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Saving Sports Illustrated will likely be a fool’s errand

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The once Time Inc., then Meredith Corp., now Authentic Brands Group-owned title, is publishing in an increasingly hostile environment for weekly magazines

The totally unsurprising news is that the new owners of Sports Illustrated have decided to lay off around half of the staff. Journalists still at the title, and those leaving it, are justifiably upset with the decision, but — as the saying goes — the writing was on the wall.

The legendary sports magazine is the victim of the Time Inc. spin off, itself a clusterfuck, and then the sale of most of the titles to Meredith Corp. Meredith had been rumored to be interested in Time Inc. from the start of the process, but never completed a deal until the Koch brothers appeared to help finance a deal. If this sounds like something that only Donald Trump could have cooked up you are pretty close to the truth.

Meredith never wanted the weeklies, and for good reason, the future of weekly magazines is bleak. So, Meredith found a buyer in brand and marketing firm Authentic Brands Group, and then swung an operations deal. But that deal was short lived when Authentic Brands struck a licensing deal with Maven.

“Going forward, the remaining SI employees will work at the direction and at the pleasure of TheMaven,” Meredith said in a statement, trying to get out from taking the blame for the debacle.

Who can blame them? SI is one of those titles everyone grew up with. But Time Inc., as Meredith has discovered, was not a well-run outfit. It was notoriously bloated, and one of the reasons NYC journalists loved it there. But the weekly magazines were no longer the cash cows they had once been, and with payrolls and other costs growing, they were likely bleeding cash. Meredith knew this when they acquired Time Inc., which is why they dumped them as soon as they could.

So why would a brand and marketing firm want to buy SI? The question answers itself, doesn’t it? It’s not for the magazine itself, its staff and its subscription and advertising revenue potential.

The publishing business sometimes seems oh-so-naive. Did anyone actually think someone that bought SI for anything other than a trophy would keep its staff at Time Inc. levels? Apparently so.

“The gutting of Sports Illustrated was pointless, needlessly cruel, stupid and thoroughly corporate,” writes Ray Ratto, the longtime sports writer, now at Deadspin. “It is what we do now—from an agrarian society to an industrial one to an informational one and now to the strip-it-down-resealable-parts one. Hurray for progress! See you in hell!”

One can understand his anger. Ratto was a sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner when it was owned by Hearst, then with the San Francisco Chronicle (again, when Hearst owned it, which it still does). Then he moved to television with NBC Sports Bay Area. But Ratto, as an industry veteran surely sees what is happening with sports journalism, if not weekly magazine journalism. The Chronicle, for instance, no longer sends reporters out on the road with the teams and instead relies on AP coverage. He works for a website, for Christ’s sake.

Hey, I mourn every time there are layoffs in our industry — newspapers and magazines — but to not understand that there is no place today for the weeklies is to bury one’s head in the sand.

As for the union representing the staff, I wish them the best of luck. They want to save the magazine, its reputation, and most importantly, the jobs. That is there job and it is an honorable one. But, in this case, I fear a futile one.


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