Sports Illustrated is an American sports magazine owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. It has over 3 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men, 19% of the adult males in the United States. 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 started in the 1930s and 1940s, but they both quickly failed. Following these events, there was no large-base general sports magazine with a national following. It was then that TIME patriarch Henry Luce began considering whether his company should attempt to fill that 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.
After offering $200,000 in an unsuccessful bid 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." Many at Time-Life scoffed at Luce's idea; in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Luce and His Empire , W.A. Swanberg wrote that the company's intellectuals dubbed the proposed magazine "Muscle," "Jockstrap," and "Sweat Socks." Launched on August 16 , 1954 , it was not profitable (and would not be so for 12 years) and not particularly well run at first, but Luce's timing was good. 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 such as yachting, polo and safaris, but upscale would-be advertisers were unconvinced that sports fans were a significant part of their market.
Innovations
From its start, Sports Illustrated introduced 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 round-up that enhanced the viewing of games on television
- In-depth sports reporting from writers like Robert Creamer, Tex Maule and Dan Jenkins.
- Regular illustration features by artists like Robert Riger.
- High school football Player of the Month awards.
- Inserts of sports cards in the centre of the magazine.
- Semi nude women
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 news-stands and in mailboxes only a few days later.
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.
Regular segments
Who's Hot, Who's Not: A feature on who's on a tear and who's in a slump.
Inside the NFL , MLB , NHL , NBA , College Football , College Basketball , NASCAR , Golf , Boxing , Horse Racing , Soccer and Tennis (sports vary from issue to issue) has the writers from each sport to address the latest news and rumors in their respective fields.
Faces in the Crowd: honors talented amateur athletes and their accomplishments.
The Point After: A back-page column featuring a rotation of SI writers as well as other contributors. Content varies from compelling stories to challenging opinion, focusing on both the world of sports and the role sports play in society.
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. Mulvoy also hired the current creative director Steven Hoffman. Critics said that it rarely broke (or even featured) stories on the major controversies 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 subscription incentives seemed to some like an exchange of journalistic integrity for commercial opportunism. 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 again achieve the level of prominence that SI once had.
Sportsman of the Year
Since its inception in 1954, Sports Illustrated magazine has annually presented the Sportsman of the Year award to "the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement." Roger Bannister won the first ever Sportsman of the year award thanks to his record breaking time of 3:59.4 for a mile (the first ever time a mile had been run under four minutes).
Michael Phelps is Sports Illustrated's most recent Sportsman of the Year, for 2008. Phelps won 8 gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Tiger Woods is the only athlete to win the award twice as an individual. (Curt Schilling won in 2001 along with Randy Johnson and then won the award when he was a member of the 2004 Boston Red Sox).
Cover history
The magazine's cover is the basis of a sports myth known as the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx. To find the number of times an athlete has appeared on the cover go to: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/cover/home/index.htm
Most covers by athlete, 1954-2009
Most covers by team, 1954-May 2008
Most covers by sport, 1954-2009
Celebrities on the cover, 1954-2003
Fathers and sons who have been featured on the cover
Presidents who have been featured on the cover
Tribute covers (In Memoriam)
Writers
Main article: List of Sports Illustrated writersPhotographers
- Rich Clarkson
- Mark Kauffman
- Neil Leifer
- Walter Iooss
- Hy Peskin
- Robert Riger
- Herb Scharfman
- Tony Triolo
- John G. Zimmerman
- Bill Eppridge
Spinoffs
Sports Illustrated has helped launched a number of related publishing ventures, including:
- Sports Illustrated Nerds magazine (circulation Only Frank)
- Launched in August of 1986
- First feature article revealed the secrets of the Iron Claw
- First cover graced by ShockWave's Brother
- Marketed to non sports market as an attempt to capitalize on the movie "Revenge of the Nerd"
- Won the "Dr. Claw's Choice Magazine Award" 7 times
- Sports Illustrated 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
- Sports Illustrated Australia
- Launche
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