Sporting News on life support

I thankfully got out a few months ago, but word is the magazine has been killed and the mismanaged, directionless digital operation will lose close to $10 million this year. More layoffs in December.

 

Still?

 

It amazes me that these guys along with Sports Illustrated and others that were the best in the business at one time never saw what was coming until it was too late. Is it just me or should Sporting News and SI have been the frontrunners in online sports journalism instead of ESPN and Yahoo. etc.?

 

You can say that about newspapers too.

I've said it before, but if Gannett would have worried a little more about generating revenue from the web and a little less on "Moments of Life" and stupid nicknames for the newsroom, they'd be in a better place and they would have been able to show the way for the other newspaper companies.

 

Not a fan of their website redesign. Not surprised the move to partner with AOL wasn't a savior. Count me among those, though, who will be sad to see it go. Used to love getting the paper in the mail every week when I was a kid.

 

So did I. My dad bought me my first copy in the mid-70s and I used to love scanning the box scores.

My favorite issue was always the one with the team information at the start of spring training.

 

Think I dropped my subscription sometimes in the 90s, just when it was morphing from the "Bible of Baseball" into whatever the hell it has become since. Seems like it deserves a better fate, given what it was and how long its been around.

 

I gave up on it when it started to read like a sportstalk station and they began running more NASCAR than baseball.

 

Once upon a time, I worked at an auto racing website. When the owners ran out of venture capital money after the first year, they sold to Sporting News for next to nothing. TSN felt compeled to lay everyone off over the course of two months and move the operations.
Sorry for the layoffs in this case, but fuckabuncha Sporting News.

 

When I was a kid, having all the box scores and team notes in one place was awesome, and I giggled at Dick Young's high batshit factor. Heck, ESPN the TV version made TSN irrelevant long before the Internet got its shot at it