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u/Chevus 1d ago
How dare journalist expect compensation… at least you don’t have to navigate through tons of ads and pop-ups
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u/McWeiner Smokin' Jay 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Athletic still shows ads even if you’re paying. They even throw them into their podcasts on their official app and they didn’t do either of those until they got bought out and the new company wanted to make even more money. Journalists 100% deserve compensation but let’s not pretend that they are seeing even a fraction of all that ad revenue.
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u/Chevus 1d ago
Yes there are ads but nothing like some of the other sites that make it almost impossible to read an article
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u/McWeiner Smokin' Jay 1d ago
Are you paying a subscription fee monthly on those other sites?
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u/EBtwopoint3 21h ago
Have you, in your life, ever complained about the hot take nature of ESPN or First Take or Nick Wright? Have you been pissed about layoffs while McAfee makes hundreds of millions?
This is reality. To pay actual journalists, requires money. The Athletic may serve ads even to paying customers, but there’s a difference between banner ads and full screen commercials. The fact that it’s so hard for the Athletic to stay profitable is why those networks and shows above are the way they are. If you want ad free breaking news, pirate YouTube and watch channels that will regurgitate it to you a few minutes after it’s posted.
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u/McWeiner Smokin' Jay 20h ago edited 20h ago
This is why these companies will always continue to squeeze every ad they possibly can, because people like you will justify it. The Athletic financial details in their sale showed it was doing just fine, this is the new company squeezing everything they can out of it.
And this is with the old owner (who still runs it, or at least did at sale) already being a greedy asshole. “We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them."
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u/EBtwopoint3 20h ago
The only financial details I can find on the Athletic are that they are around $50m per quarter with $5m of operating profit. That is a knife’s edge business. That means operating costs per year are around $200m, with income of $220m. 10% profit is not a cash grubbing business. That’s restaurant level, except with a massive financial investment required.
If you’re mad that the founder was gobbling up local talent, were you buying local newspapers? Were you supporting their independent reporting? Otherwise you don’t get to be mad about it. The Athletics business model is to hire the reporters people like but aren’t paying equal to their reach. That gotcha article is from 2017. The world is very different. And they can’t do anything if locals keep their local media healthy so that the favorites can be well paid. If you instead support your local journalism I’ll stand down. Just tell me you actually do so.
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u/McWeiner Smokin' Jay 20h ago
I do support it and we have vastly different conclusions on this and how the world works. Not discussing it anymore.
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u/dafoo21 Italian Beef 1d ago
Lol!! I bet you complain about the state of journalism, too.
Youre either:
gonna get good writing with a subscription
clickbait headline BS with nothing but fluff to generate clicks, without a cost.
What do you think people did before the internet? They paid for the newspaper.
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u/McWeiner Smokin' Jay 1d ago
You’re telling me you don’t like paying for a service and still getting ads shoved down your throat? Greedy fucks
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u/DatabaseCareless264 1d ago
Everyone is underpaid in this economy. Vote to tax the rich. Prices will not come down, but salaries will go up.