Sports Biblio Digest, 10.6.19: The Great Long Run of Sports Illustrated
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: Alberto Salazar; Black Sox Centenary; Best American Sports Writing; America’s Ugliest Ball Park; Atlanta’s Sports Divide; Ice Hockey in Europe; Saving Pimlico; Jake Gaither; Paying College Athletes in California; D.C.’s New Gambling Den
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When I wrote here in June about whether there was an heir apparent for Sports Illustrated, I didn’t think about the urgency of that rumination.
Just a couple months after the 65-year-old iconic magazine was sold to an outfit called Authentic Brands, it’s safe to say that the SI that many of us grew up reading, hoped to someday write for and pointed to as a hallmark of sports journalism has been swept away, for good.
The announcement this week that the SI brand would be run by an entity called Maven, and after nearly half its editorial workforce was laid off, to be replaced by low-paid contractors, is enough to bring any SI fan to tears.
In addition to a number of reporters, editors and online producers, editor-in-chief Christian Stone, a 27-year veteran of SI, is out, having left a day or two before the axe fell.
Coming in is an oft-tried, rarely successful strategy of creating team verticals—for now the building is for the NFL and college football seasons. This worked to a degree at SB Nation, but the oversaturated, video-heavy, clickbait-driven method that Maven executives are imposing isn’t any more appealing than the way the deal with down.
The new hires are being paid a pittance, are required to register as an LLC (to avoid thorny contractor and freelancer pay issues), appear to be getting little editorial support and have to post constantly, including quickie videos that some in media land still think can be monetized as easily as snapping your fingers.
It remains to be seen whether SI/Maven turns out to be a content mill of the worst kind, as many fear. An acquaintance recently booted by a heartless newspaper chain after decades of loyal service has signed on for this opportunity, so I’m hoping for the best.
As the lovable curmudgeon Ray Ratto wrote in something of an SI epitaph at Deadspin, the magazine that did more than perhaps any sports media entity to elevate how we cheer, savor, think about and understand sports doesn’t appear to be replicable, not in the digital age:
“Sports Illustrated lived on the effort you put into finding the words. For those whom SI mattered, the anticipation was part of the value. A Tex Maule story, or a Frank Deford, or a Rick Reilly, or a Gary Smith, or a Scott Price, or a hundred others I lack the time, space, and energy to reference, was the value of Thursday delivery. Even the wretched stupidities of the swimsuit issue, in which great writers were tasked with writing 8,000 words about the devastating beauty of Macedonia because some rock outside Skopje could enhance the lounging skills of a largely naked model, were a staple at one point of the magazine’s utility. ESPN The Magazine went clothing one less with its gender-inclusive Body Issues, but once you’ve seen Prince Fielder arse-out, the game is pretty much done.
“But even rampant bits-out photo spreads didn’t undo Sports Illustrated. The end of anticipation did. Once you could get a quick fix immediately, the value of the extra stuff that took a couple of more days diminished and eventually expired. The gift of waiting for the definitive explanation had been lost, an unintended corpse in the slaughterhouse of the new technological order. That, frankly, is how Sports Illustrated fell out of popular favor and eventually descended into the nightmare of corporate churn.”
That SI didn’t readily adapt to the online world is not a new story, nor is it an uncommon one in print media. When the Web browsers emerged, in the late 90s, SI built its first .com domain in conjunction with CNN, another Time-Warner property, and operated a skeleton staff in Atlanta.
The then-ample resources of SI in New York weren’t put to any serious use until a few years later, when SI was already lagging behind ESPN, by then hiring away top-notch newspaper talent.
The hot takes about the demise of SI this week howled with outrage about the corporate cutthroats who bought the vaunted magazine for its branding (hello, Dave Zirin).
But these howls are irrelevant. These buyers are indeed vampires, or even vultures, the term I prefer.
That’s because so much of print media is at the vulture stage, the carcass of what remains being circled over by vulture investors, hedge funds, turnaround artists, and others who buy a property in a dying industry cheap, then bleed it for whatever financial value is left, toss the rest aside and exit.
Whatever Maven’s end game is is hard to say for now, as is how long of a runway it may have to employ the new strategy, such as it is. What’s happening is cruel and dumb and surely this is hardly the end of the bloodletting for what’s left of print media.
But the die was cast a long time ago, as the legacy media, flush with cash and complacent with sizzling earnings, missed the chance to remake itself, and reach new legions of readers/viewers/listeners/fans.
A journalists’ “rebellion” is fine, for it reveals the passion that many still hold for a fine profession that continues to take a beating. But it's a different, equally powerless howl.
Sports Illustrated still boasts the bylines of Tom Verducci, S.L. Price and a few other luminaries, and I pray Authentic Brands/Maven doesn’t lay a hand on the SI Vault, the golden archive of the magazine’s greatest writing. Nothing has been mentioned for now about the print edition, published biweekly.
But the new ownership, for all of its glaring lack of tact in this transaction, isn’t the bogeyman here. Changing tastes and new ways of getting information were triggered by technological and generational factors that sparked a media revolution.
Sports Illustrated and many newspapers, during their most glorious years, didn’t see the last train leaving the station, and now they are left a husk of their former selves. The “heart” was taken out a long time ago.
SI is gutted, but like so much of the newspaper and magazine industry, the wounds are largely self-inflicted.
A Few Good Reads
After holding a special symposium in Chicago last week about the 100th anniversary of the Black Sox scandal, the Society for American Baseball Research has posted audio highlights, with breakout links and other resources, including its Eight Myths Out project;
More on correcting the Black Sox record from Zach Buchanan at The Athletic, who talks to Jacob Pomrenke, the devoted head of SABR’s Black Sox Scandal Research Committee and other volunteer historians of the issue. Pomrenke’s Twitter avatar is a headshot of Buck Weaver, the White Sox third baseman in 1919 who proclaimed his innocence in the fix but whose name has not been cleared by baseball;
From The Oregonian, the four-year ban for running icon and coach Alberto Salazar following a six-year investigation by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has stirred a lot of emotions in the sport as his credentials were revoked at the World Track Championships in Doha and his punishment comes a year away from the Tokyo Olympics. Salazar is appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport;
From Sports Illustrated, a solid, if a bit exaggerated, examination of the sports divide in Atlanta, as reflected by the Braves and defending MLS champion Atlanta United. By exaggerated I mean that “decades of racial and political disharmony” are certainly part of the city’s history and always will be, but the relocation of the Braves from downtown to a few miles from where I live is in a suburban area that’s increasingly diversifying and urbanizing. Kevin Kruse, a Princeton historian and author of a 2005 book about the “White Flight” of Atlanta during the Civil Rights years, calls the outlier stadium “the culmination of white flight,” but he doesn’t sound like he’s been here lately;
From The Wall Street Journal: Heavy winter turtleneck sweaters worn by baseball players in the early 1900s are making a fashion comeback;
The 2019 edition of Best American Sports Writing is out, and guest editor Charlie Pierce has chosen an eclectic mix of traditional athletic profiles (young 76ers star Joel Embiid), serious topics such as convicted sexual abuser and gymnastics doctor Larry Nasser, and an off-the-beaten-path story about the Spanish long-distance runner and mountaineer Kilian Jornet; also in BASW, from Sports Illustrated, is Tim Layden’s piece on the 50th anniversary of John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the Mexico City Olympics;
From The Athletic, Mark Lazerus on the odyssey of bouncing around the professional hockey leagues of Europe, through the eyes of players who’ve tasted the high life of the NHL;
From The Baltimore Sun, a last-minute deal to renovate and redevelop the famed but decaying Pimlico horse track appears to be a go, keeping the 149-year-old Preakness Stakes from being moved to the Maryland suburbs;
From The New York Times, the Oakland-Alameda Stadium is considered one of the ugliest in all of American sports. The Raiders are already out the door after this season, to Las Vegas. The playoff-bound A’s are looking for a new ballpark, and diehard fans are wondering if they’ll decamp for another city if the club doesn’t get what it’s looking for;
From U.S. Sport History, Bob D’Angelo reviews “Blood Sweat and Tears” by Derrick Blood, a profile of Jake Gaither, one of the acclaimed figures of black college football history, who coached his last game at Florida A &M 50 years ago;
From The Washington Post: The owner of Capital One Arena, home of the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals, has struck a deal with British bookmaker William Hill in what could be an early step toward bringing legal sports gambling to the District of Columbia;
From Sports Illustrated: Ed O’Bannon and Michael McMann on a new pay-to-play law in California regarding college athletes that’s being hailed as a game-changer; at the San Diego Union-Tribune, Mark Ziegler has a message for those hailing the new law: Be careful what you wish for;
From The Atlantic, and in the wake of a U.S. college admissions scandal, Derek Thompson writes about how Harvard uses legacy ties and athletics to sustain the cult of rich-kid sports;
From Hardball Talk: How a St. Louis Post-Dispatch sportswriter saved the life of a videographer who collapsed in the dugout before last Sunday’s Cubs-Cardinals game.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 181, published Oct. 6, 2019.
I’d love to hear what you think about the Digest, and Sports Biblio. Send feedback, suggestions, book recommendations, review copies, newsletter items and interview requests to Wendy Parker at sportsbiblio@gmail.com.