The fast-growing sports news and features site The Athletic announced on Monday that it will launch a DC presence in early September. While they have yet to announce which reporters they’re poaching from DC media, multiple sources have confirmed to RMNB that former NBC Sports Washington Capitals reporter Tarik El-Bashir is among them.
But El-Bashir, who’s covered the Capitals for seven of the past 11 season, won’t be covering the Capitals. We’re told he’ll cover football.
Other signs of a new venture for El-Bashir have emerged in recent days. His last post on NBCSports.com came two weeks ago, on August 6. He also recently changed his Twitter handle from @TarikNBCS to @Tarik_ElBashir and removed references to NBC Sports from his bio.
While El-Bashir and The Athletic have yet to confirm the news, multiple independent sources have told RMNB it’s a done deal.
Prior to joining NBCSW, El-Bashir was the Capitals beat reporter for the Capitals for five seasons. He covered football for NBCSW for four seasons before returning to the Capitals beat in July 2016. That’s a lot of institutional Caps knowledge heading back to a different beat.
📢 LAUNCHING IN EARLY SEPT: Quality, in-depth DC sports coverage for diehard fans. More details to come 👀
— The Athletic (@TheAthleticDC) August 20, 2018
