St. Louis has said goodbye to its share of companies: General Dynamics, 7UP, Southwestern Bell. But the 119-year-old Sporting News has weathered ownership changes, fluctuating profits and fierce competition—and stayed in town. Is that about to change?
By Steve Weinberg
With additional reporting by Anna Jones
As closely identified with the city as Anheuser-Busch and the Gateway Arch (though far less known by locals), the Sporting News is easily the most influential national magazine ever based in St. Louis. Founded by the Spink brothers in 1886, it earned the nickname “The Bible of Baseball” in the roaring ’20s; added football, basketball and hockey during World War II; went full color and made itself a must-read for anyone following team sports or NASCAR.
But today, the magazine’s fortunes, as well as its place in the St. Louis pantheon, are in flux. The Sporting News (SN) has suffered losses in the readership sweepstakes and rumors of the second sale to “outsiders” in less than a decade. And despite assurances from management that the magazine is not for sale, it’s quite possible it will be—perhaps even in 2006, after some accounting numbers are cleared up.
Much bodes well for the Sporting News. For the second straight year, the magazine made Adweek’s annual Hot List. Circulation, stagnant through much of the 1990s at just over half a million, has exceeded 700,000 for the last two years. The company continues to grow its brand name with its books, radio stations, Web site and online fantasy games. The most recent news is an expanded agreement with Major League Baseball, following a nearly two-year joint venture with fantasy baseball.
But president and CEO Rick Allen is quick to admit that he wants to position the company to grow even larger.
“There are three things you can do with a company,” he says. “You can keep doing what you’re doing under the current ownership structure. Second, you can get bigger, and that would mean for us starting things and buying, and we look at that very actively. And third is that you decide that there are resources other than cash that other players can give to you that can let you grow faster. … One possibility is to say that we’re going to grow fastest if you own us outright.”
Since the mid-1990s, the magazine has gone from a tenuous relationship with then-owner Times Mirror, to the flux of being put up for sale, to the euphoria of deep-pocketed Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen purchasing the company, to the dot-com boom and bust, changes in leadership at the CEO level and rounds of layoffs.
Now what?
In editorial director John Rawlings’ office hangs a framed front-page reproduction of the magazine’s first edition, dated March 17, 1886. Then headquartered at 11 N. Eighth, the magazine emphasized professional baseball coverage but also paid attention to harness racing, wrestling and other competitive sports. The brainchild of Alfred Henry Spink, born in 1853, and Charles Claude Spink, born in 1862, the new national sports weekly caught on quickly and made the two brothers, transplants from Quebec, famous and wealthy. Their heirs managed the magazine conscientiously, and so did the heirs of the heirs. The Spink name became irrevocably identified not only with the Sporting News, but also with St. Louis.
Meanwhile, the weekly was a must-read for any sports fan, particularly baseball fans in a day when baseball dominated the sports world.
But a slippage in national dominance started in the mid-1950s, when mammoth Time Inc. founded Sports Illustrated. Almost overnight, the stand-alone Sporting News, part of no media conglomerate, found itself second in the hearts, minds and wallets of readers across the nation.
In 1969, the magazine abandoned its interesting downtown home at 2018 Washington and moved to the suburbs. (Now converted to upscale lofts, the building on Washington still sports the old Sporting News sign.)
In 1977, Times Mirror bought the publica-tion from the Spink family for $18 million. Now the Sporting News did belong to a giant conglomerate. But the fit was questionable. Not only was ownership headquartered in far-away Los Angeles and New York, but The Sporting News was an oversized weekly tabloid on newsprint; in other words, a dark horse in the Times Mirror stable of slick color monthlies.
Under Times Mirror, the Spink family name faded from the pages, and eventually from memory. Soon the magazine would be renting the second floor of a nondescript building in a suburban office park near the intersection of Olive and Lindbergh. The apt address: Corporate Square Drive.
In 1990, Rawlings was ensconced as executive sports editor of the San Jose Mercury News when he received a call from a Times Mirror headhunter. To his surprise, he found himself accepting the editorship. His vision, hard to articulate in the beginning, is now ingrained: He wanted a Sporting News reader to stand around the office water cooler on Monday and sound smarter than anybody else. He wanted to “take people places they can’t go themselves.”
Rawlings could never take Times Mirror support for granted because of the weekly’s awkward fit amidst the monthly magazines. He tried to appear confident in front of his staff, however. In 1991, he oversaw a face-lift: The magazine started using color and graphic design more dramatically, changed the page size slightly and narrowed regular coverage to six sports—Major League Baseball, professional hockey and pro and collegiate football and basketball. In 1993, the magazine halted its tradition of publishing every major league baseball box score, which the innovative sports coverage of daily newspaper USA Today had pretty much rendered obsolete. Rawlings felt good about the improvements, which made the magazine a solid No. 2 in circulation behind Sports Illustrated and strengthened profitability.
When Times Mirror abruptly installed a new management team, Rawlings, wanting to sound upbeat, focused on what he hoped would be a plus: Those managers, some coming from the breakfast cereal division of General Mills, understood marketing well. New Sporting News CEO James Nuckols, Wheaties marketer extraordinaire, worked closely with Rawlings to extend the magazine brand.
By the time ESPN the Magazine launched in 1998, the Sporting News bore closer resemblance to The New York Times Sunday Magazine than to its former newsprint tabloid self. Lots of color, slick paper, jazzy design.
The Sporting News had also adopted a tagline, “See a different game.” Devised by the New York City advertising agency Christy MacDougall Mitchell Bodden in 1997, “See a different game” became more than just a marketing slogan—it became Rawlings’ mantra. He pushed his staff every week to teach already sophisticated readers something new about the baseball, football, basketball or hockey they worshipped. Resisting the lure of celebrity journalism, the magazine continued to focus on what happened between the lines, not in bedrooms, bars and courtrooms.
But ESPN the Magazine capitalized on its television franchise to hopscotch its circulation past that of its venerable predecessor. Circulation figures soon showed Sports Illustrated at about 3.2 million, ESPN at about 1.7 million and TSN at just over half a million. Other sports magazines were crushed by the competition and shuttered their offices.
Rawlings refused to show dismay about eating the circulation dust of Sports Illustrated and ESPN. “If you can’t be the navy, you better be darn good pirates,” he would say.
In 1999, after 22 years of uneasy marriage, Times Mirror decided to jettison its St. Louis property. Rawlings felt a measure of relief. The bottom line requirements had become increasingly difficult to live with, and e-mail and phone communications between St. Louis and the coasts had sometimes exacerbated problems instead of alleviating them.
Efrem (Skip) Zimbalist III presided over the sale for Times Mirror. He had joined the company in 1995, enthusiastic about managing a magazine division that included The Sporting News, but aware of the magazine’s “complex situation” within the parent corporation. Zimbalist encouraged a move away from baseball as the predominant identification of the Sporting News, given surveys showing that professional football drew more interest. He also encouraged the development of a Web site superior to that of Sports Illustrated, hoping to peel away dissatisfied readers.
But, says Zimbalist, the immediate success of ESPN The Magazine, combined with Sports Illustrated achieving greater television presence through a partnership with CNN, led to an inexorable conclusion: Times Mirror needed to find a new home for the Sporting News, unless it, too, could arrange a television deal. And Zimbalist’s negotiations with the networks never panned out.
Talk of the sale, announced in September 1999, weighed heavily on employees.
Holly Lawton, for one, felt alarm. She had left her job at the Portland Oregonian earlier that year to become an editor for SN. Now she was worried that a new owner would move the magazine or order a major transformation as a desperation measure to close the huge circulation gap with ESPN and Sports Illustrated. Lawton started sending résumés. She ended up at the Kansas City Star, where she is now deputy sports editor.
Mike Nahrstedt hoped to ride out the rumors. A 1982 graduate from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he left the state to work at a Virginia newspaper but returned in 1983 and found a job at the Sporting News. He was determined to remain at the magazine he had come to love. So he and about 150 other employees sat tight, worked hard and hoped for the best.
In 2000, the magazine became the property of its second absentee owner when Paul Allen (no relation to Rick Allen) bought the company for $100 million. Allen had never been identified with magazine publishing, and his name had never come to mind when employees speculated about buyers. Rawlings felt bullish, though, after learning about Allen’s plans to use SN’s content with his cable company. The billionaire ran a private corporation, so Wall Street-induced profit-making on behalf of stockholders would not come into play. Allen cared about sports—his empire includes the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association and the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League—and at one time had subscribed to the Sporting News. Furthermore, he wanted to build a media company attracting primarily male readers, Web surfers, radio listeners and television viewers—exactly the kind of audience that would excite advertisers.
Faithful employees kept their jobs, and the magazine did not move to Seattle, where the rest of the new owner’s corporate empire was based. Instead, Allen, who had earned his fortune starting Microsoft alongside Bill Gates, decided to ride the dot-com boom.
Soon after, the quantity and quality of content on SN’s Web site took off. Interactive television looked promising. New staff members were hired, bringing the total of St. Louis employees close to 200. Euphoria reigned.
“We did projects that never would have been possible before,” Nahrstedt recalls. “For instance, we produced moving play diagrams for every National Football League team. Pick a team, and you could see how one or more of its offensive plays unfolded. Nobody else was doing that.”
Innovative. Exciting. But ultimately not profitable. As the dot-com boom turned into a nationwide bust, layoffs were instituted. “That was extremely painful,” Nahrstedt says. “A lot of good people came through our doors, and I hated to see them go.”
Fridays were gut-wrenching. Employees would be called into Rawlings’ office, reappear to grab a few personal belongings, then disappear forever. A few e-mails would fly, but little was said; those who stayed were heartbroken, relieved and numb.
As editor in chief, Rawlings shouldered much of the burden. He says he worried himself sick trying to figure out how to tell capable, pleasant, loyal colleagues they would have to leave.
Since the 2001 carnage, Rawlings has had to preside over two more rounds of layoffs, and the empty desks in the newsroom serve as painful reminders. Through it all, the magazine has continued to produce consistently strong coverage of baseball, football and basketball while expanding its reach. But in today’s sea of media, it takes more than good coverage to keep a publication afloat.
After the layoffs, Rawlings moved the Sporting News into something other than “stick and ball” competitions by adding NASCAR to its coverage. Some staff members grumbled. But the need for new ad revenue, plus the nationwide ascent of NASCAR, made resistance seem futile. And new advertisers did sign up—Sears Craftsman, AC Delco and Ford Racing among them.
Rawlings, 53, can come across as a softie because of his wide smile, understated manner, teddy bear appearance and self-deprecatory remarks. When he makes a potentially unpopular decision, however, he implements it without equivocation. “After I crossed the great divide about covering NASCAR,” he says, “I never looked back.”
In early 2003, shortly after CEO Nuckols announced his departure from TSN, Paul Allen dismissed top managers in Seattle and New York City, then hired Rick Allen as president and chief executive officer of TSN. Rick Allen had helped the Discovery cable television channel and the National Geographic Society expand their audiences. Now he started working on the Sporting News. The company established partnerships with Major League Baseball’s Web operation (mlb.com), with Vindigo Studio to market fantasy sports applications for wireless telephones, with Fox Sports on the air and the Web. Advertising revenue increased 31.6 percent over the previous year.
An August 2004 issue of the magazine contained 54 advertising pages, then a TSN record. Adweek wrote: “Vulcan Ventures’ scrappy sports weekly has reinvented itself, carving out a niche and proving that it is built to last. Automotive, apparel and spirits advertisers agree the publication is hitting a home run.”
With so many positive signs, the sales rumors that arose in October 2004, published most prominently in the New York Post, took the magazine staff by surprise—especially after an upbeat September 20 article in The New York Times about the seemingly secure place the Sporting News held in the Paul Allen empire.
Reportedly, quite a few companies made inquiries, including Fox. Other rumors pointed to American Media, owner of the National Enquirer. Among other possible suitors: Time Inc. and ESPN the Magazine owners Disney and Hearst, which were reported to have shown interest during the last sale. The Post also listed Zimbalist as a possible financial suitor. But whatever dollar amounts might have been discussed, they apparently fell short of expectations.
Before serious talks could begin, November brought an unexpected twist in the “Will the Sporting News be sold again?” saga. Inaccuracies about the audience numbers for the radio division were discovered by employees within the Sporting News family, apparently raising warning flags for potential buyers. Trade publication Radio Business Report broke the news, followed by the Post.
Today, Rick Allen acknowledges the radio audience inquiry and says outside accounting and law firms have been hired to investigate. Advertisers will be made whole, he vows. He also stresses that the inquiry is not delaying a sale of the Sporting News because no sale is under discussion.
But, adds Allen, “Paul is a businessman. He wants to do what is going to let this particular asset reach its greatest possible growth. … If he becomes convinced it might grow faster in someone else’s hands, he would have to contemplate what he’d do with it. … The ownership structure is not the most important part of us doing our job well.”
In February, Allen announced the promotion of James Borth from senior vice president to a newly created general manager position, overseeing the magazine. Allen is also working with Fox Sports to change the nature of their online partnership. And he’s pushing hard for revenue, because after two years of tremendous growth, ad sales are struggling to keep pace. Through February, ad pages were down almost 10 percent from the same time in 2004, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. And that could keep the company in the red for yet another year.
“We are very, very close to profitability; we have not yet reached it on a consistent basis,” says Allen.
Rawlings, who’s now reporting to the new general manager, is still trying to be upbeat— without sounding like a Pollyanna. “It’s hard being small in a big world,” he remarks. “The most successful media companies are generally the big media companies, and our competitors certainly have that in their favor.
“Our magazine historically has not been a great vehicle for advertisers,” he adds. “That has changed dramatically. We are modern and visually interesting, with a pretty high fun factor. But getting that message across has been a real challenge.”
If Allen does sell the Sporting News? Possibilities range from keeping the status quo to selling the radio network to shutting down the magazine—or simply buying the historic Sporting News name—or moving the magazine across the country.
Michael MacCambridge, a St. Louis writer of bestselling books about the National Football League and Sports Illustrated, says worrying about the fate of this particular municipal institution is anything but melodramatic. But he, too, wants to sound optimistic: “The Sporting News name and franchise is still important and valuable. They do the best preseason magazines on the markets, and their books division has done some inspired stuff, in both annuals and special titles. I think the Sporting News has a future. I just hope the future remains in St. Louis.”
