The New York Times has bought the Athletic for half a billion dollars!

Is this a sign that new media is in good shape? Or a sign my head is going to explode?

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Headline news: So the New York Times has spent $550m on the Athletic.

I read a funny tweet, I think from Jonathan Liew (though I am loathe to properly credit him, because Jonathan Liew receives too much acclaim and it can’t be good for his mortal soul) which read something like: nice irony that The Athletic ended up getting bought by a local newspaper.

The irony there is that The Athletic, at least in the eyes of American sports media, was constructed under a business model that was designed to kill local media. The founder, Alex Mather, didn’t even try and hide this; he told the New York Times that his publication would “wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.” Lovely stuff.