On Sunday, I published the most recent edition of the Sports Media Guy newsletter, featuring our post from Wednesday about Michael Mirer and Jennifer Harker’s new study on newspaper digital sports subscriptions.

After I published, Jeff Jarvis responded on Twitter with a thought-provoking thread on the issue:

Sports sections made economic sense under the Myth of Mass Media: all readers see all ads so we charge all advertisers for all readers. Sports in many papers had ~20% readership but those readers were billed to every advertiser in every section. Lovely while it lasted. 1/ https://t.co/Dc4wdk2ccf
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) February 14, 2021

Second, sports sections had few endemic (relevant) advertisers: mainly tire ads, whose marketers made the sexist assumptions that only men (a) read sports and (b) bought tires. Thus sports coverage itself was a loss leader. But it helped total circ; that helped total ad rev. 2/
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) February 14, 2021

Since early in my online newspaper life, we looked at trying to charge for sports sections. Problem was/is: sports coverage is a commodity. The Athletic has challenged that by buying newspapers' last remaining sports talent. We'll see where this goes. 3/
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) February 14, 2021

I imagine publishers telling sports editors everywhere: Pay your way or hit the highway. That'll never happen at a sports paper like the NYDN. But at the run of the mill Podunk Daily Disgrace? I could see sports coverage (a) made into a separate product or (b) killed. 4/
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) February 14, 2021

This finally forces newspapers to ask where their core value is -- and is there value there. Tick-tick.... /fin
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) February 14, 2021