New York Times to disband sports department, rely on The Athletic

The New York Times said it would disband its sports department and rely on coverage of teams and games from its website The Athletic, both online and in print. Joe Kahn, The Times’s executive editor, and Monica Drake, a deputy managing editor, announced the change to the newsroom as “an evolution in how we cover sports.” They added, “We plan to focus even more directly on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large.” The sports desk has more than 35 journalists and editors.