A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THE MAGAZINE'S LAST 16 COVERS HAVE FEATURED BASEBALL, FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL, BASEBALL, FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL, BASEBALL, BASEBALL, BASEBALL, FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL, AND BASEBALL: And so Slate's Josh Levin asks, What's wrong with Sports Illustrated?

Sports Illustrated has plenty of competitors besides ESPN and the New York Times. The increase in sports television coverage, and partly the popularity of SI itself, created a huge demand for comprehensive, sophisticated sports journalism. Traditional beat reporters, Web writers, enterprising bloggers, brainy statisticians, and YouTube videographers are now producing plenty of smart, funny, indiscreet, insidery material every day. Sports Illustrated used to distinguish itself by writing better, and securing better access to its subjects, than anyone who wrote faster. Now, with a few exceptions—Ian Thomsen's recent story on the Celtics' maneuverings to corral Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, Tom Verducci on how the Red Sox saved Jonathan Papelbon's shoulder—the magazine's reported pieces don't offer original details. They just come out three days later than everybody else's.

Levin offers a handful of interesting possibilities: (1) use its influence to push bolder opinion journalism; (2) beef up the investigative reporting and (3) open up the archives and put more materials from the magazine's glorious past online.