I may have done this to myself.
I can’t imagine there are many fellow Penn State-Pittsburgh Steelers-Pittsburgh Pirates-Tampa Bay Lightning-DC United combo fans out there in the world.
And yes, I’m here to grumble about being a fan of those teams. But not in the sense that I’m so frustrated by Nikita Kucherov going so silent in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs that I want to complain about it.
I’m here to complain about something else this week that’s been on my mind for a few weeks, as it relates to those teams. It was the main place I got a lot of my coverage of Penn State, the Pirates, the Lightning and occasionally the United.
Emphasis on the word “was.”
Once again this week, I was reminded that The Athletic, once sold as a beacon of hope for sports journalism and sports fans searching for quality, one-stop coverage just a few short years ago, is no longer what I signed up for. Or rather, what I subscribed to.
Yet another reason for why I subscribe to The Athletic is leaving the sports media company that was acquired by the New York Times back in 2022 as DC-based soccer writer Pablo Maurer announced this week the company would not be keeping him past the end of June.
I know this is a slight change of pace from what you’re used to seeing on the blog, but this does impact Penn State’s sports media beat after all, and I think a lot of Penn Staters aren’t alone in the way their feeling about The Athletic right now.
Audrey Snyder, one of Penn State’s best beat writers, was the singular reason a lot of Nittany Lion fans had a subscription to The Athletic. However, in early April, Snyder announced her time with the company ended because The Athletic no longer wants “to cover Penn State with a full-time beat writer.”
And you see, even before Maurer – someone who I read with great regularity and think is one of the best soccer writers in America – announced he was no longer going to be working for the brand and even before Snyder made the announcement she’d been forced out, I was already feeling a void by The Athletic.
Longtime Tampa Bay Lightning beat writer Joe Smith moved to Minnesota back in 2022, which prompted him to take a more national role (one that he’s still doing a great job of). That left a hole on the Lightning beat from The Athletic that clearly wasn’t going to be or will ever be patched up.
Then in the summer of 2023, longtime Pittsburgh Pirates beat writer (and proud Penn State alum) Rob Biertempfel was laid off – once again leaving a gap in coverage from what was and supposedly is the future of sports journalism.
For those keeping score at home, that is four of my five main teams or leagues that I care about that I can no longer reliably depend on The Athletic for coverage of.
The Steelers beat writers have been a steady constant even if they’ve changed – and for obvious reasons. The shift in focus on the NFL is clear from the sports media outlet is noticeable and rightfully so. This is the most popular thing in America – and even somehow made the world’s most popular person a part of it – even by happenstance.
And in no uncertain terms, The Athletic still consistently produces incredible journalism that I enjoy reading and consuming.
But nonetheless, this is not why I signed up for The Athletic. When The Athletic rolled out its awe-dropping strategy – basically making it both the Avengers and Infinity Gauntlet of sports media – fans greatly benefited. Aside from incredibly well-written pieces, it offered a convenience of great coverage for all my teams and all of your teams and everyone’s team. It also offered a great sense of collaboration among popular writers and journalists that felt unique, fun and smartly done. Fans benefited from the voice they hired because they hired the best. They – in the 21st century – built the best.
Now, though, it seems those who lead it are tearing that down.
Just a few weeks after Snyder shared that the company would no longer be supporting a Penn State beat, Wisconsin football reporter Jesse Temple shared similar news, adding to the growing list of teams without dedicated coverage.
And sure, I get that the Pirates, the Lightning or the MLS aren’t exactly the most well-read verticals for the company. The Pirates are abysmal for a myriad of reasons that don’t exactly make you want to tune in or read about their performance. The Lightning play a sport that is by far North America’s fourth most popular. And the MLS can’t get out of its own way with weird TV contracts that won’t grow the game with accessibility in this country.
For those teams, I can – from a business sense – unfortunately understand why there is no replacement plan when investors are looking at line items. But I also struggle with the logic of The Athletic – from that business sense – in shutting off coverage of a team poised to make another deep College Football Playoff run with a deep, passionate fan base and “the largest dues-paying alumni association in the world.”
It’s why when Snyder shared her news, so many Penn Staters who only had a subscription for her work stated they’d be canceling.
Like those fans, I struggle with it in an ethical sense that The Athletic was sold to me, a sports fan, as not just a but the place where I could come to get all of that content to feel connected and knowledgeable about my teams. Now that’s all being ripped away and I, too, struggle with keeping the subscription.
That also isn’t fair to the talented people who still work there. It’s hard to find the feature writing that the company produces. It has, in just about every shape and fashion, supplanted Sports Illustrated’s ability to do that. There are insights about hockey and college football you truly can’t get anywhere else – and for right now, that is just enough to warrant me keeping a subscription to The Athletic.
Though much like the magazine (if one can call it that these days), The Athletic seems nowhere near where it used to be because it is avoiding the very principles that made it what it is.
This also isn’t to say that I can’t or don’t get my coverage elsewhere. Penn State fans – some of them ungratefully – are quite lucky to have a strong, deep beat that covers the Nittany Lions so well. Snyder has seemingly made it clear she wants to be a part of the Penn State beat moving forward through her work with the Centre Daily Times’ Jon Sauber. For my Bolts, I’ll happily fork a few bucks to support Erik Erlendsson’s Lightning Insider site, which was influential in proving that I could do something on my own. And yes, I am trying to keep my options open for Pirates coverage as well.
Sports journalism is an essential part of fandom and keeping an eye on all of that is important to me. That’s one of the reasons this blog and our podcast exist. I truly believe the media plays an important role in sharing the stories of why we fall in love with sports – just as players and coaches are the ones who make it happen.
But when the ones who control those that tell the stories strip that essence away from those brands like The Athletic, it’s sports fans who pay a price and punishment for it.
Yes, even all of those Nittany Lion-Steelers-Pirates-Lightning-United fans.
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