Exploring Venues/Publications

The two publications I chose are Grantland and Sports Illustrated, and both of these publications focus on sports and related subjects. They share a common audience, with any sports-crazy to average fan looking for an interesting story about sports. They try to attract the teenagers to middle-aged males, and to a certain extent some females could be interested in these publications. There are no major barriers, like race or religion, since they talk about all different sports and seem to have a good moral compass. Grantland is formatted a little differently from Sports Illustrated, as its online versus in-print like SI. However, there are several notable differences in their styles; first, their content. Sports Illustrated is similar to investigative reporting, giving reasons why teams are performing at certain levels and give predictions for the future. They delve deeper into the actual events, focusing on the human element of the story, the athletes and the coaches involved in the games. In comparison, Grantland focuses on the pop culture surrounding the sports; the articles often relate to music or sports or combine elements of both. Another difference is their writing style; they are nearly polar opposites. On one side, Sports Illustrated writes in a much more serious, more authoritative style. On the other, Grantland writes in a narrative style. Their articles are more free-flowing, and often take tangents off their topic. The articles have a relaxed tone, and tend to include irregular grammar usage not found in serious writing. Their use of evidence is often the same; lots of statistics from games and drafts and other important numbers. Sports has become a numbers game, and both use these numbers to support their arguments. I mentioned this earlier, but their formats are also radically different; Sports Illustrated is a biweekly magazine delivered to houses while Grantland is an online publication that gets delivered to your computer. Both are incredibly interesting, although Grantland’s articles tend to be very long.