I miss Sports illustrated. But then I miss a lot of print publications, including the ones I worked for from 2004-2016.
After working for a religious nonprofit for over twenty years, I was unceremoniously downsized. It took almost two years, but after doing some freelance work for the Jewish News from New JerseyI was offered a full-time job as a staff writer.
If you know anything about me, despite appearances, I am a very shy person, so the thought of talking to strangers on a daily basis and asking all kinds of personal and impersonal questions was quite frightening. But if I say so myself, I think I did a good job, even winning a few awards for my work, including the New Jersey Press Association’s Best Blog of the Year for Kaplan’s Korner, a site about Jews and sports that I continued for a while after departure That job when the newspaper was bought and I was without a job again.
Anyway…
One of my hobbies was collecting first editions of magazines. It’s cool to go back and look at it from a pop culture standpoint: what were the big stories, the ads, the fashion? I even thought about a book about the cultural history of ANDbut never really followed through; maybe it’s time to rethink that. They went from weekly to monthly, virtually losing the prestige and influence they once had (despite the swimsuit issue).
In a recent Bookshelf Conversation with David Fleming, author of the Baseball Obscura books we discussed the demise of the baseball yearbook. Thank you very much, Internet. You have made such publications virtually obsolete with your updated information which spelled the end of some of my favorites such as Street & Blacksmith and many others I would look forward to spring.
#week #Sports #Illustrated