which makes Sports and Metro no longer necessary. Which sucks for the people involved in both. But it's understandable, if still unfortunate.

 

On my 5,200th post, I pay homage to those at the Times. This is such a freaking cookie-cutter industry, I fear this will set a trend.
The ones I really feel for are the latest desk jockeys that Times Sports brought on board. Merry Christmas.

 

I don't think this will start a trend. The Times is a unique paper, one that sort of competes with the Post, but not really. And that's no offense to the fine people on staff. They do excellent work and the sports section writing was/is always top notch. But the Times fights a losing battle circulation-wise against the behemoth that is the Post. Go into a 7-11 in northern Virginia or P.G. County and it's a 50-50 shot that you'll even find the Times. It serves a niche audience in the D.C. area. The move to drop sports sucks. Sucks big. But as Meat pointed out, it's at least understandable.

I liked that the Times didn't cover preps. For one, it didn't have the staff to do it right. Preps is a massive undertaking in the D.C. area. The Post does a decent job with it, but they have a lot of correspondents helping. And really, the rich, conservative types that read the Times aren't picking up the paper looking for high school football coverage. So the Times threw a lot of resources at the pros and colleges and more than held their own in that regard.

Sad day, because I have experience with the people on staff and really got my start in the business stringing for the Times. But I don't think this will be the start of a huge trend of secondary papers dropping sports, because the Times just isn't your normal No. 2 metro in the area.

(Though as I say this, I think about what happened at the East Valley Trib in metro Phoenix and shudder. Oi.)

 

LOL!

 

You needed even more evidence This Century Blows after the first decade?

 

I remember living in DC in the early 90s and the Times bascially kicked the Post's tail on Redskins coverage. Every Monday, the Times was a "must-read," because it had color pictures, pages and pages of game coverage, good opinion -- on the way to the Metro, I always made sure I had change to get a Times out of the box.

They were way ahead of the Post in the amount of space dedicated to coverage and in graphic design. At that point, I think the Post was still black and white, even on the section fronts. I always thought that was smart -- if there's one thing in your city that you know everyone cares about more than anything, why not throw all your resources at it?

 

They teach sarcasm in College Park? Tim H. Tebow.

 

As someone who works in the Times sports department, I can tell you that Barker jumped the gun on this a bit. Nothing has been announced. This is what is widely rumored to be happening, but we have been told absolutely nothing specific about the paper's plans since they announced there would be layoffs coming. I wouldn't read into Barker's comments as anything "official" since there have been no formal decisions made. We are under the impression we're all going to be gone, but we don't know when or how it's going to go down.
Also, to be clear, the information about Feb. 2 is a bit inaccurate. We have been assured that we will are guaranteed to be paid through Feb. 2. However, it's possible (though we don't think it's likely) that the final decision about peoples' jobs could happen after that.

Anyway, we all appreciate many of the kind words on this board.

 

I thought it was a jab at the wizards, nats, Os, etc...

 

The week of Feb. 2-5 could be quite a bloodletting for several publications.

Hate to hear this for the Times staffers.