Former Athletic Writer Bob Kravitz Talks About Toxic Work Culture At The Organisation

For 41 years, Bob Kravitz has worked as an Indianapolis Colts writer for The Athletic, Sports Illustrated, IndyStar.

Kravitz was fired by The Athletic at the beginning of last month as part of a wave of widespread layoffs as the publication continued its shift to concentrate on national media rather than local coverage following its acquisition by The New York Times.

Former Athletic Writer Bob Kravitz Talks About Toxic Work Culture At The Organisation

The subscription-based sports website “The Athletic” was skilled at losing both money and staff morale.

“The Athletic” set their ambitions high but ultimately managed to crash and burn, from the woke sports coverage to the proclamation that they may wind up as the leading sports website on the Internet.

Their former writers are now criticizing them after rounds of layoffs this year pushed them to cut 4 per cent of their staff.

Due to the entire “burning bridges” issue, the 63-year-old takes it out on The Athletic in the article and opens up about a former employer in a way we seldom ever see.

In a Substack piece, The Indianapolis Star and a writer to the Rocky Mountain News slammed “The Athletic” for placing him on probation after he didn’t reach subscriber goals while he was still recovering from triple bypass surgery in 2020.

Kravitz criticized “The Athletic” for treating its writers like livestock, blaming everything from the erratic leadership to the excessive content requirements.

“I guess my numbers weren’t what they wanted, but hell, I was recovering from a life-changing medical event,” Kravitz wrote in his new Substack he debuted on Thursday. “You would think that might have some impact on their thinking, but no. I had to produce 395 subscriptions in three months – or else. That’s absurd, unfair and outrageous, especially given my health situation. Well, I survived, producing more than 400 subs by working myself half to death, a great idea after open-heart surgery. But that soured me on the place forever. I felt it in my bones.

“They don’t give an f— about me as a human being.”

Kravitz gave credit to the outlet for taking mental health seriously, but not hitting metrics, which Kravitz says  “were absolutely central to the way we were judged” and had a “deleterious impact on our collective mental health as a staff.”

“There was nothing more dispiriting than working your a– off on a story, only to look at the metrics and see one subscription and 2,000 unique views. It was soul-sucking, honestly,” Kravitz wrote.

The Athletic makes a really big deal about the importance of mental health, and that’s great, but I think I’m speaking for a majority of current Athletic writers, the primacy of metrics (subs, unique views and the rest) had a deleterious impact on our collective mental health as a staff. There was nothing more dispiriting than working your ass off on a story, only to look at the metrics and see one subscription and 2,000 unique views. It was soul-sucking, honestly.”

In 2021, “The Athletic” and its model suffered a staggering loss of $55 million. The magazine lost $54 million in 2019 and another $41 million in 2020.

They excel at mistreating authors and haemorrhaging money, if they have any special talents at all.

As of right now, The Athletic hasn’t responded to Kravitz’s remarks.

 

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