Sports columnist Kravitz lands new job with sports website

Bob Kravitz has taken a job at The Athletic, a subscription-based online sports media outlet.

As a senior staff writer for the Athletic’s Indiana edition, Kravitz will write columns and features on the Indianapolis Colts, Indiana Pacers, college sports and other topics, he said on his Twitter account this morning.

Bob Kravitz

Kravitz, a veteran sports writer, spent 14 years as the lead sports columnist for The Indianapolis Star, before departing to take a job with WTHR-TV Channel 13 in 2014.

In mid-September, IBJ learned that Kravitz had been downsized from WTHR. He continued working for the television station and writing for its web site through much of November.

Kravitz—who previously worked at Sports Illustrated, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Rocky Mountain News in Denver—provided sports commentary both on the air and online for WTHR."For Indy readers who have followed me the last 18 years (and thank you, thank you), I will do a lot of the same things I’ve done for nearly two decades: I will write columns, share my thoughts on all things Indianapolis–Colts, Pacers, Indiana, Purdue, Butler and whatever else intrigues me at a particular time," Kravitz wrote in a column Wednesday morning. "But I will also do more of the longform pieces (we used to call them takeouts) that take a deeper dive into a given subject."

Kravitz, 58, admits taking the job is a bit of a brave move for him.

“Yes, it’s digital journalism, something of a new world for a guy who started his career on the old Radio Shack TRS-80 word processor,” Kravitz said in his first published story on Wednesday for The Athletic. “But more important, it’s journalism, old-school sports journalism, featuring the kind of reporting and writing I grew up practicing back in the 1980s and ’90s. It’s the kind of journalism I remember from back in a day when every major newspaper featured a constellation of great beat reporters, columnists and feature writers.”

The 3-year-old Athletic began beefing up its Indiana coverage earlier this year by hiring local sportswriters Stephen Holder, Scott Agness and Pete Sampson. Holder previously worked for the Star; Agness wrote for the Pacers.com and VigilantSports.com; and Sampson was co-founder and former editor of Irish Illustrated.

WTHR General Manager Larry Delia told IBJ in 2016 that Kravitz’s stories on the station’s web site generated huge numbers of page views. The station declined comment on the layoff when it was announced in September. But Kravitz said of his departure on his Twitter account after the news broke: “There’s no backstory here, nothing embarrassing or sinister. Just a business decision they made."