> It sounds to me that a site dedicated to sports, should focus on sports.

What does it sound to you that a site not purely dedicated to sports—like say, I dunno, Deadspin—should do?

From https://nypost.com/2019/10/30/deadspin-writers-revolt-say-th...

  Things are spinning out of control over at Deadspin.
  Several staffers at the news site announced their resignations on Wednesday — amid a struggle with their G/O Media bosses who recently   issued a memo telling writers to file only sports stories.
  
  The internal revolt began Tuesday with rebellious staffers continuing to write non-sports stories — and the deputy director saying he’d been fired for not following the directive.
  “Hi! I’ve just been fired from Deadspin for not sticking to sports,” tweeted Barry Petchesky.
  
  On Wednesday, sports writer Lauren Theisen posted an image she said was of “the meeting where management tried to get us to move past   Barry’s firing.” She then announced that she was leaving the site over how her colleagues were treated.
  Features writer Kelsey McKinney and media reporter Laura Wagner were also among the many staffers to announce they quit Wednesday.
  
  A G/O spokesperson said in a statement: “They resigned and we’re sorry that they couldn’t work within this incredibly broad coverage mandate. We’re excited about Deadspin’s future and we’ll have some important updates in the coming days.”

I don't understand why sports writers would be mad about being told to stick to sports. If I go to a sports website, I want to see sports articles. That's the job. Instead, you got progressives writing political articles tangentially related to sports if at all. If they want to write political articles, don't write for a sports site.

Compare and contrast:

https://twitter.com/gmgunion/status/1189287651146383361

I think that says it all really

From Wikipedia:

"Deadspin is a sports news and blog website, originally founded by Gawker Media. Deadspin posts commentaries, recaps and previews of major sports stories of the day, as well as sports-related anecdotes, rumors and video"

I'm not a reader of deadspin, but if their content no longer aligned to this, and was primarily focussed on politics. Its little wonder the owners said knock it off.

Coincidentally, ESPN, has done the same thing, putting the focus back on sports[1]

[1] https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/07/espn-dan-le-batard-no-polit...

I am (was) an avid reader of Deadspin, and the non-sports content was a large part of why I read that site for 10+ odd years. The reality is that, even for people who love sports, there often isn't very much to say about them. Rather than force them to churn out the same kind of article about why LeBron James is good at basketball that you could read on any number of websites, Deadspin allowed their writers the freedom to write about whatever they wanted to, whether that was a brilliant analysis of Loony Tunes (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-wile-e-coyote-explains...), poignant commentary about the ways in which journalistic language undermines sexual assault victims (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/against-allegedly-18197033...), or tell a harrowing story about recovering from a major brain hemorrhage (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-night-the-lights-went-...). The perspective offered by Deadspin was unique, and I will miss it dearly.

> I'm not a reader of deadspin, but if their content no longer aligned to this, and was primarily focussed on politics.

See, if you had been a reader for a while, you would have known that they frequently covered non-sports topics, and that's a big part of what their readers liked.