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The New York Times has announced the disbandment of its sports department, leaving many employees uncertain about their future within the company.
The decision comes after the newspaper’s acquisition of The Athletic in 2022, which has apparently prompted a shift in the Times’ sports coverage strategy.
Over the weekend, a group of sports department employees sent a letter to the newspaper’s ownership seeking clarification about their roles and expressing their concerns about feeling neglected.
They expressed a sense of being “twisting in the wind” since the acquisition of The Athletic.
On Monday, the Times responded to the employees’ letter, but the announcement likely did little to appease those who had voiced their concerns. The newspaper revealed that they would be dissolving their sports department entirely, entrusting all sports coverage to The Athletic, both online and in print.
The executive editor of The New York Times, Joe Kahn, and the deputy managing editor, Monica Drake, explained the decision in an email to the Times newsroom.
They outlined plans to concentrate on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism that explores the intersection of sports with money, power, culture, politics, and society at large. Simultaneously, they stated that the newsroom’s coverage of games, players, teams, and leagues would be significantly scaled back.
The disbandment of the sports department marks another blow to the Times’ sports journalism team, which had already undergone downsizing in recent years. This latest move will affect more than 35 journalists and editors who had remained in the department prior to Monday’s announcement.
ESPN has recently let go of about 20 members of their network as well.
The acquisition of The Athletic likely played a role in this redirection, as the company may have seen an opportunity to consolidate sports coverage under one brand while allocating resources to other areas of journalism.