Linkmeister

Adieu, SI

If you deliberately let your subscription to a magazine lapse, do you feel regret? Does it make a difference if you've been a subscriber for most of the past 30 years?

I'm coming to the conclusion that Sports Illustrated (the print version) has succumbed to People magazine syndrome: athlete as celebrity. I'm getting profiles rather than game descriptions these days, as well as full-page descriptions (with illustrations!) of football players' workouts and little charts which tell me how four athletes fit in pop culture (sample question from the October 15 issue: "Celebrity I'd like to kiss").

SI used to be more focused on games, and about once a quarter you'd find an eight-page article about a serious issue (Steroid usage, college athlete recruitment). Not often, not anymore.

What brought this on? I was reading the Washington Post this morning and found a link to Josh Levin's article at the bottom of a page. When Levin wrote this:

To get a sense of what now populates SI's pages, please take a minute to read Michael Farber's recent profile of Seattle Mariners closer J.J. Putz. The story begins: "The first bars of AC/DC's Thunderstruck came at precisely 9:54 p.m. PDT, Putz Domination Time." In the next few pages—about three minutes of reading; please set your watches to Putz Domination Time—we learn the speed of our hero's fastball ("When Seattle's resident sandman tosses his magic dust in a hitter's eyes, it's usually at 96 mph"), the pronunciation of his last name ("puts as in 'puts up numbers so spectacular that they border on the implausible' "), and his prank of choice ("Putz generally eschews cutting up teammates' clothing ... having made the shaving-cream pie his signature bit"). We're never told, however, why we should give a damn about J.J. Putz. The piece, like the great majority of SI's profiles and game stories, is bereft of ideas—it never explains how it feels to close a baseball game or why Putz's magic dust is any different than Mariano's magic dust. The old SI used sports as a window onto life and culture beyond the playing field or, failing that, as a vehicle for great writing. The new SI uses sports as a window onto itself or, failing that, as a vehicle for cringe-inducing anecdotes.

I agreed with him.

So I'm thinking that I might let the subscription lapse and just pay the newsstand price for the particular issues I want (World Series, Super Bowl, Baseball Preview, and yes, the Swimsuit issue [gotta keep the collection alive!]).

Should I feel apologetic?

Posted by Linkmeister at November 1, 2007 01:38 PM | TrackBack