When you work in the media long enough, it’s inevitable.

In 17 years working in journalism, I’ve been witness to several rounds of layoffs and every time one happened, I found myself coping the same way.

I’d look at those who were cut and attempt to justify why the company chose them and not me. Maybe it was survivor’s guilt. Maybe it was rooted in my own fears about my livelihood suddenly coming to an end. Maybe it was an attempt to make myself feel better about sticking around. I’m not proud of it, but that’s how my mind works.

Then came the day this spring in which ESPN’s talent base was crushed. In all, around 100 of my colleagues at ESPN were let go one day in late April. I sat at my desk and watched one-by-one as journalists announced on Twitter they were part of the company’s massive purging. The names were astounding. People I’d followed for years. Writers and reporters still very much at the top of their game – breaking news, reporting and writing in a way I still aspire to do. In the hockey world, they were my teammates and some of my closest friends. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

It was crushing.

I wasn’t one of those let go but there wasn’t justifying any of it. Not even close. It was a company cutting costs while operating in a business model that was no longer working like it once did. The idea that you could do your job in a professional manner, own your beat, and you’d survive without question was gone. Maybe it had been for a while.

It’s a helpless feeling when that’s the profession you’ve chosen.

I desperately wanted to believe there was a place that existed where the writing mattered most, where smart, original coverage of sports was the heart of a workable business model.

I believe I’ve found that place.

* * *

It was in the middle of this storm of layoffs, of friends losing their jobs, of uncertain futures, that I was approached by the guys at The Athletic with a much different vision. The pitch was simple: Leave your post as a national hockey writer at ESPN and help build a sports media empire with a new business model. And do it in Detroit, your hometown.

It meant leaving my dream job, but the more I read the unique content being produced by the writers at The Athletic in Chicago, Toronto and Cleveland and saw the reaction from sports fans – both in their willingness to pay for it and the way they seemed to thirst for it – the more I became convinced diehard fans in Detroit would want the same thing.

The Athletic is a subscription model. It costs money to read. In a subscription model, satisfying the readers, satisfying the local sports fans, has to be the priority because they’re paying the freight directly. It’s that simple. There’s no stream of income from television or classified ads or the Sunday circulars. If fans aren’t reading and paying for it directly, it doesn’t exist.

It means creating a different product than the current sports coverage in Detroit is a necessity. It means that duplicating what’s already being done in the other local news outlets would be abandoning what we envision for this site.

The Athletic Detroit has to be different. As the underdog trying to get a foothold in a market with a very established media, it’s the only path to distinction.

There will be new voices. There will be a focus on the sort of insight, storytelling, analytics, film breakdown and analysis that sports fans in other cities have shown they want to read.

It also means constant interaction and communication between those producing the coverage and those reading it. It’s the only way this model works.

* * *

There are some reading this who will never pay for content on the Internet. As someone who used to work for ESPN Insider, I’ve heard from that group and I get it. I would never try to tell anyone how to spend their money.

Instead, I want to speak to the Detroit sports fan who cares deeply about the Red Wings, Tigers, Lions, Pistons, Wolverines and Spartans – the fan who might be frustrated at times with how their favorite team is covered, the fan who wants deeper insight than they are getting now, the fan who wouldn’t mind paying five bucks a month to have a say in how the sports media landscape looks in Detroit.

To that fan, I have a simple request: Take a chance on The Athletic Detroit. Subscribe right now at the start. Send a message to The Athletic’s founders in Silicon Valley, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, that Detroit sports fans are ready to support new coverage of their teams. That they should in turn re-invest in our city in a way so many smart people are doing right now.

After you do that, I have another request. Reach out on Twitter (@CraigCustance) or via e-mail ([email protected]) to let me know you’re in. Not because I want to RT it, because of course I do, but also because I want to hear directly from Detroit sports fans exactly what they’re craving in their sports coverage. I want to hear who you love reading, who you don’t. I want to hear about the story you wish somebody would write. Also, The Athletic is pledging $1 for every subscriber we get this year to a Detroit-based charity. I want to hear from you which charity that should be. We’ll decide together.

This is just the start.

We’ve got a load of stories coming this week, a slate that is admittedly hockey-heavy because that’s my background. Along with launching Detroit, I’m still keeping my hand in hockey as one of The Athletic’s NHL Insiders. But as we grow this summer it will round out across all sports. Next week, we’ve got a major hire to announce that I can’t wait to share and it’ll be the start of a string of hiring announcements here like we’ve seen in the other cities where The Athletic is growing.

Detroit sports fans deserve as much.



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