from Ray Ratto at DEFECTOR,

Alex Mather, one of the two creators of The Athletic, knew this 2017 quote, “We will wait out 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,” was a bad idea almost a soon as he said it, and he tried several times to walk it back. Now that his creation is inside the whale he wanted to harpoon, the echo must be deafening.

In the years since its founding, The Athletic’s plan to be the last ones standing was edited to read “latest one swallowed,” selling itself for $550 million to, of all companies, The New York Times. At least that’s the reporting; sale prices often have a healthy squirt of helium to them, and Mather’s plan with co-founder Adam Hansmann to sell their little dreadnought for enough money to buy a Caribbean tax haven will simply have to be applied to their next scheme. That’s probably too cynical, but hey, you came to this shop and you get this level of service.

There was a point when Mather and Hansmann were true believers in the project, which was no less than recreating The Sporting News at internet speed. They would be local everywhere, with a small (probably too small, with hindsight) national view, and they would live on a subscription model. If you had a team, they had a reporter for you.

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