Look at the cold winter of “sports media” from another angle.
What does it feel like to be unemployed at an advanced age? Bob Kravitz, 63, is worried now that he may not be able to retire with an iron rice bowl. A month ago, he was laid off by The Athletic (hereinafter referred to as TA). He really experienced a “crisis”. It was unrealistic to change his career. If he still wanted to make money until retirement, I can only get up and find another job. In addition to writing for a magazine with a few audiences in Indianapolis, I started a paid Blog on Substack. According to his statement, it is to subsidize some families. For most sports practitioners and fans, TA’s name must be no stranger. This is one of the largest and most professional national sports media in the United States at present, and it is also one of the first sports media to try a full pay wall. TA once stood on the tuyere of The Times and expanded savagely. However, when the main theme of The Times became “cost reduction and efficiency enhancement”, TA was not immune. Even if the subscription price kept rising, the subscription users exceeded 3 million, last year, he was forced to sell his body to the New York Times (hereinafter referred to as newtime) at a discount of 0.55 billion yuan. Then he started another wave of layoffs and fired 20 journalists at one time. Kravitz was among them. TA joined the newtime media matrix, which directly threatened the sports edition of the newspaper headquarters. When Kravitz complained about TA in his blog, newshay had already abolished the sports edition, allowing editors and journalists to transfer their posts, thus ending the reporting tradition of this department for more than a century. Kravitz himself came from paper media and experienced the glory of “Sports illustrated” in the 1980 s and 1990 s. Later he worked in TV stations and newspapers in Indianapolis. He thought he could take root in this city forever, but ten years ago, facing the impact of social media platforms, he had already died of this heart. When he worked in a place where the Internet attribute was greater than the media attribute, the old pen pole experienced bitterness, it’s really hard to say. “In the past, I sat in front of the computer and could completely immerse myself in the idea of a column or report, and gained great happiness from it, even without knowing the passage of time. That is the pure pleasure of writing, which is my favorite job and gives me great confidence and confidence. Now I am a little afraid to go back to the computer and start writing again. No matter how many times they tell you that the layoff is just a business decision and has nothing to do with your ability to work, you will feel that it is personal to you, “Kravitz wrote in his blog. He said that when writing for TA, what he needs to consider is not whether he wrote it or not, but whether it is appropriate to select points and whether the writing method can reach the traffic index. The TA page of Kravitz shows that it is an old North American sports gun. Subscription volume is the focus of the assessment. Kravitz said that he had a heart operation in 2020, but during the rest period, he still had to undertake the task of adding 395 subscriptions for three months, he said that he spent half of his life and finally overfulfilled it, but this incident completely made him lose any fantasy about this company-“I can feel it from my bones, they didn’t treat me as a person at all.” In the end, the kpi reached by desperate efforts could not prevent his fate of being cut, “the reason they gave me was that my market was too small and they wanted to face the whole country”. Ironically, the slogan TA shouted at the beginning of its establishment was to pay enough attention to the minority teams and competitions. “When I first joined the company, journalists would report college basketball, walkers and Colts, while I was a columnist. Now there is only one person left on the whole website who is responsible for local events and only reports the News of the Colts. If you are a sports fan from Indiana, isn’t it a waste of money to subscribe to TA? Not reporting college basketball here is as outrageous as not reporting Hockey in Toronto.” Indiana, the most important thing is campus sports In such a editing room environment, the quality of articles is no longer the most important thing. For a media that relies on Readers’ Subscription as the main revenue, it sounds a bit incredible, but this is the reality. Kravitz said that he changed four docking editors in four years, reflecting the high job mobility. “I worked hard to write a draft, but it turned out to be a subscription and 2,000 browsing. It was really too destructive.” The 63-year-old Kravitz is still unsettled. Even if he has not experienced the waves of the times, his ability to settle down is completely denied by the cold capital, such bitter fruit is definitely hard to swallow. Yes, no matter the TA, which once burned money and expanded wildly in the world, or the New York City with a market value of up to 6.6 billion US dollars, it is not a philanthropist. Sometimes, the more gratifying the earnings of large groups are, the more difficult it may be for the employees below. Some insiders analyzed the shrinking of TA from the perspective of the reform of content form and the overall depression of the news industry. However, in fact, the new time on which TA backed was a rare exception. In 2022, its monthly active users were 0.145 billion, the total revenue is 0.231 billion, far exceeding the pre-epidemic level. At present, the total number of subscribers is approaching the 10 million th mark. In the past ten years, the media environment has been going on, and the advertising revenue has been basically taken away by Google Facebook. Most people can’t find the direction of profit by content. However, under such a background, new York’s ability to turn losses into profits and get out of the downturn by subscription is indeed an industry beacon. When TA first came out, it was obvious that he wanted to copy the new time model and stick to deep (or paper media) reporting. This kind of news ideal really attracted a large number of practitioners. The sports sector of American local Metropolis Daily was basically dead as early as ten years ago when it was hit by the Internet. Even ESPN was not spared, and TA also took the opportunity to dig for people. In 2018, TA’s editorial team expanded from 65 to more than 300 in just 10 months, and the number of subscribers doubled. From 2019 to 2020, TA burned a total of $0.1 billion in financing. In the seven years since its establishment, TA has never made profits. It lost more than 40 million last year and nearly 8 million in the first quarter of this year. In terms of operation, TA has always been guided by the growth of subscriptions, in other words, to write popular articles. However, the contradiction lies in the fact that the explosion is often found in popular teams, which doomed the piston and Pacers not to be valued. Now, it is no surprise that the Bay Area team, which has always been able to make traffic explosion, always makes some arguments that fear that the world will not be in chaos (after Durant’s Achilles tendon rupture in 2019, we once pointed the finger at this media). Then, the epidemic changed everything. From Disney to Netflix to newshey and TA, the era of traffic King is over. Everyone is keeping profits at all costs, and it is self-evident who this price is. In 2020, TA made a large-scale layoff (accounting for 8%), which shocked the whole industry. After burning up nearly 0.15 billion dollars of financing, TA, which is difficult to raise, will eventually be unable to stand up. This has to talk about the powerful labor union in Newtown headquarters. The dissolution of the sports department in New York spread to more than 30 journalists and editors, but no one was dismissed because of the existence of trade unions. It was in May that New York reached an agreement with the Union after more than two years of difficult negotiations to raise the salary for all employees. The lower the salary, the larger the salary increase. The minimum annual salary increased from 37500 to 65000 US dollars. Whether it is cleaning or security, everyone has a share, while the average annual salary of union members increased to 160000 US dollars. This victory was the result of the Union’s hard struggle. On the day of the shareholders’ meeting held in New York at the end of last year, more than 1,100 union employees signed a strike agreement and conducted a 24-hour strike. There are more than 1,800 employees in the editorial department of Newtown, and nearly 1,500 members of the Union. For such a large-scale newspaper, such a 24-hour strike has to rise to the sky for another stock price and senior officials. However, the operation of TA is independent of New York and is not under the protection of the New York news industry union. Naturally, there is no scruple to dismiss people. In fact, since the news that newshay was going to buy TA spread, the editorial room of the headquarters had been fried. The Ministry of Sports once sent a letter to protest against the merger with TA. Fools all know that this acquisition is a threat to their jobs, but no one can prevent capital from transferring contradictions to the lower level. This dissatisfaction accumulated to a certain extent, and even senior insider journalist shames charanaya inevitably became the object of venting. Not long ago, charrania broke the news during the draft that Hornets might choose Skut Henderson’s rumor (some people would say it was false information), which led to fluctuations in the gambling market. In addition to being a Trump reporter of TA, charrania also has a cooperative relationship with gambling company FanDuel. Some Times employees directly publicly condemned charrania’s professional ethics online. In fact, the news of God wo also caused a large fluctuation in odds, but he had nothing to do with gambling companies, and the news ethics were not questioned. The literati stabbed each other most fiercely. God wowan damaged charrania from head to tail without using a dirty word. Even if the fate of being cut (temporarily) is avoided, these New York sports department employees will certainly become victims. The trade union filed a complaint for them without stopping, opposing the act of “outsourcing trade union positions to non-trade union subsidiaries (obviously referring to TA), and will” use all means to crack down on this attempt to openly undermine the trade union “. To some extent, it is the enterprises that can operate like newshay and make great efforts to make such a moth. At the same time when Newtown announced the revocation of the sports department, the Los Angeles Times, a major newspaper that once “dominated” the West Coast, also announced that it had officially cut down the contents of the match report, score update and team ranking. However, the serious media, such as Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, which were once famous for a while, only have a weak struggle in this industry (mainly contributing to the market) it’s just a newspaper. In 2021, when Newtown prepared to acquire TA, TA still had more than 600 employees. At that time, the two founders promised that the acquisition agreement included a clause that no layoffs were allowed. Today, the number of TA employees is about 450. In the face of the slowing down of advertising business and uncertain economic prospects, layoffs will continue, which will not be just a problem for the TA family. Next, there is a high probability that New York will deny the union’s accusation. If the Union chooses to be rigid, it can also seek relevant institutions to hold an arbitration hearing, which may lead to endless lawsuits. However, during this period, the New York sports edition, which once produced four Pulitzer Prize winners, will basically be completely ancient. In an internal email in response to the protest from the employees of the sports department and the labor union, newshay boss suzberg said, “We know that this decision will disappoint some people, but we believe that for readers, this is the right choice. Thinking about Kravitz’s recent experience, this sounds really ironic. Apart from reporters, the biggest loss of these personnel adjustments is probably the audience of fans. Only in the era when the importance of sports and entertainment has to step back for several steps, can you see the insights about the inside story of walkers (PS: another Scott Agness, who mainly ran the News of Indian city, was also cut) is it really that important? Welcome to our wechat public number “Houchang Village sports team” to see, there are more NBA, CBA related archaeology, comments and character content>> (Text/kewell)
