Covering sports, when there’s no sports: COVID, market orientation, paywalls and the Athletic

Abstract

This study incorporates in-depth interviews with 43 journalists from the digitally native, venture-capital-backed sports journalism organization the Athletic. Through the lens of gatekeeping and utilizing the concept of market orientation, findings illustrate how having a somewhat strong market orientation could positively impact gatekeeping processes. Data illustrated that, during the pandemic, journalists at the Athletic collaborated more and included more diversity in content. This positive result, which led to a subscription increase, is primarily due organization-level influences on gatekeeping. This study concludes with analysis on how these findings can affect journalism in general and sports journalism specifically now and after COVID-19.