Opinion: is Sports Illustrated digging its own grave?
Sydney Taylor, Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of unsplash.com.
The views and opinions expressed on in this article are solely those of the original author. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Vision NGU or North Greenville University.
Attention, please. Headline writers only needed. The middle of articles are no longer important.
Sports Illustrated has laid off a huge portion of their journalistic staff to make an unbelievable change in the way articles and stories are written.
Since online journalism has made the jump to “how many clicks can this get” rather than “what story will this tell” it has been harder for any writers to keep a career. The people of this generation have started to give up on reading. Long posts on social media result in scrolls past it, and long articles are being treated the same. In return, the new writers are the same way.
Sports Illustrated had an image that the company told the stories sports fans really wanted to read about. The stories might have been lengthy but it was actually good quality that length was not an issue. People use to have to really dive into the story to get out the hidden treasures.
Of course nowadays, it’s the trend to basically use the headline or blurb to tell the whole story. People have given up writing quality stories after the title or link because they know the people are not going to keep reading once they have what they want.
The original sports writers are being replaced with new and fresh faces of bloggers and freelancers. Fluff fluff fluff. The integrity of Sports Illustrated is compromised and is headed down the drain. Actual sports fans are not going to stick around for clickbait. These new ways of getting readers to view posts are going to get old once the people realize they are not getting anything more than what they can find on Google.
When asked about the new Sports Illustrated change, NGU’s Director of Football Communications, Robbie Gawrys did not hold back. “Clickbait stuff gets extremely annoying. Sites like 247 and Barstool use this sort of reporting and while people might tune in every now and then, it’s not something a true sports fan wants to read.”
There have been other big names that have burned out in the past like this including Inside Sports and Sport Magazine. Once the writers that actually care about what they are writing and devoted themselves to delivering quality stories are gone then the readers will follow. People tend to care more about what other people care about.
Gawrys said, “I 100% believe sportswriters are still needed. One of my favorite sites is the Athletic which is blog-ish, but still thoughtful writing about not only sports but the athletes and stories.” Sometimes companies have to learn the hard way. This might be one those hard lessons to learn about giving up time and effort to fit in to the fast pace and shallow minds of this generation.
The editor-in-chief, Chris Stone, was one of the first to leave. Once the news was out that the company was changing ownership and leaders, the staff new there would be big changes. The layoffs were basically inevitable, it was just a matter of when and who.
Sports Illustrated has made a big jump in the wrong direction and left tons of writers without jobs. If someone were to start up a competing sports journalism magazine or site that actually cares about quality, now would be the right time.
