Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated is an American sports media franchise owned by media conglomerate Time Warner.

Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men.

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. 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 Chrisopher Hercik.

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.