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Why doesn’t The Athletic have any of their affiliated writers actually cover the actual play of the most recent game?? Yesterday’s Giants game vs St. Louis had no articles that I could find that actually talked about the game itself. To me, the benefit of having writers at the games is to provide some insight on what happened and to offer opinions on how well or poorly the team performed. We can’t always watch or listen to the game. So why don’t you tell us about it? The other issue I have with the writers is their approach to writing about sports in general. I’m assuming they’re all professional sports journalists. Why do they all write their “columns” like they’re writing an episode script for a low budget sitcom. The lame and juvenile “jokes” that seem to be more important to them than whatever topic they’re trying to cover! This style of writing seems to permeate all aspects of sports whether it’s the Giants’ hideous new uniforms , the “A’s” phantom stadium plans, or the 49ers quarterback competition. A little humor is often appropriate and/or enlightening to a particular topic, but it shouldn’t be a template that dominates the article, with a few facts or opinions thrown in to fill out the script. The Athletic is supposed to be a sports forum. Leave the comedy to Hollywood.

Let me start by saying that The Athletic is one of my favorite sites as both a sportswriter and a fan. There’s a lot of quality content on the site that I have no problem paying for. The problem I have is with the experience that comes with the app. For the recurring cost, I’d expect something that works more smoothly and loads articles properly. Ever since the most recent redesign of the app, it has been freezing on the intro screen at least half of the times that I open it. After getting through those freezes, the app will kick me back to the home page whenever I switch to one of my team filters. When loaded, the stories themselves are generally slow and unresponsive, which further hurts the experience. There are other minor complaints, such as not having articles load in the app after being clicked on from newsletters or social media feeds, as well as not being taken to the comment that’s made on your thread when you get a notification, leading you to try to figure out which story you commented on in the first place, which typically doesn’t have the response to your comment anyways. (Desktop is always ahead of the app in terms of comment threads being updated). Overall, the quality of this app is nowhere near the value of free sports apps, which is a shame, because the writing is great.

I enjoy several columnists on here but navigating otherwise is not great. I like a single overall front page with the top stories in all sports, regardless if I follow that sport or league. Still haven’t found a place to see that. With help from support a while back, I found where the standings are but it is annoying how far deep you have to dig to get to them. First you have to go to scores, then scroll over among your favorites to pick your league, then choose standings. Also, here in baseball playoff time there is no indication of where a series is and who is leading, it only shows the scores. I’m basically done with baseball for the year because i hate all teams that remain but I like to see who has the series lead while I’m on here looking at other stuff. I have to leave and go elsewhere so if it is on here, it’s too hard to find. After this trial is over I’ll have to justify if it’s worth full price for the few people I really like but as a paid total sports source, there are other free choices I’ll lean on.