After failing for nearly three decades, the golden age of Sports Illustrated (SI) emerged in the 1960s. SI featured the prestigious Swimsuit Issue, highest quality sports writing, and special feature articles from big-time names. The hiring of editor Andre Laguerre revolutionized the SI brand, and the magazine became the first sports publication to successfully release an issue each week, while producing a profit, an idea thought unachievable.
A significant obstacle to overcoming the impossible was finding sufficient coverage each week. Winter, especially February prior to the Super Bowl, was the slowest time of year for sports coverage. Laguerre is accredited to finding a solution to the lack of content: The Swimsuit Issue. These editions of the magazine feature massive names posing on the cover and throughout the issue, including supermodels, athletes, and celebrities. The Swimsuit Issue began as a filler issue in February to remain on the weekly publishing track, but arose to be SI’s most beloved, and most profitable.
For sports journalists—photojournalists, writers, and editors alike—publishing work in SI became one of the greatest career honors. Some of the countless names that appear in SI bylines include poet Robert Frost, baseball star Ted Williams, and even President John F. Kennedy.
This golden age, however, would not last forever. Nearly a third of SI staff was laid off in 2019 after Authentic Brands Group (ABG) purchased SI. The magazine also went from releasing 52 issues in 2010 to a mere 12 in 2020, a sharp decline in publishing in just a decade. What previously was considered the unmatched, best sports magazine, now publishes as frequently as the prior versions of SI that failed.
Recently, SI’s standard seems to have dropped further past publication dates. Readers began to notice that featured articles on SI were not up to their usual, high quality standard, and allegations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) usage arose. Writer profiles in SI bylines were appearing and disappearing, but the poorly composed articles remained; each writer was simply replaced with a new one. A brand new name, bio, and photo were reattributed to the exact same articles. They seem like normal, sport-loving people that you may encounter on the street: Drew “grew up in a farmhouse, surrounded by woods, fields, and a creek,” and Sora, who “believes everyone should participate in some sort of physical or mental activity at least three times per week.” The headshots used for each seemingly average profile were found available for purchase on websites with AI generated content.
Other media websites have been testing AI, however the significance of SI’s “tests” differ. Buzzfeed, for instance, provides a disclaimer, as well as a separate profile for the robot. SI, on the other hand, created deceptive, realistic profiles that gave no explicit indication of their published content, only what readers and other news outlets were able to deduce. The reasoning behind SI using AI for their magazine is unclear. In an era of dying journalism, could this have been a pilot run to cut costs for the company?
After the AI scandal, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ross Levinsohn was fired.
This year, the magazine’s 70th year of publishing, began with tons of layoffs after SI’s publisher, the Arena Group, failed to pay a quarterly payment to ABG. Over 100 SI’s staff were affected. Because of the failed payment, the Arena Group’s license to publish SI has been terminated by ABG.
Following the layoffs, the NewsGuild of New York, a union for journalists, filed an unfair labor practice charge against the Arena Group on behalf of the SI Union. The legal action is in regards to some of the SI staff being immediately let go, and not given the 90 days that New York legislature requires.
While negotiations are ongoing, the future of SI is up in the air; this may mark the start of the death of a publication that was once the best—and the standard—of the industry.
