It's Tuesday: That awkward moment when the Fickle Finger of Fate points at Sports Illustrated
...and a headline isn't a post from The Onion...Issue #120
Consumer America is filled with many iconic brands. Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Target, even Barnes and Noble. All of those names are immediately recognizable. Hear the name and a picture instantly forms in your mind.
It’s the same for certain magazines and news organizations: Time, ABC, CNN, Cosmopolitan, NBC, Playboy. Then, there’s Sports Illustrated.
Time, Inc’s Henry Luce was not the first to name a magazine Sports Illustrated. There were two other incarnations before he launched the magazine over the objections of some of his staff in 1954. Get this, the magazine didn’t make a profit for twelve years. Imagine a corporate entity being that patient in 2024.
When I entered the magazine world, Time, Inc. was a powerful corporate and consumer brand that expanded it’s reach with the merger with Warner Communications in the first decade of this century and the acquisition of American Express Publishing in the second decade. But the company was spun off and larded up with corporate debt and the acquisition of Time, Inc. by Meredith and then the purchase of Meredith by IAC spelled the end of independent Time magazines.
The Sports Illustrated that was under license to the Arena Group by the Authentic Brands Group was nothing like the storied publication that existed under the Time, Inc. banner. Writers like Frank Deford, George Plimpton and Don Yaeger were long gone. The weekly releases were relegated to monthly issues and the popular but odd swimsuit issue. The title still had a circulation that was a bit over 1 million, but single copy sales were down below 10,00 per issue and overall circulation was well below its one time high of 3 million.*
Did all of this have to happen? Who knows? It would have been nice if the Time, Inc that was spun off in the last decade wasn’t left holding $1.3billion in debt. But that’s how it’s done. It would have been nice if IAC wasn’t so quick to sell off or shutter some magazines, but that’s how mergers and acquisitions are handled. The public’s tastes change over time. The way people get information changes over time.
It’s harder in this decade for general interest magazines to maintain their level of mass audience. Was the Arena Group a good steward of Sports Illustrated? The recent reveal that they were using third party AI to leave less than well written affiliate marketing content on their site suggests that they could have done better. Honestly, this whole story reminds me of the old Rowan and Martin Laugh In skits where the “Fickle Finger of Fate” was awarded
Sometimes, even the most well built, well designed brands cannot withstand the passage of time and the fickleness of management and the public.
*: By comparison, in an AAM report in the second half of 2013, SI reported 2.7 million paid subscribers and single copy sales averaging 46.5 thousand copies per week.
one_Not an Onion headline…
The Writers Guild of America East represents the writers at The Onion, now under the G/O Media umbrella. They’ve pledged to go out on strike on January 31st if their demands are not met by management.
They’re looking for better pay and protections against AI generated content.
“This strike pledge reflects the mandate from our members to address several pressing workplace issues, especially the need for fair pay and AI protections,” said Marnie Shure, managing editor of The Takeout and member of WGAE’s Onion Inc. Union bargaining committee.”
two__Cocoa Girl Magazine partners with Bloomsbury Children’s Books
I love reading about these kinds of partnerships. Cocoa Girl Magazine was founded in the UK by Serlina Boyd to give Black girls in the UK a voice and an education about Black culture. Shortly after starting Cocoa Girl, she started Cocoa Boy.
The partnership with Bloomsbury is designed to show readers that they can turn their writing hobby into a real career. Cocoa Girl is a quarterly and each issue will feature articles and activities about different departments within a book publishing company. There will also be a contest and the winner will see their short story in print in Cocoa Girl Magazine.
This title was the 2020 Launch of the Year winner as named by the British Society of Magazine Editors.
three__In unsurprising news, billionaires are losing a fortune in the news industry
Since I started this week’s newsletter talking about the shaky future of Sports Illustrated, let’s talk about the significant losses a few billionaires are taking on since acquiring a magazine or newspaper.
Just because you “disrupted” the bookselling or CRM business doesn’t mean you can remake the newspaper or magazine business. You may have billions to support the business you purchased at discount pricing, but that wealth doesn’t insulate you from all of the challenges that industry is facing and that none of the experienced legacy executives have yet to solve.
Biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong purchased the LA Times for $500million. Their newsroom planned a walkout in the face of job cuts. Likewise, at the end of last year, The Washington Post eliminated 240 jobs while Time Magazine lost close to $20million last year.
four__In ongoing news about Substack’s “Nazi problem”…
When it launched, Substack got an incredible amount of positive press, and a few skeptical takes over some of the writers they lured to their site. The idea behind Substack is pretty good. Bring your newsletter here and we’ll provide a lot of tools to help you grow. Charge for subscriptions and we’ll take just 10%.
But like anywhere on the internet, at some point, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, LGBTQ haters, anti-semites, they’ll all show up and start some trolling. In this case, the problem became visible when Substack rolled out their Notes app.
As Bloomberg writer Joshua Brustein notes,
When companies take money from venture capitalists, they implicitly agree to pursue this swing-for-the-fences business model. In Substack’s case, this decision sowed the seeds of the current controversy.”
How many other newsletter platforms are supporting, wittingly or otherwise, writers who are posting seriously objectionable content? Hard to say. Do they have a social media style feed with an algorithm?
five__Vroman’s Bookstore is for sale
As reported in the Shelf Awareness newsletter, Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, CA has been owned by the Sheldon family for 130 years. So, how many 130 year old bookstore chains do you know of?
Current owner, Joel Sheldon, is about to celebrate his 80th birthday and has run the store for 50 of those 80 years. Vroman’s consists of two stores on Colorado Boulevard and Hastings Ranch plus the Book Soup store in West Hollywood.
On a professional note, I tend to pay attention to the store because they do sell magazines. A lot of them.
Here’s to finding new ownership that will support the mission of locally owned, independent bookstores.
Your moment of international magazine zen…
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And now, before you click away and check out your Trips Slack and wonder how Fiona from accounts managed to make it to Bali last week, let’s check in with our favorite stressed out magazine media marketing team. When we last checked in with them, Veronica’s gang was the last one standing in the office and the new CMO kept them working over the Christmas break. How are things going in the New Year?
Well, the team just assembled in Conference Room B and the CMO informed them that the office is being downsized to just Conference Room B. No break room. No hot desks. No cubicles. Veronica lost her private office. The company’s local HQ is now the conference room and they all get to work around this conference table. How’s that going to work out?
If you’ve read this far down, guess what? Our AI Sign-Off editor is on the fritz again so I’m going to wish you a good week filled with short meetings, easily decipherable spreadsheets and findable docs on your Google Drive.
