New York Times is shutting its sports department

The 35 editors and reporters currently working for the New York Times’ sports desks will be retained. In another sign of a challenged media landscape, the New York Times announced Monday it is disbanding the newspaper’s sports department, leaving the bulk of coverage to its digital site the Athletic. Under the change, stories from the Athletic, which the New York Times purchased in January 2022 for $550 million, will be fully integrated into the newspaper’s operation, providing content to the print newspaper. Joe Kahn, the New York Times’s executive editor, and Monica Drake, a deputy managing editor, told employees that the integration of the Athletic is “an evolution in how we cover sports.” “We plan to focus even more directly on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large,” the editors told staffers in an email sent Monday morning. “At the same time, we will scale back the newsroom’s coverage of games, players, teams and leagues.” The New York Times purchased the Athletic, a startup launched in 2016, as part of its strategy to reach a broader audience with digital products adjacent to the main news site.