Sports Illustrated has struggled to "adapt to the digital age," and Monday’s revelation of alleged AI articles was “just the latest sign of drift at Sports Illustrated, exacerbated by a relentless pursuit of engagement with the site’s non-journalistic entities,” according to Nerkar & Draper of the N.Y. TIMES. SI's stewardship by Authentic Brands and the Arena Group has been “particularly rocky." Arena’s options for generating revenue are “somewhat limited, encouraging a daily churn of articles.” Employees have “complained publicly” that Arena has been “dismissive of concerns about article quality and a lack of editors -- made worse in February when 17 members of the staff were laid off -- all while enforcing weekly quotas from writers.” ABG bought SI’s intellectual property in 2019 and sold a 10-year license to "publish Sports Illustrated to TheMaven," which has since been rebranded as the Arena Group. Since 2019, there have been “repeated rounds of layoffs” at SI and “reductions in the circulation” of the print magazine. Hundreds of sites dedicated to individual teams -- helmed by non-staff writers “paid small sums -- were created with little oversight and diluted what it meant for 'Sports Illustrated' to write something.” But SI’s problems “began before Authentic Brands and Arena.” Under its original owner, Time Inc., there “were layoffs -- including the last remaining staff photographers at a publication celebrated for its sports photography" -- and it went from “being a weekly print magazine to a monthly" (N.Y. TIMES, 11/28).
A NEW AGE ORDER: The GLOBE & MAIL’s Simon Houpt wrote while SI was “already a shadow of its former self,” the report of alleged AI articles “stunned the sports journalism community.” The report comes as sports journalism itself is “in the midst of an expanding fake news crisis,” as the industry “tangles with AI’s thorny temptations for a business model under extreme pressure.” While the news of S.I.’s misstep was “greeted with shock,” its parent company had already announced that AI would be an “important part of its future, telling The Wall Street Journal last February that a number of fitness-related articles published under the Men’s Journal banner, which it also owns, had been produced by mining the magazine’s archives.” In the U.S., the AP began using AI in 2019 to “produce previews for NCAA basketball games.” Similarly, the core of postgame wrap-ups, which are “often rote affairs that simply summarize the scoring, could be produced by AI, freeing up a reporter to add their own unique observations from the match” (GLOBE & MAIL, 11/28). In D.C., Strauss & Sommer wrote questions about AI and how it "will be wielded, the ethics behind it and what human work it might ultimately replace" are “roiling journalism." At SI, the focus of staffers’ outrage “was less existential -- product reviews aren’t sports journalism" -- and more about "yet another embarrassment they said undermined their journalism.” Staffers believe that sort of brand-devaluation “overshadows the good journalism the outlet still does.” The root cause of the despair is a business model that staffers “fear is irretrievably broken” (WASHINGTON POST, 11/28).
FALL FROM GRACE: In S.F., Ann Killion wrote this is the latest blow in a business that is “changing fast.” It “resonates because it degrades Sports Illustrated,” an outlet that was “once the gold standard of sports journalism.” Instead of being “caretakers of a cultural icon,” Arena is “destroying the very name and reputation of something they hope to profit off.” But there is a “lot more at stake than a sports story.” The growth of AI and the "accompanying gutting of legacy news sources have led to a flood of misinformation” and a “lack of trust about what is real and accurate and what is fake" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 11/28).
