On that front, though, one quote in Strauss’ piece from former Times sports editor Jason Stallman (now helping the company with this transition) stands out: “The Athletic is trying to get the attention of hardcore sports fans. And it makes sense for Times employees (and particularly Times sports employees) to try and maintain the distinction between those two departments, especially if they’re worried their own staffing level may be cut.
It makes sense that any Athletic unionization would involve their writers as a separate unit. As Strauss notes, there were significant unionization discussions after the Wirecutter acquisition, which eventually saw the Wirecutter unit reach a deal with management last December. The bargaining unit discussion there is perhaps especially notable, and that’s specifically relevant to the eventual “Always identify yourself specifically as a representative of The Athletic (and not the New York Times)” policy the Times settled on. The Times declined to comment on whether it planned to maintain the current size of its sports desk. Since the Times is committed to investing in the Athletic as a key tentpole of its subscription offering, one obvious way to cut some of its sports coverage costs, multiple staffers said, would be to shrink the Times’s sports desk, not through layoffs but by not filling jobs that come open. That is another reason that the Times would never want Athletic staffers to be able to say they are Times sportswriters, according to a person familiar with the Times-NewsGuild dynamic. And Times management would want it that way, rather than grow the current bargaining unit by hundreds of members. …If the Athletic’s newsroom were to unionize, it would almost certainly be its own bargaining unit, separate from the Times newsroom. And some Athletic reporters chafed at the Times implementing restrictions on political donations and commentary on social media, as Defector reported. The Times has created a team to examine Athletic policies and, going forward, will limit or at least need to sign off on journalists authoring books with players they cover, as some British soccer reporters have.
Times sports staffers have also asked repeated questions about standards at the Athletic, the Times staffers said. This summer, the Times and the Athletic ran identical stories about a Yankees pitcher in the span of a few days.
#Wirecutter nytimes series#
(The Times declined to confirm how many staffers were on its sports desk.) The sports staff has had a series of meetings with higher-ups at the Times, including Perpich and executive editor Joe Kahn, asking questions about how work is promoted and how and whether they are supposed to compete with the Athletic on stories. The Times has started to promote the Athletic on its homepage and in its Twitter feed, which has sapped morale among the sports department of around 40 to 50 people, according to multiple staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company business.
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