KC Star offering sports-only digital subscription

The Star definitely has good people, my point was more that if it had offered something like this years ago it could have built a nice subscriber base. Now they have to lure people away from other outlets.

 

The problem is, the Athletic has positioned itself as the place to go for "premium" sports coverage that you can't get in the paper. I'm not saying that's necessarily true (then again, when is the last time a newspaper hired someone away from a competing outlet, instead of vice versa?), but a great deal of the Athletic's success has come from marketing. It's done a great job of positioning itself as an alternative to run-of-the-mill newspaper coverage for high-brow sports fans. That makes it difficult for that "run-of-the-mill" newspaper to come back and try to win subscribers from that base. If newspapers want to compete with places like the Athletic, they need to hire editors who understand what 21st-century sports fans want, both from a content standpoint and a platform standpoint. A lot of today's SEs are still ink-and-print guys at heart, and a lot of times the constraints of deadlines and news hole are diametrically opposed to the kind of content that the Athletic devotes much of its energy to producing. It's hard to make data visualizations translate to print. It's hard to write a smart, thorough analysis in 15 minutes between the end of the game and first deadline, and it's even harder to do it in 650 words, without video clips or gifs or screenshots. How many sports editors are telling their writers to forget about writing for print so that they can produce content like that? Maybe the guy at the KC Star is doing that, but if he isn't, then they are going to struggle to convince the Athletic's readership to spend money.

 

The problem with the Athletic is: 85 percent of their hires have been old, stale newspaper guys who are just doing the same old same old.

 

What do you want The Athletic to do? Hire comedy writers?

I know you're skeptical of the entire operation. I am a little too. But God help us if we gotta have 47 Spencer Halls and Drew Magarys running around.

 

I don't know, in the markets I've been paying attention to, they've generally hired the beat writers in the market who have the largest following in the educated, middle-to-upper class 18-to-45 demo. The profile of a typical writer has been under 50, strong analytical voice, strong social media presence. That has generally meant the local newspaper losing whatever of its talent, if any, fits that mold.

 

I'd be willing to bet that most, if not all, newspaper sports editors are doing this. All four of the papers I''ve work for over the last 10 years, at least. The print product is still important to newspapers as a revenue stream, but every semi-respectable paper in the country has been writing for the web, with many of the same elements you referenced, for years now.

 

If you seriously don't think newspapers like the KC Star have adapted to a digital audience, check this out. Here's some digital content you aren't getting with your subscription to the Athletic.

Yordano Ventura’s final year filled with family turmoil, emotional distress

 

I’m a $10 a month digital subscriber and it’s great. I actually feel guilty about it.

 

Well, there are lots of former newspaper writers who've left for the Athletic who would disagree that their former employer was "writing for the web" the way it needs to be done to attract the audience that the Athletic is targeting. Hell, if you're still using the phrase "writing for the web," there's a pretty good chance you're doing it wrong. How about this: show me one newspaper sports editor who has a daily MLB or NBA beat writer whose No. 1 responsibility isn't filing a deadline piece for the print edition each night.

 

This is a very, very insightful answer. Agree.

 

Maybe newspapers do this already in bunches, but I am surprised more don't provide reduced-price section-only digital subscriptions to attract people who read newspapers for one specific section.

 

It's true that newspaper editors are still slaves to the print product. I never refuted that. And maybe that daily grind and deadline does interfere with a beat writer's ability to explore certain kinds of stories.

My argument wasn't really about that, though. It was the notion that newspapers aren't making an effort to bring those visual elements to a digital audience. They are, and there are endless examples. It is fair to wonder, though, whether newspapers can continue to serve a print readership and an online audience with dwindling resources.