The New ‘Sports Illustrated’ Promises To Still Do ‘In-Depth Journalism’ Despite Being A Hollowed Out Husk Now

As the Vice and Messenger collapse just got done illustrating in glorious technicolor, the problem with online U.S. journalism isn’t that it’s inherently unprofitable. The problem is usually that the worst, least competent, shallowest people imaginable routinely fail upward into positions of management, then treat the brands they acquire like disposable napkins.

That’s certainly been the case over at Sports Illustrated, which isn’t so much even a media organization anymore as much as it is a bloated brand corpse being exploited by a visionless extraction class, with a largely nonexistent interest in the company’s original function: sports journalism.

That was first exemplified when the magazine got in hot water for using AI to create fake journalists and lazy clickbait, without telling its actual human writers. Then it fired most of those writers while simultaneously hosting lavish “brand parties” celebrating the brand’s descent from meaningful sports journalism organization to a hollow placeholder hawking cheap supplements and casinos.

Sports Illustrated’s fortunes got bleaker early this year when The Arena Group, which had actually only been renting the Sports Illustrated brand as part of a 10-year deal with Authentic Brands Group (ABG), failed to make a quarterly $3.75 million payment to continue licensing it. That resulted in a revocation of the branding license and no limit of additional chaos for the already imploding company.

Now ABG has leased the brand to a new owner, Minute Media, a digital-media company focused on “short-form sports content creation.” Minute Media CEO Asaf Peled states they might even stumble into the realm of “in depth journalism,” maybe:

Mr. Peled said Minute Media was focused on “short-form sports content creation,” making video, audio and text for consumption on mobile devices. It owns Fansided, which features articles and podcasts for sports fans and for several years was owned by Sports Illustrated’s former publisher, Time Inc.

…Mr. Peled said he also wanted to continue Sports Illustrated’s tradition of in-depth journalism.

“It’s an exception to our core strategy, but it’s not the first time we’ve done that,” Mr. Peled said.

Sure thing, buddy.

This is happening all over media and journalism. Companies, hedge funds, VCs and executives that have zero interest in journalism are buying media companies, hollowing them out like pumpkins, then basically waving the corpses around like empty marionettes as they push the shallowest content imaginable in pursuit of unlimited growth and bottomless ad engagement.

It rarely goes well. Nothing being built has any lasting power or depth. Sports Illustrated hawks supplements. Newsweek was hollowed out to launder right wing conspiracy theories. Vice was hollowed out to be used for… well, whatever the failson brunchlords left in charge think they’re doing. It’s all interchangeable, shallow, and largely meaningless.

Most of these folks envision a future where (badly) AI automated dreck gets pumped out at impossible scale as part of a massive, senseless engagement infotainment ouroboros that shits out advertising money with limited effort and even less meaningful thought. Others are keen on dismantling real journalism then filling the void with propaganda, distraction, and bad faith simulacrum.

The folks still interested in actually doing journalism are either fired, or relegated to starting their own newsletters or building smaller, cash-strapped news organizations that may or may not survive legal assault by petulant billionaires angry that somebody might have told readers the truth.

Surely there will be no broader cultural downside to such a transformation.