From Disney’s shuttering of ABC Sports to focus on ESPN to The New York Times acquiring The Athletic and eventually axing NYT Sports, there have been many cases over the years of media outlets that once did their own extensive sports coverage moving away from that, thanks to corporate combinations with other sports-centric outlets.
But Time is telling a different story.
In 2018, shortly after their 2017 acquisition of Time Inc., Meredith Corporation sold the flagship Time magazine to Salesforce founder Marc Benioff. That sale separated the publication from the rest of the Time Inc. titles, including Sports Illustrated.
Since then, Time has plunged deeper into sports than it did for most of the years (1954-2018) when it was corporate siblings with SI. While the magazine still covered sports during that period, even occasionally with covers, much of the coverage was left to its colleagues at the sports-specific title.
The newly independent Time has re-emphasized sports. They’ve broken news (such as Diana Taurasi’s retirement), produced documentaries (on IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon and the 2023 U.S. FIFA Women’s World Cup team), and made news with cover athlete selection (most recently including F1 driver Lewis Hamilton) and athletes of the year.
Time editor in chief Sam Jacobs spoke to Awful Announcing about the publication’s sports strategy. While sports have mattered to the publication since its 1923 beginnings, he says they have more freedom with their sports coverage now that they’re no longer part of a larger publishing conglomerate.
“There are two different ways to tell the story about Time and sports,” Jacobs said. “One is this is a topic that we’ve covered for 101 years, right? We’ve got people on the cover of Time who are athletes as early as 1924, so it’s certainly part of our DNA and part of our history. The other way to tell a story about Time and sports is that we have been liberated as a company and as a media brand since becoming an independent publisher to pursue the stories that we’re most passionate about.”
Time still did some sports coverage in the Time Inc. days, just as they still covered entertainment and business topics despite fellow titles there. But Jacobs said those other publications, which were launched after the flagship Time, did impact the degree to which the magazine covered some of those areas.
“I started at Time almost 12 years ago as part of Time Inc., when we had sister titles. We wouldn’t have had an athlete of the year because Sports Illustrated would do sportsperson of the year, and we wouldn’t have an entertainer of the year because down the hall was Entertainment Weekly and People. You can go down the list, we wouldn’t have a CEO of the year because Fortune was down the hall. But the truth is that all of those publications spring out of Time, they all come out of our history and our focus.
“It’s been really wonderful to be able to go after those sports stories without having to worry about ‘How is the guy down the hall going to feel about it?’ That has been really exciting.”
But that isn’t necessarily about highlighting sports figures just because people are interested in the subject. Instead, Jacobs said coverage of selected sports figures is natural for Time given those figures’ influence.
“When I think about who Time focuses on, we’re really focused on leadership, we’re focused on people who are shaping the future. And it’s evident to anyone with a cell phone or a television that people in sports are some of the individuals who are doing that.”
He said the publication’s overarching focus across different subjects is on the people involved.
“Every subject area requires understanding and nuance,” Jacobs said. “But for us, and this is core to our DNA, Time is about people, right? So we look at people as a way to tell stories. People are the best way to get people to understand complicated questions, changes in society, trends.
“And so for us, as we approach sports, whether we’re talking the business of sports or whether we’re telling just an achievement story or someone who’s using their place in sports to make societal change, we’re going to tell that story through people. And that’s true of our coverage not just in sports but in everything.”
Given that Time is geared at an audience well beyond hardcore sports fans, Jacobs said one key element to their sports coverage is finding the figures who matter beyond on-court performance. That can include people like Caitlin Clark, who’s been a vital factor in the immense growth of women’s basketball, and people like Hamilton, who, beyond his much-discussed move from Mercedes to Ferrari, is co-producing the Brad Pitt-starring film F1 and co-chairing this year’s Met Gala.
“When it comes to thinking about what athletes to cover, we certainly focus on individuals who are transcending their sport,” Jacobs said. “And from a business perspective, from a societal perspective, athletes like Lewis Hamilton are some of the most consequential people on the planet right now. So it’s been really exciting to try to find those moments.
“It’s also been super gratifying just to see that when we do pick the right person at the right moment, they’re excited about engaging with Time. There’s no one on the planet who doesn’t want to be in Time, on the cover of Time.”
Jacobs said that it was definitely the case with Hamilton. His receptiveness led to a remarkable photoshoot with black horses (in reference to the Ferrari logo) and a cover story that generated major interest worldwide.
“Hamilton spent a lot of time with us and our reporters and our photography team. I don’t remember a photoshoot we’ve done that involved not one, but two horses. So it’s a pretty special picture that we took. But he also was really open with our reporter Sean Gregory about his experience and his year.
“And the measurement for that is just the immense amount of pickup that that story had. I mean, there are more than 100 digital and print and broadcast outlets that followed that story, there are quotes from that piece that Sean wrote that I suspect will kind of follow Hamilton across this season. And hopefully those pictures will be iconic when it comes to remembering his career and also just this moment in it.
“To bring someone like Hamilton, obviously F1 is a giant sport, but our global audience is 120 million people, readers across the planet. Not every one of them is engaging with Hamilton. But we know by this summer, certainly with the Met Gala coming up with, the F1 movie coming up, that he’s going to be a kind of a household name in households where he’s not yet a household name. So it was really an opportune time to to talk to him.”
Jacobs credits the work of many of his reporters with their renewed success in sports.
“I would just pause and put a note there about just the incredible work that Sean Gregory (a finalist for the Associated Press Sports Editors’ inaugural Billie Jean King Award last year for excellence in women’s sports coverage) is doing, our kind of core sports reporter. We have lots of people who cover sports at Time, but that’s his focus. The other person I would flag is Alice Park, whose day job is a public health reporter, and then when the Olympics come around, she’s an expert in figure skating and gymnastics. And they’ve covered more than a dozen Olympics, and are already gearing up for Torino. So there’s in them a ton of experience, a ton of connection.
“This is a total group effort. I love what Sean is doing, I think when it comes every two years with the Olympics, Alice is a great champion of our reporting. But we’ve got people across the entire newsroom who are telling these stories. We’re really excited to get to do them in a way that connects with people.”
Speaking of women’s sports coverage, that’s been a key part of Time’s recent sports impact. Jacobs said women’s sports currently stands out as an area where the publication can showcase something they think matters and reflect the way others see it mattering.
“When it comes to women’s sports, it’s a mirror and it’s a spotlight, right? I mean, this is a moment in time when women are just having such a huge impact on sports and are using sports as leverage to have an impact on society.
“We’re not new to that. Like I said, Time has had athletes on the cover since 1924. The first woman who was on the cover as an athlete in 1924 was a golfer, Edith Cummings, a champion. So this is a story we’ve been covering for a century.
“You would have to be blind not to see what is happening right now, the power that these athletes are having,” Jacobs said. “A helpful number to understand the change: in the last decade, we’ve done 20 covers with female athletes, in the previous decade there were five. Some of that is spotlight, some of that is us saying ‘You really need to pay attention to these terrific athletes and the impact they’re having in society,’ and some of that is there are now just so many more female athletes who have a voice and have a platform.”
Another way Time can appeal to athletes is through its aforementioned multiple platforms, plus its live events side.
“What’s been really exciting is our ability to tell these stories across so many different platforms,” Jacobs said. “In the last couple of years we’ve produced two great documentaries, one for Netflix on the Women’s World Cup team, one for Max with The Lionheart on IndyCar racer Dan Wheldon. We’re doing that over there, at the same time we’re having conversations with Caitlin Clark at our events that are breaking news on their own.
“And then we also just think about ‘How do we integrate coverage of female athletes across all of our different platforms?’ And we have a great program in Women of the Year where we’re often looking at ‘Who are the women who are leading us through sports?'”
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“We’re really intentional about it. It’s a new skill set for those of us as journalists to think about all these different platforms as ways to tell stories. Our predecessors put out a magazine each week and were frequently bored between the times when that magazine had to come out. And we are not: we’re constantly trying to figure out how to tell stories across all these different platforms.”
In Jacobs’s mind, the expanded awards approach works for readers, featured athletes, and the publication’s business side. He said that’s especially true when those awards and associated interviews wind up making news.
“That’s a really great thing for our business, but I think it’s also good for readers and our audiences because they just get different moments where they can engage with Time outside of a traditional print cycle. And then as a journalist, I’m excited then to use those moments, not just as an opportunity to tell stories about the people who I think are shaping the future, but really to get to know them. That is core to our mandate.”
