The new Sporting News

Most of you who know me have seen me toting around the Sporting News at on time or another, and most of you have borrowed it to read. I've been getting the magazine for about 20 years, it was probably the first one I subscribed to.

Sporting News, as Pat Conway once correctly commented, is "kind of hard-core, the sports magazine for nerds." I think he meant it endearingly. My old teammate Brad Geldnich constantly borrowed it on our many basketball and baseball bus trips in high school.

It was a tabloid newsprint product back then, and a good chunk of the content was baseball box scores. I've been with TSN through a lot, as it evolved into an oversized glossy magazine format, to a regular glossy magazine format, to what it is now.

Which is a slightly oversized magazine that will be mailed to subscribers 24 times per year, not weekly as it has been for so long. Last week I received an issue with these words on the front cover:

"Dear Valued Reader: After extensive research with 'die-hard' fans like you, we're changing the way avid fans get their sports news. Starting with your next issue, Sporting News magazine will be much different.
-Your 'new' Sporting News will now feature regular A-list contributions from award-winning storytellers, athletes, coaches, scouts, executives and more.
-Your 'new' Sporting News will be 25% larger and printed on high quality paper.
-Your 'new' Sporting News will now arrive every two weeks as our publishing cycle moves from 50 issues to 24 issues a year — including four double issues. ..."

This move is accompanied by the introduction of a robust daily online product. This isn't a huge shock. Many of us in publishing have lately been involved with a frequency reduction combined with an increased push online. The antiques magazine we publish went from 52 to 40 issues per year in March. The Cap Times went from six days per week to two (on that: Mertzy and Polzin tuned me into Badger Beat, it's going to be a site fans will want to check daily).

In these times of diminishing print advertising revenues and skyrocketing prices for paper and postage, shifting emphasis to online makes sense.

What's interesting about the Sporting News is that they've gone with a larger publication size and higher-quality stock. The first "new" Sporting News arrived in my mailbox last week, and it' s a nice product. There are more photos, more longer pieces, and also more quick-hitters. The magazine also seems to have enlisted new big-name contributors like John Elway and Reggie Miller, an old-school big-name sports journalist in John Feinstein, and a new-school big name in Will Leitch, founder of Deadspin.

Some of the new content works, some of it feels uncomfortable and forced. Personally, I liked what they were serving before — the magazine arrived on Wednesday, and it was enough content for me to digest by the weekend, when I then turned to Sports Illustrated. The new content is heavy on athlete-authored short stuff, which some people like, but I would rather read analysis from beat writers.

It was clear Sporting News had to make a move. My praise in the preceding paragraph notwithstanding, lately the magazine seemed to be basically NFL coverage and Wrangler ads. Sporting News Today, the new daily online product, is promising. As mentioned earlier this summer, Chris Pressley is a contributor to Sporting News Today.

TSN won't be like it was when I was a kid, but in publishing, nothing will ever be like it was when I was a kid.