US news outlet The New York Times (NYT) has announced that it is disbanding its sports department, with future coverage to be supplied by The Athletic, the sports website the company bought last year.
The NYT has said that there are no planned layoffs, with the 35 editors and reporters currently working for the sports department moving to other roles within the newsroom.
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In a letter to staff sent yesterday (July 10), The NYT’s chair AG Sulzberger and chief executive Meredith Kopit Levien said: “Though we know this decision will be disappointing to some, we believe it is the right one for readers and will allow us to maximize the respective strengths of The Times’ and The Athletic’s newsrooms.
“Under our plan, the digital homepage, newsletters, social feeds, the sports landing page, and the print section will draw from even more of the approximately 150 stories The Athletic produces each day chronicling leagues, teams, and players across the United States and around the globe.”
In a separate email to The NYT newsroom, executive editor Joe Khan and deputy managing editor Monia Drake, said: “We plan to focus even more directly on distinctive, high-impact new and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics, and society at large.
“At the same time, we will scale back the newsroom’s coverage of games, players, teams, and leagues.”
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By GlobalDataIn January last year, The NYT announced it was acquiring The Athletic as part of a strategy to expand its audience of paying subscribers and mitigate the effects of newspaper print advertising falling.
The deal was worth $550 million.
The Athletic, founded in 2016 and primarily focused on mainstream US sports and European soccer, boasts 400 journalists covering over 200 individual sports clubs and teams worldwide.
However, it has yet to turn a profit. The year before The NYT’s buyout, it incurred operating losses of around $55 million having secured $65 million in revenue. In the first quarter of this year, meanwhile, it reported a loss of $7.8 million.
The NYT said the number of paid subscribers was more than 3 million in March, up from 1 million when the company was purchased.
Image: Paul Rovere/Getty Images
