Sports Illustrated Founder

Sports Illustrated is the largest weekly American sports 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 calendars.

The magazine's cover is the basis of a sports myth known as the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx.

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:

economic prosperity
television, and
Sports Illustrated.

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 safaris, 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:

Liberal use of color photos - though the six-week lead time initially meant they were unable to depict timely subject matter
Scouting reports - including a World Series Preview and New Year's Day bowl game roundup that enhanced the viewing of games on television
In-depth sports reporting from writers like Robert Creamer, Tex Maule and Dan Jenkins.
High school football Player of the Month awards.
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 hockey game and behind a glass backboard at a basketball 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.



Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is published annually by Sports Illustrated magazine. It features top fashion models wearing designer swimwear in exotic locales. New issues come out around the middle of February or later. It was first published in 1964. The issue that got the most letters was the 1978 issue. The best selling issue was the 25th Anniversary Issue with Kathy Ireland on the cover in 1989.

Through the years famous supermodels have been featured on the cover such as Cheryl Tiegs, Christie Brinkley, Paulina Porizkova, Elle Macpherson, Rachel Hunter, Valeria Mazza, Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks. Other famous models who appeared within its pages, but not on its cover, have included Cindy Crawford, Stephanie Seymour, Angie Everhart, and Naomi Campbell. The eight models that were featured on the cover of the 2006 SI Swimsuit Issue were featured in a coffee table book called Sports Illustrated: Exposure (ISBN 978-1-933405-85-8). Photographed by Raphael Mazzucco, and produced by Diane Smith, the unprecedented “reunion shoot” featured 139 pages of never before seen images.

Athletes in the magazine

Several well-known female athletes have also appeared within the issue's pages, though not on the cover. Steffi Graf appeared in the 1997 Swimsuit Issue. In the 2003 issue, tennis player Serena Williams and figure skater Ekaterina Gordeeva were featured inside the magazine. Anna Kournikova appeared in an inset on the 2004 cover, and had a photo spread within its pages.

In the 2005 issue, Olympic gold medallists Amanda Beard and Jennie Finch, along with Lauren Jackson and Venus Williams were featured. Tennis phenom Maria Sharapova appeared in an inset on the 2006 cover, and also had a spread inside the issue.

Beyoncé

In spring 2006, Sports Illustrated chose music as the theme for the 2007 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Senior Editor Diane Smith immediately set her sights on getting ten-time Grammy award winner, Beyoncé Knowles to pose for the magazine.[3] In 2006, Beyoncé launched a swimsuit line under her House of Deréon clothing label. In the end, Beyoncé Knowles became the first singer to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2007.

Premiums

Over the last few years, various extras have been featured in the Swimsuit Issue. In 1998, athletes and their spouses started to appear in the magazine. One of the featured athletes included Wayne Gretzky with his wife Janet Jones in a swimsuit. In 2000, the magazine was offered with 3-D glasses as some of the photos were published in 3-D. This was also done in 2007. Trading cards were included with the 2005 edition of the magazine. Models featured on the trading cards from the 2005 SI Swimsuit Issue were:

Shakara Ledard, Frankie Rayder, Yamila Diaz
Carolyn Murphy, Michelle Lombardo, Anne V
Fernanda Motta, Bridget Hall, Marisa Miller

On the cover

1964 - Babette March
1965 - Sue Peterson
1966 - Sunny Bippus
1967 - Marilyn Tindall
1968 - Turia Mau
1969 - Jamee Becker
1970 - Cheryl Tiegs
1971 - Tannia Rubiano
1972 - Shelia Roscoe
1973 - Dayle Haddon
1974 - Ann Simonton
1975 - Cheryl Tiegs
1976 - Yvette and Yvonne Sylvander
1977 - Lena Kansbod
1978 - Maria Joao
1979 - Christie Brinkley
1980 - Christie Brinkley
1981 - Christie Brinkley
1982 - Carol Alt
1983 - Cheryl Tiegs
1984 - Paulina Porizkova
1985 - Paulina Porizkova
1986 - Elle Macpherson
1987 - Elle Macpherson
1988 - Elle Macpherson
1989 - Kathy Ireland
1990 - Judit Masco
1991 - Ashley (Richardson) Montana
1992 - Kathy Ireland
1993 - Vendela Kirsebom
1994 - Kathy Ireland, Elle Macpherson, and Rachel Hunter
1995 - Daniela Pestova
1996 - Valeria Mazza and Tyra Banks
1997 - Tyra Banks
1998 - Heidi Klum
1999 - Rebecca Romijn
2000 - Daniela Pestova
2001 - Elsa Benitez
2002 - Yamila Diaz
2003 - Petra Němcová
2004 - Veronica Varekova; inset Anna Kournikova
2005 - Carolyn Murphy; inset Jessica White, Marisa Miller, Yamila Diaz
2006 - All-star Past Cover Models: Veronica Varekova, Elle Macpherson, Rebecca Romijn, Rachel Hunter, Daniela Pestova, Elsa Benitez, Carolyn Murphy, Yamila Diaz; inset Heidi Klum, Maria Sharapova
2007 - Beyoncé Knowles; inset Bar Refaeli