Sport In America from Sports Illustrated... and role of Sports Journalism

Very interesting cover story in the November 28 issue of Sports Illustrated.

The entire text of the piece by Time Inc Sports editor Terry McDonell doesn't appear to be online now (just silly, me thinks), but Sport In America is posted as an abridged version. The story introduces a future HBO series of the same name that Sports Illustrated will be co-producing.

Overall concept of the series and introductory story is described on this Inside Sports Illustrated blog post and around the question of what sport means to individual people... with this question still quite relevant in today's environment of large money and high level cynicism around sport.

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The piece by McDonell was interesting (if only the whole text could be provided here) and got me thinking more about sports journalism and what it does. There's certainly recapping of with scores and game summaries, but also much more. The narrative recreation of fan memories is a huge offering that sports journalism can provide and another aspect of journalism around sports is the revealing of information.

This can be around things like player profiles a well as supremely important topics like Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State child sex abuse case (with my blog post last month on writing about the scandal). This case provided another example of how sports journalism can play a much more important than score and game notes role with this NBC interview with Sandusky where noted sports journalist Bob Costas let Sandusky eviscerate himself in relation to the accusations made and charges filed.

Very important stuff to be sure... and this revealing, recreating and recapping that can be provided by sports journalism doesn't even fully cover the entertainment value that solid media coverage can add to the (financially very valuable) total fan experience.

Detroit Writing from Time & Sports Illustrated

Interesting concept from Time, Inc. that’s already resulted in some compelling writing…

The idea is for Time Magazine and its affiliated publications including Fortune, Money, Sports Illustrated to continually report on the once thriving city of Detroit.

Both Sports Illustrated and Time had cover stories about Detroit this week and each issue featured pieces from the editor about why Time Inc. made this decision. Both that from Time Inc.’s Editor-in-Chief John Huey and the essay from Sports Illustrated’s Terry McDonell detail how far the city has fallen. The statistics referenced are 29% unemployment, 50% illiteracy and 70% unsolved murders… all from a place that used to be the epicenter of American manufacturing.

As Huey describes, the goal of Time Inc. in reporting so thoroughly on the city is to shine a spotlight and perhaps help Detroit “recover and find it’s way into the future.”

On to the first stories…

The Time Magazine cover piece is titled “Detroit: The Death — and Possible Life — of a Great City” and written by Daniel Okrent. It’s a broad overview of Detroit and it’s current struggles from someone who grew up there.



Solid writing from Okrent, but probably more compelling to me was the Sports Illustrated cover story by Lee Jenkins. The frequent baseball writer contributes “Tigertown” about the team and efforts led by owner Mike Ilitch, to help revitalize the city.



While the role a sports team can play in such a big task may seem insignificant, the franchise has worked hard to put a contending team on the field as well as make games affordable to its fans.

An additional anecdote from the Jenkins piece showed the team’s support of local industry. When General Motors found itself unable to continue sponsoring the popular "home run water fountain", Ilitch decided to not seek different sponsor dollars. Instead, he simply added Chrysler and Ford alongside the GM name in centerfield... at no cost to any of the beleaguered automakers. Not a bottom-line based decision, but a very cool one.