At some point during the last decade or so, the idea of a weekly printed news magazine went the way of the horse and buggy. Newsweek stopped their print edition. I think, but I'm not absolutely sure, that Time still publishes a weekly magazine, but with the Internet and 24 hour news and sports cable outlets, what is the need for them? Such was also the case for the venerable Sports Illustrated.
A few years ago, it went from a weekly to a bi-weekly publication. It was also shed by Time-Life and is now owned and published by something called Maven Media Brands, and it has now become a monthly publication. It is no longer the place where you go to read about what happened in the World Series or Super Bowl. So, what is it?
I long ago quit subscribing to SI, but I recently succumbed to one of those one-year-for-twenty-bucks subscription offers to find out, and I have been pleasantly surprised.
The magazine still has it's Scorecard, Faces In the Crowd, and Point After features, but more importantly, they still maintain a stable of very good writers - Michael Bamberger, Steve Rushin, Pat Forde to name a few - and the magazine consists mainly of the kind of feature stories that used to appear as the final long form story in each weekly issue. You know, the stories that made subscribing to Sports Illustrated worth the money.
In the current issue alone, dated "Fall 2020" and pictured above, I read no less than five such terrific articles. One about the chain gangs that work in NFL stadiums, a story about the demise of sports bars due to the COVID pandemic, a story about athletes visits to the Trump White House over the last four years, an excerpt from Jim Gray's new book, and a story about racial unrest at the University of Missouri. In the previous issue, there were two great stories: one about high level tournament Scrabble (who knew?) and an interesting profile of golfer Bryson DeChambeau. So in just two issues, I've gotten more than my money's worth.
One note of caution. There is very little advertising in the magazine, so I wonder if the new SI is a sustainable business model. The do still plan to have their special soft core porn issue, aka, the Swimsuit Issue, which will probably be chock full of ads, so who knows? And maybe the digital Sports Illustrated website, which does give you up to the minute sports news, generates enough income to carry the ink-on-paper magazine.
Like I said, who knows?
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