The Washington Post cutting its sports section defies wider business trends
Published about 7 hours ago • 4 min read
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The Washington Post axing its sports section goes against business trends
The Washington Post's Franklin Square headquarters. (Ajay Suresh on Wikipedia.)
The sweeping layoffs of one-third of The Washington Post'sstaff (nearly 300 journalists) this week cover a lot of areas. Just about every section was impacted somewhat, but some of the biggest changes include closing several foreign bureaus, shrinking and restructuring the metro desk, and closing down the books and sports sections in their current form. For what it's worth, Post executive editor Matt Murray told Ben Mullin of The New York Times they will have some kind of sports coverage, but it will look a lot different:
In a videoconference with employees on Wednesday morning, Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, acknowledged that the sports department would be closed as part of a sweeping round of layoffs that affected hundreds of staffers. He added that The Post would reassign several of the section’s reporters to cover sports “as a cultural and societal phenomenon” and that the institution would maintain a section in print.
Mr. Murray said in an interview that the way sports content was delivered and consumed had changed drastically. Video has become more popular, and professional sports leagues are increasingly telling their own stories. The sports media industry has also splintered into niche and broad providers of content, he said, and The Post needs to determine where it fits in.
“We have excellent sports reporting, and the very best sports coverage we’ve done does break through,” Mr. Murray said. “Generally The Post isn’t seen digitally as a major sports destination. So we’re kind of wrestling with some of those questions.”
It would be onething if the newspaper's sports coverage merely pivoted in response to some of those questions. That's somewhat what happened with The New York Times shutting down its sports desk in 2023 and replacing it with coverage from The Athletic, which they'd previously bought; although there were further controversies around that, in particular on its move to replace unionized Times sportswriters with non-unionized Athletic employees, the overall move could at least be seen as a shift in how the paper handled its sports coverage rather than a deemphasis of sports (although, there's an argument that this was still a step down from when they had both their own sports desk and The Athletic). But the Post is going much further, indicating that they largely don't want to be in the sports business at all (apart from this unspecified "coverage of sports as a social and cultural phenomenon"). And while all these Post cuts can be highly debated overall, and many of the specific ones deserve thorough questioning as well, the sports cuts in particular stand out as going against a wider business trend.
That larger trend is that sports are becoming a more and more important part of the world, in a wide variety of ways. Some of that can be seen in the recent great ratings for theNFL, college football, baseball, and more. But the true business importance is even beyond those raw ratings. In an extremely fragmented viewing landscape, sports broadcasts are more and more one of the last things people watch live (and often together), and they're one of the last places to effectively reach a big audience with ads. They're also one of the last things that people all talk about; the next couple of weeks will see far more conversations about the Super Bowl and the Olympics than any entertainment show.
This has sports essential to the business case for broadcast networks, which are getting more and more into the sports business. But sports broadcasts are also something unique that people will pay for, which makes them critical for cablenetworks and streaming services as well. And indeed, one of the biggest spenders on sports (and one that has seen great ratings results, especially for football) is Amazon, also owned by Post owner Jeff Bezos. It's interesting to see Bezos deemphasize sports at one of his properties while another one keeps becoming a bigger and bigger player in the sports world.
The other area where sports continue to gain in impact is something that Murray hinted at with his comments on covering sports "as a cultural and societal phenomenon." It remains to be seen what that coverage will look like and if it will be any good (but, given the talent at Post Sports, it likely will be, and it's notable that many of the reassigned New York Times sports reporters have continued to make big sports impacts with stories in, say, the business section). But the idea behind it isn't wrong, as sports are indeed a cultural phenomenon, and in some ways, even more of one than they've always been. And people are perhaps more interested in athletes and their lives than they've ever been.
One area this is shown is with the wild success of athlete podcasts (perhaps especially Jason and Travis Kelce's New Heights, but many beyond that as well). Another one is with the way athletes' comments on social and political issues get so widely discussed; many non-sports sites are regularly featuring stories on what sports figures say, as those draw audience. And a third is with the focus on athletes as endorsers; Sunday's Super Bowl will feature all kinds of elaborate ads, many with actors, musicians, and other celebrities, but a lot of the big ones are going to include athletes. Going back to the broadcast discussion, many athletes are some of the widely most recognizable people out there in our current world, which has them being tapped as endorsers more and more. Sports' tendrils are reaching further and further throughout the wider business world.
With that in mind, the idea of covering sports as a cultural and societal phenomenon isn't a bad one. And it will be interesting to see what the Post does there. But none of that required axing the sports section overall; both of those things could have co-existed. And the Post moving so dramatically away from sports is remarkable, especially in a time when it seems like everyone else wants to be more and more in the sports business.
