What happened to Sports Illustrated?
Sports Illustrated was a magazine that used unique forms of journalism with a mix of photography. With an up rise in spectator sports in the American culture, Sports Illustrated would take charge in delivering behind the scenes information. Sports Illustrated would be a leader in the media industry along with what was playing over the television. Since Sports Illustrated was a magazine and could not print issues fast enough to compete with television, they would produce other content. The magazine would act as an offset to that of television. Television was always fast news that would tell you who won and lost and also include the score. Sports Illustrated would offset the speedy news of the television by providing inside statistics and meaningful analysis a couple days after.
The magazine Sports Illustrated has a weird past as it had many owners and was no successful at first. Stuart Scheftel created the first Sports Illustrated with the intended target for sportsmen. For two years, he would publish on a monthly basis covering the sports of golf, tennis, and skiing. Stuart would then go on to sell the name to Dell Productions which would first be published in 1949. Dell Productions would only cover six issues of their version of Sports illustrated until it would be closed. Within these six months, Dell Productions would cover major sports within the magazine. These major sports would include baseball, basketball, and boxing. In 1954, Henry Luce, the owner of “Life” magazine at the time, had taken on the challenge of covering sports in the magazine industry. At the time, Luce was not even a fan of sports, but had decided that the time was right.
After going through many owners, Sports Illustrated is now owned by Authentic Brands Group. Authentic Brands Group had acquired the magazine after Meredith Corporation had bought it from Time in 2018 since they were a parent company. Soon after, Meredith Corporation would announce that they had planned to sell it since it did not fit in with “it’s lifestyle properties”. From Meredith Corporation, Authentic Brands Group would take charge of Sports Illustrated along with giving the publishing rights to a digital company called theMaven, Inc.
The magazine was published weekly in order to give fans behind the scenes information. Nowadays, the Sports Illustrated magazine is only published 16 times a year. They have also managed to deliver their sports news online through their website which was developed in 1997.
Sports Illustrated was a hit as soon as spectator sports began to skyrocket in the 1960’s. Without the internet being easily accessible to the general public, print was still the way to go in the sense of communication. Once internet service would be available to almost anyone, Sports Illustrated still had their focus on constructing and publishing the most popular sports magazine there was. Although they are online today, Sports Illustrated had failed to make a quick switch to a different form of media. The forms of media in which they could have easily changed their focus to was television and being able to provide their content online.
The magazine, Sports Illustrated, does not publish as much as it used to. Annually, Sports Illustrated now only publishes 16 copies a year. In 1997, Sports Illustrated had slowly but surely made their way onto the internet.
From our textbook Media & Culture, it states that “Although the Internet was initially viewed as the death knell of print magazines, the industry now embraces it.”(Page 324). Over time, the magazine industry has learned to now put most of their content on line in order to reach their viewers easier. This also allowed publications of the news magazine to get to people faster than waiting in the mail for them. This allowed magazines to go from print to online. In the 1950s, television had started to take over. This resulted in “magazines ultimately reacting the same way radio and movies did: They Adapted.”(Page 325). The up rise in technology would change the magazine industry forever, as people would begin to lose interest in reading printed magazines. This means that magazines would soon become digital for people to view online.
Sports Illustrated was in no shape or form a way to communicate who won and lost. Sports Illustrated was the type of magazine where you would watch the game, then wait a few days for your addition of that week’s copy to be mailed to your front door. Within the magazine would contain information about the statistics of the game. Along with those statics would come analysis and insights which couldn’t be found anywhere else, such as information that was behind the scenes and no one else could get. This would include things like locker room banter, interviews with the coaches and players, and analytics on how each player performed. This new approach of sports writing could only be found by two gentlemen who went by the names Dan Jenkins and Frank Deford. These magazines would also contain photojournalism to go along with each analysis.
What we can learn about the magazine industry is that it is not as an important way of communication as it used to be. It used to be a thing that everyone signed up for to be delivered to their house. In the present day, we rely on faster networks and sources to report the important information through websites and on television.
It is rare that I see someone reading a magazine unless it is at a barber shop or the mechanics. The magazine industry, from my point of view, has sort of died off as it really isn’t all that important anymore. Although it is not as big as it used to be, bigger magazine companies such as Sports Illustrated, Better Home and Garden, and People magazine still publish copies a couple times a year.
In an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, they cover the topic of journalism and how the industry itself might be in some trouble. John Oliver explains how the newspaper and journalism industry is suffering because they are beginning to shut down and downsize. Since this industry is suffering, it could affect all of use because all of the information found on social media relies on journalism. Some examples for where you would get news on social media would be Facebook, Google, and Twitter. John states that ‘those places are often just repackaging the work of newspapers”. This would make sense since everything that gets published into the newspaper is fresh and new news. Without journalism, the news networks would have nothing to report on. John Oliver also makes another great comparison stating that “the media is a food chain that would fall apart without local newspapers”. This works the same way with Sports Illustrated and how they report behind the scenes details. The reporters and writers of Sports Illustrated put in a lot of work in order to get information that is different from that of the news stations. News stations then use the information from reporters at Sports Illustrated, reword and restructure the information, and propose it as their own news.
As big as it was, Sports Illustrated had failed to convert to different forms of media. At first, they were the most successful and leading sport magazine for many years. After a couple years of perfecting the magazine magic they had put into creating their name, technology was here to change that. The introduction of radio and television was a threat to the magazine industry. These new forms of technology would grasp people’s attention as it was the new and cool thing to watch or listen to. Over time, Sports Illustrated had become smaller and less popular, as people were interested in learning about their sports news from the radio and television. Finally, Sports Illustrated had moved to other forms of media such as creating a website. Sports Illustrated now competes with Bleacher Report, Fansided, and Rant Sports.
Within the last couple of years, Sports Illustrated has been sold to Authentic Brands Group. Although the company has been sold to a different owner, the publishing rights are still with a separate digital media company. In the middle of 2019, it was announced that the rights to publish Sports Illustrated would be handed over to a digital media company along with a 10 year contract. Editorial operations would now be licensed by the company Maven.
Sports Illustrated was a magazine that used unique forms of journalism with a mix of photography. Sports Illustrated first began to gain their popularity when spectator sports had began in the late 1900’s. This new up rise within the American Culture would allow or the magazine industry to prosper and grow. Sports Illustrated would soon become one of the most well know sports magazines. This was all until they had experienced a change in technology within the journalism community. Sports Illustrated failed to successfully and quickly convert to an online source. Now with technology, magazines are almost irrelevant and hard to get people to read.
