• by Ray Schultz , June 12, 2023

The Athletic, the sports news outlet acquired  by The New York Times last year, has laid off nearly 4% of its newsroom staff on Monday, totaling nearly 20 people. 

In addition, more than 20 reporters will be reassigned in a “significant reorganization” of the newsroom, said David Perpich, publisher and Steven Ginsberg, executive editor, in a note to the staff, according to the Times. 

The publication is shifting away from having one beat reporter per sports team to a broader approach, ““telling the most compelling stories for fans across the teams in a given league, drawing on both local and national reporting expertise.”

However, even with these changes, “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,” Perpich and Ginsberg wrote. “At the end of this process, we will have more than 100 beat reporters on teams.”

The Times acquired The Athletic for $550 million in January 2022. The title had more than one million subscribers at that time, but had operating lossess of roughly $55 million in 2021, the Times continues. 

The Athetlic, which operates separately from the Times newsroom and sports section, lost about $36 million from the time of the acquisition to the end of 2022, the Times writes.