The Athletic Lays Off Nearly 4% of Its Newsroom

The Athletic, the sports news outlet owned by The New York Times, laid off nearly 4 percent of its newsroom on Monday.

David Perpich, the publisher of The Athletic, and Steven Ginsberg, its executive editor, announced “a significant reorganization” of the newsroom in a note to the staff. They said the publication was shifting away from having one beat reporter per sports team to broader coverage “telling the most compelling stories for fans across the teams in a given league, drawing on both local and national reporting expertise.”

Nearly 20 people will be laid off as part of the reorganization, while more than 20 reporters will be moved to new assignments, they said.

“Even with the changes being announced today, the size of our newsroom will grow this year compared to last, as will our overall investments in our editorial group in the years ahead,” Mr. Perpich and Mr. Ginsberg wrote. “At the end of this process, we will have more than 100 beat reporters on teams.”

The Times bought The Athletic in January 2022 for $550 million. The Athletic, which had more than one million subscribers at the time, had operating losses of about $55 million in 2021.

The Athletic has continued to lose money after the Times Company bought it, though revenue has increased. The Times reported that the sports site had lost about $36 million from the time of the acquisition to the end of 2022. The Athletic operates separately from The Times’s newsroom and sports section.