The veteran magazine Sports Illustrated, part of the history of US journalism for almost 70 years, plans to lay off a significant number of workers, including expectedly all of its unionized staff, after the publishing company defaulted on quarterly payments under the publication's licensing agreement, the publication's workers' union, NewsGuild, announced this Friday in a statement. post on social networks.
The layoffs are related to the growing financial problems of the company, Arena Group Holdings, which has defaulted on a note from lenders and payments to the owner of the publisher. He owes $3.75 million to Authentic Brands Group, the legal owner of the brand, for the publishing license alone.
The decline of the famous magazine has accelerated in a few weeks. Earlier this month, Arena stated that it had not made the quarterly payment to Authentic. This Thursday, it announced in a statement that Authentic had terminated the publishing license agreement effective immediately.
“We are in intense conversations with Authentic Brands Group, but we understand that we are not the only ones,” Arena said in a statement sent by email this Friday and reported by Bloomberg. “Although the publication license has been revoked, we will continue to do Sports Illustrated until this is resolved.”
The publishing company said it is “confident that in the future the brand will continue to evolve and grow in a way that serves sports news readers, sports fans and consumers.”
The reasons for the magazine's failure are not only economic, although the impact of the digital revolution and the flight from advertising to other media have also had a considerable influence; cuts and labor mobilizations are not foreign to media as prestigious as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times either Washington Post. Arena fired its CEO, Ross Levinsohn, in December following a news story claiming that the magazine used author names generated by artificial intelligence in some articles. The company also publishes TheStreeta financial information portal.
Arena announced plans Thursday to lay off more than 100 employees, about a third of its workforce. The company said it is in negotiations with Bridge Media Networks for a substantial investment to keep the publication afloat. “We hope to be the company that takes forward IF [siglas de Sports Illustrated], but if not, we trust that someone will do it,” Arena said. “If it is another business, we will support the transition so that the legacy of Sports Illustrated Don't suffer.”
Arena shares fell 34%, to 84 cents per share, at the close of the New York Stock Exchange.
In the statement published on social networks, the magazine's workers' union denounces the deterioration of the work environment in recent times. “We have fought together as a union to maintain the standards of this historic publication that we love so much, and to ensure that our workers are treated in accordance with the value they bring to the group. “This same fight will continue,” said Mitch Goldich on behalf of the editorial team. The statement highlights the magazine's journey, almost 70 uninterrupted years on newsstands and, with greater merit if possible in recent decades, resisting the harsh onslaught of digital media. “This is another difficult day in what have been the difficult four years under Arena's management,” underlines the union's text, which urges the company to comply with the commitments made to the workforce.
The greatest reference for sports information in the United States in more than half a century could not escape the new times, some of its readers pointed out this Friday on social networks. “This is the cover that destroyed Sports Illustrated” said Ian Miles Cheong, with almost 900,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), about the image of a transsexual woman “who got thousands of readers to unsubscribe from the magazine.” The Internet user was referring to the cover that illustrated its annual swimsuit edition in 2023. Other X users denounced the growing populism of the masthead, as well as its use of artificial intelligence to generate information, which, according to critics, contributed to undermining both its image and its content.
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