The New York Times had their quarterly earnings report on Tuesday. My colleague Angela Fu wrote about it for Poynter.
The Times grew its digital subscriber base by 180,000 and reported a profit of $46.6 million in its second quarter. Fu wrote, “Total revenue for the quarter was $590.9 million, up 6.3% year over year. Much of the increase in revenue was due to higher digital subscriptions and money made through product reviews site Wirecutter, which had its best non-holiday quarter ever.”
Meanwhile, The Athletic — the sports site purchased by the Times in January of 2022 for $550 million — continues to operate at a loss. It reported a loss of $7.8 million during the second quarter. That’s at least an improvement over the $12.1 million loss in the second quarter of last year.
Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said The Athletic has more than doubled its advertising revenue year over year and is helping to drive new advertisers across the Times brand.
The Times announced last month that it was dismantling its sports department and would have The Athletic provide its sports coverage. The Times union is fighting that plan.
Journalists at CalMatters unionize
And here’s another item from Angela Fu.
More than 90% of editorial, product and development staff at CalMatters announced Tuesday that they are unionizing with the Pacific Media Workers Guild.
CalMatters, a nonprofit digital outlet covering California, started publishing in July 2015. The union is seeking voluntary recognition from management, and if successful, their bargaining unit will have roughly 40 people.
CEO Neil Chase acknowledged the request in a message to staff Tuesday morning: “We're doing the prudent responsible thing, meeting with our attorneys today to ensure that we do this the right way, but we'll have a more thoughtful response soon and look forward to the next steps.”
Journalists across the industry have been organizing in droves over the past few years. Though many of them have done so to survive budget cuts and hardships brought about by the pandemic, a growing number come from newsrooms that are flourishing. Last week, nonprofit investigative outlet ProPublica voluntarily recognized its staff’s union, and the week prior, journalists at Deep South Today, a nonprofit that seeks to build a network of newsrooms in the South, announced that their union had also been voluntarily recognized.
“While many news outlets are shrinking, CalMatters is growing in both size and reporting ambition,” investigative reporter Lauren Hepler said in a press release. “As CalMatters grows, I hope that talented staff members across our newsroom will have a say in where we’re going and how we get there.”
If CalMatters does not voluntarily recognize the union, the journalists will have to petition the National Labor Relations Board for an election to determine whether they can unionize.
More fallout over baseball suspension
I wrote in Tuesday’s newsletter how Baltimore Orioles play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown was suspended for, apparently, pointing out that the Orioles hadn’t had much recent success playing on the road against the Tampa Bay Rays until this season. What he said was hardly critical, and yet unless there’s something that we don’t know, that was enough for Orioles’ management to have him temporarily suspended. The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka reported Brown will return to the air on Friday.
As the story picked up steam Tuesday, baseball announcers across Major League Baseball blasted the Orioles during their broadcasts.
New York Mets play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen said, “If you don’t want Kevin Brown, there are 29 other teams who do. It’s a horrendous decision by the Orioles. I don’t know what they were thinking. But they’ve gotten exactly the reaction that they deserve. And it’s just a shame because the Orioles are playing so well and now they’ve diverted attention from that. And now they have made themselves a laughing stock.”
New York Yankees play-by-play announcer Michael Kay, on his radio show in New York, said if what has been reported is true, the Orioles “should be ashamed of themselves.” Kay noted how not only did Brown say what he said, but the same information also appeared on a graphic during the Orioles broadcast. Kay said if Orioles chair John Angelos didn’t like the Brown comments then he is “unreasonable and thin-skinned.” Kay went on to call the suspension “unconscionable.”
Kay added, “This makes the Orioles look so small and insignificant and minor league.
Boston Red Sox announcer Dave O’Brien called all of it a “fiasco.”
The story gained so much traction that it actually made CNN on Tuesday morning. CNN anchor John Berman said on air that maybe the network should bring on CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta to discuss a condition called “chronic thin-skinnedness.”
Bad call
Fox Sports 1 and radio host Colin Cowherd is one of the better sports broadcasters in the business, but he and his show had a cringeworthy mistake on Tuesday. Cowherd had a list of 20 NFL quarterbacks who are not getting to a Super Bowl and, Cowherd said, “certainly not winning it.”
Among the names that Cowherd said (and a name that appeared on a graphic on the screen) was Dwayne Haskins.
Haskins died in April of 2022 when he was hit by a dump truck while trying to cross an interstate in Florida on foot. A toxicology report later revealed he had a blood alcohol level of .24, and tested positive for ketamine and norketamine. He was only 24. Earlier this year, Haskins’ family filed a lawsuit against several people and companies, alleging Haskins was drugged as a part of a “blackmail and robbery conspiracy.”
Back to Cowherd. Mistakes get made when you’re giving out hot takes three hours a day, but this is bad. Not a fireable offense, but it’s apology-worthy. I’ll keep you posted if one is announced on today’s show.
Cowherd’s name is on the show and it was his list, according to the graphic. But there’s blame to go around. Someone typed Haskins name for the graphic and certainly someone on the production crew should’ve caught that before it embarrassingly went out of the air.
Media tidbits
- Even more ESPN news. After the recent layoffs claimed two of three co-hosts of its morning radio show, which was simulcast on TV, ESPN now has a new radio team. The New York Post's Ryan Glasspiegel and Andrew Marchand report the new show will be co-hosted by Michelle Smallmon, SiriusXM’s Evan Cohen and former NFL player Chris Canty. They will replace the morning team of Keyshawn Johnson, Max Kellerman and Jay Williams. Johnson and Kellerman were part of the recent layoffs, while Williams’ contract is up soon and it isn’t known if he will remain at the network. The new radio show is expected to start by the beginning of the NFL season next month.
- In a piece for ProPublica and The Atlantic, Alec MacGillis with “How Social Media Apps Could Be Fueling Homicides Among Young Americans.”
- Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be interviewed on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" this morning at 9 a.m. DeSantis, who had a major shakeup to his campaign staff and strategy this week, will be interviewed by Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer.
- Axios’ political reporter Alexi McCammond announced on X that she has moved on to write politics for The Washington Post Opinions section. In 2021, McCammond was hired to be the editor in chief at Teen Vogue, but resigned before she started after staff there complained about racist and homophobic tweets McCammond had posted a decade earlier when she was a teenager. McCammond, a prominent political reporter who also was a contributor at MSNBC, returned to Axios at the time, and now joins the Post.
- I’m a huge fan of the TV show “Law & Order.” So I love this piece from NPR’s TV critic Eric Deggans: “Dun dun — done! Why watching 'Law & Order' clips on YouTube is oddly satisfying.”
- In The Atlantic, Steven Waldman with “The Local-News Crisis Is Weirdly Easy to Solve.”
- A couple of items from Axios’ Sara Fischer. First, it’s “OpenAI funds new journalism ethics initiative.”
- Then, Fischer reports that “Puck, the buzzy media startup that covers the intersection of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, has raised over $10 million in a Series B growth round, Puck co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly told Axios.”
- X CEO Linda Yaccarino will be a guest on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Thursday at 10:15 Eastern.
Hot type
Vice’s Anna Merlan with “Trafficking Survivors and Advocates Are Being Harassed by ‘Sound of Freedom’ Fans.”
From last week, but worth your time: The Ringer’s Lex Pryor with “America’s Bee Problem Is an Us Problem.”
More resources for journalists
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].
