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Tuesday 11th July: New York Times to disband sports department
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Announcing an ‘evolution’ in its sports coverage, The New York Times has said it is disbanding its sports department. In future, it will instead turn to coverage of teams and games from its website The Athletic, both online and in print.
An email to the publications newsroom said the Times’ coverage would now focus more ‘how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large’. That means leaving coverage of games, players, teams and leagues to The Athletic.
Someone more cycical than me might say the NYT bought The Athletic for its audience, but is now using the purchase to justify cuts. What I find interesting is the potential for alignment with Jacob Donnelly’s belief in the development of a national and a local subscription mix. Reduced coverage of teams and games might be an opportunity for local brands.
The FT’s B2B division, launched in 2007, makes up three-quarters of the FT’s paying readership. Revenue has grown at an average of more than 10% each year since 2018. A rebrand to FT Professional will see it target growth industries of professional services, law, media and tech alongside its existing core sectors of financial services, banking, government and education.
This echoes some of what Thomas Baekdal was saying in the article Esther shared yesterday. The lawsuit against OpenAI claims the three authors “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material for ChatGPT.” I get the frustration, but I think the train has already left the station. The future has to be about being better at the things AI can’t do, like being funny and building brands.
This is a mess for all sorts of reasons, but whatever has or hasn’t gone on, the BBC is facing yet more accusations of cover ups and staff wrong doing. The allegations reported by The Sun have been dismissed as ‘rubbish’, but the keyboard vigilantes are out in force, accusing everyone from sports presenters to news readers and chat show hosts. The headline on Chartlotte Tobitt’s ‘Who reads the Sun?’ piece last week has taken on a whole new resonance.
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