The guys on FAN 960 just spoke about The Athletic with Stephen Brunt.
Brunt seemed unsure of the longevity of such ventures. While wishing them success, his argument seemed to be that he was uncertain that consumers would be willing to shell out cash for an online "writer's platform" over the long term. The guys all discussed the decline of newspaper sports pages as being one reason for the emergence of sites like The Athletic, but seemed to imply that there's no certainty in online journalism either.
I'm one of those luddites who still gets the Herald every morning...it's a habit I can't break. I start with the sports each day. I miss George Johnson a lot, but enjoy Kristen Odland and the beat writers for the Stamps. On Wednesdays, there's a CFL round-up that's quite good too. During the NHL season, there's usually a decent weekend sports package covering a bunch of cities' stories of interest. In the past year, the Herald eliminated then reinstated boxscores from the major N.A. leagues due to reader complaints (there still do exist many of us who like to see the baseball and hockey game scoring summaries in black and white print!)
Nevertheless, today's newspaper coverage definitely pales in comparison to even fifteen years ago, columnist and content-wise.
From that perspective, if The Athletic's focus is in part to revive some of that tradition, I wish them nothing but the best. It may finally be my incentive to switch to an online platform for reading sports news.
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