The Athletic

One issue at the Athletic seems to be Kristian Dyer. He had written pretty regularly about the two NY area franchises until early April, but his production tailed off, and there has been nothing since April 11.

He seems to still be active for MSG (with solely a Red Bulls focus) and is still listed as a contributor on the Athletic's website.
 
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One issue at the Athletic seems to be Kristian Dyer. He had written pretty regularly about the two NY area franchises until early April, but his production tailed off, and there has been nothing since April 11.

He seems to still be active for MSG (with solely a Red Bulls focus) and is still listed as a contributor on the Athletic's website.

I was in the process of touching on this exactly. The coverage is completely imbalanced. There are 5 articles about Toronto FC just in May because there is one writer still apparently assigned to them and active. Meanwhile Dyer hasn't written anything on any subject for The Athletic since April 11. Is he still on staff? Who knows. But when they hired the new national writers the implicit promise was that the Athletic would provide nationwide coverage via a substantial staff of national beat writers. But apparently the national writers are not inspired by 2 teams in the NY-metro market.
 
Don’t forget Midas Mulligan (though he’s not been heard of since Liverpool’s Champions League win...). And you really should merge with mgarbowski mgarbowski ’s site: https://citybluesbythenumbers.com/ You’d be the be all and end all of NYCFC analysis.

honestly thats how it is for most of the other teams too. just people that like the team so much that they kinda work together for content and doing it for the love of their respective team. and i feel like i get more out of it.

granted soccer was not why i got the athletic because i knew there would be other places i can find different articles and content. but it does seem that the athletic soccer space is pretty much dead, maybe good article here or there on the MLS as a whole ( TAM or DP rules or solidarity payments issues, expansion analysis etc). similar to the other international soccer section
 
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Meanwhile Dyer hasn't written anything on any subject for The Athletic since April 11. Is he still on staff? Who knows. But when they hired the new national writers the implicit promise was that the Athletic would provide nationwide coverage via a substantial staff of national beat writers. But apparently the national writers are not inspired by 2 teams in the NY-metro market.

Dyer's not going to be on the Athletic's NYCFC beat any more. The plan is that we'll see rotating coverage from Stejskal, Maurer, Tenorio, "possibly a few others." In theory that should be an upgrade, but we'll have to wait and see about the frequency and depth of the coverage.
 
Dyer's not going to be on the Athletic's NYCFC beat any more. The plan is that we'll see rotating coverage from Stejskal, Maurer, Tenorio, "possibly a few others." In theory that should be an upgrade, but we'll have to wait and see about the frequency and depth of the coverage.
Thanks for the Dyer info. The rest is basically consistent with what they seemed to promise in so many words a few weeks ago. If they cannot manage weekly stories about every MLS team (specifically NYCFC really), what they need, at a minimum, is a weekly round-up like Doyle's format. If you are promoting your MLS coverage, and they are, deliver at least one solid paragraph about every MLS team every week. Maybe they could split it among 4 writers instead of having one person pretend to have in-depth knowledge of every team. Then deliver a guaranteed dedicated article about every team at least, idk, every 3 weeks?* And then let the writers pitch stories to fill in the rest.

* Yes. Even Colorado.
 
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Josie's on a vacation far away....


Jozy's on a vacation far away...
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ill see myself out
 
I’m listening...
Just, something like I'm sorry you're disappointed and we hope to expand coverage soon. Which is by-the-book nothing. Then he finishes by asking me which writers I'm most interested in reading which is completely off-topic from my complaint. Like it's my job to tell them who to hire or assign to the NYCFC beat. How about the anyone who you pay to write about NYCFC. I responded by pointing out that in May alone there have been 5 stories about TFC and 3 about the Sounders, plus lots of other teams with multiple stories, and I'm not interested in subsidizing MSL coverage for other cities while NYC is ignored. But I'm done. Further correspondence is pointless, though I might tease them on Twitter a few more times. Barring an unexpected significant change my subscription will lapse. If I see that NYCFC coverage revives I can always sign up again.
 
Also I forgot to mention. I wrote a similar complaint email to them last August when coverage stopped for a month. I got the same response word for word.
 
Just, something like I'm sorry you're disappointed and we hope to expand coverage soon. Which is by-the-book nothing. Then he finishes by asking me which writers I'm most interested in reading which is completely off-topic from my complaint. Like it's my job to tell them who to hire or assign to the NYCFC beat. How about the anyone who you pay to write about NYCFC. I responded by pointing out that in May alone there have been 5 stories about TFC and 3 about the Sounders, plus lots of other teams with multiple stories, and I'm not interested in subsidizing MSL coverage for other cities while NYC is ignored. But I'm done. Further correspondence is pointless, though I might tease them on Twitter a few more times. Barring an unexpected significant change my subscription will lapse. If I see that NYCFC coverage revives I can always sign up again.
I don't know. I kind of took the question from them asking who I like to read as an honest attempt to find a reporter that the fans like. Maybe I am being naive.

Of course the question is who would I recommend? Kyle S. comes to mind, obviously. I don't think Crooks is enough of a natural writer. Maybe the guys at the Outfield, but do I really want to break that up? Who else is there? Maybe Nick Chavez? I just haven't read enough of his stuff.
 
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I don't know. I kind of took the question from them asking who I like to read as an honest attempt to find a reporter that the fans like. Maybe I am being naive.

Of course the question is who would I recommend? Kyle S. comes to mind, obviously. I don't think Crooks is enough of a natural writer. Maybe the guys at the Outfield, but do I really want to break that up? Who else is there? Maybe Nick Chavez? I just haven't read enough of his stuff.

I admire your more charitable take, but I stand by mine. It came off to me as changing the topic. "Thank you for writing about our lack of NYCFC coverage. In response, I'm not going to address that, so how about we talk about what I want to talk about instead." Add to that it's a canned response I have received twice in response to very similar complaints and it's not satisfying.

I kind of get it, but it's still annoying. The Athletic markets itself with 2 major themes. First, they hire the best sports writers about everything and for a single fee you get all of these great writers on every sports topic delivering high quality content. Second, they simply offer more coverage of everything you might want. Do you want more of the already over-saturated (eg Yankees)? They have that. Do you want more of the less widely covered and obscure? They have that. The theme I put first in this post is the main one. Their primary focus is delivering content from a big, talented stable of great sports writers. But in my email I clearly wrote about the second one, and specifically the second aspect of the second theme. They should address that before reminding me about the other stuff.
 
Or maybe it's just that we were off this week.

or both.
Could be, but when he teases like this it's usually for a reason, and dummyrun dummyrun has previously noted there's evidence that Doyle has cribbed ideas about NYCFC from stuff I've written. I personally doubted that, but now I'm wondering.