Days before that first Kawhi story broke, The New York Times struck a seven-figure licensing deal with Torre and Meadowlark Media to host Pablo Torre Finds Out on The Athletic. The deal presaged the increasingly complex nature of the Times’s relationship with its sports media franchise. Much like ESPN’s own licensing deal with Pat McAfee, the Times’s new partnership with outside talent raised questions about the consistency and integrity of its editorial product. Would Torre be held to the Times’s exacting standards, or did he get to play by his own rules? Torre’s Kawhi reporting was undeniably strong, but, as a podcaster, it came with a layer of prosecutorial insinuation and anonymous sourcing that wouldn’t have survived the Times edit desk. However the Times intended to manage this awkward choreography, it was happy to claim Torre as one of its own—especially after Pablo Torre Finds Out won the Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting for its work exposing the Clippers alleged evasion of the salary cap. The Times and its publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, proudly touted this as the first-ever Pulitzer for The Athletic. Torre gamely accepted the association with the Times, which he described as “an honor in and of itself.” But, as Times and Athletic sources acknowledged to me this week, the prizewinning reporting actually started long before the licensing deal and was produced independent of the Athletic.
