The End of SI?

Yeah, I once had a bit of culture shock when I stopped at a Wal-Mart in Kansas (in Lawrence even!) and couldn’t find a a single copy of Rolling Stone, even though there were about 23 magazines with some variation on Home Defender magazine and the like.

 

It's really odd - if you have a five section magazine area, one will be women's titles, one will be brides and kids, one will be home redecorating/improvement, one photography/media and one just guns.
The only weekly I think most grocery stores carry is the National Enquirer.

 

As someone with long experience in buying magazines in grocery stores jobbers seem to be on two kinds of schedules. If the jobber comes in once or twice a week then you will see the weeklies like SI stocked. But if the jobber comes in less frequently then you will just see titles like Gun and Ammo that are not going to be dated. I suspect with the decline in magazine sales more outlets are going to reduced magazine delivery schedules.

 

I don't know if they have the capital, but it would be interesting if The Athletic bought SI and used it as their print flagship. I know they have designs on an online magazine (Ink), but I wonder whether online works better for their city sites and they could use SI as their national/print/magazine arm.

I say this with the stipulation that I know nothing about business or publishing or anything, really.

 

Jesus, that was painful, like a bad college thesis. Stopped at this, high up, says it all (though it needs an edit):

"The quintessential middle-class American magazine of the postwar era."

 

I don't think that anyone has every covered an event as well as SI. I find the Athletic to be a useful because it provides a broad scope of coverage. The quality of the product is generally equivalent to that of a large market newspaper, which is logical, because that is where they hired their staff from. But if the Athletic could somehow deliver game recaps of big events like the Super Bowl, the Masters, etc. and have them on-line by six the next morning with the quality of SI then it would truly become the nations's sports page. I would think that could attract a couple million subscribers.

 

Headed to NBC, where he'll do the Monday morning column under some other name.

SI's shedding folks, but, beyond that, I got the sense that, of the people left covering football for SI, only King really loved the sport how I do - or how NBA writers love their sport right now. The rest of the MMQB team, while doing good work, seems more interested, like many journalists are now, in the intersection of celebrity and hot topics with the sport.

 

It all started with Moddy ...

 

How does leaving SI for NBC Sports alleviate the 24/7-ness of football coverage? Is he going to focus on longform and pivot to video?

 

He’s also contributing to the PFT show, I’d assume on a regular basis.