Michael Powell, who wrote the New York Occasions’ “Sports activities of the Occasions” column between 2014 and 2020, used to get peppered by regional sports activities reporters about learn how to get a job on the New York Occasions, Los Angeles Occasions and Washington Put up.
Since then, the New York Occasions disbanded its sports activities division, offloading protection to the Athletic, which it acquired in 2022, and killed the seminal column that additionally featured star writers like Pink Smith, Robert Lipsyte, Selena Roberts and John Department. The Los Angeles Occasions stopped printing baseball field scores in 2023, and is reportedly down to simply 9 full-time sports activities employees writers. Earlier this month, the Washington Put up shuttered its sports activities part as a part of mass newsroom layoffs.
“It’s like so many areas in journalism now, the ladders are lacking a number of rungs,” mentioned Powell, who additionally spent 10 years on the Put up between 1996 and 2006 and is now a employees author for The Atlantic. “It’s much more tough in the event you don’t wish to simply do fanboy protection or fangirl protection.”
The Put up’s determination to chop its sports activities desk is the most recent signal of legacy shops scaling again each day protection of sports activities, a yearslong retrenchment that has offered a gap for sports-centric shops just like the Athletic and impartial journalists resembling Pablo Torre, a former Sports activities Illustrated author and ESPN persona who now has the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” to assist fill the hole. Sports activities groups, too, are producing shareable content material, as social media customers blast out clips of thunderous dunks and last-second drives that followers used to have to attend till SportsCenter to catch.
In a way, sports activities junkies are spoiled for alternative. However the retreat of nationwide newspapers gives fewer avenues for journalists to chop their enamel within the business, particularly when entry-level beats like highschool sports activities turn into line objects in a layoff. The shift additionally dangers robbing native audiences of in-depth and sustained protection of their hometown heroes.
It’s taking place at a time when there’s no scarcity of native sports activities information. Los Angeles is coping with the downfall of Casey Wasserman and his departure from one of many largest sports activities companies on the earth, to not point out the continuing controversy over his position as chairman of the LA28 Olympics committee. The FIFA World Cup kicks off in June, and the Tremendous Bowl returns to SoFi Stadium a yr from now.
So what’s the trail ahead? Information shops trying to compete in at present’s screen-addled age, journalists and consultants advised TheWrap, want to fulfill audiences the place they’re and lean into authentic, in-depth reporting that goes nicely past the field rating — the sort of work that may’t be replicated by a synthetic intelligence-powered bot.
“Individuals nonetheless need tales which might be related to their lives and revelatory in regards to the groups and leagues and sports activities they care about,” Steven Ginsburg, the editor in chief of the Athletic, advised TheWrap.
Ginsburg, a former Put up managing editor, leads a worthwhile newsroom of greater than 500 journalists protecting each main U.S. league, together with faculty sports activities, worldwide soccer, Components 1 and at the moment the Winter Olympics. The Athletic, like fellow digital-native outlet The Ringer, boasts a number of of the highest 10 sports activities podcasts on the Spotify and Apple charts.
“What has modified is how individuals get that info,” Ginsburg added. “It’s diverse in all types of the way, whether or not it’s video, visuals, knowledge, interactives, audio, newsletters, quick type, lengthy type. Generally individuals simply need the nugget of data, generally they need a 4,000-word story. I believe that’s the way in which journalism is altering, and I believe it’s incumbent upon shops to vary with followers.”
The Put up’s pivot
The Washington Put up has a venerable custom of standout sportswriting, having been house to ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” hosts Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser, columnist and Caitlan Clark biographer Christine Brennan, New Yorker editor David Remnick and the Atlantic’s Sally Jenkins, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Put up government editor Matt Murray acknowledged in an interview with the Occasions that the paper “does break by means of” at occasions with nice sports activities protection. However the Put up isn’t “seen digitally as a significant sports activities vacation spot,” mentioning the recognition of video and the way skilled leagues inform their very own tales.
Certainly, the first tab on the web site for the Tremendous Bowl-winning Seattle Seahawks is a “Information” tab, full with tales in regards to the group’s triumph, contemporary updates and options on gamers. The Washington Commanders have a information web page with comparable tales and options. Groups additionally submit sport clips on social media platforms moments after they occur, in addition to sport outcomes.
Going ahead, Murray mentioned the Put up will cowl sports activities as a cultural and societal phenomenon. However Put up readers additionally appeared to the paper for extra native choices, with greater than 30,000 customers following its highschool sports activities account on X.
Powell, an Atlantic employees author who wrote a guide chronicling a Navajo highschool basketball group, advised TheWrap that top faculty sports activities protection gives a degree of entry to gamers that reporters wouldn’t get on a collegiate or skilled degree. The protection permits them to comply with an athlete by means of faculty, and maybe, their skilled profession.
Ryan Hunt, a College of Florida lecturer and a former Sports activities Illustrated editor-in-chief, added: “Most sports activities reporters sort of received their begin protecting excessive faculties.”
“That beat isn’t as prevalent anymore in newspapers, particularly as there are fewer and fewer newspapers,” he added. “So the way in which into the business and solution to evolve by means of the business positively has modified.”
“Individuals comply with people”
Stay sports activities stays the linchpin of linear tv, and is more and more coveted by streamers like Amazon’s Prime Video and Netflix and Peacock. Sports activities accounted for 96 of the highest 100 telecasts of 2025, with the NFL dominating as this month’s Tremendous Bowl drew 124.9 million viewers throughout broadcast and digital platforms.
The extreme urge for food for sports activities protection has allowed for brand spanking new, partaking voices to surge. Torre launched “Pablo Torre Finds Out” with Dan Le Betard’s Meadowlark Media in 2023. The present has damaged a variety of tales, together with one alleging that the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented the wage cap to pay Kawhi Leonard, and generated buzz by means of its dogged reporting on Jordon Hustonthe 24-year-old girlfriend of former New England Patriots coach Invoice Belichick.
Kevin Merida, the previous government editor of the Los Angeles Occasions who beforehand labored as a Put up managing editor, mentioned Torre’s rise represented how personalities can supersede established manufacturers in sports activities journalism. For these manufacturers to remain related, he mentioned, they’ve to determine learn how to make use of the personalities they’ve at their disposal, as followers will flock to the place they’ll discover unique info.
“‘I do know Pablo Torre broke all that, so I’m going to stick with Pablo on that one,’” he mentioned, describing a hypothetical fan’s viewing habits. “Individuals comply with people. That’s the a part of the system we’re in.”
One other signal of the occasions: The Athletic minimize a cope with Torre final August to convey his present to its podcast community.
Viewers first
Ginsburg mentioned Athletic reporters are anticipated to deal with what followers care about most, and decide the easiest way to ship the story — whether or not that is still including graphics to a text-based piece or going the video route.
The Athletic has expanded its video and graphics arms, he mentioned, to prioritize such interactive storytelling strategies, resembling reporter-produced movies posted to its Olympics reside blogs and a brand new weekly video collection“The Athletic Present.”
“On the root of it, it’s what the followers wish to know, and what can we inform them that no one else is telling them?” mentioned Ginsburg, who known as the Put up’s determination to chop its sports activities desk “an actual physique blow to all journalists, and particularly so for these of us who had been on the Washington Put up.”
Some efforts at experimenting with expertise haven’t panned out. USA As we speak Co., previously Gannett, experimented with AI to jot down sport recaps of highschool video games in 2023 earlier than ending the follow after nationwide backlash.
Nonetheless, Ginsburg’s Athletic must innovate as a result of it additionally faces stiff competitors, he mentioned, pointing to the sports activities sections of the Every day Memphian, the Boston Globe and the Baltimore Banner. The California Put up, too, has additionally made sports activities reporting a spotlight, hiring a number of sports activities writers from the Los Angeles Occasions forward of the massive sporting occasions over the following two years.
“The profitable native shops on the market really lead with sports activities journalism,” he mentioned. “You see it on the prime of their e-newsletter, on the prime of their homepage. It’s of intense curiosity to individuals all throughout the nation — I believe really, curiosity in sports activities at each degree is throughout the board.”
Finally, Ginsburg mentioned, he felt the necessity “to show the worth of sports activities journalism” by means of the Athletic’s work, particularly in mild of the Put up’s sports-desk determination.
“Followers are into sports activities for many causes, however one of many massive ones is enjoyable, they usually wish to get good info out of it, and they also’ll gravitate to locations which might be enjoyable and that give them good info,” he mentioned. “On the Athletic, we’re making an attempt to do each.”
Jon Clegg, the Wall Road Journal’s government information editor and its former sports activities editor, mentioned the business-forward paper has lengthy lined sports activities past the native lens. Some provocative current items — “The Sudden Breakup That’s Shocked All of Tennis,” “Confessing Exes, Cursing Curlers and a Condom Scarcity: When the Olympics Get Bizarre” — are additionally more likely to attain readers who would possibly by no means trek to the sports activities part, together with diehard followers.
“We simply determined to not even try to cowl that form of commoditized sports activities information, and as an alternative attempt to do extra bold, extra attention-grabbing, extra authentic content material,” he mentioned. “I believe there’ll at all times be a marketplace for that.”
But when an outlet’s enterprise mannequin is native, then sports activities seem integral.
The Baltimore Banner, which launched in 2022 and final yr received its first Pulitzer Prize, introduced final week that it could develop its sports activities part to cowl Washington-based groups, noting that “wonderful sports activities journalism drives reader engagement and subscriber retention.”
“At a time when a lot pulls communities aside,” its announcement learn“sports activities convey us collectively.”
