Sporting News

About Sporting News

Sporting News is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based sports media brand publishing news and analysis across the major American sports leagues, and one of the oldest continuously operating sports publications in the United States. Founded as The Sporting News on March 17, 1886, in St. Louis by Alfred H. Spink, a director of the St. Louis Browns baseball team, it spent more than a century as the definitive voice of baseball journalism, earning the nickname "the Bible of Baseball." For most of its first hundred years it was the only national newspaper devoted to baseball, printing box scores for every major league game and reports on every team. After 122 years as a weekly publication, the magazine moved to a biweekly schedule in 2008, a monthly schedule in 2011, and digital-only publication in 2013. Today it operates from Charlotte as a digital sports media brand covering the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and college sports, while its historic awards, including Sportsman of the Year and the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for baseball writing, remain part of its legacy.

Founding in 1886

The Sporting News published its first edition on March 17, 1886, St. Patrick's Day, in St. Louis. It was founded by Alfred H. Spink, a former writer for the Missouri Republican daily newspaper and a director of the St. Louis Browns baseball team, champions of the American Association. Each issue was 17 by 22 inches, eight pages, priced at five cents, and focused primarily on baseball, horse racing, and professional wrestling. At the time, the leading sporting weeklies, the Clipper and Sporting Life, were based in New York and Philadelphia; by World War I, The Sporting News would stand as the only national baseball newspaper. Al Spink gradually turned the paper over to his younger brother Charles, hiring him as business manager in the 1880s, selling his stock in 1894, and departing from writing and editorial work in 1899. Al later moved to Chicago, wrote for the Evening Post, and in 1910 published one of the first baseball histories, The National Game. He died in 1928 in Oak Park, Illinois.

The Spink family era

When Charles Spink died in 1914, his son J.G. Taylor Spink took over the publication, beginning a family stewardship that would last more than six decades. Taylor Spink, named in part for his grandfather's friend Ban Johnson, the founder of the American League, expanded the paper's ambitions while preserving its baseball soul. Under his leadership the paper became an outspoken supporter of the American League when it began play in 1901 as a rival to the National League, advocating reforms to improve the sport's integrity, including efforts to eliminate gambling, curb liquor sales at ballparks, and discourage assaults on umpires. In 1903, Sporting News editor Arthur Flanner helped draft the National Agreement that established peace between the two leagues and laid the foundation for the modern World Series. Taylor Spink's aggressive marketing and expanded editorial content toward the end of World War II brought the publication many more readers, building circulation to a respectable 80,000 and beyond.

The Bible of Baseball

Throughout much of the 20th century, The Sporting News was decidedly non-glamorous: black-and-white newsprint with staid graphics, not printing a color picture until 1967, a shot of baseball's Frank Robinson. But for most of its first century it was the only vehicle for serious sports fans to follow teams from around the nation. Each week it printed a box score and blurb for every baseball game played in the major leagues and numerous minor leagues, and every issue carried a report on each MLB team, usually written by a local newspaper's beat writer for that team. The paper's devotion to box scores and statistics earned it the nickname "the Bible of Baseball," and its authority was such that major league baseball subsidized it for years, including purchasing thousands of copies to distribute to soldiers during World War II. Other publications included the annual Baseball Register, a compilation of lifetime statistics of active major league players. Newsweek once noted that Ty Cobb paid $25, in two installments, for a lifetime subscription, and that an ayatollah in Iran let American hostages read the Sporting News while in captivity, and very little else.

Expanding beyond baseball

For decades, The Sporting News resisted covering sports other than baseball, accepting them the way baseball accepted integration, very slowly, as one St. Louis account put it. Regular coverage of professional football did not begin until 1942, with basketball and hockey added that winter. When a football section was introduced, purists were so shocked that the paper made it a pullout, easily removable for offended hard-core baseball fans. The paper switched to a tabloid format in 1943, originally as a wartime paper-conservation measure. Under C.C. Johnson Spink, who took over publishing responsibilities when Taylor Spink fell ill in 1961, coverage expanded into more sports and fields. Johnson Spink, named for his grandfather's friend Ban Johnson, broadened the paper's repertoire beyond its baseball core, though the biggest change came in 1978 when he sold the sports tabloid to Times Mirror for $18 million, ending 92 years of Spink family ownership.

Times Mirror and later ownership

Times Mirror, which also owned the Los Angeles Times and several St. Louis properties including KTVI-TV, operated The Sporting News through the 1980s. The publication eventually passed to the American City Business Journals group, and after 122 years in St. Louis, the magazine moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, home of its parent company. Online operations for SportingNews.com, previously housed in both New York and St. Louis, were consolidated in Charlotte. The move was a blow to the psyche of the St. Louis journalism community, though economically modest, as the publication employed only a few dozen people in suburban Chesterfield by then. In Charlotte, Sporting News reinvented itself as a digital sports media brand, competing with ESPN and a proliferating universe of sports websites and blogs that had long since made its signature box scores freely available on the web.

The digital transition

After 122 years as a weekly publication, The Sporting News switched to a biweekly publishing schedule in 2008, then to a monthly schedule in 2011. In December 2012, the magazine announced it would go digital-only starting in 2013, ending more than 126 years of print publication. The transition reflected the brutal economics facing print sports media: competition had increased enormously with the arrival of ESPN The Magazine and countless internet pages and blogs devoted to sports, and the box scores that had been the paper's franchise were now instantly available online. As a digital brand, Sporting News pivoted to news, analysis, and opinion across the major leagues, leveraging its historic name recognition while adopting the formats of modern sports media: breaking news, fantasy sports content, and social distribution.

Awards and honors

Sporting News has long been associated with prestigious sports awards. Its Sportsman of the Year honor, along with Pro Athlete of the Year, College Athlete of the Year, and Athlete of the Year awards, recognized the outstanding performers across American sports. The publication also gives out sport-specific awards for Major League Baseball, basketball, the NFL, and college football. Most enduringly, the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, named for the longtime publisher, is presented annually by the Baseball Writers' Association of America to honor meritorious contributions to baseball writing, keeping the Spink name at the center of baseball journalism's highest honors. These awards connect the modern digital brand to the publication's century-plus heritage as the chronicler of American sports.

Photography and visual history

The Sporting News played an important role in the visual history of baseball. In 1904, New York photographer Charles Conlon began taking portraits of major league players as they passed through the city's three ballparks, the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium, and Ebbets Field; many of his photographs were featured in The Sporting News and became enduring visual records of baseball's early history. Franklin Gritts, the Cherokee artist, served as the publication's art director from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, shaping its mid-century visual identity. The paper's famously staid graphics were part of its charm for purists, who loved what Newsweek called its old-fashioned disorderliness. The visual archive accumulated across more than a century of publication remains one of the richest records of American sports imagery.

Website and current status

Sporting News publishes at sportingnews.com from its base in Charlotte, North Carolina, covering the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, college sports, and more with news, analysis, and fantasy content. Nearly 140 years after Alfred Spink cranked out the first issue on St. Patrick's Day in 1886, the brand endures as a digital sports media property, its name still carrying the authority of the "Bible of Baseball" era. The publication's journey from an eight-page St. Louis weekly to a national digital brand mirrors the broader transformation of American sports media, from box scores on newsprint to instant analysis on every screen. Its awards, its archives, and its name remain touchstones for sports fans who remember when following the national pastime meant waiting for the week's Sporting News.