{"id":4563,"date":"2009-10-21T07:41:21","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T11:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=4563"},"modified":"2009-10-21T07:42:57","modified_gmt":"2009-10-21T11:42:57","slug":"not-by-george","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/not-by-george","title":{"rendered":"Not By George"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looks like it’s Tangential Connections to George Plimpton Week here at Virtual Memories<\/em>! Here’s another passage that stuck with me from George, Being George<\/a>\"\":<\/p>\n

MYRA GELBAND: By the late 1980s, of course, the magazine evolved, and the kind of journalism George did for [Sports Illustrated]<\/em>, which was his signature journalism and I would guess his most commercial, took a backseat to the type of hard-sports journalism that became prevalent in the 1980s with the advent of things like ESPN and cable television.<\/p>\n

I think it became harder for George to figure out stories that would work for the magazine, because his interests had changed, too \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he wasn’t gonna go suit up and play football for us, and we weren’t gonna run those kind of stories. So it became a little more challenging for him to get into the magazine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So SI<\/em> faced the challenge of 24-hour sports coverage by . . . trying to replicate it on a weekly basis? Rather than play to the strengths it had in long-form writers like Plimpton, Dan Jenkins, Frank Deford, etc.? Because the media only got faster, but SI has to keep coming out once a week.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying anything new; here’s a piece from 2007 by John Levin on why SI sucks<\/a>. Still, I knew there was a reason that the only articles I remember from the last 10 years of SI were Frank Deford’s long pieces on Bill Russell<\/a> and Roger Bannister and Edmund Hillary<\/a>. (Wait: 1999 was 11 years ago, huh? Man, that decade just flew by.)<\/p>\n

And of course, the most memorable piece published in SI in the past 30 years was Plimpton’s Sidd Finch prank<\/a>, from 1985. The section on that article in George, Being George<\/em> is hysterical, as expected. There’s a great passage from one of the Paris Review<\/em> young’uns, detailing how afraid he was that he and Plimpton were going to get mugged by a trio of thugs, until one of the thugs realized who Plimpton was and told him how much he loved the Sidd Finch article.<\/p>\n

Oh, well. I guess this means last April’s TEN-PAGE FEATURE ON A PROFESSIONAL SURFER<\/a><\/em> was SI<\/em>‘s attempt at getting back to its roots.<\/p>\n

Gripegripemutter. . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looks like it’s Tangential Connections to George Plimpton Week here at Virtual Memories! Here’s another passage that stuck with me from George, Being George: MYRA GELBAND: By the late 1980s, of course, the magazine evolved, and the kind of journalism George did for [Sports Illustrated], which was his signature journalism and I would guess his … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Not By George”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[877,876,871,671],"class_list":["post-4563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-dan-jenkins","tag-frank-deford","tag-george-plimpton","tag-sports-illustrated"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1bB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4550,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-101909","url_meta":{"origin":4563,"position":0},"title":"What It Is: 10\/19\/09","author":"Gil","date":"October 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: I finished Moby Dick last week, and got swept up in George, Being George, an oral history of George Plimpton, over the weekend. Reading the section on Plimpton's divorce from his first wife, I felt really sad for his kids. I went to college with his oldest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "baseball"","block_context":{"text":"baseball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/baseball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0199535728","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11690,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-282-lance-richardson","url_meta":{"origin":4563,"position":1},"title":"Episode 282 – Lance Richardson","author":"Gil","date":"August 13, 2018","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 282: Lance Richardson \"We focus so much on the people on the stage, we forget about the people in the wings who help them get there. I wanted to write a book about the people in the wings.\" House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Design"","block_context":{"text":"Design","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/design"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0790.jpg?fit=1080%2C1079&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0790.jpg?fit=1080%2C1079&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0790.jpg?fit=1080%2C1079&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0790.jpg?fit=1080%2C1079&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0790.jpg?fit=1080%2C1079&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4576,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/publishers-at-play","url_meta":{"origin":4563,"position":2},"title":"Publishers at Play","author":"Gil","date":"October 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a pretentious young man (I'm older now; but that doesn't mean I'm less pretentious), the Paris Review Writers at Work anthologies were my Bible. (Or at least my Apocrypha. My Bible was a mash-up of Tropic of Cancer and Inside the Whale.) I'd seek out the collections\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0802131786","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9989,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-193-ed-koren","url_meta":{"origin":4563,"position":3},"title":"Episode 193 – Ed Koren","author":"Gil","date":"November 7, 2016","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #193: Ed Koren \"I've mined this little world that may or may not be exclusive to me, but it's something that I'm interested in: the interface between country and city, between older and younger, between lifestyles. It's an emotional and intellectual world I like probing.\" Ed Koren's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/30212571843_168e13320c_k.jpg?fit=882%2C1200&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/30212571843_168e13320c_k.jpg?fit=882%2C1200&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/30212571843_168e13320c_k.jpg?fit=882%2C1200&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/30212571843_168e13320c_k.jpg?fit=882%2C1200&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4555,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/george-on-the-block","url_meta":{"origin":4563,"position":4},"title":"George on the block","author":"Gil","date":"October 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"As I mentioned a while back, one of my favorite recent discoveries is NYC Grid, in which blogger Paul Sahner posts a new photo essay of a block of NYC each day. 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