Washington Post hiring national sports reporter two months after axing sports desk

It hasn’t taken long for The Washington Post to crawl back into the world of sports coverage, despite eliminating its entire sports desk in February.

Just two months ago, the Post unceremoniously dispatched its storied sports department, leaving print subscribers to enjoy wire copy covering the city’s four major professional sports franchises without any of the enterprise reporting, columns, or insider scoops that had littered the sports page throughout most of its history.

At the time, executive editor Matt Murray said the sports desk would close “in its current form,” leaving open the possibility that the Post would continue covering the beat in some capacity. Semafor’s Max Tani indicated that sports was destined to be rolled into the features department and covered as a “cultural and societal phenomenon.”

It appears we’re getting the first look at exactly what that will be in practice. On Friday, The Washington Post listed a job posting for a National Sports Reporter. Per the listing, the role “is designed for a reporter who sees sports as a powerful lens into the forces shaping the country, including politics, culture and business.” Further, the Post writes the sports reporter will focus on the paper’s “core coverage areas, including politics, business, technology, health and education.”

Looking past the obvious irony that the Post had any number of capable reporters that could have done this exact job before doing away with its entire sports department in February, the idea to focus its sports coverage on those areas makes a lot of sense. The Post‘s core audience are political junkies; that’s where the paper’s bread is buttered. Naturally, there would be a lot of overlap between readers of the Post‘s political coverage and sports stories that intersect with politics, culture, business, and society.

But the way the outlet has gone about reshaping its sports desk has, understandably, rankled a number of journalists, including former Washington Post reporter Nicki Jhabvala, who covers the Commanders.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski chimed in on social media writing, “You had, like, 12 of these.”

“Comes with excellent job security per sources,” The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen wrote.

The Post has also made a couple of other sports hires since axing the department two months ago. Danielle Allentuck was hired as a Nationals beat reporter shortly before Opening Day, and the paper rehired Capitals beat reporter Bailey Johnson for the “time being” as the Caps close out the season.

However, the National Sports Reporter role seems to be the first hire designed to implement Murray’s vision of retooling the newspaper’s sports coverage to focus on stories of national interest, with a skew towards politics and society, rather than local teams. Many would argue the paper already did both local and national reporting; and it did them quite well. Critics would say this isn’t a retooling, but rather a blunt way to recapture some of the sports reporting the paper already did at a fraction of the cost.

It’s difficult to dispute that notion. A true retooling could’ve been accomplished with targeted layoffs while simultaneously elevating and investing in reporters that specialized in the stories the Post wants written. Instead, the paper took a hacksaw to the entire department and is moving to rebuild it with duct tape.