Sports Illustrated Magazine Reducing Number of Issues (Again)

Back in 2015, the Sports Illustrated magazine came out almost weekly, printing 51 issues. The number of issues has seen a reduction ever since. The mag dropped to 38 in 2017, then 27 in 2018. Now, Sports Illustrated is taking a once-a-month approach, dropping the print edition to 17 issues per calendar year, as reported by Daniel Roberts, a senior writer at Yahoo Finance.

Now, just two years later, it will cut again to one issue per month in 2020—plus four special issues and the Swimsuit Issue, for a total of 17 issues in the calendar year.

Sports Illustrated staffers learned of the coming change at an all-hands meeting in October. Sports Illustrated management has also notified its printer of the plan to go monthly.

Most notably, sources close to the magazine say the “close time” for each issue will be 3-4 weeks, meaning that everything in every issue must be “closed” (all text and photos edited, complete, sent to the printer) more than three weeks before the magazine comes out.

(via Yahoo Finance)

Once a go-to news outlet, Sports Illustrated has been in constant flux the last few years. They have been sold off multiple times and experienced a massive overhaul earlier this year when TheMaven took over media operations and laid off droves of staffers.

It’s been reported TheMaven has financial issues and their reputation is far from solid. Former Deadspin writer and media watchdog Laura Wagner called new SI CEO Ross Levinsohn a “notorious scumbag” in her piece detailing the company’s plan to “turn Sports Illustrated into a rickety content mill.”