“Sports Illustrated”. They are supposedly laying off all of their staff, and (according to other stories I’ve seen) Authentic Brands Group (ABG) who owns SI, has terminated the license of Arena Group to actually run SI.
“Pitchfork”, at least in current form. Conde Nast says they are folding it into “GQ”.
Some follow up housekeeping:
Michael Swanwick’s obit for Howard Waldrop.
The other day, Mike the Musicologist texted me:
Have I told you I performed in a Schickele world premiere?
This is a story I had not heard before. Below, and with his permission, is his version of the story.
One of my professors at CUNY, Leo Treitler, was a close friend of Schickele’s, and for Leo’s retirement party, Schickele wrote a short, 3-4 minute, choral piece for him.
I think there were twelve of us students of Leo’s (three per part) who briefly rehearsed and performed it for him at the party.
Although he has published scholarship on every historical period, Leo is mostly known as an early music scholar, and Schickele wrote him a mensuration canon. It’s a very difficult and restrictive form composers usually use demonstrate their skill. Mostly associated with Renaissance music, composers still use it up to this day; Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten” is probably the most well-known, contemporary one. Schickele was not at the party, so, being an occasional piece, I doubt he ever heard “Leo, Don’t Slow Down” or that it was ever performed again.
MtM says this is a good version of the Britten Cantus, done by an Estonian orchestra and conducted by a friend of Pärt.
So if this is an issue of the owner of the SI brand terminating the license from the current publisher, might they reassign it to another publisher that would actually cover sports and put attractive women into the swimsuit issue?
I think that’s a distinct possibility, if they think the publication still has some value to customers. And if they can convince someone that it has enough value to be worth the effort of running it.
Someone in TMQ’s comment painted out that one of SI’s many problems was: they had a crap website. If someone came in and cleaned that up…but where’s the money, when everyone runs ad blockers?