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Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Sports Illustrated: Fading Away

This year Sports Illustrated is only publishing 28 issues. For decades it was a weekly magazine with 52 issues a year, plus additional special issues. Then they started taking off Christmas week, then also a week in July. In 2017 they published 48 issues including special issues (I think). The magazine had also dramatically reduced the number of pages in each issue. The actual paper was thinning, and much smaller than its old size: 8-1/2 x 11. Now they’ll publish every other week, but on thicker quality paper. Each issue will have lots more pages as well.

SI is cutting back because fewer people are subscribing and buying hard copies of the magazine. More people are getting their news off the internet. As up to date and topical SI has always been, the articles are always several days old by the time it hits the mailbox. SI has shifted from reporting sports news to going more in depth with its stories. I almost always find the its worth my time to read a SI article, even if I hadn’t been interested in the subject. SI is a part of Time magazine. Sounds like Time, Newsweek, People, and other magazines are cutting back as well.

I also noticed that no college football player or coach graced the SI cover after the early August college football issue until late November, when Baker Mayfield was featured.

I like to look at newspapers, but it’s not worth it for me to subscribe. I’ve been subscribing to SI since 1983, and have 99.9% of the issues. They’re fun to leaf through and look at the pictures, but it’s hard to read all the articles. Maybe now with fewer issues I can get caught up, but it will probably take me a year or two.

I don’t subscribe to the paper, and over the past few years I have gradually decreased the number of AJC articles I read on line. Reminds me that Anna had wanted a hard copy of the Tuesday AJC, but I forgot. Anna is used to hard copies of newspapers because the University of Georgia’s student newspaper can be found everywhere around campus.

Hoops: GT beat Miami. They were talking about that game on 680 . There were two or three articles about the GT game on the AJC’s website. Not sure who lays out the stories in the actual newspaper. I guess the game didn’t end until it was too late to get it in the Thursday paper and then it was old news for the Friday paper. I’m sure AJC GT beatwriter Ken Seguira was at the game. I had to look hard and scroll down but I found one video and two articles about GT/Miami. The articles are on “myAJC” which is for subscribers only, but I wouldn’t know how you as a subscriber could log on.



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