At the moment, there’s confusion. Heartbreak and confusion. Sports Illustrated may live on. It may not. It may morph into something else. One hundred people are laid off. More than 100 people are laid off. Everybody is laid off. The union is fighting. The union is helpless. The headlines are so confusing.
My pop, who worked for both the baseball AND football Giants, walked in the door one evening in 1954 with this colorful new magazine. On its cover, Eddie Matthews of the Braves appeared to be doing violence to the baseball. I was 6 and enthralled!
As a former business journalist with BusinessWeek and then a PR guy for 20+ years -- I find nothing more impactful than the power of words. The turn of a phrase. The color. The detail. The ability of a writer to let a reader's mind conjure up the visceral feeling of a moment. In years past -- it was easier to find such creativity. Frank Deford, Jim Murray, Rick Rielly and Joe. it still exists today... but the vehicles that packaged that writing into tasty treats -- newspapers and magazines -- are disappearing. I too longed for my weekly dose of goodness in the form of Sports Illustrated. I miss it.
I am pretty sure this is my second reading of this, and I apologize if I have already commented.
It seems like an overarching point here is that much of print media is having a hard time mattering. I have been nostalgic a lot lately for newspapers and magazines like they were. The USA Today when I went to a hotel at a kid was always a big draw. On that point, if you’re at all like me, I have two suggestions.
First, I have recently learned about The National. It seems like The Athletic if it couldn’t get off the ground and was before the internet. It would be interesting to hear about from someone who knows more, such as yourself.
Second, Mike was trying to get you into other sports recently—eh, within the past few years. I’d like to push Italian soccer/football—calcio. Not for the game itself, but because Italy can look like what I imagine NY in the 50s did in some ways. The tight fashion and the smoking everywhere in Milan, sure. But also the newsstands and newspapers. You can see a crowd of old men around a big newsstand, unlike I’ve personally ever seen in America outside of movies and TV set in that era, and think, wow, to these Italians, somehow, print still matters. The newspapers themselves look more like papers that we might see shown on a documentary covering something from decades ago. And I just find that really interesting.
Also, there is a lot to be said for not just the photographers but the photo editing that was able to pick the most indelible image out of a stack and make it stick.
Just watching replay after replay now - “instant classic” - idk - it doesn’t seat into the brain (at least this old GenX one) the same way.
I suppose that's possible, and I appreciate you explaining your thinking.
But I'm really curious. Do you have circulation figures? E.g., how many swimsuit issues were sold (or clicked on?) in 2021 vs. 2022 or 2023? That would seem like an important piece of evidence for your assertion.
I say that because there's another possibility. After all, we're talking about cover photos for 2022 and 2023 because they were, apparently, memorable, and those issues did make something of a splash. Did 2021's issue get any attention at all? If not, then perhaps SI editors decided that they needed to do something different and change up the models on the cover of what had once been the magazine's most popular issue. IOW, what we're talking about might have been not wokeness or another ill-defined boogieman but rather a market-driven attempt to salvage a dying brand.
Of course, it didn't work, but then--as Joe's article and the comments show--nothing else SI has been doing for the last decade has worked out.
The writing was great. But the sports photography defined a generation. It was art; it was relevancy. Making the cover of SI was like a comedian making his first appearance on The Tonight Show and having Johnny call you over. You were elevated to the pantheon; you were validated, and the rest of the world knew.
I am sure that many of Joe's readers, like me , were once SI readers. We are fans of sports and great writing. Writing that can make you think, laugh and sometimes weep. Thank you Joe for carrying on that great tradition.
I often laughed and cried reading the tales of fathers and sons in The Baseball 100. I remember my wife knocking on the door to my bathroom in 1991 after the Twins won the World Series because she could hear crying coming from inside. Was I all right? Yes, I'm just reading Steve Rushin's piece on the World Series in Sports Illustrated.
The way in which this great writing is delivered to us may have changed , but the reason we read has not.Sports provide great opportunities for writing that gets to the core of the human experience.
I have long been a fan of the great sports writers from Ring Lardner ,Red Smith and Jimmy Cannon to Deford,Fimrite, Rushin and Joe. Since we are a like-minded lot here I highly recommend reading the works of John Lardner and his classic piece "Down Great Purple Valleys "
Joe, you are so right. Sports Illustrated has been such an important part of my life. I subscribed from 1976 to about 2021, when I couldn't figure out when, if ever, the magazine was going to arrive. (They didn't even tell us it went to a monthly or did it?) I still have the vast majority of those magazines in boxes in my basement. Plan to go through them during retirement. The writers you mentioned and so many more were so influential to me. I have since read books by them, especially Deford and Kirkpatrick The event did not fully occur until I read about it in Sports Illustrated. Our lives without it will never be the same. I definitely remember, going to the mail box on Friday and just reading the entire magazine in one sitting, often starting at the back, with Reilly or others. So sad to have it come to an end. So glad you were there for period of your life. What an experience.
I talked my mom into getting me an SI subscription in the mid '80's when I was 11. I thought it was such a cool and amazing thing that I walked around at school telling most of my friends as a flex. I maintained that subscription for nearly 20 years before letting it go. For so long, it was the gold standard for a sports fan. It's very sad to see yet another era (completely) die away.
"Part of the magic was that it was your mailbox, this wondrous combination of photographs and words was coming directly to your house and from there to your bedroom. It belonged to you. All of the brilliant turns of phrase, the hilarious jokes, the tear-jerking turns, the heart-stopping paragraphs, the drama, the color, the photographs, the letters to the editor, the faces in the crowd, all of it was yours. And next week, same time, another little miracle would come to your mailbox."
I received a subscription to Sports Illustrated from my parents for years, probably starting at age 13 or so. One wall of my bedroom was a collage of photos I'd snipped out and pasted up. This is a sad day indeed.
Very sad - waiting for SI to arrive in the mail was once one of my favorite things. Even sadder is the loss of long form sports stories and profiles. There used to be some really good stuff on The Athletic, but even that's gone away.
I grew up in Toronto and subscribed from 1978 (aged 13) up to when I moved (for good as it turned out) to Australia in 1993. I loved that magazine. I also kept every issue and several years ago (at great expense) shipped them to Australia where they sat in boxes for years. This year I had to cull the boxes and got rid of about 75% of the mags, only keeping the one's with the 'best covers'. Who knows what sports journalism gems of stories I threw out...but re-reading some of the one's I've kept is magical. The writing is rich and superb. How lucky were we to grow up in that era of sportswriting?
You are a fabulous writer Joe and I love reading your stuff but Frank Deford wrote a cover story in the 1980s about the Toughest Coach There Ever Was that sticks to me nearly 40 years later as the greatest short form story I ever read. The loss of SI is the final nail in old time journalism which frankly in this age of Celebrity Journalism is still the best journalism. Please never turn into a guy who is high on his talent. You're an amazing writer but you never take yourself or your subject too seriously. Please don't change.
SI set the tone, set the conversation, and set the picture. Now? pictures ‘blink by the ‘000, so we don’t appreciate them. Sports stories ‘blink by the ‘000, uncurated, so we don’t appreciate them. Basically, entertainment is thrown at us — oft unasked for — like raw meet, unseasoned, bloody, uncooked, and in an endless parade. There’s no scarcity, and we have little clue what’s memorable, what’s worth noting, before another piece of red meat lands on us. The Athletic suffices for some, but there’s no amazing picture so we have a visceral feel for the tale. SI took the time to curate, prepare the meal, and we enjoyed it. On our own time. None of us want us to lose that. So thanks for the heads up, Joe. I re-subscribed. Hopefully they can get it turned around.
SI and Pitchfork dying the same week gives me some pause. Both were formative at different times in my life. Their tones were different, their primary mediums were different, and obviously they covered different areas. But they both shaped my tastes and enhanced my appreciation for things I loved.
I don’t know if there’s a lesson to draw from both of them circling the drain at the same time other than making a go of it in media is hard.
SI was a cultural monolith. I read it as a kid, and copies of the magazine can still be found in nearly every waiting room in the nation. It was everywhere, and it meant everything. It's death was telegraphed for years, but its still sad because its one less connection back in time. Still, this is a mercy killing. It hasn't been SI for years (And I'd hate to see it become what the AV Club has... a sad betrayal of its identity).
Pitchfork.... geez, that was the New Media. That's what came along and replaced the dinosaur of Rolling Stone. It had a new tone and it felt like ours (even if I'm being honest, Pitchfork is more of a Millennial touchstone than Gen X... it skewed younger than me). And its already dead? The replacement is dead? It feels like it wasn't even long enough to be an era.
When Pitchfork gave Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple a rare "10" rating just a few years ago, it still felt like that meant something. Hell, I saw Jawbreaker a few months ago, and they made fun of Pitchfork review in their stage banter. Now, that's already out of date. It felt like it still had some cultural sway, but... I guess not. At least it won't have the long zombie death of Sports Illustrated.
My pop, who worked for both the baseball AND football Giants, walked in the door one evening in 1954 with this colorful new magazine. On its cover, Eddie Matthews of the Braves appeared to be doing violence to the baseball. I was 6 and enthralled!
As a former business journalist with BusinessWeek and then a PR guy for 20+ years -- I find nothing more impactful than the power of words. The turn of a phrase. The color. The detail. The ability of a writer to let a reader's mind conjure up the visceral feeling of a moment. In years past -- it was easier to find such creativity. Frank Deford, Jim Murray, Rick Rielly and Joe. it still exists today... but the vehicles that packaged that writing into tasty treats -- newspapers and magazines -- are disappearing. I too longed for my weekly dose of goodness in the form of Sports Illustrated. I miss it.
Joe,
I am pretty sure this is my second reading of this, and I apologize if I have already commented.
It seems like an overarching point here is that much of print media is having a hard time mattering. I have been nostalgic a lot lately for newspapers and magazines like they were. The USA Today when I went to a hotel at a kid was always a big draw. On that point, if you’re at all like me, I have two suggestions.
First, I have recently learned about The National. It seems like The Athletic if it couldn’t get off the ground and was before the internet. It would be interesting to hear about from someone who knows more, such as yourself.
Second, Mike was trying to get you into other sports recently—eh, within the past few years. I’d like to push Italian soccer/football—calcio. Not for the game itself, but because Italy can look like what I imagine NY in the 50s did in some ways. The tight fashion and the smoking everywhere in Milan, sure. But also the newsstands and newspapers. You can see a crowd of old men around a big newsstand, unlike I’ve personally ever seen in America outside of movies and TV set in that era, and think, wow, to these Italians, somehow, print still matters. The newspapers themselves look more like papers that we might see shown on a documentary covering something from decades ago. And I just find that really interesting.
You know who would never have had a byline in SI?
Pat McAfee. Enough said.
Also, there is a lot to be said for not just the photographers but the photo editing that was able to pick the most indelible image out of a stack and make it stick.
Just watching replay after replay now - “instant classic” - idk - it doesn’t seat into the brain (at least this old GenX one) the same way.
I suppose that's possible, and I appreciate you explaining your thinking.
But I'm really curious. Do you have circulation figures? E.g., how many swimsuit issues were sold (or clicked on?) in 2021 vs. 2022 or 2023? That would seem like an important piece of evidence for your assertion.
I say that because there's another possibility. After all, we're talking about cover photos for 2022 and 2023 because they were, apparently, memorable, and those issues did make something of a splash. Did 2021's issue get any attention at all? If not, then perhaps SI editors decided that they needed to do something different and change up the models on the cover of what had once been the magazine's most popular issue. IOW, what we're talking about might have been not wokeness or another ill-defined boogieman but rather a market-driven attempt to salvage a dying brand.
Of course, it didn't work, but then--as Joe's article and the comments show--nothing else SI has been doing for the last decade has worked out.
The writing was great. But the sports photography defined a generation. It was art; it was relevancy. Making the cover of SI was like a comedian making his first appearance on The Tonight Show and having Johnny call you over. You were elevated to the pantheon; you were validated, and the rest of the world knew.
I am sure that many of Joe's readers, like me , were once SI readers. We are fans of sports and great writing. Writing that can make you think, laugh and sometimes weep. Thank you Joe for carrying on that great tradition.
I often laughed and cried reading the tales of fathers and sons in The Baseball 100. I remember my wife knocking on the door to my bathroom in 1991 after the Twins won the World Series because she could hear crying coming from inside. Was I all right? Yes, I'm just reading Steve Rushin's piece on the World Series in Sports Illustrated.
The way in which this great writing is delivered to us may have changed , but the reason we read has not.Sports provide great opportunities for writing that gets to the core of the human experience.
I have long been a fan of the great sports writers from Ring Lardner ,Red Smith and Jimmy Cannon to Deford,Fimrite, Rushin and Joe. Since we are a like-minded lot here I highly recommend reading the works of John Lardner and his classic piece "Down Great Purple Valleys "
Joe, you are so right. Sports Illustrated has been such an important part of my life. I subscribed from 1976 to about 2021, when I couldn't figure out when, if ever, the magazine was going to arrive. (They didn't even tell us it went to a monthly or did it?) I still have the vast majority of those magazines in boxes in my basement. Plan to go through them during retirement. The writers you mentioned and so many more were so influential to me. I have since read books by them, especially Deford and Kirkpatrick The event did not fully occur until I read about it in Sports Illustrated. Our lives without it will never be the same. I definitely remember, going to the mail box on Friday and just reading the entire magazine in one sitting, often starting at the back, with Reilly or others. So sad to have it come to an end. So glad you were there for period of your life. What an experience.
I talked my mom into getting me an SI subscription in the mid '80's when I was 11. I thought it was such a cool and amazing thing that I walked around at school telling most of my friends as a flex. I maintained that subscription for nearly 20 years before letting it go. For so long, it was the gold standard for a sports fan. It's very sad to see yet another era (completely) die away.
"Part of the magic was that it was your mailbox, this wondrous combination of photographs and words was coming directly to your house and from there to your bedroom. It belonged to you. All of the brilliant turns of phrase, the hilarious jokes, the tear-jerking turns, the heart-stopping paragraphs, the drama, the color, the photographs, the letters to the editor, the faces in the crowd, all of it was yours. And next week, same time, another little miracle would come to your mailbox."
Perfect. :)
I received a subscription to Sports Illustrated from my parents for years, probably starting at age 13 or so. One wall of my bedroom was a collage of photos I'd snipped out and pasted up. This is a sad day indeed.
Very sad - waiting for SI to arrive in the mail was once one of my favorite things. Even sadder is the loss of long form sports stories and profiles. There used to be some really good stuff on The Athletic, but even that's gone away.
I grew up in Toronto and subscribed from 1978 (aged 13) up to when I moved (for good as it turned out) to Australia in 1993. I loved that magazine. I also kept every issue and several years ago (at great expense) shipped them to Australia where they sat in boxes for years. This year I had to cull the boxes and got rid of about 75% of the mags, only keeping the one's with the 'best covers'. Who knows what sports journalism gems of stories I threw out...but re-reading some of the one's I've kept is magical. The writing is rich and superb. How lucky were we to grow up in that era of sportswriting?
You are a fabulous writer Joe and I love reading your stuff but Frank Deford wrote a cover story in the 1980s about the Toughest Coach There Ever Was that sticks to me nearly 40 years later as the greatest short form story I ever read. The loss of SI is the final nail in old time journalism which frankly in this age of Celebrity Journalism is still the best journalism. Please never turn into a guy who is high on his talent. You're an amazing writer but you never take yourself or your subject too seriously. Please don't change.
SI set the tone, set the conversation, and set the picture. Now? pictures ‘blink by the ‘000, so we don’t appreciate them. Sports stories ‘blink by the ‘000, uncurated, so we don’t appreciate them. Basically, entertainment is thrown at us — oft unasked for — like raw meet, unseasoned, bloody, uncooked, and in an endless parade. There’s no scarcity, and we have little clue what’s memorable, what’s worth noting, before another piece of red meat lands on us. The Athletic suffices for some, but there’s no amazing picture so we have a visceral feel for the tale. SI took the time to curate, prepare the meal, and we enjoyed it. On our own time. None of us want us to lose that. So thanks for the heads up, Joe. I re-subscribed. Hopefully they can get it turned around.
SI and Pitchfork dying the same week gives me some pause. Both were formative at different times in my life. Their tones were different, their primary mediums were different, and obviously they covered different areas. But they both shaped my tastes and enhanced my appreciation for things I loved.
I don’t know if there’s a lesson to draw from both of them circling the drain at the same time other than making a go of it in media is hard.
Both hurt for different reasons.
SI was a cultural monolith. I read it as a kid, and copies of the magazine can still be found in nearly every waiting room in the nation. It was everywhere, and it meant everything. It's death was telegraphed for years, but its still sad because its one less connection back in time. Still, this is a mercy killing. It hasn't been SI for years (And I'd hate to see it become what the AV Club has... a sad betrayal of its identity).
Pitchfork.... geez, that was the New Media. That's what came along and replaced the dinosaur of Rolling Stone. It had a new tone and it felt like ours (even if I'm being honest, Pitchfork is more of a Millennial touchstone than Gen X... it skewed younger than me). And its already dead? The replacement is dead? It feels like it wasn't even long enough to be an era.
When Pitchfork gave Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple a rare "10" rating just a few years ago, it still felt like that meant something. Hell, I saw Jawbreaker a few months ago, and they made fun of Pitchfork review in their stage banter. Now, that's already out of date. It felt like it still had some cultural sway, but... I guess not. At least it won't have the long zombie death of Sports Illustrated.