Sports Illustrated lays off almost everyone

[Principled Man]

Much of the staff of Sports Illustrated, and possibly all remaining writers and editors, received layoff notices Friday, which essentially could spell the end of a publication that for decades was the gold standard of sports journalism.

The union of the staff tweeted Friday that it would continue to fight for the publication of the magazine but that its future is now in the hands of the magazine’s owner, Authentic Brands Group.

 

“This is another difficult day in what has been a difficult four years for Sports Illustrated under Arena Group (previously The Maven) stewardship," the union said in a statement. "We are calling on ABG to ensure the continued publication of SI and allow it to serve our audience in the way it has for nearly 70 years.”

 

ABG has owned the magazine since 2019 and sold the publishing rights to a company called the Arena Group. The Arena Group missed a recent payment for those publishing rights, prompting ABG to pull the publishing license and putting the future of Sports Illustrated in jeopardy.

 

Friday’s announcement is the latest turmoil at the fabled sports magazine, following several rounds of layoffs over the past decade. When ABG bought Sports Illustrated from its previous owner, Meredith Corporation, more than 30 percent of the staff was laid off.

 

Sports Illustrated still has between 30 and 50 employees.

 

[The Washington Post]

[Nova Carmina]

It's been a zombie publication for years. It may just be time to put it down. Damn shame.

[stoopid]

I'll admit that my overall ingest of published articles and such has gone down drastically as more 'free' options on the internet have become ubiquitous.  My last subscription was to Wired magazine that I recently allowed to expire due to very rarely cracking it open or even reading many of the articles online.  They sit in a pile at my desk at work unread.

 

For me the trend has been getting information in bits and bites, on demand via searches most of the time, and when wanting more in depth analysis for general topics I'll watch a youtube video.  For things that interest me most, it's forums and Youtube channel subscriptions (I'm a Youtube subcscriber, maybe this counts as 'media' consumption now?).

 

While its sad to see many written behemoths fade into the sunset over time, and there's certainly dangers should all "true" journalism vanish, I'm weirdly optimistic that the things replacing them can be as good or even better due to the lowish bar of entry and less frat house/boys club establishment gate keeping.

[TheAccountant]

Sad but I must confess that I have not purchased it for many years.  Was great once upon a time but I felt the quality went down through the years.  Last time I bought it might have been around 2007 or 2008.

 

My guess is that one or more of the companies mentioned in the original article were private equity funds (i.e. vulture capitalists).  Sadly they ALWAYS wreck magazine / newspapers when they purchase them.  Just so they and their small band of already rich owners can become even more obesely wealthy they wreck journalism (in the broadest possible sense).

 

Still, a sad end of an era (as with National Geographic basically ending a while back).  In some ways National Geographic was an even bigger loss. 

 

 

[BastillePark]

That's what putting Martha Stewart on the cover of the swimsuit edition will do for you (that and an overall downturn in periodical sales). 

[Principled Man]

I fondly remember the days when I would run to the bookstore to get the World Series and Super Bowl issues when my teams won it all.

 

I just HAD to get one before they sold out!  If I didn't get one, I was seriously pissed off!   

 

 

 

[blueschica]

That is a great photo of Johnny Bench!  Ours was this one, I think everyone in Pittsburgh still has it.  Sad to hear this news.  I always liked the amateur sports highlights near the back; high school kids and such.  It was a cool thing.

 

Edited January 20 by blueschica

[zepphead]

Sadly a sign of the times. Damn you Internet!!!

[treeduck]

All the writers and editors have been laid off but they still have 30-50 employees, who's left the boss, the cleaners and the lap dancers?

[Principled Man]

33 minutes ago, treeduck said:

All the writers and editors have been laid off but they still have 30-50 employees, who's left the boss, the cleaners and the lap dancers?

 

The Boss.

5 Tech people to show him how to work his computer.

10 People to fetch things for him.

10 Sanitation and maintenance people

15 Photographers for the swimsuit issue

[Maverick]

7 hours ago, blueschica said:

That is a great photo of Johnny Bench!  Ours was this one, I think everyone in Pittsburgh still has it.  Sad to hear this news.  I always liked the amateur sports highlights near the back; high school kids and such.  It was a cool thing.

 

Willie Stargell was probably my favorite baseball player when I was a kid.  I grew up in Maryland, but I rooted for the Pirates over the Orioles in the 1979 World Series.  Kent Tekulve was another favorite of mine, too.

 

By the time Cal Ripken had come on the scene, I had become an Orioles fan, and remained that way until Peter Angelos trashed the franchise in a desperate attempt to keep baseball out of Washington DC.  I lived in Maryland, but I was in the Washington suburbs.  I've been a Nationals fan ever since they arrived.  If the Orioles ever escape the Angelos ownership, I might could have them as my American League team.  But not until then.

[blueschica]

6 hours ago, Maverick said:

Willie Stargell was probably my favorite baseball player when I was a kid.  I grew up in Maryland, but I rooted for the Pirates over the Orioles in the 1979 World Series.  Kent Tekulve was another favorite of mine, too.

 

By the time Cal Ripken had come on the scene, I had become an Orioles fan, and remained that way until Peter Angelos trashed the franchise in a desperate attempt to keep baseball out of Washington DC.  I lived in Maryland, but I was in the Washington suburbs.  I've been a Nationals fan ever since they arrived.  If the Orioles ever escape the Angelos ownership, I might could have them as my American League team.  But not until then.

Willie Stargell was one of a kind, just awesome. I have his autograph somewhere, from when I was too young to realize how cool he was (and we thought autograph day was something that would go on forever.) Kent Tekulve was really special, also. We kept cable way longer than we should have because he was the color guy for most of the Pirate games for years, and he was so great to listen to. He finally retired and we could switch to streaming 

[Principled Man]

47 minutes ago, blueschica said:

Willie Stargell was one of a kind, just awesome.  

 

I will always remember his classic windmill at-bat routine....  

[blueschica]

My dad and I saw Stargell hit a home run into the right field upper deck of Three Rivers Stadium once; It was a great night!  

 

No wonder the Pirates were often losing money, with these ticket prices!  (Just kidding, like most teams, it's the TV revenue, or lack of . . .). I kept this for some reason.

 

[BastillePark]

16 hours ago, zepphead said:

Sadly a sign of the times. Damn you Internet!!!

In a lot more ways than 1. It's spawned a legion of people who "did their research" and know more than the actual scientists. It's also provided millions of us a way to communicate and read interesting articles and watch videos, sometimes in real time, so it's not all bad.

Edited January 21 by BastillePark

[Principled Man]

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star
In my mind and in my car
We can't rewind, we've gone too far
Pictures came and broke your heart
Put the blame on VTR...

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

 

The Internet:  Hold my beer.....

[zepphead]

22 hours ago, BastillePark said:

In a lot more ways than 1. It's spawned a legion of people who "did their research" and know more than the actual scientists. It's also provided millions of us a way to communicate and read interesting articles and watch videos, sometimes in real time, so it's not all bad.

Like a lot of things in life, some things good, and some things bad!

[NoahLutz]

'I Just Don't Know Where We Went Wrong,' Contemplates Sports Illustrated Executive In Front Of Framed Covers Of Obese, Trans Swimsuit Models

 

https://babylonbee.com/news/i-just-dont-know-where-we-went-wrong-contemplates-sports-illustrated-ceo-in-front-of-framed-obese-swimsuit-issue

 

NEW YORK, NY — After sending a company-wide email to notify all of its staff that they were being laid off, a top executive at iconic publication Sports Illustrated contemplated how things turned out so wrong as he stood in front of framed covers of obese and trans swimsuit models.

 

"I just don't know where things went south," said Jack Weber. "Did we not get woke enough? Should we have featured trans models even earlier? Was the heavy woman we put on the cover not heavy enough? What was it? Maybe we should've given more consideration to plastering the Pride flag on our cover back in June. I was certain we signaled the appropriate amount of virtue for every possible cause and movement out there. It just makes no sense."

 

The magazine, long seen as the authoritative source for all sports news, finally cut loose all its workforce after realizing no one was reading the publication anymore. "This really threw us for a loop," Weber said. "We had so many big things planned to turn things around. A salute to Caitlyn Jenner. Naming Lia Thomas our Female Athlete of the Year. We were even in negotiations to have Lizzo as a special celebrity cover model for the swimsuit issue this year. Now, all of that will be lost."

 

At publishing time, Sports Illustrated announced it had found a new solution to its problems by hiring an entirely new staff that would be the most diverse and inclusive in the history of sports news publications.

[NoahLutz]

I saw this article below, and thought of this thread, though it might be better suited for SOCN.  I don’t want to talk about whether the article is correct in its assertions (at least not outside of SOCN), but I will point out that a lot of new media is flourishing, and it is doing so because of the internet and despite efforts to kill it.  The internet doesn’t explain the fall of SI.

 

Why I'm Canceling My SI Subscription

ANDREW KLAVAN | 12:44 PM ON FEBRUARY 03, 2013

 

I am going to let my subscription to Sports Illustrated lapse when it runs out this year. I hope lots of other people will do the same. Like too many other publications, the magazine has become dishonest, dishonorable and even occasionally despicable in its conformist, lockstep left-wing bias. Republican politicians and conservative positions are routinely insulted in articles having nothing to do with either. Yawn-inducing left wing predictability is brought to the discussion of every issue. No SI writer is allowed to disagree with leftism ever. Despite its great photographs and occasionally good athlete profiles, the magazine has remade itself into crap in the name of political conformity.

 

For me, the Super Bowl issue with its smarmy and poorly reported article on religion in football was the last straw. The article was not an offense to God, it was an offense to journalism. Mark Oppenheimer, a left wing anti-religion writer for the left wing New York Times, among other left wing venues, does the left wing hit job on football players of faith. Not surprisingly, he is also the author of a hagiography of the Christian-bashing gay bully Dan Savage. (This blog has always supported gays and gay rights, but to my mind, Savage has no more place in serious debate than the Westboro Baptist gang.)

 

I could go through Oppenheimer’s lousy article “In the Fields of the Lord,” graph by graph to point out the unsupported conclusions, innuendoes, slanted use of quotes and flat-out untruths that would be unacceptable in any magazine attempting to report fairly, but I’d rather spend my time doing something more interesting, like twiddling my thumbs.

 

But here’s an example, chosen almost at random:

Quote

 

“It’s clear that for a substantial number of athletes and coaches, there is no tension between being a Christian and being an aggressive athlete. On the contrary, many of them argue that football builds character and thereby makes a man more of a Christian — a commingling of faith and football now accepted by fans.

But is that a mistake? Just 50 years ago such coziness between public Christianity and football would have seemed absurd. Athletes were nobody’s idea of good ambassadors for religion; they were more likely to be seen as dissolute drinkers and womanizers — more the roguish Joe Namath than the devout Roger Staubach.The aggressive, violent play preached by coaches of an earlier generation was accepted as natural precisely because sport was pagan, not Christian. Christianity was peaceful, charitable and pious. Sport was bloody, ruthless, impious.

In the 1950’s and 60’s that antagonism began to soften…”

 

 

Really? So 50 years ago — which would be 1963 — a cozy relationship between religion and football would’ve been “absurd,” but in the 1950s, more than sixty years ago, that began to change. Football used to be more about wild man Joe Namath, who played between ’65 and ’77, than pious Roger Staubach, who played roughly between ’69 and ’79.Uh, who says so? What made Namath more representative of football than Staubach? That he got more headlines? That says something about journalism, but not about religion. Sport was pagan? In what world? Gale Sayers’? Johnny Unitas’? Bear Bryant’s? Hogwash.

 

Okay, maybe in this example Oppenheimer’s writing is just sloppy, shoddy, unedited, stupid and unsupported, but the rest of the piece really is sinister. Organized prayer is made to sound like a conspiracy. Statements like “Football corrupts its fans” are thrown out without any proof whatsoever. And then there’s the fourth rate theology: “The Bible is clear that [God] preferred the loser.” Mr. Oppenheimer has a PHD in American religious history so really, he might want to read the Bible sometime.

 

Well, I could go on, but why bother? I’ve chronicled SI’s Lord-o-phobia before. And Oppenheimer is entitled to his shallow opinion. My point is only that it’s not journalism, or interesting, or even vaguely worth reading. I would love to read a well-reported, balanced article about the problems of mixing faith and sports as I would be interested in intelligent debate about Title IX and whether the damage it does to boys’ sports outweighs whatever good it does, if any, for girls. But you will never find that in SI today.

 

All you get here are leftists telling leftists how to think leftily about leftism. Which is a waste of everyone’s time. Especially when what you’re trying to do is find out about your favorite sport.

 

Screw em. Sports Illustrated officially stinks now. Cancel my subscription.

[ozzy85]

Hell, most of the car mags I read are gone. My last sub was for 4 Wheel & Offroad. Died out in 2019.