1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Sports Illustrated layoffs

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by silvercharm, Oct 3, 2019.

  1. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Monthlies can be tough on topicality, but the sports calendar is pretty well fixed. We know when events are coming.

    So I think a Vanity Fair for sports could work. But I'm not sure it will. Vanity Fair itself isn't working very well lately.

    That said, worries about the publication schedule are only relevant to the paper product. What's the website doing all month? is maybe a better question.

    Hurts to see a favorite cultural institution go through this, but everything changes.

    Adapt or die.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2019
  2. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    A feature on Player X that had a couple good weeks and is the talk of his/her sport, SI's bread-and-butter, is also too risky on a month's lead time. Season previews would also be a stretch, you'd miss the late stuff like Andrew Luck's retirement. And forget doing anything around March Madness, and on, and on.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2019
    Lugnuts and wicked like this.
  3. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    Where are the subscribers for such a version of SI going to come from? How much of the subscriber base was driven by features rather than national games and info? How would this SI be any more marketable than something on the web?
     
  4. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    To be fair - they missed the Luck retirement this year. Even weekly, the March Madness issue arrived at homes after the first games tipped.
     
  5. Lugnuts

    Lugnuts Well-Known Member

    If they want to publish once a month, they could take the approach of Racquet Magazine, which has gone all-in on the collectors' item motif. Each magazine is frame-worthy. And you can't find the features online. Cool concept?? Maybe?? Ish??

    I have never read Racquet Magazine.
     
  6. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Without commenting on Racquet magazine, because I have never actually seen an issue. ... there are still some niche publications that can pull off a print product that comes out quarterly or bi-monthly or monthly. The nichier (is that a word?) they are, the more there still seems to be a market.

    I think it requires a targeted subject or interest where there is a passionate group of people who will rally around a publication like that and support it. It can be a small group of enthusiasts, as long as it can generate targeted advertising or ancillary businesses that sell things related to the interest. It's a big bonus if it is a hobby or interest that appeals to wealthy people, so it can attract luxury ads. Even better if it is something that lends itself to ancillary businesses, such as events related to the niche or conferences or selling equipment or branded merchandise. ... with the magazine essentially giving the authority to be in those other businesses (so sometimes, the magazine itself can be a money loser). Many of the kinds of publications I am talking about don't have a lot of subscribers, but are still financially viable.

    SI, at least as it exists, is too much of a generalist magazine to pull off what I think you are talking about. Sports is a niche, but SI isn't targeted to something defined or rare enough, and as a result it is operating in pretty saturated market.

    If you want to operate a successful print magazine still, it needs to be geared toward people who own private jets or are tropical fish enthusiasts or are poultry farmers for a living. And even with those kinds of magazines, I am not sure how long the print model is going to hold up into the future.
     
  7. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    General-interest city/state magazines come to mind for me as the best monthly templates, like Texas Monthly or Philadelphia Mag. The covers are pretty formulaic (best new restaurants, year-end awards, etc.) but the writing and storytelling are generally very good. They're still working as print products, thanks to credibility with their audiences. I have never lived in Texas but have subscribed to Texas Monthly off and on for 15 years.
     
    Azrael likes this.
  8. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Great post.

    'Inside Sports' was monthly, was it not?
     
  9. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Texas Monthly was an interesting publication in that it is a regional, but it did some really good journalism that gave it a strong national reputation and a decent-sized national subscriber base. It won National magazine awards and was a favorite of people who wanted good long-form writing. But the magazine hasn't done very well recently. ... it's pretty much the same story as a lot of other print. It's gone through a few owners -- a private equity owner that tried to cut costs and build it up and then sold it to Randa Duncan Williams a few months ago (rich woman, who seems to want to own it more as a vanity project than as a profitable business, but maybe I am wrong about that). But it really has moved away from the good (more expensive) long form to more web-friendly short lifestyle things, and it's not nearly the magazine it was even 10 years ago.
     
  10. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Yes. Prior to the Internet age eating up the print magazine business. It had a run from the 70s to the 90s. There was also "Sport" magazine, which was a long-time monthly. It actually predated SI.
     
  11. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    I'm the editor of a bi-monthly golf association magazine, so I fight the timeliness battle all the time. We'll have some light coverage of championships and such, but for the most part, we try to work on more fleshed out feature material with vague timeliness. Sometimes, we'll get lucky. We're hosting a huge USGA championship next year and I've massaged the deadlines so that the particular issue around the tournament can come out about 10 days before the event. Still, all of the edit will have to be done a good six weeks before the event begins. We won't know who will make it through qualifying, especially locally, so it'll be hard to write a lot of player-to-watch type things and what not.

    We had a story about three years ago, a lead item in our news and notes, about a kid who led his Division II team to a national championship, a member of ours who secured the winning point in the championship match. Three weeks after it went to press and about a week before it hit mailboxes, the kid was killed in a single-car accident. We took solace in the fact that his father said his last great memory of his son was seeing him in print, even though I stressed like hell over looking stupid because people don't understand how deadlines work.
     
  12. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    So a monthly sports magazine model has existed, despite the challenges of topicality.

    As Ragu points out, the survival of SI going forward has less to do with that, and more to do with the collapsing magazine market generally.

    That's why I think the print-product SI is less relevant to its future than its web version.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page