The Athletic keeps growing .......

[SoloFlyer]

I have never understood this thinking. If you are new, and want to establish yourself as a successful paid model (or something that can be sold as one -- which many believe is ownership's true intent), you have to hire the best. It shouldn't matter if it is an older white male. Russo is one of the best hockey reporters around. Word is they've done very well with subscriptions out of Minnesota because of him. Portzline, Staple and Yohe are very good, too. From what I know about Carig, he's got a great rep. Why hire someone who doesn't optimize your monetization? It's dumb.

Last week, when I was in Tampa...I was watching Josina Anderson on ESPN. One of our other people mentioned her, and said, "Did you see her fingernails? Wild design." I didn't even notice because her report was good. (But, yes, I looked the next time I saw her.) One thing matters for the Athletic: Can you sell? It doesn't matter if you are white, black or purple; old or young; male or female or other.

Can. You. Sell.

The Athletic absolutely should be hiring the best. And with Portzline, Russo, the Bay Area folks, and others, they nailed it.

I guess I'm just not as convinced with some of the more recent hires. I know others disagree, including some on this thread, so maybe that's a matter of taste and opinion.

But we should be talking about diversity and hiring practices. It's a major concern in this industry and the lack of opportunities for minorities and women at the lower levels leads to even fewer opportunities for high profile jobs. When a new company comes in and is hiring predominantly white males without advertising the bulk of its open positions, I think their hiring practices should be discussed.

 

[wireguy]

With all the writers who are forced to settle for freelancing etc, they should consider doing some recruiting events so these writers can meet the people running the site instead of sending cold emails and hoping for a reply.

 

[Moderator1]

Not arguing your overall point because I'm not familiar with their overall roster. Aren't the two women they hired for the college football section full time?

 

[thizzellewashington]

The EIC of the Toronto site is notorious for dismissing/blocking anyone on Twitter who calls them out for a lack of diversity.

 

[MeanGreenATO]

When the Athletic launched its college football vertical, they were roasted for not having any people of color when it launched.

New site The Athletic reflects old sports media diversity problem

 

[ChrisLong]

I read in LAObserved that The Athletic is staffing up in SoCal, having hired Pedro Moura for baseball coverage. Moura is formally OCR and LAT. Very talented.

 

[Alma]

When the Athletic launched its college football vertical, they were roasted for not having any people of color when it launched.

New site The Athletic reflects old sports media diversity problem

This is part of what happens when you make reporters some of the editors and they just hire some of the people they already know.

Also: How many writers does The Undefeated employ who might otherwise be employed elsewhere?

I've written this before and I will again: Many smaller/mid-size media organizations want more diversity and just can't get much of it. 95 percent of the apps (or higher) are from white men in some of these job markets. These jobs do not generally pay well. Talented, qualified women and minorities often have options above and beyond mid-level because large news organizations and universities want their voices and want to give them opportunities, and make sure they do.

I have no objections to this practice, either. Nor do I object to bigger, snazzier outlets hiring women and minorities. They should do as they please.

But when they do that, they inevitably drain the talent pool for shops that form the vast majority of news outlets.

Here, for example, are the 2017 Washington Post interns:

THE WASHINGTON POST INTERNS 2017

27 total

19 women

2 white men

Here's 2016:

THE WASHINGTON POST INTERNS 2016

24 total

14 women

4 white men - 1 of whom is also a 2017 intern.

That's 64% women and 9.4% white men.

So the Washington Post is proactive in its diversity. Not all those folks end up there - in fact, most can't because there aren't enough jobs - but that internship on a line shows up real quick. It opens doors to jobs.

But it creates a vacuum at the bottom.

 

[MNgremlin]

Good to see you guys think race/gender is the most important quality people are looking for in new hires....

Can you write well? Doesn't matter, because all we need the hire to be is a person of color or a female! (and no, I'm not saying these people are automatically lesser quality writers than white males, but it seems like that qualification matters above the rest according to some)

If a white male is the most qualified applicant for the position, why should he be passed over for a minority not as qualified?

 

[SoloFlyer]

Good to see you guys think race/gender is the most important quality people are looking for in new hires....

Can you write well? Doesn't matter, because all we need the hire to be is a person of color or a female! (and no, I'm not saying these people are automatically lesser quality writers than white males, but it seems like that qualification matters above the rest according to some)

If a white male is the most qualified applicant for the position, why should he be passed over for a minority not as qualified?

Not one person in this thread has said a person's race or gender should be the the most important quality in a new hire.

All some of us have done is question The Athletic's approach to hiring. When you don't have an open application process and you end up with a strikingly white newsroom, you open yourself up to criticism.

 

[Azrael]

Yeah, white males just can't catch a break.

 

[MNgremlin]

Sorry, I probably should have not said "you guys think." Is that better?

I never said white males can't catch a break. I just think outrage over a hire's race/gender is dumb. I'm not talking about just journalism here either. I've seen plenty of these comments made in politics and sports. I guess all employers who hire predominantly white males are just racists. A white man gets hired over a black man? Must've been because of race. That's the only possible reason. No minorities in the newsroom? A bunch of racists.

I don't vote for someone because they're white, but I've heard of plenty of people who vote for someone because they're female or a person of color. Not because of their qualifications, but because of their skin color/gender. That's the type of thing I'm talking about.

 

[Azrael]

Is that better?

I'm pretty sure it's not.

 

[Rhody31]

I'm not seeing "The Athletic is generally hiring young" at all. Here in NY, they hired one kid and a whole bunch of beat guys, including Rick Carpiniello, a longtime Rangers writer who hasn't been working F/T since Gannett screwed him. I've seen some of these beats infuriate head coaches and managers in press conference settings. Marc Carig's piece on Terry Collins' final days as Mets manager basically wrecked his relationship with Collins. Couldn't have been easy to write knowing that was coming. C. Trent Rosecrans hasn't been soft on the Reds in Cincy. Ask that clown Brandon Phillips.

I also suspect fans paying for the content won't be as eager to want blood as the dummies who absorb Barstool Sports for free. You have to be more nuanced and intelligent to pay for content.

I do agree The Athletic looks unsustainable, especially with bored frat tech bros running the place. I think it's going to end badly in a year or so, especially if the market keeps sinking. They'll move on to something else without a second thought about the writers they lured from safer, more established places.

ProJo EIC posted Red Sox beat writer Tim Britton is leaving for a spot with The Athletic covering the Mets, so there's a young guy for that staff.

 

[dirtybird]

Not really. What Barnwell does is easy in its own way, in the sense that he doesn’t have to co-exist with a coach in a certain market. Athletic writers do.

At some point, when you’re a beat columnist or writer or whatever, you have to risk beimg unpopular if you’re going to be any good for any amount of time. Unpopular in the sense that you might have to get a chilly reception for weeks/months for what you wrote.

I guess we’ll see. I don’t feel like I come at this from an overly negative perspective. I didn’t think Grantland would work, and it didn’t. But I’m probably too focused on sustainability.

I'd imagine younger folks are better at dealing with that chilly reception than you think. On a lot of beats, there's probably more distance than there once was. I'm only worried about that reception if I have good sources to **** of, and that's worth negotiations when it comes to that.

When I was a lead guy on a smaller beat (as a young, liberal millennial), I got that treatment once every few months, mostly because the coach was way oversensitive. My hope was to keep my powder dry, use that capital when it actually mattered. Instead I got the joy of calling the guy directly after a coaching search process that rankled him a great deal to ask how it felt to miss two jobs he was interested in and be stuck at a small program for another year (management was high on coaching search traffic and couched the desire for one more hit in "journalism"). As a young reporter, I probably deflected too much upward, saying the editors were asking for it, though that might have more to do with me than the average millennial.

One thing I wonder about is stories like the one you mentioned about firing a coach over clock management. Unsure if it's just my corner of the internet and world, but it seems a lot of older writers want to write that shoot from the hip-type thing and younger writers might lean more toward nuance. That case is certainly not nuanced (you've said yourself someone like Barnwell understates the difficulty of clock management), so I hope writers young and old can put the care into writing the "unpopular" pieces.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Yeah, white males just can't catch a break.

Well, that's my layoff and thousands of others summed up in a nice, neat bow.

But I guess it's good to have someone spread the first layer of white liberal guilt.

 

[lcjjdnh]

App still needs some work if they’re really trying to replace the newspaper sports section. For starters, so far as I can tell, there’s no way to check box scores except for the teams you follow, a universe that is itself limited by the teams it covers? Kind of annoying. Of course I can also check that sort of stuff on ESPN, but it’d be nice to have an all-in-one solution—especially since their co-founders say they want us to make us “Fall in Love With The Sports Page Again.”*

(*Although I’m not quite I’ve fallen out of love with the printed paper—nothing I know of replicates the efficiency of the baseball agate page, setting aside that nowadays the paper is printed without half the scores.)

 

[Azrael]

Well, that's my layoff and thousands of others summed up in a nice, neat bow.

But I guess it's good to have someone spread the first layer of white liberal guilt.

I'm sorry, shotty. It's bad news whenever anyone loses a job.

But I don't think you or thousands of others were laid off in service of diversity.

 

[boundforboston]

App still needs some work if they’re really trying to replace the newspaper sports section. For starters, so far as I can tell, there’s no way to check box scores except for the teams you follow, a universe that is itself limited by the teams it covers? Kind of annoying.

It seems to be the same regarding podcasts.

 

[YankeeFan]

New hire in NYC.

 

[boundforboston]

Dennis Lin of San Diego Union Tribune, Jake Kaplan of Houston Chronicle and Bernie Miklasz have joined. Houston, Los Angeles and San Diego all had sites launched today in addition to New York City, Cincinnati and Dallas.