But Sports Illustrated did. Every magazine has its editorial boundaries of seriousness, affluence and celebrity. This year, along with reporting the NCAA finals, Stanley Cup playoffs and the apotheosis of the Chicago Bulls, the magazine has credited its readers with being interested in race relations in South Africa, the Bosnian War and Ethiopia's police state. Besides covering the Masters, S.I. ran a feature allowing LPGA pro Muffin Spencer-Devlin to out herself as a lesbian. While the editors have had the sense to maintain S.I.'s connection to how people live today, the popular success of sports has created a kind of rift plateau, pushing the magazine out of reach of the climatic changes that have killed or mutated so many of its peers.
TV can only run replays.
S.I. has a particular genius for capturing character and the moment. Its single shocking picture of baseball umpire John McSherry collapsed at home plate preserved the terrible power of unexpected death, something that video loops vulgarly erased. One would like to ignore it completely, as one suspects would many staffers, but it is a fact of life, a tired multimedia phenomenon. Its unprecedented popularity in the '80s gave it the status of Republican porn. But real porn is making a comeback while these glossy curiosities endure, buffed and photographed like cars.