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Sports Illustrated editor talks about the swimsuit edition, Steve Jobs and the future of magazines

Terry McDonell brought a wealth of magazine experience to New York City when he started his tenure at Sports Illustrated in 2002, but he told a Newseum crowd on Oct. 9 that the magazine presented him with new business and ethical dilemmas that he had not faced before.

As part of the Newseum’s “Inside Media” event series, McDonell spoke to the small audience in an interview-style presentation and described how he handled issues ranging from technology to the swimsuit edition to sharing new stories.

The historic voice of Sports Illustrated allowed the magazine to enjoy great success when he first arrived in 2002, McDonell said, but at the same time, he knew the website needed to grow digitally. However, resistance to change came from everyone from young journalists to the senior staff writers, he said.

“The tech writers didn’t know what was coming, and revenue was slipping,” McDonell said, describing the tension in the newsroom.

In an effort to help the audience understand the drastic impact the tech industry and the growing number of online readers had on the print media industry, McDonell compared the digital revolution of journalism to the development of highways and the replacement of railroads. Magazines, McDonell said, are still a great technology, but they only serve some people well. Others expect their news in different forms today.

In 2009, McDonell, who had a relationship with Apple founder Steve Jobs while working for Newsweek, helped develop an iPad version of the Sports Illustrated magazine filled with photos, graphics, interactive features, and videos. The technology allowed him to present his material in a new way and reach a younger audience, but he said his mission of storytelling remained the same.

“It was all about voice,” McDonell said. “If you had unique voices on top of good reporting in multiple sections, your magazine had a voice.”

While Sports Illustrated has become known for its voice, another distinctive feature of the magazine also stands out, and this second identity is not perceived as positively by all readers.

Swimsuit models started appearing in the magazine in the early 1960s as a way to attract readers in the traditionally slow sports month of February, and the strategy still remains successful today. Sports Illustrated sells over one million copies of the swimsuit magazine, but McDonell said the staff of Sports Illustrated during his tenure as editor remained fairly evenly split on the ethics of the photos. He said Time Warner, the

business owner of the magazine in 2010, conducted research on “swimsuit” and found out that ⅓ of staff writers liked the idea, ⅓ hated the concept and ⅓ thought the poll itself was comical.

McDonell acknowledged the issue’s controversial nature and described the model photos as “shameless.” Yet, he couldn't deny the sales and business. He said the company made investments into the swimsuit edition and reached millions of readers with the annual magazine. He made decisions himself on the models from 2002-2012, but he said that the editors of the swimsuit sections were all women.

Even as SI changes, by going digital, yet still including models in swimsuits McDonell said that magazines will likely continue to be a part of the media landscape.

“Magazine thinking satisfies the needs of democracy,” he said.


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