Sports Illustrated (Reggie Bush cover)

That reminds me of another thing I hate about SI: the lame Go Figure section.

We get gems like "1: Players who have hit five grand slams before the All-Star break." Thanks, guys.

I blame this section for the wave of giant numeral headlines that pervade today's newspaper pages. That, and those people categorized with the "d" word.

 

Once subscribed to something else, got Golf Plus instead. No way of changing it, they said.

Golf Plus became unopened recycling fodder almost every week. Don't care about golf and certainly not SI's take on it. Although there for a while, it might have been a refreshing change from the "lick Tiger's balls" approach that was everywhere.

 

Because I'm a dork, I keep all of the "relavent" articles that I have come across in my 12-plus years of subscription. Anything that I think is just an amazing read. It pains me to say that there are stretches where I don't reading anything for weeks worth saving, where in the mid to late 90s, I'd be keeping three or four articles per magazine week.

 

So I went back and looked at the Joe Jurevicius article that's supposed to be so bad and I would say that just about all of DyePack's criticisms are off the mark. All the items he picks on make perfect sense within the context of the piece, which was written by Richard Hoffer. This may not be a masterpiece that you'll remember forever, but it's a lively, well-written story that has plenty of substance. SI may have its problems, but this kind of feature isn't one of them. I invite anyone to go read the piece and see what they think. It's in the issue with the Mets on the cover.

And no, I'm not Richard Hoffer. I just don't like seeing good, solid work get nitpicked to death.

 

Boy, that's a shock. Never thought someone would come in here and just say, "Nothing wrong with that. Reads just fine to me." : : : :

Thanks for checking in, Richard. (I'm "nitpicking" your denial.)

And I'm sticking by my original impression of this story. I was asked for an example of a story where the writer tried to be clever instead of just writing. I'm sure SI, given its current tack, will provide many more examples in the near future.

 

Dye is right. The Sir Vytis bullshit (Jurevicius' tattoos) is a staple of every overwritten Jurevicius piece that ever was. Ninety-nine percent of what's been written about him is typical SI flora.

Don't bother finding out anything new about him, just go to the same old well of cliches that the Giants and Bucs writers tapped bone dry.

 

One more comment on this story, and then I'm moving on:

I think the editors are more to blame than the writer. I skim this and see all sorts of things that should have been marked as extraneous.

We find out last year was the first time Joe started more than nine games or scored more than four touchdowns. Then the next paragraph starts out: "He finished off last season, probably his best ..."

Any editor worth his or her salt would have cut out "probably his best." The guy scored 10 touchdowns.

 

What are you talking about? The story spent two sentences on the Sir Vytis tattoo, one of which explained who the hell Sir Vytis is. How is that overwriting?

DyeP, you may not think so, but a writer being clever is actually a good thing. Hoffer could have written the same stuff about Jurevicius' baby dying that I've read a million times, but he took a different approach. You seem to want a straight, newspaper-like feature. That's not what SI does, nor should it be.

 

Richard:

You seem to be bending over backward to try to miss the point.

LJB was saying the tattoo has been covered and covered and covered. Not sure how you missed that. Oh wait, yes I am. See my first sentence.

The rest of what you say is the usual bullshit ad hominem argument similar to what design dolts throw out. Your lame variation is: "We CAN'T just write boring stories."

No one is asking you to, Richard. You could have written your Jurevicius story and made it flow better. You chose to insert extraneous info and things in parentheses.