Indianapolis sports columnist Bob Kravitz among layoffs at The Athletic

The Athletic hired Bob Kravitz as the website's senior writer for Indiana sports in 2018. (File photo)

Bob Kravitz, an Indiana University alum who previously  covered sports for The Indianapolis Star, WTHR-TV Channel 13 and radio station The Fan, was included in job cuts announced Monday by subscription website The Athletic.

The website owned by The New York Times trimmed about 4 percent of its journalistic staff, or nearly 20 reporters. The layoff news was delivered in an email to staffers from The Athletic’s publisher David Perpich and editor in chief Steven Ginsberg.

Kravitz shared the news on social media. Part of his tweet read, “It’s been a good run, 41 years-plus of sports journalism, some of it damned good. I’m sad I don’t get to walk away on my own terms, but that doesn’t often happen.”

After graduating from IU in 1982, Kravitz worked for Sports Illustrated and newspapers in Denver, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Cincinnati and New Jersey.

The Indianapolis Star hired Kravitz in the role of sports columnist in 2000. From 2008 to 2010, he co-hosted an afternoon show on The Fan with former sports marketing executive Eddie White.

In 2014, Kravitz left the Star to work for WTHR. His television run ended in 2018, the same year The Athletic hired Kravitz as senior staff writer for its Indiana edition.

On the East Coast, Kravitz is known as the reporter who broke the “Deflategate” story after the New England Patriots beat the Colts in an AFC Championship game in 2015. New England quarterback Tom Brady was suspended for four games in connection with allegations that he ordered the deflation of footballs used in the game.

With the exit of Kravitz, the Indiana roster of reporters at The Athletic includes national features writer Zak Keefer, Indianapolis Colts reporter James Boyd and University of Notre Dame reporter Pete Sampson.

The Athletic’s new strategy includes moving 20 reporters from their current team beats to more generalized roles, according to Monday’s email from management.

That approach marks a departure from the one-time mission of the outlet, which was to cover every team from every major league across the country with a dedicated reporter. The Athletic has been successful editorially with millions of subscribers, but that coverage—and the travel and staffing associated with it—is expensive.

“The Athletic has generally viewed every league in a similar manner, with similar beats and offerings. But our growing body of research and our own understanding of the sports we cover compel a more nuanced approach,” the note said, adding, “There is no perfect formula for determining which teams to cover, but we are committing dedicated beat reporters to the ones that most consistently produce stories that appeal to both large and news-hungry fan bases, as well as leaguewide audiences.”

The note described an evolving approach to coverage. The NFL and English Premier League dominate reader interest, it said, and staffing for those leagues remains mostly unchanged.

Because NHL and Major League Baseball audiences are more local, those leagues will have some beats eliminated. The company’s overall investment in the newsroom would still grow this year, according to the note, and the company will still have more than 100 beat writers covering specific teams. But a new focus of the site will be stories that appeal to wider audiences.

“Our data shows that the stories that are of greatest interest to our subscribers—and draw in the most new readers and subscribers—are often the ones that provide revelatory information about players and teams that resonate with fans across an entire league,” the note said.

The New York Times bought the Athletic last year for $550 million in cash to buttress its subscription business. The Athletic now has around 3.3 million subscribers, more than double when it was acquired. But it has been a drag on the company’s bottom line. Last year, it lost $6.8 million in February and March and another $12.6 million in the second quarter, according to the Times public filings. It lost $7.8 million in the most recent quarter.

“We’ve reorganized The Athletic’s newsroom to ensure we’re structured to enact our strategy to cover the most compelling stories that matter to fans across all the teams in a given league daily,” said a New York Times spokesperson. The spokesperson said the Times expects The Athletic’s newsroom “to be larger at the end of this year than it was last year.”