The demise of SI

SI is not as consistently excellent as it was in its 60s and 70s heyday, because it doesn't have the writing depth it did then, when each sport was covered by a Hall of Fame talent. But each week, there's at least one outstanding piece of work, and that's not a bad batting average.
What the magazine has lost is its status as the authority. It was sports' Walter Cronkite, and if it brought an issue or a sport to your attention, you paid attention. SI did not have as much to do with the rise of the NFL as did TV, but it was surely on top of that curve.
That's long gone. Part of that loss is due to the changing media universe, and part of it is due to SI's deliberate switch into a marketing machine to keep Time Inc. from going under, as seen in regional covers and other such devices.
SI remains a superior magazine. When people say it has deteriorated, I believe what they are really mourning is the passing of a sports world in which SI was the most influential voice.

 

SI would be much more relevent today if it still put track meets on the cover.

 

I liked the Shaq story, but of course I don't really follow the NBA so it seemed new to me. The cover shot was interesting. He looks near death. He looks human. I give them credit for running it instead of a glossier photo.

 

Bat, this isn't about a cover jinx.

SI goes to press, what, Monday night?

At that point, the series was tied 2-2 and Boston had just come off a fairly convincing Game 4 victory. No, the editors could not have foreseen what happened Tuesday in Game 5. But there existed the possibility that Boston could have won that series before some people even received the issue (sometimes mine doesn't come until Friday.) Why even take the chance that you could have egg all over your face? The perfect game was the safe choice for the cover, even if it would have been four days old by the time it reached newsstands. It's still a rare event in baseball, made especially compelling because the guy who tossed it's only claim to fame beforehand was bitching about A-Rod.

 

It's funny that we think SI is flawed when its runs a cover story on an athlete whose team has just been eliminated. And yet every day readers tell us our newspapers are dated because they have already read our game stories or news items on our web sites. We of course insist otherwise, but judging by the numbers of folks who absorb our content via assorted digital platforms, their point has a degree of validity.

 

It's surprising how late SI is to the party, even on features.

I laughed when I saw the recent story on the Bryan Brothers (even The New Yorker and NYT magazine beat SI to it). Why SI hasn't done a Marion Jones WNBA story is baffling (NYT magazine, again, beat them to it). The NYT scooped them up and down the Kevin Pearce snowboarding story. Track, I agree, is full of rich subject matter. So is cycling right now. Where's the variety? Not everything is being Twittered.

 

FWIW, Braden IS the cover here in SoCal.

 

One Scott Price story is worth a year's subscription. As a weekly I think their strength is when they step back a bit and examine sports and its impact on society and vice versa. Whether it's about beer's impact on sports, declining numbers of (ethnic group) in (sport) or the psyche of a long suffering town, they are one of the few places that does that stuff in depth.
There are plenty of places on the Web for gossip, personalities and best ever/he sucks type stories. I do wonder if the fragmentation of the media makes it tougher for SI writers to get the access that they traditionally have. And I'm not talking about partying it up with athletes after a big win - I don't give a crap what they're playing in their Escalade.

 

Even some of the post-big event (Super Bowl, Final Four and the like) stories are becoming cliche. When was the last time, George Gamesaver not interviewed during the post-game party with his family and buds since his days working at the Podunk Bar&Grille and Oil Changers?

 

Access is absolutely an issue for SI. Talk to any writer who's been there awhile. He/she will tell you how much worse it's gotten. There are two kinds of news outlets these days -- "partners" and "others." ESPN is in the first category, and is granted the access that goes along with it. SI is in the second, and makes do with what it gets. If you're not putting money directly in a sport's pocket, you've got second-class status. Sad, but true.

 

In the glory days, only SI stuck with its subjects after the game, from the locker room to the post-game party to the next morning. Everyone else had a daily deadline. Now, as noted, the partners come first, and SI is often stuck with the leftovers, no matter what the deadline.

But, as I said on another thread, where's Golf Plus been the last two weeks?

 

Really liked the lacrosse story this week. Having a weekly deadline means an awkward turn like the Cavaliers and a Shaq cover -- Cleveland was still alive for 36 hours after I got the issue, so I thought it added to the buildup of Game 6.

I'm still underwhelmed by the Dan Patrick page. He's good at light Q&As but I think it worked better when he had the back page of ESPN The Mag than it does in the middle of SI.

We have a different (and often valid) SI complain thread here nearly weekly, but I still give it 20 minutes of my week and don't feel like I've wasted my time.