Sports Illustrated layoffs

And he had just gotten married a couple months ago ... oh boy ... :0

 

Maven!

 

Authentic Brands is the one doing this.

 

Finally leafed through the "new" SI. One hundred pages. Seriously, they used to do that as a weekly and now as a monthy it looks like a magazine you'd find on an airline. Some decent articles - but it seems to be going away from Big 4 coverage. It would be funny if it devolved back into a magazine with stories about birding, mountain-climbing and boating.

 

I don't know that that's necessarily a regression. Give people stories they couldn't get elsewhere. The Big 4 is already oversaturated with coverage.

 

Just find it funny because that is how the magazine kind of started out in its early days.

 

Way way back in 1979, when SI turned 25, George Kimball did a piece on the anniversary for the Phoenix. He found that SI had like six animals on its covers, horses, hunting dogs, ducks being hunted, fish being fished, etc. before it put an NBA player on it.

 

A couple of weeks ago SI had a story about the problem with feral hogs in the country, which is a serious issue for landowners, farmers and even neighborhood homeowners in some areas. It was a good story, though not really anything new or groundbreaking that I could see. But not what SI usually does at all.

Bonnier Corp., the company that owns Field & Stream and Outdoor Life among others, is looking at sale-closure-refinancing options and consulting financial experts about at least eight print titles. They killed one print publication last week, Sportfishing Magazine, letting the 25-year editor go and going digital only. They're swirling in the shitter with the F&S and OL titles now at four issues a year.

So more non-traditional stories might not be a bad thing for Sports Illustrated to consider doing.

 

There are still a lot of hunters and fishers in this country. They could do worse. In another sign I am old, I remember when every big city daily had a hunting and fishing beat guy, even the Boston Herald. Ours was Michael Globetti, a born and raised Alabaman. I had a sweet deal with him. Whatever he killed or caught, I or Alice would cook. Some mighty fine dinners in the late '80s.
Now of course, there's no such thing in either Boston paper. The Cape Cod paper still has a fishing guy, but he probably ought to be in the business section.