A number of employees of The New York Times’ sports department sent a letter to the newspaper’s ownership over the weekend asking for clarification about their future because they felt they have been “twisting in the wind” since the company purchased The Athletic in 2022.
They got that clarification on Monday, but it probably didn’t come as a comfort to many of those who signed the letter. The Times announced that they are disbanding their sports department and that The Athletic will handle all sports coverage online and in print.
“We plan to focus even more directly on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large,” executive editor Joe Kahn and deputy managing editor Monica Drake wrote in an email to the Times newsroom on Monday. “At the same time, we will scale back the newsroom’s coverage of games, players, teams and leagues.”
The Times had downsized their sports department in recent years and this move will impact more than 35 journalists and editors who remained on the desk ahead of Monday’s announcement.
