The New York Times’ bombshell report, written by Katherine Rosman and Ken Belson on former The Athletic NFL insider Dianna Russini, reignited the controversy surrounding New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel.
According to Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy, the article may have answered a few questions, but it also “raises a slew of fascinating questions” about The Athletic, its parent company, NYT, including the status of the publication’s ongoing internal review into Russini.
Reporter Says NYT’s Dianna Russini Story Raises More Questions Than Answers
In his column for Front Office Sports, McCarthy wrote: “The New York Times’s lengthy new story on Dianna Russini doesn’t provide many answers on what happened between her and Patriots coach Mike Vrabel. But it sure raises a slew of fascinating questions.”
Among the issues he highlighted was the relationship between the NYT and its sports subsidiary, The Athletic, which it purchased in 2022 for $550 million. McCarthy questioned why executives at the Times Company declined interview requests from their own newspaper.
After initially defending Russini when photos of her and Vrabel at an adults-only Arizona resort surfaced in April, The Athletic executive editor Steven Ginsberg later announced that the publication would conduct an internal review.
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More than two months later, The Athletic has yet to publicly announce the findings of its review. McCarthy wrote that the timing of the NYT report led several industry sources to believe it may have been intended as a message for The Athletic to conclude its review quickly.
“As soon as the Times story entitled, ‘Dianna Russini Was an NFL Insider. Was She Also Out of Bounds?’ dropped on Wednesday, several sources told me they thought this was the Times sending a message for The Athletic to stop dragging their feet and wrap up a probe that’s making both media brands look bad.”
Former The Athletic NBA writer Ethan Strauss echoed that sentiment in his Substack, describing the article as evidence of the “simmering one-way beef” between traditional Times journalists and their newer colleagues at The Athletic.
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Strauss explained further in his Substack column titled “New York Times’ Dianna Russini Story is Somehow About NYT Hatred of The Athletic.”
“Russini is a flashpoint in this feud because she represents a lot of what that Gray Lady culture resents about sports ‘journalists.’ I’m generalizing, but these people look down on us, maybe even more so than sports fans tend to,” he wrote.
“Russini, a well-compensated middlebrow act with loose ethics, is an affront not just to their preferred standards, but also to their very identity as journalists,” Strauss added. “They hate that some people might categorize a person like this as sharing the same profession.”
McCarthy also pointed to several details emphasized by the Times, including Russini’s reported salary of nearly $800,000 and the company’s criticism of her story about FaceTiming an NFL head coach to avoid a traffic ticket.
The Times also noted that The Athletic had launched a review into Russini’s reporting before she resigned, writing that “rather than wait for the results of her employer’s review, Ms. Russini resigned.”
Russini has not publicly responded to the Times’ report. While her future in NFL media remains uncertain, PFSN’s Alex Kennedy believes that “as soon as she decides to tell her side of the story, there will be a ton of people ready to listen.”
Will Russini get another gig as an NFL insider after the scandal? Here’s what PFSN’s NFL analysts think about what’s next for Russini and her future in the industry.
