The demise of SI

And lets be honest, does anyone work for a publication that is as good as it once was? This isn't an SI thing.

 

If you are old like me, you went to the mailbox first thing on Thursdays because there was no place else to go for information like this.

Today, you could have the EXACT same quality as you (allegedly) had in the 70s, and there would still be no reason to rush to the mailbox.

For the Record? Old news. Reads like transactions. Week-old transactions.
19th Hole? Same inane letters and debates we get today.
The Week in Baseball? Really old news. Phillies went 5-2 the Week of May 11-17. Wonderful. It's May 21 when I'm reading this.
Preakness? Old news.
Takeout by Deford? OK . . . I'll get around to it. As soon as a finish my texting and tweeting and padding my Facebook friendships.

 

It remains a training center. It's a great training surface, nice and safe, like most of the Maryland main tracks are.

 

Nah. Just installing a plague upon both their houses.

 

so...if SI sucks so bad, what you do to make it what it was? who would you hire? what would you change?

 

It'll never be what it was. To be perfectly honest, the demise of Sports Illustrated can be blamed more upon the modern nature of sports rather than the skills of the current writers. In the old days, athletes were more open to writers. Now, it seems that athletes believe that talking to a writer can hurt more than it can benefit. With millions of dollars involved, most of the best athletes could care less about the sports writer. You could bring in some of the best writers, and I'm not entirely sure if the magazine will return to its best days.

 

This will come as news to the old-timers who had lengthy one-sided conversations with Mickey Mantle's back.

 

First, hire some more (or better) copy editors. Quality control has gone to shit in recent years. Ditch the Dan Patrick crap. Those would be two good steps.

 

* Expand the variety of sports covered -- by a LOT.
* Ditch all the preview issues and put that content online.
* More humor -- by writers who do humor well (i.e. David Sedaris, Dave Barry...subcontract writers from The Onion if necessary)
* More investigative pieces
* More issue-driven pieces -- look at HBO's Real Sports, E:60...
* Add a point-counterpoint page that has two writers making cogent arguments for/against a current topic (maybe instead of the long essay in the front).

Just some thoughts

 

Agreed, and ...

Ditch Selena Roberts.
Add diversity to the sports you cover.
90% enterprise.

 

>>>Ditch Selena Roberts.<<<

So the magazine is going to imrpove by dropping a one-page column that runs in every second or third issue?

 

She must be getting some sort of significant salary, no? Let her go and go after someone else who is more talented and can produce consistently. She's awful.