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Sports Illustrated is a popular weekly American
sports magazine owned by media giant Time Warner. It has
over 3 million subscribers, the third highest magazine circulation in the United States, and is read by 23 million adults each
week, including over 18 million men, 19% of the adult males in the country. It was the first magazine with circulation over one
million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice.
Its "swimsuit issue," which has been published since 1964, is now an annual publishing
event that generates its own television shows, videos and calendars.
History
Two other magazines named Sports Illustrated were actually started in the 1930s and 1940s, but they both quickly failed. In fact, there was no
large-base, general sports magazine with a national following when TIME patriarch Henry Luce began considering whether his company should attempt to fill the gap. At the
time, many believed sports was beneath the attention of serious journalism and
didn't think sports news could fill a weekly magazine, especially during the winter. A number of advisers to Luce, including
Life Magazine's Ernest Havemann, tried to kill the idea, but Luce, who
was not a sports fan, decided the time was right. (MacCambridge, 1997, pp. 17-25).
After unsuccessfully offering $200,000 to buy the name Sport for the new magazine, they acquired the rights to the
name Sports Illustrated instead for just $10,000. The goal of the new magazine was to be "not A sports
magazine, but THE sports magazine." Launched on August 16, 1954, it was not profitable and not particularly well run at first, but Luce's timing could not
have been better. The popularity of spectator sports in the United States was about to explode, and that popularity came to be
driven largely by three things:
- economic prosperity
- television, and
- Sports Illustrated.
The early issues of the magazine seemed caught between two opposing views of its audience. Much of the subject matter was
directed at upper class activities (yachting, polo), but upscale would-be advertisers were unconvinced that
sports fans were a significant part of their market. (MacCambridge, 1997, pp. 6, 27, 42).
Innovations
From the start, however, SI did introduce a number of innovations that are generally taken for granted today:
- Liberal use of color photos - though the six-week lead time initially meant they were unable to depict timely subject
matter
- Scouting reports - including a World Series Preview and New Year's Day
bowl game roundup that enhanced the viewing of games on television
- In-depth sports reporting from writers like Robert Creamer, Tex
Maule and Dan Jenkins.
In 1956, Luce asked Time, Inc. senior European Correspondent André Laguerre to come to New York
and help define the magazine's character. Many of the staff had serious doubts that the English-born Frenchman could possibly
know anything about American sports, but Laguerre won them over, and during his term as Managing Editor (1960 - 1974), SI became a model for other middle-class American
magazines. Its writers developed their own characteristic style by daring to tell people what was important. Many would say that
the magazine legitimized sports -- and being a sports fan -- for a huge segment of the American population. The steady creation
of landmark stories (e.g., "The Black Athlete - A Shameful Story" by Jack Olsen and "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton) showed that sports fans could be readers, and a generation
of sportswriters patterned their own writing after what they read in SI. (MacCambridge, 1997, pp. 5-8, 160).
Color Printing
The magazine's photographers also made their mark with innovations like putting cameras in the goal at a hockey game and behind a glass backboard at a basketball game. In 1965, offset printing began to allow the color pages of the magazine to be printed overnight, not only producing
crisper and brighter images, but also finally enabling the editors to merge the best color with the latest news. By 1967, the magazine was printing 200 pages of "fast color" a year; in 1983, SI became the first American full-color newsweekly. An intense rivalry developed between photographers, particularly Walter Iooss and Neil Leifer, to get a decisive cover shot
that would be on newsstands and in mailboxes only a few days later. (MacCambridge, 1997, pp. 108-111, 139-141, 149-151, 236).
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during Gil
Rogin's term as Managing Editor, the feature stories of Frank Deford became the magazine's anchor. "Bonus pieces" on Pete Rozelle, Bear Bryant, Howard Cosell and others became some of the most quoted sources about these figures, and Deford
established a reputation as one of the best writers of the time. (MacCambridge, 1997, pp. 236-238).
Creative Decline
After the death of Henry Luce in 1967, the creative freedom that the staff had enjoyed seemed to diminish. By the 1980s and
1990s, the magazine had become more profitable than ever, but many also believed it had
become more predictable. Mark
Mulvoy was the first top editor whose background contained nothing but sports; he had grown up as one of the magazine's
readers, but he had no interest in fiction, movies, hobbies or history. Mulvoy's top writer Rick Reilly had also been raised on
SI and followed in the footsteps of many of the great writers that he grew up admiring, but many felt that the magazine
as a whole came to reflect Mulvoy's complete lack of sophistication. Critics said that it rarely broke (or even featured) stories
on the larger issues in sports (drugs, violence, commercialism) any more, and that it focused on major sports and celebrities to
the exclusion of other topics. The proliferation of "commemorative issues" and crass subscription incentives seemed to some like
an exchange of journalistic integrity for commercial opportunism. Today, few people still call Sports Illustrated one of
the best written magazines in America. More importantly, perhaps, many feel that 24-hour-a-day cable sports television networks
and sports news web sites have forever diminished the role a weekly publication can play in today's world, and that it is
unlikely any magazine will ever achieve the level of prominence that SI once had. (MacCambridge, 1997, pp. 8-9, 268-273,
354-358, 394-398, 402-405).
Sportsman of the Year
Since its inception, Sports Illustrated has annually presented the "Sportsman of the Year" award.
The Cover Jinx
When Major League Baseball player Eddie Mathews, pictured on the cover of Volume 1, Issue 1, suffered a
hand injury a week later that forced him to miss seven games, the "Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx" was born, as some
noted that bad things seemed to happen to people soon after they appeared on the magazine's cover. Other notable cover
coincidences include:
- January 31, 1955 - The week that an issue featuring her was on the stands, skier Jill Kinmont struck a tree during a practice run and was paralyzed from the neck
down.
- May 26, 1958 - SI's 1958 Indianapolis 500 preview issue featured Pat O'Connor
, who was killed in a
15-car pileup during the first lap of the race.
- February 13, 1961 - Laurence Owen was billed as "America's Most Exciting Girl Skater." Two days after the cover date,
Owen and the rest of the United States figure skating team perished in
a plane crash.
- December 14, 1970 - The University of Texas, 10-0 and enjoying a 30-game winning streak , fumbled nine times in its next
game, a 24-11 loss to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl.
- September 4, 1989 - Not his picture, but Major League Baseball
Commissioner Bart Giamatti's words about Pete Rose appeared on the cover the week Giamatti died of a heart
attack.
- June 5, 1995 - Three days after his appearance , San Francisco Giants third baseman Matt Williams, the National League
leader in home runs, batting average and RBIs, fouled a pitch off his
right foot, breaking it, and forcing him to miss 2 1/2 months.
While the list of "examples" of the jinx is extensive, an individual record 49 cover appearances by Michael Jordan and team record 61 covers by the New York Yankees haven't seemed to bother them.
Spinoffs
Sports Illustrated has helped launched a number of related publishing ventures, including:
- Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine (circulation 950,000)
- Launched in January, 1989
- Won the "Distinguished Achievement for Excellence in Educational Publishing" award 11 times
- Won the "Parents' Choice Magazine Award" 7 times
- Sports Illustrated Almanac annuals
- Introduced in 1991
- Yearly compilation of sports news and statistics in book form
- SI.com sports news web site
- Launched on July 17, 1997
- Online version of the magazine and sports site for CNN.com
- Sports Illustrated Women magazine (highest circulation 400,000)
- Launched in March, 2000
- Ceased publication in December, 2002 because of a weak advertising climate
- Sports Illustrated on Campus magazine
- Launched on September 4, 2003
- Dedicated to college athletics and the sports interests of college students.
- Distributed free on 72 college campuses through a network of college newspapers.
- Circulation of one million readers between the ages of 18 and 24.
References
- Michael MacCambridge, 1997, The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine, Hyperion Press ISBN 0786862165
External Links
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