The Athletic coming to Calgary - Page 12 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

Resolute 14 · 10-10-2017, 02:09 PM

Just checked in for the first time in about a week.

Top story is still Oilers beating the Flames. Aside for one subsection, all front page stories are from October 3-5, except for a few from September 24 (!). No Flames/Calgary content posted at all since October 6. No story or recap of any kind about any of our last two games. No story on Jagr signing.

Then again, the only two stories posted in the Edmonton section since then was a Micheal Russo piece that was cross tagged because the Oilers were mentioned once, and a post by someone named "Black Dog Pat" where he mostly talks about himself and his kids.

Not an especially impressive start. It seems they may have spread themselves too thin.

Insane_Flame · 10-10-2017, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Just checked in for the first time in about a week.

Top story is still Oilers beating the Flames. Aside for one subsection, all front page stories are from October 3-5, except for a few from September 24 (!). No Flames/Calgary content posted at all since October 6. No story or recap of any kind about any of our last two games. No story on Jagr signing.

Then again, the only two stories posted in the Edmonton section since then was a Micheal Russo piece that was cross tagged because the Oilers were mentioned once, and a post by someone named "Black Dog Pat" where he mostly talks about himself and his kids.

Not an especially impressive start. It seems they may have spread themselves too thin.

I was really close to getting a subscription....no anymore.

PeteMoss · 10-10-2017, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Just checked in for the first time in about a week.

Top story is still Oilers beating the Flames. Aside for one subsection, all front page stories are from October 3-5, except for a few from September 24 (!). No Flames/Calgary content posted at all since October 6. No story or recap of any kind about any of our last two games. No story on Jagr signing.

Then again, the only two stories posted in the Edmonton section since then was a Micheal Russo piece that was cross tagged because the Oilers were mentioned once, and a post by someone named "Black Dog Pat" where he mostly talks about himself and his kids.

Not an especially impressive start. It seems they may have spread themselves too thin.

They did say they weren't going to do game recaps since you can get them anywhere. But yes - not a ton of Flames content. A fair bit of stuff on the NHL page and MLB and the rest. But not recommended for Flames content now.

corporatejay · 10-10-2017, 02:27 PM

I'm hoping they write a good jagr piece in a few days or so. That's the point. Put the time in. Make it worth the read. Why post something about jagr signing with the flames when everyone else is covering it

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Resolute 14 · 10-10-2017, 02:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

They did say they weren't going to do game recaps since you can get them anywhere. But yes - not a ton of Flames content. A fair bit of stuff on the NHL page and MLB and the rest. But not recommended for Flames content now.

Which is fine, except they had Duhatschek do an Oilers puff piece recapping the opening night game as a coatrack for a post to fawn about McDavid. I can get that anywhere else too.

The main NHL page looks busier, but when you consider it is an aggregation of the 14 city specific pages with NHL teams, it's still thin. And that's fine - they are just starting out in most places - but it also underscores the complete lack of content for the western Canadian teams. Interestingly, Kent Wilson has been MIA for a week. The start of the season is an odd time to disappear.

Mostly though, the completely broken front page makes things look worse than they are. It's all old news. That is partially because I have tagged the Flames and Blue Jays as my favourite teams, and nothing has really been posted about either, but that just signals that the system should be defaulting to new material network wide.

Tyler · 10-10-2017, 02:58 PM

I think people need to realize that this is more of a magazine-style site and not a newspaper site, where you are gonna get an article a day.

bax · 10-10-2017, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Just checked in for the first time in about a week.

Top story is still Oilers beating the Flames. Aside for one subsection, all front page stories are from October 3-5, except for a few from September 24 (!). No Flames/Calgary content posted at all since October 6. No story or recap of any kind about any of our last two games. No story on Jagr signing.

Then again, the only two stories posted in the Edmonton section since then was a Micheal Russo piece that was cross tagged because the Oilers were mentioned once, and a post by someone named "Black Dog Pat" where he mostly talks about himself and his kids.

Not an especially impressive start. It seems they may have spread themselves too thin.

Not that I disagree with you that things have been slow lately, but some of this isn’t true. There were two articles on the Jagr signing as well as a really unique piece on the Hamilton brothers.

handgroen · 10-10-2017, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tyler

i think people need to realize that this is more of a magazine-style site and not a newspaper site, where you are gonna get an article a day.

good point plus we had the thanksgiving long weekend and october 5th was just thursday of the previous week

Resolute 14 · 10-10-2017, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bax

Not that I disagree with you that things have been slow lately, but some of this isn’t true. There were two articles on the Jagr signing as well as a really unique piece on the Hamilton brothers.

Ahh crap, you're right. I actually missed the Duhatschek piece on Jagr. Which is amazing given it hasn't exactly fallen off the front page despite being eight days old. The Hamilton article is 14 days old, which is why I didn't include it.

Ultimately though, we've gone from one Flames article a day at the end of September to nothing in a week. The Oilers are basically in the same boat. Vancouver three since October 6, Ottawa two, Winnipeg two since October 4. Montreal is getting daily updates since their lead writer is really engaged, and Toronto multiple daily - which is expected since its the only previously established Canadian site.

corporatejay · 10-10-2017, 05:56 PM

I'm hoping they write a good jagr piece in a few days or so. That's the point. Put the time in. Make it worth the read. Why post something about jagr signing with the flames when everyone else is covering it

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

P-DAZZLE · 10-10-2017, 07:52 PM

Seems like there is some really good content for the NFL and MLB that comes in daily. Film analysis. Roster speculation. Features. Breakdowns of coach interviews/press conferences. For the NHL it seems like there is none of this. Little bit disappointed with the money spent right now. Almost every article I read is good to great; however, I thought there would be a bit more content than the current rate even though it's still a starting period.

saillias · 10-11-2017, 09:19 AM

I've been mulling on this for a while and not sure how to put it because I think the writers may read this place. But I don't like the value of Athletic Calgary coverage so far. It's like they took Kent Wilson's work that he did at FlamesNation, and add in Duha's work that he did for the Globe & Mail, call them "the Athletic Calgary" while having them change nothing and write the same articles, and charge people to subscribe. I like Kent Wilson's work but I was seeing it for free. FlamesNation is good for what it is. Now I'm paying for the same content.

robaur · 10-11-2017, 09:36 AM

I'm very happy with my subscription. I read a lot of the content they have on other teams/leagues. There's enough Flames content to read on a regular-basis that Athletic isn't really where I go to check out Flames content.

LanceUppercut · 10-11-2017, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by saillias

I've been mulling on this for a while and not sure how to put it because I think the writers may read this place. But I don't like the value of Athletic Calgary coverage so far.

The Calgary coverage could really use one more writer as Duhatschek is shared between Calgary/Edmonton and Winnipeg. That being said, Duha's articles are worth it and being able to read some more in depth coverage on other teams is great. I got in on a 50% promotion, so the price I'm paying for the first year is more than adequate for what I'm getting at the moment. I will be re-evaluating after the season to see if I will keep it or not.

Mazrim · 10-11-2017, 09:46 AM

If you're only on The Athletic for Calgary based news, then I would agree it's probably not worth the money. However, I've been really enjoying reading content from other NHL teams so far, and it's been definitely worth the money for that alone.

Arsenal14 · 10-11-2017, 10:11 AM

They definitely need to expand their Calgary staff. The content that is produced on the site is good (I read a pretty good article on Dustin Byfuglien's play this morning and there is a ton of Blue Jays stuff) but there isn't enough right now to justify the price. Darren Haynes alone generates more Flames quality content for free than we're getting on The Athletic. Even one more writer would help. And they really should remove the Stampeders link if they aren't going to have any articles.

Braden · 10-11-2017, 10:28 AM

I'm still pretty surprised there hasn't been an article regarding "beating the curse" in Anahiem, figured they would have had someone all over that. I think they just need to offer Darren Haynes a bigger paycheck, Ive always loved his take on the flames.

Samonadreau · 10-11-2017, 10:35 AM

It seemed like Kent wrote more when he was part of FN. I realize the point of the Athletic is quality over qauntity but his last piece was a transctibed interview without much more meat on it. That being said i am interested to see what articles come out when we get deeper into the season and agree that you probably need to be interested in reading material from throughout the nhl or even other leagues to get the full bang for your buck here. I mostly enjoy it.

Resolute 14 · 10-11-2017, 10:59 AM

Kent was writing up a storm in the first week or so of the Athletic. Why he's gone MIA in the last week is a bit of a mystery.

GullFoss · 10-11-2017, 12:12 PM

I have the Athletic and I find myself ignoring Kent's stuff. Its just too analytics heavy, and to be honest, I don't find it especially insightful.

1) Too much emphasis on advanced statistics makes for poor story telling. I don't have an issue with advance stats, I just don't think he uses them properly. Advance stats should be weaved into the story to provide evidence. His articles feel like data dump of statistics...its not very good storytelling. The statistics are basically the story with his writing.

2) Its not clear that the stats he cites are strong enough to stand on their own. And as someone with a background in statistics, I don't find the pure stats articles very compelling either. The advanced stats used in most articles are subject to a lot of false positive and have a wide standard of error. I can imagine how advanced stats are useful within an organization, but I dont think they're using Corsi or WOWY. I think more often than not, stats have to be more micro-detailed to eliminate the large degree of error that plagues high level advanced stats.