The New York Times recently outsourced its sports section to The Athletic, a YC startup which the NYT now owns. 35 sports reporters will be "reassigned". It's partly union-busting - the NYT is unionized, but The Athletic is not.
Half a billion dollars for a startup by two techbros, but the Times can't afford the cost of their employees unionizing?
I guess I'm not in the least bit surprised then that every time I happen to click on an article from The Athletic out of boredom, it feels like something a freshman journalism major might write and then later be embarrassed about...and that every article I've read has been attributed to "The Athletic Staff."
Sidenote: it always amazes me that in the US, you supposedly need permission from a complicated, slow federal bureaucracy to be "recognized" and thus protected from retaliation for actions.
It's not cost, it's control...