Sports Illustrated's Publisher Lays Off Entire Staff. Future Unclear | Hacker News Reader

Sports Illustrated's Publisher Lays Off Entire Staff. Future Unclear

frontofficesports.com

27 pointsmarban16 comments

> That fiasco was followed by a head-scratching town hall in December led by Bhargava with SI and other Arena employees that spanned more than 90 minutes and during which Bhargava said, “No one is important. I am not important. … The amount of useless stuff you guys do is staggering.”

What a weird thing to say at an all-hands meeting. If individual contributors are doing things that are "useless" it's because someone in management put them on that course.

Clearly this is because there’s no demand for sports writing anymore, and in fact nobody consuming any kind of sports media, because otherwise I can’t imagine how a savvy business person couldn’t figure out how to make money with the most storied name in sports journalism.

Hm... maybe there is demand and they are not a savvy business person?

Or maybe the internet kicked off a generational shift in demand away from written content and towards lowest common denominator content like Barstool and whatever is going on with gambling. Startup brands will always be able to skate fastest towards the puck. To the extent that the SI brand is associated with substantive content it's more of a liability now.

Grantland did fine for a while until it was cancelled by ESPN and then reborn as The Ringer, which has done fine since then; as noted elsewhere, The Athletic has been doing fine as well. I’m not convinced that “Americans don’t read interesting writing anymore” is a theory for which there’s sufficient evidence, although I could be convinced that a series of short-sighted business types tanked a 50 year old publication because they believed that.

The point is that in the old world a print magazine became a household name for generations, now the same type of content is relegated to a few niche brands that will never have the same level of cultural relevance.

SI may well have been mismanaged, but print journalism is dying across the board so what really could have been expected? It could have survived with better management, but only by becoming something stupid.

I don't know how they are doing monetarily, but theathletic.com has taken over what Sports Illustrated used to be. Good actual sports journalism.

With internet fragmentation, I wonder if a generic sports magazine isn't going to be nearly as useful as something focused on a specific sport. "What's happening in the sports world today? Oh yea a magazine that gives me all sorts of sports news. How incredibly useful to me."

Maybe it was only popular because it was the only game in town 30 years ago, and the auto-renew subs for doctor and dentist's offices stopped when those doctors and dentist's retired.

Maybe it has something to do with their change in editorial direction?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jul/29/the-sports-...

Swapping out your customers for people that are will never be customers doesn't seem to work.

Putting a 'trans-women' on the cover of the 2023 Swimsuit Issue was a disaster for subscriptions.

Evidence?

https://frontofficesports.com/sports-illustrateds-publisher-...

Is 2024 the year of Midjourney's SI Swimsuit edition?

The swimsuit issue people, too?

Did they fire their llms too :(

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