SI is down to just 38 issues this year

Sometimes they do. I checked before I called.

 

I remember being tricked by SI in the early '90s. Not remembering exact months, I'll say that my subscription was going to expire in December 1991. In April, I got a good offer to renew for two years. I did, and when that renewal kicked in a few weeks later, my new expiration date was in April two years later, not December. They got me to pay for more than half the year twice (albeit with a great offer). I didn't fall for that trick again.

 

Must have been a strategy, too, or you would have received two issues every week for half a year (or until you called to stop that nonsense).

 

Did anyone notice that a "partnership" between SI and Gatorade allowed the Gatorade high school athletes of the year a guaranteed spot on the cover?

 

Oh, that's why all that crap is on this week's cover.

 

Not that disappointed in putting the Gatorade high school athletes on the cover. One of them was in Rio last summer. It's not like she's some girl who only dominated against other high school kids.

 

They tried to do the same with me in the mid90s. I already had a subscription, and they kept contacting me trying to get me to renew, even though I still had time on the original subscription. And, they wanted me to renew for a higher price than I already was paying.

When it expired, they tried to make me pay at a higher rate, so I told them to end the subscription. they did, then a month later, I called them, and got the lower rate again.

My father still subscribes, and a few years ago, for nearly a year, they would send him two magazines each week. He called a coup,e of times to tell them about it, and they still kept sending him two per week. So he just gave me one each week.

 

This from DanOregon: “There has always been a struggle between Art and Commerce and now I’m telling you, Art is getting its ass kicked and it’s making us mean and it’s making us bitchy. And it’s making us cheap punks. That’s not who we are."
- Wes Mendell, Studio 60, shortly before he is fired.


That Gatorade cover? The fact that few are talking about it doesn't erase its import: One of the most valued pieces of journalistic real estate over the last 70 years has -- for the first time -- been sold. After Watergate, journalists loved to think of themselves as a craft with bedrock values. I understand that the issue now is existential; we need money to survive. What's amazing is that perhaps the most self-obsessed, naval-gazing profession on earth has seen perhaps its core value, the wall between publishing and editorial, destroyed -- and there's been so little discussion about it. I'm not kidding: Maybe it has happened and I've missed it. Maybe CJR or some blogger has hammered this question, endlessly. But compared to all the blather about Katy Tur and "fake news" and no press conferences, etc., the lack of discussion about an industry seachange -- the corporate co-opting of coverage -- is astonishing. My guess is that it's a glass-houses thing. If everyone's tending that way, then no one can -- literally -- afford to call attention to it.

 

Studio 60 was a great show.

I don't know that this is the first time the cover of SI has been sold. Maybe this is the most egregious instance, but the LeBron coming home piece a few years ago was blatant pandering. And the regional covers, and the commemorative issues, and the Swimsuit Issue: all done to make money with little focus on journalistic content. This idea that SI has been a paragon of journalistic integrity seems misplaced to me.

I stopped subscribing a few years ago and don't miss it. I'll occasionally buy an issue at the newsstand, but usually only the season previews.

 

Wasn't Brad Pitt on the cover once because he was in a movie based on a book about a sports person? I remember that feeling like a shameless plug.

 

Studio 60 was a shit show. Aaron Sorkin vigorously masturbating.

 

still better than 99 percent of the shit on TV