The New York Daily News has fired its sports editor Eric Barrow in a new sign of trouble at the floundering tabloid.
In a Thursday memo that was obtained by The Post, Barrow, a 15-year veteran of the paper who held the top sports job for the past three years, told staff that he wouldn’t be replaced.
Later on Thursday afternoon, News editor in chief Robert York confirmed that the sports editor job was no more but that he hired Kyle Wagner to a new position as the director of digital audience development for sports. Wagner was most recently senior sports editor at FiveThirtyEight.com and earlier was a writer on the Deadspin web site.
The sports staff had already been hard hit by the July cutbacks that chopped the newsroom in half, leaving only about 40 staffers as the parent company Tribune Publishing fired more than 100 across the paper. Those cuts had left only a single reporter to split time covering both the Mets and the Yankees.
Thursday, the grim reaper also came for Barrow.
“Well folks, I have just been told that I’ve been let go. My position is being eliminated,” Barrow wrote to staffers in the stunning email obtained by The Post. “Not sure what that means for the sports dept. but today is my last day. As a matter of fact, I’m being asked to leave ASAP.”
Barrow’s exit comes as Tribune Publishing tries to sell the entire company in a sale process that has been underway since March — but had yet to find a suitor willing to pony up the cash that the board seeks as its stock price has crashed in recent weeks.
“As I said in a recent email, these last few months we showed tremendous resiliency putting out a paper and website despite massive cuts here in staff,” Barrow continued in the Thursday memo.
“I have no doubt you will all continue to deliver thought-provoking, smart commentary and analysis going forward. And I will continue to root for the Daily News.
“I’ve worked here for over 15 years, and was always proud of the work we did. Best of luck to you.”
Barrow had been among the outspoken critics of the universal copy and design center that Tribune instituted last year in Chicago to handle all the papers in its chain as part of its ongoing cost-chopping moves. Barrow was furious that the shared facility meant that sometimes late-breaking scores and sports news could not make the sports final edition of the next day’s paper.
Tribune has been scrambling to stem losses at the Daily News that have been estimated at between $20 million and $30 million a year. Tribune had predicted the tabloid would finally break even in the fourth quarter. But a price hike to $1.50 in early September sent circulation plummeting by more than 20 percent for the month — the steepest newsstand decline among the city’s dailies.
Barrow could not be reached for comment. A Tribune spokeswoman said, “We don’t comment on personnel matters.”