The Athletic's hiring of six ex-Washington Post figures could be a big win

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The Athletic's WaPo hires could pay off in a big way for both them and those journalists

The announcement late last week that The Athletic had brought in six former Washington Post sports figures (following the sudden dissolution of the Post's sports department earlier in February) seemed like a throwback to a couple of earlier trends. Long before The Athletic evolved into its current form, especially with its acquisition by The New York Times in 2022 and the way it took the place of the Times' own sports department in 2023, it began as a publication focused on sports in specific cities, and one that would frequently make a lot of splashy hires at one time. And this move has some connections to both of those ideas.

Of course, the six Post figures heading to The Athletic aren't all going to be covering D.C. sports specifically. Indeed, only two are particularly listed in their release as tasked with that. That would be Barry Svrluga as a Commanders reporter who "will also weigh in on the biggest stories in the nation’s capital" and Spencer Nusbaum as a Nationals reporter). In contrast, former Post sports editor Jason Murray, Candace Buckner, Adam Kilgore, and Ava Wallace are all listed as taking on more national roles (deputy editorial director, national columnist, senior writer on the rapid response investigation team, and reporter on tennis and women's sports respectively). But this is a move that recalls some of the past big swings from The Athletic, and one that could pay off for them on several fronts. It could also be a great landing spot for these figures.

First, for D.C. itself, The Athletic now has quite a formidable team. That release notes that Svrluga and Nusbaum join Nicki Jhabvala (Commanders, she also previously worked at the Post), Josh Robbins (Wizards), and David Aldridge (columnist) on specifically D.C. coverage. That's not quite as many front-facing people as the publication had assigned to specific cities during the height of its city-focused days (remember, The Athletic started in just Chicago in January 2016, then expanded to Toronto that fall, and launched a number of further cities as well as a national site in 2017). But it is a heavy-hitting lineup, and one that will be quite familiar to D.C. readers looking for local sports coverage (as well as fans of D.C. teams who live elsewhere, a notable group considering the way people move and move out of the DMV region) in the wake of the changes at the Post. Oh, and on the regional front, The Athletic also has solid Ravens coverage with Jeff Zrebiec.

There are still plenty of other outlets covering D.C. sports, of course. But The Athletic has built themselves into a compelling option there. And while it's an odd day where a company owned by The New York Times is a significant option for D.C. sports news and The Washington Post itself no longer is (they still have a "Sports" section on their website, but it's all wire stories, with most of them national or even local elsewhere), that's where we're at following that disastrous Post decision to axe their sports team.

And that brings back some Athletic memories. A big part of the site's initial plan was acquiring top local paper talent, with co-founder Alex Mather telling Kevin Draper of the Times (then a competing publication, not their owner!) in 2017 "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." Mather later apologized for the way he said that (in a since-deleted tweet), and The Athletic never quite executed "let them continuously bleed" quite the way he envisioned, but they certainly did hire a lot of top talent away from local papers, and they did make business (even more) difficult for many papers. But perhaps the more impactful moves, and certainly the better one for the overall state of sports journalism jobs, came in the many cases where they came in after big layoffs elsewhere to give notable talents places to continue writing.

Of course, The Athletic has been through a lot of notable layoff cycles of their own, and a lot of focus shifts. Those have included multiple pivots away from an extreme-local focus, plus a big shift away from video in 2020. And the Times' elimination of their own sports department in 2023 in favour of The Athletic still carries a lot of ​questions, especially considering the impressive work ex-Times sports staffers continue to produce in other sections of that paper. So this isn't to say that the company's been an unquestioned force for good in sports journalism overall. But it is notable that they continue to make big hires, and continue to believe in investing in sports journalism (and in particular, print/online sports journalism, which seems to be taking even larger hits than any other sector of sports journalism). And, if these six figures' work at the Post is anything to go on, they'll be great assets to The Athletic.

Another interesting factor there is that four of these six figures were primarily hired to do national work as per that release. The Times/The Athletic and the Post were the main local U.S. newspapers really doing significant national work before these Post changes. Other outlets do some of that work, of course, but the Post and Times/Athletic had strong claims for sports-based subscriptions from those who don't care about their region's teams thanks to the strength of their national work. Few, if any, other local newspapers can currently say that. (Yes, there are many other outlets producing national sports journalism, from national papers and magazines such as USA Today and Sports Illustrated to TV networks such as ESPN and their linked sites to online-only sites like Yahoo and others, but the Post and Times were leading the way from the local paper side. And now only one of those is left.)

It's positive to see that several of the top figures who had been working at the Post will be continuing their sports work at The Athletic. It's still unfortunate that the Post did away with their sports section, as this means that these six jobs went to ex-Post people rather than any of the many other capable journalists out there (or, alternatively, the Post won't be hiring new figures themselves to replace these jobs); this is still at least somewhat of a sports journalism contraction (and that's to say nothing of the many other Post staffers who didn't land at The Athletic). But it is nice to see that the Times/Athletic didn't just stand pat with what they had (especially with perhaps their main newspaper-based rival largely folding its sports coverage) in the wake of these talents hitting the market.

For these six figures in particular, The Athletic seems like a good landing place for at least the short term. There undoubtedly will be an appetite for Svrluga (one of the best columnists and reporters out there, especially on the Commanders, but well beyond that) continuing to weigh in on the Commanders and D.C. sports, and Nusbaum had found some success at the Post in his time on the Nats' beat there (which started in 2024). Murray did a tremendous job of building and maintaining Post Sports, locally and nationally, and it will be well worth watching what he does as deputy editorial director at The Athletic. And Buckner, Kilgore, and Wallace have all impressed with their past work, much of which has been nationally-focused, and they'll undoubtedly slot in well to these new roles; Kilgore and this rapid-response investigation team may be an area to track in particular.

It's positive that all of these talented figures will be able to continue in sports journalism in prominent roles. And it will be interesting to see what they do from here. However, it's worth noting again that The Athletic has been through a lot of changes and pivots in the past, and that many of their hires haven't wound up sticking there for the long term. And while it's good to see that the Times/The Athletic has not yet folded up the tents on national sports journalism from/based at a local newspaper in the way so many others have, having just one main outlet doing that is far from ideal from a journalism jobs perspective, a reader choice perspective, and more. However, this move does speak to one particular market inefficiency; there's a lot of incredible sports journalism talent out there right now and not a lot of outlets looking to produce that. If someone new wanted to get into the market, or if an existing player from one of those other aforementioned sectors (national papers/magazines, TV networks, online sites) wanted to boost their credibility further with some big hires, now might be a great time.