The New York Times subscription sports publication the Athletic laid off around 4 percent of its newsroom on Monday, according to a report from the newspaper.
The layoffs will impact around 20 journalists who will depart the Athletic this week, while another 20 reporters will be reassigned. Editors for the sports brand said the newsroom will shift away from having a single reporter covering a team to having overlapping beat reporters who tell “the most-compelling stories for fans across the teams in a given league.”
“Even with the changes being announced today, the size of our newsroom will grow this year compared to last, as will our overall investments in our editorial group in the years ahead,” the Atlhetic publisher David Perpich and executive editor Steven Ginsberg wrote in a note sent around the newsroom on Monday. “At the end of this process, we will have more than 100 beat reporters on teams”
The Athletic started in San Francisco several years ago with a mission of diving deeper into the business and culture of sports. Despite launching in San Francisco, it first covered sports in Chicago, before eventually expanding to produce sports-related news impacting 47 cities across North America. The New York Times acquired the brand for $550 million last year.
The layoffs come less than a week after union workers at the New York Times voted to ratify a new contract with the news organization that will see a significant expansion of pay and benefits for covered journalists.
Those benefits include a minimum salary of $65,000 per year, pay raises for all current union members, three new holidays, a cab fare stipend for workers who are on the job after 11 p.m., a guarantee to pay up to $50,000 for fertility-related services and 20 weeks of parental leave at full pay.
