I liked Bordow's Suns coverage a lot but knowing he won't cover the Suns for the Athletic is one of the many reasons I won't be paying for their service. I don't understand the logic behind that. He seemed to enjoy his job covering the Suns but they moved him to the Cardinals and put someone new in charge of the Suns. That is a questionable business decision on their part. They lucked into signing the Suns beat writer from AZCentral and they could have offered people continuing coverage of the Suns by him at a point in the franchises history when things should be trending upward but they decide to go a different direction.
Beyond that bad decision though one of the reasons I really liked Bordow's coverage had to do with his coverage on Twitter, where he'd host regular Q&A sessions also. I would imagine working for a company like the Athletic that is charging people to read his work, they won't be happy with him giving away freebies like that on Twitter. That's part of the problem with pay models, they limit their writer's availability and sometimes they end up eliminating what they become known for or at least one of the main reasons people follow them for coverage.
ESPN suffered when they pushed Insider because they took away the content from a lot of good writers and hid it behind a pay wall but not long after they introduced Insider it seemed like they started removing Insider articles more and more to feature Insider Podcasts. That was in the early days of Podcasts and it made some sense why people would pay for those back then but Podcasts are everywhere now. The podcast market is so plentiful now that it seems like paying for access to some would be crazy but it shows how the internet has flipped also. You can listen to podcasts for free but if you hope to read something then you'll need to pay for it. There's been a weird flip over the last decade or so.
You make a lot of good points. When the Athletic did not put Bordow in charge of Suns coverage, they assured I would not be paying for a subscription. It was highly doubtful I would have paid for it anyway but this slammed the door shut.
I miss Bordow's daily coverage of the Suns for nuts and bolts information, e.g., I do not even know if the Suns offered Melton. There is no longer a go-to source for Suns coverage unless something big happens or someone decides to write a perspective article.
Now most of my Suns information comes from Arizona Sports or tweets from a myriad of national writers I find reliable such as Shams Charania and Adrian Wojnarowski. There are some other local news sources such as Gambo on twitter but it is not the day-in, day-out coverage I desire. This has created a void for the fans wanting to follow the Suns more closely.
In the end, the fans are the losers by this trend towards pay internet coverage. I can't help but think there is a trickle down effect that will eventually come back to haunt the Suns.
