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''Sports Illustrated'' is the largest weekly American Sport s Magazine owned by Media conglomerate Time Warner . It has over 3 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men, 19% of the adult males in the country. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice. Its '' Swimsuit Issue '', which has been published since 1964, is now an annual publishing event that generates its own Television shows, videos and Calendar s. The magazine's cover is the basis of a Sports Myth known as the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx . HISTORY Two other magazines named ''Sports Illustrated'' were started in the 1930s and 1940s, but they both quickly failed. In fact, there was no large-base, general sports magazine with a national following when '' TIME '' patriarch Henry Luce began considering whether his company should attempt to fill the gap. At the time, many believed sports was beneath the attention of serious Journalism and didn't think sports news could fill a weekly magazine, especially during the winter. A number of advisers to Luce, including '' Life Magazine '''s Ernest Havemann, tried to kill the idea, but Luce, who was not a sports fan, decided the time was right.". After offering $200,000 in an unsuccessful bid to buy the name ''Sport'' for the new magazine, they acquired the rights to the name ''Sports Illustrated'' instead for just $10,000. The goal of the new magazine was to be "not ''a'' sports magazine, but ''the'' sports magazine." Many at Time-Life scoffed at Luce's idea; in his Pulitzer Prize -winning biography, ''Luce and His Empire'', W.A. Swanberg wrote that the company's intellectuals dubbed the proposed magazine "Muscle," "Jockstrap," and "Sweat Socks." Launched on August 16 , 1954 , it was not profitable and not particularly well run at first, but Luce's timing was good. The popularity of spectator sports in the United States was about to explode, and that popularity came to be driven largely by three things:
The early issues of the magazine seemed caught between two opposing views of its audience. Much of the subject matter was directed at upper class activities such as Yachting , Polo and Safari s, but upscale would-be Advertisers were unconvinced that sports fans were a significant part of their market.. Innovations From its start, ''Sports Illustrated'' introduced a number of innovations that are generally taken for granted today:
In 1956, Luce asked Time, Inc. senior European Correspondent André Laguerre to come to New York and help define the magazine's character. Many of the staff had serious doubts that the English-born Frenchman could possibly know anything about American sports, but Laguerre won them over, and during his term as Managing Editor (1960 - 1974), ''SI'' became a model for other middle-class American magazines. One of the first changes was the beginning of a segment honouring unknown athletes called Faces In The Crowd . Its writers developed their own characteristic style by daring to tell people what was important. Many would say that the magazine legitimized sports — and being a sports fan — for a huge segment of the American population. The steady creation of landmark stories (e.g., ''"The Black Athlete — A Shameful Story"'' by Jack Olsen and ''"Paper Lion"'' by George Plimpton ) showed that sports fans could be readers, and a generation of sportswriters patterned their own writing after what they read in ''SI''... Color printing The magazine's photographers also made their mark with innovations like putting cameras in the goal at a game. In 1965, Offset Printing began to allow the color pages of the magazine to be printed overnight, not only producing crisper and brighter images, but also finally enabling the editors to merge the best color with the latest news. By 1967, the magazine was printing 200 pages of "fast color" a year; in 1983, ''SI'' became the first American full-color newsweekly. An intense rivalry developed between Photographers , particularly Walter Iooss and Neil Leifer , to get a decisive cover shot that would be on newsstands and in mailboxes only a few days later.. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during Gil Rogin's term as Managing Editor, the feature stories of Frank Deford became the magazine's anchor. "Bonus pieces" on Pete Rozelle , Bear Bryant , Howard Cosell and others became some of the most quoted sources about these figures, and Deford established a reputation as one of the best writers of the time.. Purported creative decline After the death of Henry Luce in 1967, the creative freedom that the staff had enjoyed seemed to diminish. By the 1980s and 1990s, the magazine had become more profitable than ever, but many also believed it had become more predictable. Mark Mulvoy was the first top editor whose background contained nothing but sports; he had grown up as one of the magazine's readers, but he had no interest in fiction, movies, hobbies or history. Mulvoy's top writer Rick Reilly had also been raised on ''SI'' and followed in the footsteps of many of the great writers that he grew up admiring, but many felt that the magazine as a whole came to reflect Mulvoy's complete lack of sophistication. Mulvoy also hired the current creative director Steven Hoffman . Critics said that it rarely broke (or even featured) stories on the major controversies in sports (drugs, violence, commercialism) any more, and that it focused on major sports and celebrities to the exclusion of other topics. The proliferation of "commemorative issues" and crass subscription incentives seemed to some like an exchange of journalistic integrity for commercial opportunism. More importantly, perhaps, many feel that 24-hour-a-day cable sports television networks and sports news web sites have forever diminished the role a weekly publication can play in today's world, and that it is unlikely any magazine will ever again achieve the level of prominence that ''SI'' once had.. Another example of a big change in direction for the periodical is in its capitalizing on alternate covers. The concept took off in the 2000s. There was an alternate issue in fall 2000 for the 2000 World Series . One issue featured Derek Jeter with the heading Subway Series . In January 2004, the controversy over USC and LSU's share of the National Football Championship, resulted in SI creating one issue for the West Coast with USC as champions while the state of Louisiana had an alternate cover with LSU as National Champions. In 2006 alone, there have been three different weeks in which alternate covers have been featured. The August 21 issue featured the College Football Preview and had five alternate covers. The October 23 issue was the NBA Preview and featured three covers with LeBron James , Dwyane Wade , and Carmelo Anthony . The College Basketball Preview was dated November 20 and had five alternate covers. SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR Since its inception in 1954, Sports Illustrated magazine has annually presented the Sportsman Of The Year award to "the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement." Roger Bannister won the first ever Sportsman of the year award thanks to his record breaking time of 3:59.4 for a mile (the first ever time a mile had been run under four minutes). Dwyane Wade is Sports Illustrated's most recent Sportsman of the Year, for 2006. Wade averaged almost 35 points per game during the six game NBA Finals series against the Dallas Mavericks. Tiger Woods is the only athlete to win the award twice. COVER HISTORY Most covers by athlete, 1954-2003 Most covers by team, 1954-2003 Most covers by sport, 1954-2003 Celebrities on the cover, 1954-2003 Fathers and sons who have been featured on the cover Presidents who have been featured on the cover Tribute covers (In Memoriam) WRITERS
SPINOFFS ''Sports Illustrated'' has helped launched a number of related publishing ventures, including:
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