'All the Staff That's Fit to Cut'

Word that the New York Times intends to shutter its sports department was predictably discouraging or discouragingly predictable or, for those averse to adverbs, a heavy blow or just plain sad. It was a surprise only to those who drive while focused solely on the hundred feet of pavement and taillights directly in front of them and suddenly wonder where the storm clouds came from. 

The Times will still have a sports *section* but will fill it with material from The Athletic, the subscription site that it purchased last year for a hefty $550 million. The Times’ move, in the vernacular, will eliminate a redundancy. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that the redundancy is comprised of actual human beings, but it follows the current newspaper ownership prescription for fiscal health: a cyanide drip for the help, along with targeted organ harvests and amputations. 

The Times’ sports department has always felt a little like a Jell-O shot station at a black-tie affair. This is less a criticism of the sports staff and more a reflection of how the Times views itself. National paper doing Important Work. The Gray Lady. All the News That’s Fit to Print. Almost as if covering games and athletes was obligatory or a concession to the way papers were always constructed. 

The Times’ sports department has employed plenty of heavy hitters and marvelous writers through the years – Dave Anderson, Red Smith, Arthur Daley and more recently, Pulitzer winner John Branch, to name a few – and did terrific work related to concussions and performance-enhancing drugs. But few people read the Times for its sports coverage, and in what was undoubtedly a consideration by the bean counters, few will cancel their subscriptions because management wants to turf the existing sports department. 

Bosses said that there will be no layoffs, which is accurate but hardly true. Present staff, they said, will be relocated to other departments such as business and breaking news. Understand that few journalists get into sports writing because they aspire to write obituaries or cover train derailments. If they refuse their new assignments and leave, well, they weren’t laid off. In six months, when Corporate concludes that the bottom line will be less costly with fewer reporters and editors, people will be given the opportunity for buyouts or streamlined or some other euphemism for: you’re no longer wanted. But every bit of future downsizing will have no connection to that unfortunate business with the sports department, nosireee. 

Passive aggressive that’s more “aggressive” than “passive.” 

There’s an organized labor component to this situation. The Times is a union shop, The Athletic is not. The Guild is understandably torqued off and plans to challenge. In a statement, the Guild said that the company “is attempting to outsource union jobs on our sports desk to a non-union Times subsidiary under the preposterous argument that The Times can ‘subcontract’ its sports coverage to itself.” To which we say: good luck with that fight. 

The Times’ announcement was half of a bi-coastal thump to sports coverage this week. The Los Angeles Times announced that it would no longer run box scores, standings or game stories in its print edition. It will still carry them online, but the sale of its printing press and increasingly early deadlines meant that it was unable to get evening results into the next morning’s paper. In a letter to readers, LAT sports editor Iliana Romero wrote that the Times’ sports section introduces “a new era” that will “take on the look and feel of a daily sports magazine.” … “We are making this change to adapt to how readers follow news and sporting events each day while managing rising production costs. You no longer will see box scores, standings and traditional game stories, but those will be replaced by more innovative reporting, in-depth profiles, unique examinations of the way teams operate, investigations, our distinct columnists’ voices, elite photography and more.” 

Romero is correct that people follow sports differently and that change is afoot. Many daily papers now have dinner-time deadlines due to consolidation and printing press and distribution issues. What she didn’t say is that all this innovation and investigation and new era hooha is in addition to the day-to-day grind. A depleted staff whose needle is already red-lined now has even more to tackle. You still have to get the box scores and gamers and standings and trades and contract negotiations and injury reports to the website. Otherwise, folks get out of the habit of clicking in, which is hardly ideal for reader engagement. You cannot pivot away from daily stuff to emphasize big-picture, investigative work, because daily work is precisely what provides the foundation and entre’ for whatever in-depth and innovative things you dream up for the already overworked staff. 

The guess is that Romero is well aware of all this, but enjoys her paycheck and plays along so that the Reaper focuses elsewhere. Like the Big Apple. New York Times brass touted the decision to use The Athletic as an opportunity to expose readers to a broader array of sports coverage, while Athletic bosses talked up the idea of reaching new readers. In theory, a national and at times international lineup of sports coverage dovetails with the Times’ overall journalistic reach. But the Times already does that to some degree, sending folks hither and yon in addition to covering the Yankees and Knicks and Jets. And again, no one picks up the Times solely for sports, and they won’t do so because suddenly they might find an interesting piece about TCU’s football coach or Ronald Acuña Jr., or even local practitioners Jalen Brunson or Gerrit Cole. 

Nope, this is an employee dump dressed as an upgrade and an example of the First Rule of Plumbing and Business: shit flows downhill.