How to make the blog even more fabulously successful?

Be like the NYT, and outsource its content

The Wine Curmudgeon, courtesy of the New York Times, has discovered a way to make the blog even more fabulously successful than it already is – I can outsource the content to someone who works more cheaply than I do.

That’s what the Times – my once beloved New York Times – did when it said it would close its sports department in favor of running stories from a website called The Athletic. How and why this happened is still a bit of a muddle; it apparently has something to do with the paper’s long-running union troubles as well as its not too brainy $550 million purchase of the money-losing Athletic in 2022.

Full disclosure: I was an employee of a Times subsidiary when I was the sports editor of the daily in Houma, La. Even then, the company’s management style was brusque. I was told that if I did a good job, I could move to the paper in Florence, Ala., or Lakeland, Fla. Which, not to denigrate the quality of those cities, didn’t have much appeal to a young, ambitious, newspaperman.

Still, if I overlook how despicable outsourcing the sports department is – it’s something that a sleazy leveraged buyout company would do – this might work. I can probably find a variety of young writers who will work for free for the exposure and the experience, and then I can use their copy under my banner. How 21st century, Elon Musk and Jeff Zuckerberg-style capitalism is that? They do the work, and I reap the benefits.

Now, will the blog be as well-written or as informative or as much fun as before? Of course not. But that’s not the point. The point is that I am making more money for myself, and the rest – the employees, the readers, the service that I am performing – be damned. Because, of course, 21st century, Elon Musk and Jeff Zuckerberg-style capitalism.

The catch is that I can’t overlook how despicable the Times’ action was. It’s supposed to be one of the bastions of American journalism, and not this company or this company (whose failings I know all too well). So I won’t outsource the blog. I will cancel my subscription to the Times, though. and hope its bosses eventually see the error of their ways.

Because one of us has to do the right thing.