Changes at the Sporting News?

I actually disagree about Rolling Stone, but then again, I'm a registered Democrat.

 

That says it all.

I think offices pay like four cents a year for their subs. Still too much.

My wife's chiropractor has like 19 chiro magazines, six chick mags, four family mags and TSN.

 

I think we established on an earlier TSN thread that the bulk of their circulation is Jiffy Lube waiting areas.

 

i look at it every now and then. stories are either hokey or predictable.

 

I recently subscribed for the first time on about five years (it's almost free now). Read one issue, and can't find an excuse to read the next one. One of the many reasons they lost me was that several years back they dropped most bylines on the contents page. When a magazine does that, they don't care who writes, only that the pages are filled with writing, and that's precisely the way TSN read.

The whole outfit is an object lesson in how to squander a brand.

 

Pompei has left. He has been replaced by their NFL feature writer Paul Attner. That means Attner will do no more features; instead, he'll be an information guy.

It's another of the Sporting News's lose-lose personnel decisions.

 

Dan has a Feb. 19, 2007, byline in TSN ... has he left since then?

 

Some of you folks in here -- HH especially -- talk about TSN's need for imagination to snap it out of its funk. Wow, gee, that's a brilliantly novel suggestion.

That's it, just use some imagination, and that broken-down jalopy is fixed, right?

Why don't you use some of your own imagination to tell us exactly what you would do in terms of imagination at TSN, knowing two things 1. like any other medium, TSN's overall editorial direction and packaging is about 99% determined by marketers and other business strategists, and owners, a rung or two above Rawlings, and 2. if you effect change and the TSN's bottom line -- net profit growth -- doesn't maintain a rate of 5-10% over the next 6-12 months, you are fired.

Go ahead -- use your imagination and tell us exactly what surefire thing TSN needs to do, knowing that any editorial decision you make will have an instant business-related effect involving factors you probably haven't even thought of.

By the way, I am not John Rawlings and I don't work for or own any part of TSN.

 

The Sporting News has been in a no-win situation for a while, and it really wasn't their fault . . . unless you want to blame them for not remaking themselves into something they have never been (and could never be).

In its heyday, TSN was all about information, box scores and statistics.

You got more pure information, box scores and statistics from TSN than every other weekly sports publication combined.

That need simply doesn't exist anymore. I can get "A's Acorns" or "Yankee Doodles" anywhere else.

SI thrives because it can fill a need: investigative journalism, a few must-read writers and a (sometimes) must-read columnist. TSN never had that and --- short of trying to duplicate The National's attempt at luring the nation's best into a job and a business environment that cannot possibly succeed long-term --- it never will.

TSN couldn't change into SI any more than railroads could change into airlines.

 

if that's the case, why don't they get new "marketers and business strategists"? because obviously the ones they have aren't getting it right.

the buck stops at the top, whoever it is.

how do they turn it around? they need to attract attention - generate buzz.
how do they do that?
imaginative innovative journalism and kick-ass writing - an age-old formula.
you don't have to re-invent the wheel. just do great work that attracts attention.

 

Likely, if they got rid of the marketers and business strategists, the buyouts would be so big, it would hurt their cash flow just enough to throw them back into a tizzy.

 

so you're saying they can't afford to get rid of the people who are ruining them.

that's the damnest paradox i've ever heard.