McDonell's SI: Not a radical remake

McDonell's SI: Not
a radical remake

Defying predictions, editor keeps much of the old

By Carl Bialik

   They said Sports Illustrated would dumb down. They said it would scrap or trim longer feature stories and ape up-and-coming competitor ESPN the Magazine to appeal to a younger demographic.
   The word: SI would never be the same after Time Inc. editorial director John Huey named Terry McDonell of Us Weekly to replace retiring Bill Colson as editor of the magazine.
    It looks like they were right about it not being the same but wrong that it would be all that different.
    There are certainly some surprises in the issue that hits the streets this morning, McDonell's first, and they start on the cover.
    An image of Charles Barkley, former basketball star and current Alabama gubernatorial candidate, shirtless and breaking out of chains, is buttressed by a quote from Sir Charles: "Every black kid thinks the only way he can be successful is through athletics. That is a terrible thing…"
   In addition to the Barkley cover story, there is an 11-page piece on coyote hunting and a special report on the suspicious death linked to former basketball player Jayson Williams.
    "Everyone thought, I guess they want us to be like ESPN," said one SI staffer about the mood of the magazine after Colson announced he was leaving.
    "Well, ESPN ain't running long stories about hunting coyotes."
    But the pages devoted to these lengthy features come at the expense of straight weekly sports news.
   The old SI would have devoted significant space to college basketball, the hot sport of March, but instead there are only two pages in the Inside College Basketball section and two pages on USC star Sam Clancy.
    While it's dangerous to jump to conclusions from just one issue, it clearly seems that McDonell has decided to make his mark early at SI, and that mark is different from what so many feared.
   "From what I understand, McDonell said something at the first meeting about how everything you heard in the media about us skewing younger is wrong," according to one SI staffer who was not at the meeting but talked to people who were.
    Well, not quite everything is wrong.
    The new-look SI has moved away from news-of-the-week sports coverage. The Barkley cover photo is a posed, provocative shot rather than an action photo. And the Barkley story is personality-driven--Barkley hasn't suited up in years.
    All of these are characteristics of the ESPN magazine.
    But there the similarities end.
    Instead of going the ESPN route of gossip and brief bits for the short-attention-spanned, McDonell has included in his first issue two long features, or bonuses--the stuff that SI writers say makes their magazine unique.
    Not surprisingly, longtime staffers are pleased, though still cautious.
    "That would be a pleasant surprise," says one staffer about the prospect of more longer features.
    "If that's true, then that's music to everybody's ears," says another.
     "I would be delighted if there are more longer pieces," says contributing writer Frank Deford. "I would have hated it if SI would be dumbed down."
    Deford says he never really feared that a dumbing down would occur.
    "I always had the sense that what Mr. Huey was trying to do was to shake things up," Deford says. "That's why he wanted somebody from outside. He wasn't particularly trying to go in any direction."
     Still, some question McDonell's sports credentials, particularly because of his decision to cut the college basketball coverage from this issue.
    "This is the one month of the year that all anyone really cares about is college basketball," says one staffer
    "In the most important month of the season, college basketball had four pages in the entire magazine, which is ludicrous."
    "McDonell came in with a reputation of not knowing that much about sports, and that decision is indicative of that."
    McDonell has edited Men's Journal and Outside. Both magazines cover fitness and outdoor sports but neither covers the sports that are SI's traditional focus.
    Perhaps with that background it is not so surprising that McDonell's SI is neither what it was nor what everyone expected it would become.
    And the new SI has only begun to take shape. Staffers point out that bigger changes and more surprises are probably in store in the coming months, as McDonell learns the ropes.
    "He's got to figure out how the magazine works," says one staffer. "It's a huge operation. Most of us who work there don't know how the magazine works."
    Deford learned how difficult it is to get in gear as SI's editor when he had a run at the top for three months in the '80s.
    "Just learning how to work the computer, and that kind of stuff--it's like entering a new world," Deford says. "Before you can turn the world on its ear, you have to know how to operate the tools."
    As McDonell gets comfortable and continues to shape SI further, he will have a supportive staff behind him, even more so now that they have seen his first issue.
    "People are hoping it works out, they want him to succeed," says the staffer who questioned the college basketball decision. "Who knows, maybe it ends up being a great thing."

-Carl Bialik is a New York writer and a contributor to Media Life.

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