Saturday, January 20, 2024

Sports Illustrated is dead and I'm not feeling so hot myself

   

     Whenever I try to convey the bounty that the Chicago Sun-Times offers its readers every weekend with the Sports Saturday wrapper, I say, "It's like Sports Illustrated." Meaning that it is packed with long, complex, interesting articles and dramatic photos. When I stumble across the rare sports story I want to cover, like an older couple hosting three rising hockey players, or a blind radio color commentator, I try to run it on a Saturday, because sports will both package it beautifully and give me room to tell a tale.
     Sports Illustrated was such high quality that you didn't even need to particularly appreciate professional athletics to enjoy it — I remember the raw envy I felt, as a writer, reading an in-depth SI piece on the enormous challenge of washing the laundry for the National Football League. What a great idea, perfectly executed.
    While I wrote my share of sports stories back in the day — golfing in Montego Bay with Arnold Palmer, sitting down to talk football with Tom Landry before a Dallas Cowboys game — I only wrote one piece for Sports Illustrated: a quirky take on how TV cowboy star Roy Rogers invented sports marketing and taught the NFL to license its logos. 
     I was proud of that notch on my belt, and would have loved to show it off, had anybody cared. But they absolutely did not. Not a soul. 
     Why would anyone? Magazines have pretty much washed away in the howling media wordstorm. Time, Life, Newsweek, once-mighty gold-plated brand names that formed the apex of the profession. Now tiny mockeries of their mighty pasts, recognized by a narrowing sliver of the consumer world, like the threadbare names of those defunct products revived in the Lillian Vernon catalogue: Lemon-Up. Prell. Necco Wafers. A familiar logo to slap on a pale imitation slightly resembling its former self.
     But I took comfort knowing SI was there, hanging on. Though battered by the same faltering economic model clubbing down all journalism — the Washington Post is also about to jettison a chunk of its reporters — it still existed.
     Until Friday, when Sports Illustrated fired its entire staff. About 80 journalists, over the side, into the icy chop that awaits the unemployed. From now on, it'll be a nostalgia act, an aggregator. A hook to bait with repackaged material jamming the racks at Walgreens. 
     The temptation is to mourn. But I'm tired of mourning. It's boring. I thought I'd like to talk about what happened, and called my friend, Rick Telander, the dean of American sports columnists, who wrote for Sports Illustrated for 25 years. He knew. He'd make sure that whatever I said at least carried a whiff of veracity.
     "I shouldn't say Sports Illustrated just died because it's already long dead, right?" I said, beginning the conversation. This is just the utter end, the ritual abusing of the corpse. 
     What happened? 
     "Fans know more than we do," said Rick. "And everybody's a photographer."
     Nothing to be done?
     "You're protesting the world," he said. "You're protesting modernity."
     Well, I'm not protesting anything. Just noticing it. I've long said, "Technology wins." No matter how much you liked human telephone operators, they're still gone.
     "To fight it is tilting at windmills," Rick continued. "To bitch about it too much is to bitch about getting old."
     Getting old does bite, particularly the part where ...  no. There's too much of that already. Rick isn't interested in shaking his fist at the young social media stars tramping all over our once exclusive lawn, and neither am I.
     "Time for journalists to figure this out, and stop worrying about the way it used to be," he said. "It's never going back, ever. Taylor Swift has 550 million followers. She has more power than all the newspapers in the United States."
     See, that's what journalists bring to the table. We see what's going on, and we say it. Even if we don't like it. Even if the truth is in no way optimistic — for us. Our houses are on fire; the least we can do is describe the flames, a final act of fealty to our fading vocation.
     "It's the end of what I've chosen as my profession," Rick said. "I never took a vow of irrelevance. That was never part of the deal. Nobody cares. Writing has become a commodity. Everyone can do it."
     I could argue that — actually, everyone can't do it. Obviously. What everyone can do is read, and watch videos, and the time once spent reading a revealing, in-depth profile of a player is now spent watching his girlfriend watch him. There is only so much time in a day.
     "Nobody under 30 reads a newspaper," said Rick. "Do you see them reading long magazine pieces? They get the stuff on Facebook. Go on their phone. Check out the news, go on TikTok and that's it. Who looks at the byline?"
     He said that there was a time when he knew the top sports columnist in every city in the country. He and Rick Morrissey were discussing this recently.
     "We used to know them all," he said. "We couldn't name a sports columnist in Detroit. I can't name a columnist in the entire United States. None."
     I told Rick that I do what I do, not for the benefit of whatever remnants of an audience might yet remain. But for myself. To satisfy my own curiosity, meet my own standards and, not incidentally, make a living.
     "I still care a lot," said Rick. "I never had a job I've been prouder of. Never dreamed I'd be blindsided like this. Didn't expect technology to make it irrelevant. The whole world is changing. I hate the feeling that the thing I chose to do is irrelevant. But it just is."
     I can't tell you if Telander is right, or I simply find myself in the same place and agree with him completely.  Sometimes it seems what I do is dig a hole in the morning, go to sleep, wake up to find it filled, then dig another one. Rinse. Repeat.
     "Every year we have a job is astounding," he said. "This is what I do. I'll do it until it's over."
     That's two of us then. Playing in an orchestra on an antique bandstand set on a cliff at the edge of the sea. Sawing away at our instruments while, every now and then, with increasing frequency, another chunk of cliff gives way, and a cello, or a couple of bassoons go whistling into the abyss. The symphony falters, the music grows thinner, fainter. But the tempo is resumed, until the next crash, a strangled cry and a pair of cymbals go clanging down the sheer rock face followed by a splash.
      If this all sounds depressing, it shouldn't. Some days fun is had, still, and a shimmer of significance forms far away, a mirage deforming the air for a moment before vanishing. The way I see it, no matter how big music streaming services get, there are still a few artisans left making violins. You don't need to sell them to everybody; you just need to sell them to a few customers whose ears can detect the difference between a tune played on a fine instrument and one buzzed out on a comb wrapped in wax paper. 
     When I went into writing, and was warned about how difficult this line of work was as a career, even then, I liked to quote Daniel Webster. Told that the legal profession was an impossibly crowded field, he replied, "There's always room at the top." I believe that still holds true as the journalistic world empties out. If this is the end, well, then, we will endeavor to shine brightly at the end, just as we did at our beginning.

78 comments:

  1. I have little interest in sports anymore. I haven't watched a baseball game since the Cubs won the Series in 2016 & only the occasional Bears game to hope they lose, as I flat out hate the McCaskeys!
    I used to read SI at the library, but I even stopped doing that, except for the annual Swimsuit Issue & even that has gone astray, what with men, fat girls & trannies in it!
    And if some of you don't like that term, tough, as my personal opinion of them is that they're just gay men afraid of being called gay, so they sort of get hormones & a few get surgery to look like a female & dress like one & then still have sex with men. So in fact, you're still a gay man, just with some body dysmorphia & altered parts!

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    1. From so many perspectives you are so wrong. But I guess "...removing all doubt" is what you intended here.

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    2. Only the ignorant cast aspersions on those they have no way of understanding. Better to admit that you do not know everything and hope for the best for every fellow human.

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    3. Why do you even care about what other people do? Is your life that vacuous that you must make ridiculous comments about something you obviously know nothing about? Wow. Just mind your own business and you’ll be a lot happier.

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    4. Clark, I don't know what your relationship is with Mr. S, but it must be strong for him to put up with your b******* what the f*** is wrong with you? Is your whole worldview based on the things that you dislike even in the face of dwindling opportunities in his profession? Neil is upbeat and sees the bright side of things. God, you're a miserable person

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    5. You have put yourself in an extremely poor light. Very disappointing.

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    6. Clark St, I don't much about transexualism but I'm sure that you don't either. Too bad that you can't go to the library to peruse the swimsuit issue anymore although that's hardly a decline in culture.

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    7. Old saying: "It is better to be thought a fool and remain silent than to speak up and remove all doubt." I'm guessing that Mr. S could easily have declined to let your comment appear, but then decided to let you hang yourself with your own rope. He's done this before, when he's posted stuff from trolls, haters, and spammers.

      You lost me at "trannies." Didn't bother with the rest of it. You should have stopped right there. Were you drunk when you typed in those last few needless lines of nonsense. PWI is usually a bad idea. And if this reply pisses you off...tough. You deserve even worse.

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    8. Fifty comments posted, another 50 deleted. Had I read past for the first graph, or remembered what an asshat Clark St. is, generally, I'd have never posted it. But believe it or not, I try not to focus on the comments too much — it's too time-consuming, which is why they don't appear after articles on the paper's website. I'm considering just telling everyone to comment on Facebook and shutting them off. It's not my job to provide a platform for toxic crazy people.

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    9. I hope to hell you don't do that, Mr. S. Really sorry there are so many asshats now. I'm finding that to be the case everywhere I go. Too many orange Kool--Aid guzzlers and fascists, too many youngsters who want to see all the Boomers in their graves. I enjoy typing out my thoughts here...can you tell?

      And sometimes I like to go back and see what was going on at EGD a year or two ago...or longer. You can't really search archived comments on FB...at least, not nearly as easily. This is such a much better venue for commenting...I was here three years before I finally gave in and joined up with Mother Zucker.

      If you're already leaning toward shutting down the comments, mainly because of the haters and the clowns, I hope you will reconsider. But you wouldn't be the first. All the major publications, and the networks, have done the same thing. And for the same reason. Which is pretty goddamn sad. But they had no choice. Unless a blogger or a FB page or a website runs a very tight ship, the haters wil lprosper and prevail. And they keep on coming back. They're just like cockroaches.

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  2. Great column. I too miss the days of reading great sports columnists. But I'm a Boomer, as you might guess.

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  3. So much to relate to here. When my professional life started in 1983 I was warned it would soon be usurped by technology and I should chose a different path. Still hanging on by a thread 40 years on. Now approaching the off ramp of work's conveyer belt...then plop...hoping it outlasts me, but doubtful.

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    1. I never expected cabinet making would be taken over by CNC robots but it pretty much has. I'm still hanging on too. What do you do?

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  4. What will humans do for a living when the robots have all the jobs? Some days I am glad I am on the old side of the pool.

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  5. “ time once spent reading a revealing, in-depth profile of a player is now spent watching his girlfriend watch him.”

    You nailed it. So depressing…

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  6. So to cope with the fear of being called gay, you believe people choose the painful and difficult path of joining a group they don't naturally belong to, a group that may be the most persecuted minority in America today?

    Your logic escapes me.

    Wonderful and melancholy article Neil.

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    1. Thanks. I didn't read the rest of Clark Street's comment when I posted it (I'm only shown the first graph). I didn't realize he went directly into the gender weeds.

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    2. I don't have any problems with gays, they don't bother me. I don't bother them.

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    3. I suppose you don't have any problem with fat people either though you made it clear in your comment that you don't want to look at them in bathing suits. Well dude, get a clue

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  7. I’m 80. Many of now say that living in the US in our lifetimes was the best of times and will never come again. Our time was not without terrible problems and I am white, but still…I am glad I am as old as I am.

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  8. SI, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian. Hell, even Newsweek. Used to subscribe to them all because of the wonderful long form pieces which - even when treading ground I thought I had no interest in - were beautifully written. Crafted by fine crafts persons. When those pieces got shorter and shorter, the quality suffered for the brevity, and I gradually let my subscriptions slip away. I'd say I miss it, but there's nothing left to miss.

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  9. This is a fine piece. But it doesn’t allow for The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Economist, the New York Times and numerous others that seem to be alive and, if not but particularly well, still standing. Good periodical writing can still be found, one just has to look a little harder.

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    1. That's true. I guess I wasn't assessing the whole genre, just SI. I get all of those, except for Atlantic, and at times it seems more ritualistic than practical. I'm not reading as much myself.

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    2. I actually subscribe to all of those, but only read the online versions. I still like to read in-depth articles. But, my husband, who is older than I am old, listens to podcasts. He loves them.

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    3. I love to read magazines, newspaper articles, books, poetry, and somehow have managed to instill some of that love into my three boys.
      On the days when they say my god slaughterhouse five. What a great book! A Confederacy of dunces. How come you didn't tell me about this one? Dad
      I always knew that I'd made a new friend when. One of the first questions they asked was are you reading anything right now and an hour long conversation would ensue about that book and the one that they were reading or had just read.
      I went to the bookstore recently. It was packed with people. Maybe we're over looking something. I think people still read even young people

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  10. Rather than speak badly about people who choose a different lifestyle or look different than I, I think I'll talk about SI's demise.
    I've been a subscriber since 1976 and looked forward to it's arrival every week, then bi-monthly and finally monthly. I also get it digitally, but rarely read it there as the interface was, in my opinion not smooth. I read every word except about soccer (sorry, rest of the world) and the photos were outstanding. That said, in our instant gratification and notification world it was only a matter of time. So now another adjustment. A small one though as it was a monthly. And all those people out of their jobs. Sad, but inevitable.

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    1. SI was the source of one of the biggest-ever media jokes...the Sidd Finch fiasco. He was a fictional N.Y. Mets ballplayer, and the subject of the notorious April Fools' Day hoax article "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch"-- written by George Plimpton--and first published in the April 1, 1985, issue of Sports Illustrated.

      According to Plimpton, Finch was raised in an English orphanage, went to Harvard, learned yoga in Tibet, and could throw a fastball at 168 miles per hour. Many readers, newspapers, sportswriters, and even TV networks fell for it. So did I, at least to begin with, until a few things raised an eyebrow or two. Then I realized what the issue date was...and had a good laugh.

      Maybe it wasn't quite as widespread a hoax as the 1938 Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, but that famous 1985 SI story became a BFD. And I'm pretty sure I still have that issue in my baseball files. That story was a hoot!

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  11. My classmate, Michael Klingensmith, left SI some years ago to try and save the Minneapolis Star Tribune. (Fridley MN was his hometown.) I think he succeeded as well as one could expect in these times.

    I very much related to Mr. Telander's sadness that what he chose to do has become irrelevant. What I chose to do has become physically close to impossible for me to do. At least though, I can foster it in my children and grandchildren. I don't think I could encourage them, unfortunately, to pursue journalism.

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  12. Journalism’s long fatal illness began with Reagan deregulation in the early 80s, which enabled ownership consolidation to eliminate print and broadcast outlets at a breathless pace. It drove me out of the profession and I’ve lived with the sadness of not having the career I wanted, and the sadness of witnessing the devolution of journalism to predominantly POV documentation rather than a commitment to at least try and deliver objective reporting.

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    1. It's always Reagan.

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    2. Clinton did his part with the telecommunication act as well

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    3. Well, as a point of FACT it WAS Regan and his administration that drove deregulation in the early 80s. It is my OPINION that his action enabled dramatic change in the media landscape that had perilous and negative effects on health of journalism in the United States. The end of SI is simply the latest symptom of that peril.

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    4. There is often more than one single fact that is germain to a conversation. While Reagan's veto of continuing the fairness doctrine has its place. It is not the only reason for the demise of journalism and broadcasting
      Clinton's signing of the telecommunications act, although written during the previous administration, has played a big part in the changing landscape.
      The telecommunications act while conceived during the bush administration was signed by Clinton and that is a FACT

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  13. Way back in the 1980s I worked as a production artist at an ad agency. Any printed piece was hand-crafted using X-acto knives, rubber cement, layout boards, Rapidograph pens, typesetters and position stats. The day we got our first computer--a clunky old Apple--I knew the jig was up and I went to grad school. I remember long-time art directors crying because their way of doing things was vanishing, but as NS says, technology wins. Years later I was teaching and sponsoring the student publication the kids created using Freehand and Photoshop on Macs. Their reactions were priceless when I told them what I went through to create printed materials in the old days. You'd have thought I crawled out of a cave every morning and hunted dinosaurs for breakfast.

    Funny thing is, years from now those kids will be old and bemoaning the fact that things aren't what they used to be. I'm glad that Rick Telander acknowledges that the only thing constant is change, some good, some bad. Someday there may be a renaissance in writing and journalism that will arise from this (relatively) still-new tech world of ours, but us old-timers won't be leading it. Those new leaders probably haven't been born yet.

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    1. My first wife was a graphic artist. Typesetting, layout, paste-up, the whole megillah. She had a number of jobs, with both big and small outfits, and also worked as a freelancer. She had more job offers than she could handle, and if somebody looked at her cross-eyed, she could walk and find another job in a jiffy. She did that a couple of times. Typed 100 words a minute.

      When I left town in the early 90s, she was still working for a big insurance company downtown. I imagine that her skills gradually became obsolete over the course of that decade.

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  14. I recall enjoying my spouse's SI back in the 80's, so I could see pics and stories on Dan Marino. ;) Hey, don't knock Prell. It's great on cleaning hair, but no fake pearl in it like in my childhood.

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    1. Did it used to come with an actual fake pearl In it? I thought that was just used in the commercial to show how thick it was. But it’s been a while!

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    2. No. No fake pearl. Although that would have been a cool marketing idea. My mother's name was Pearl. She was not fake. She bought Prell shampoo, and I used it as a kid. Loved the deep green color.

      The ad campaign that employed the pearl, which was used to show how thick the shampoo was, also had that creepy female chorus that would chant "Other shampoos are THINNNN...and watery-watery-watery..." Unforgettable.

      My wife remembers that "chant of the harpies" from her own TV-watching kid days. Sometimes we will say it to each other, and laugh. We're old...and we find it easy to amuse ourselves.

      . A classic TV commercial will remain in your head for years...long after the show it sponsored has been forgotten, and lost to time. And those Prell Shampoo ads, the ones with the pearl, are among them.

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    3. Hmmm... Am I safe in assuming that preferring Dan Marino to ogle (er... I mean learn about) among all the NFL quarterbacks of the '80s might have had something to do with his Italian heritage, Private? 😉

      Not sure if these Prell commercials would get the nod, today. I've got no dog in this fight, but there are a number of references online to people remembering "pearls" in the bottles.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRDioD3zubw

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    4. No kidding about old commercials. I hate to think how much of my memory space is taken up by jingles from the 60s and 70s. I could really use it for more important information!

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    5. Mr. S should do a blog on old commercials and we can all add to it. ;)

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    6. If you are interested in commercials and marketing, old and new, and you're up at 6:30 on Saturdays mornings, tune into Terry O'Reilly's "Under the Influence" show on WBEZ, 91.5 fm. Enlightening: and funny: who knew that Marlboros were considered a woman's cigarette in the 20s and 30s, until some advertising company invented the Marlboro Man and pitched the very same cigarette to men instead. O'Reilly is a Canadian adman, who's been around the block a few times and knows of what he speaks.

      John

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  15. You orchestra metaphor instantly created a vision of the Jazz Band on the Titanic…

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  16. Is anyone really surprised? It's children's games.

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    1. I’m not particularly interested in sports, but they’re doing just fine. Those “children’s games” are tremendous money-makers It’s reading about them, and reading in general, that’s on the decline.

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  17. I let my subscription lapse decades ago. I don't read the sports pages as thoroughly either, it just doesn't seem worth the time. While SI covered subjects in depth and taught me about sports and people in insightful ways, the story I best remember was from a more pedestrian publication that I subscribed to as a teen. It was a behind the scene piece on jockeys, the struggles involved in maintaining strength while also making weight. Riding 1000 pound animals at breakneck speed is hard for any person but for a 115 pound man, weak from a meager diet , it is a dangerous struggle, and injuries and death were common. The article was titled "The Men They Call Boys" and in ran in SPORT magazine, which died long ago. I probably missed similar pieces in SI, and hopefully those writers will find other outlets for their talent. Writing is not easy, especially with any consistency. We need all the good journalists our schools can produce, now that there is unlimited opportunity for them. Getting the good ones read is the problem.

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    1. Finding good writing is the hard part. It just isn't marketed as well as newspapers. Were they put them on your front porch? They were in a box on every corner but somewhere in there behind that screen is a lot of great writing. If you just find it, I'm grateful to be kidding. The picayune in my inbox and the Roseland pieces from Neil's to friends, but Id have never found them accidentally

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  18. I still subscribe to 5 “newspapers” online. Columnists like you, Rick T., Rick M and others and others are the only reason. I skip all the amateurs. I only want to read professional wordsmiths. John H.

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  19. Thank you to Clark St. for proving that hating and demeaning transgender people is still socially acceptable. If Clark St. had posted about n-words or [insert your favorite epithet for Asian people] in the SI swimsuit edition, somehow I think the reaction to his comment would have been very different. (Maybe his comment would have been taken down rather than being referred to as a journey into the gender weeds?) And, yes, I am a transgender woman (who transitioned 16 years ago) who is gay, but that’s because I am attracted to women, not to men. As to the changes in journalism, I find them interesting. I subscribed to the paper edition of the Sun-Times for about 30 years but canceled my subscription when the paper started running stories from USA Today and the price of my annual subscription went north of $400.00 per year. I still wanted to be knowledgeable about current events so I subscribed to the on line version of the Washington Post which I still read every day. And now the electronic version of the Sun-Times can be accessed for free. And, of course, now there are social media influencers, some of whom are very good in reporting and commenting on current events. (I think of Heather Cox Richardson who has a national following, and Eric Zorn.) Rick Telander is right, of course. The one constant thing in life is change. People will always want to know what is going on (and still enjoy in depth stories) but the sources of news and stories is changing. Joanie Wimmer

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    1. Thanks for sharing Joanie. And I'm sorry that this hateful screed ever saw the light of day. Far less derogatory and inflammatory comments seem to get blocked and Clark street's b******* just keeps on coming

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  20. Didn't someone say "The medium is the message"? The illuminated screen is very captivating.

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  21. There’s still The New Yorker!

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  22. Glad to see Grizz mention the Sidd Finch article, so I don't need to. It was legendary and quite the treat. I subscribed to SI for decades, but gave it up quite a while ago. My interest in sports has diminished quite significantly as I've gotten older, plus I'm a lot more picky about the topics of long-form articles than I used to be, given the profusion of online prose presented each day. Still, I'm sorry to see what's become of it. If nothing else, this development prompted some fine reflections from our genial host and Rick Telander, whom I used to read in SI back in the day.

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    1. I ascribe my diminished interest in sports to its connection to legalized gambling. I still like to watch a game of basketball or baseball or football at least once a week. Primarily the local teams, but the notion that they only play the game to determine the winner of the bets and that they talk about betting throughout the broadcast or telecast is so annoying that I can't stand it

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    2. I'm with you, FME. Mark my words — gambling is going to ruin sports in some profound way we haven't even considered, yet.

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    3. Something along the lines of the 1919 Black Sox scandal...the fixing of and the throwing of games. Probably not at the collegiate level, and probably not MLB...that's not where the betting money is, because of the long daily schedule and the sheer profusion in games. Perhaps in pro basketball. Maybe the NCAA March Madness tournament.

      But my money is on NFL football (sorry, couldn't resist). There will be a gambling scandal involving the tanking of teams or point shaving...something that will shake America to its core and maybe wreck the whole megillah. It will be enormous and historic and it won't be pretty.

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  23. Great column and thought provoking comments. I've seen a change in reading habits with my neighborhood book club. I started the book club in 2009, and the nine, middle age+ women faithfully read that month's selection, followed by a vigorous book discussion. I've seen a change over the last several years to where we are not as prone to have finished the book, which then impacts the discussion. Truly, even I find myself "skimming" our selection the day before the meeting because I didn't make the time to read the book with the allure of social media, texting and online breaking news alerts on my phone. I let them eat up my day. So yes, we are moving into new territory with online taking over our lives and threatening to dissolve balanced journalism. Good news! The person most consistent about reading that month's novel is our youngest, newest member in her 30's with four children. That gives me hope that the younger generation wants to read something beyond a two paragraph summary. Now I need to get myself back on course.

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  24. Sad about SI. I just threw out decades of magazines I had saved in my garage. I will add that the Saturday ST Sports section is a gem. Turned the worst newspaper day into a great one.

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  25. Such a compelling piece, thanks! Just finished reading Martin Baron’s Collision of Power; his account of the challenge, cost, and sometimes courage required to turn out thorough, truthful reporting is sobering. I support 4 national and 5 local reporting publications b/c they are essential to democracy and thinking, and I believe they will always be needed. I hope the inevitable losses will be outweighed by gains.

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  26. Actually, Jakash, I prefer blue eyes and Danny got them from his Mom's Slavic side. ;)

    I swear I recall the pearl in the shampoo. hmmmm

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    1. I was gonna say, heck, if that's all it takes, I've got blue eyes...

      I will concede that he was somewhat of a better quarterback, however. 😏

      Actually, I liked him, and the Dolphins, too and always wished he would have won a Super Bowl.

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  28. Grizz, my spouse's maternal Grandmother was named Pearl as well, born in the U.S. though.

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    1. and she was of Polish background

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    2. Russian, Polish and German on my father's side...Russian and Lithuanian on my mother's. And mistaken for an Italian several times. In three different cities.

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  29. Rick M. is loads of fun to read too.

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  30. Took me a while, but I really like the S-T's Sports Saturday. Meanwhile, the shadow-of-its-former-self Tribune's sports section – with the exception of some columnists – has become the place to go for the scores of games played the day before yesterday.

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  31. Another superior column. The image of the slowly diminishing cliff-bound orchestra will stick with me as I listen interminably for the last note.

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  32. Dale Bowman is my favorite writer in the sports section.

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  33. No shout-outs to Lewis Grizzard? Former sports editor at the Bright One, and author of "Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself."

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    1. During my cup of coffee at the Sun-Times (1976-78), Lewis Grizzard was the executive sports editor. I knew him, but not very well. It was obvious that he not a happy man.

      Grizzard disliked Chicago intensely, especially its bitter winters. And his brief stay up North coincided with some of the coldest and harshest winter weather Chicago has ever had. That was one of the main reasons he returned to Atlanta in 1977.

      In one of his many books, Grizzard later recalled his Chicago days as the most miserable period of his life. He died too soon, at 47, in 1994.

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  34. Great piece. As crumbling as the newspaper business is, the magazine biz has always been even more cutthroat. The death of SI leaves the pro leagues to cover themselves, with all the depth of coverage that allows.

    What fans get with mlb.com, nfl.com, etc., is the varnished 2-dimensional reflection that fans crave -- no exposés of CTE brain damage or the corruption of sports gambling. Perhaps that's what too many fans wanted all along.

    Now they have it.

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  35. man, you really know how to write

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    1. Thanks. Of course, I should: I've been doing it long enough.

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  36. I don't even know how I came upon this article. I think I was mindlessly surfing sports news, which is a tragedy itself because I do consider myself a reader. I didn't know about SI's demise. I've simply found myself turning more to sports, mostly as a respite from politics and the sorrows of the world. Although with the advent of gambling, it's one scandal away from irrelevancy as well. Can't really say I was an avid reader of SI content in the past either, but I light a candle for the departure of any outlet for true journalism. One by one they're seemingly replaced by mere snippets of coverage, apparently written in disappearing ink... here now, gone in 15 minutes, which also seems to coincide with the attention span of humanity anymore. In any case, kudos for the excellent article, and keep on writing for those of us who can, and do, still read more than just the headlines.

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