Lee Heidhues 7.17.2023
I am so shocked The New York Times is blowing its sports page to oblivion.
When I first read the news of this inexplicable act by America’s most well known newspaper I didn’t understand. Perhaps, because I did not think such an action was possible.
Sports are integral part of the global landscape. How the Times could do this for what appears financial reasons and nothing else boggles my mind. As a lifelong follower of sports.
I will let the excellent sports journalist Dave Zirin explain it better than I.
Excerpted from The Nation 7.17.2023 – Dave Zirin
I read the New York Post more voraciously, but my dream was to be a good enough journalist to write about sports for The New York Times.
It would have felt like getting a work of art into a museum. Now, that sports section is gone. The New York Times shuttered its sports page, a victim of greed and union busting.
This announcement came hours after a similar one from the Los Angeles Times that it would be closing its doors to sports coverage as well. As Boston Globe senior columnist Bob Ryan wrote, July 10 is “a day that will live in infamy” for anyone who cares about sports writing as a profession.
The New York Times will replace its sports coverage with the website The Athletic, which it purchased for $550 million 18 months ago in an effort to boost its own subscription base. Now, another side of the attractiveness of The Athletic purchase is revealing itself. The staff there is nonunion.
Mere weeks after a contentious labor battle that put Times management on its heels, a section of the union has been gutted. In a rather nauseating statement on the closure, New York Times Chairman A.G. Sulzberger and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said that this was all part of a bigger plan “to become a global leader in sports journalism, which represents a major pillar of our company strategy to be the essential subscription for curious people around the world.”
How one becomes a “global leader in sports journalism” by blithely wrecking your sports page and outsourcing the labor away from deep-dive coverage is a question they should be pressed to answer.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/new-york-times-sports-page/
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