What’s been a rough year already for media — and sports media — became even grimmer with last week’s announcement that Sports Illustrated laid off 17 staffers. Among those let go were baseball editor Matt Martell, NBA writers Howard Beck and Jeremy Woo, college sports editor Molly Geary, NBA editor Jarrel Harris, features editors Chris Almeida and Alex Prewitt, and executive editor Adam Duerson.
Though an internal memo obtained by Awful Announcing stated that 12 new openings have been created in a “restructuring,” it’s clear that the evolution of a publication and brand that once represented the best in sports journalism has moved even further away from the vaunted magazine many sports fans grew up reading.
Sports Illustrated’s deterioration into a website largely running quick-hit articles (often with clickbait headlines) and a print edition publishing monthly rather than weekly raised concerns from Dan Le Batard and producer Jessica Smetana on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz last week.
Le Batard established himself as a newspaper writer and one of the nation’s top sports columnists, so it’s easy to see how Sports Illustrated‘s current path would upset him. Ditching the longform sports journalism enjoyed by generations of fans, that influenced many in sports media is likely even more upsetting for someone who worked on in-depth, investigative reports such as the ones which exposed the off-field anarchy of the University of Miami football program during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
For Smetana, the layoffs feel even more personal. Prior to joining Le Batard at Meadowlark Media, she was a writer, producer, and host at Sports Illustrated. And her work included longform pieces on Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Niele Ivey and the revival of Miami Marine Stadium.
Will there be a place for those sorts of features at the publication from here on out? As Smetana and Le Batard see it, the path SI is now walking is a particularly bleak one for the future of sports journalism.
“Where would you go right now that would be like Sports Illustrated?” Le Batard asked his crew. “Where would you go because you want to be more informed than you are about the personalities and about the stories?
“Not the data, not the analytics. There are a lot of places that will give you a lot of good information that is learning. But just to learn something more about a personality.”
Excellent reporting still exists at Sports Illustrated. It’s not just a content farm. Albert Breer provides thorough coverage of the NFL. Tom Verducci is a baseball institution while Stephanie Apstein does great work covering MLB. Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger are must-read writers on college sports. Chris Herring and Chris Mannix are among the best NBA writers in the industry.
Le Batard might be the most astute media critic whose podcast isn’t devoted to sports media. He’s correct that the days of writers like Frank Deford, George Plimpton, Mark Kram, Curry Kirkpatrick, and Gary Smith writing epic features — typically at the end of an issue — revealing the personalities and motivations of legendary athletes, providing definitive chronicles of history’s greatest sporting events are long past.
As pointed out during the Le Batard Show discussion, longer-form sports journalism does still exist at outlets including The Athletic and The Ringer, major newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and magazines like GQ and Esquire still create strong work in that space, though infrequently.
ESPN might produce more longform pieces than any platform in sports media. But the print ESPN the Magazine folded in 2019. We’re also talking about a network that just relegated its serious journalism brand, Outside the Lines, to recurring features on SportsCenter, so how much is it truly valued?
What Le Batard and Smetana seem to be truly lamenting is a bygone era that almost certainly isn’t coming back. And that predates Sports Illustrated‘s latest wave of layoffs by decades. SI was no longer the first word in sports once fans could get highlights every night on ESPN. Rival publications such as Sport magazine and Inside Sports also shuttered during this period as content increasingly moved online.
This isn’t even the magazine’s first downsizing. The Meredith Corporation acquired SI (along with all other Time Inc. publications and quickly sold it to Authentic Brands Group, which reduced the publication schedule from weekly to monthly and licensed editorial content to The Arena Group (previously TheMaven). ABG also saw an opportunity to market a brand with hotels, apparel, and sports nutrition supplements. Except for a few notable hires (many of them mentioned above), the magazine has been an afterthought.
While Le Batard mourns the death of longform sports journalism due to myriad entertainment options, constant stimulation, and shorter attention spans, it might also be worth noting that the former Miami Herald sports columnist helped contribute to this development as well.
No, it’s not exactly the same thing, but Le Batard left newspapers behind for TV and podcasts, much like contemporaries Michael Wilbon, Tony Kornheiser, and Mitch Albom. They saw where the industry was going and where the platforms would be. Who has time for sports columns when quicker takes are available via video and audio — and in even smaller snack sizes on social media?
Besides reading preferences, fans may also be less interested in personalities than they were previously. Athletes control their images so exactly now. We may get bits and pieces through Instagram and Tik Tok, and maybe that’s really all people have time for now. Everything else we really need to know, what really matters, happens during the games and events.
And for those that have an appetite for something more, books and documentaries exist to satisfy such curiosities. Those interests moved beyond the magazine feature long ago. Sports Illustrated‘s latest layoffs are just the most current reminder of that.
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
