Slam Magazine was created in 1994 with sport and hip-hop culture being its main target focus. The writers of Slam put most of their focus on the basketball side of the sport culture articles that feature athletes in high school, college, and at the professional level. The journalists for Slam write their articles including feedback and quotes from the athletes themselves. Slam’s issue titled “The Future,” which is volume number 222 for July and August containing 82 pages, is the magazine that I evaluated and analyzed in detail and compared it to the “mainstream” sports magazine Sports Illustrated. For relevance, I compared Slam to Sports Illustrated’s newest Issue “Where are They Now”, which is volume 130 for the first week of July containing 102 pages, which is a well-known sports magazine covering many different kinds of sports and athletes. Slam Magazine and Sport Illustrated writers are writing for two culturally different people, Slam is more focused on Black culture meanwhile Sports Illustrated’s target audience is all cultures. Although their target audiences differ, there are various ways that the magazines can relate to each other as well.
Slam Magazine is made up of articles taking up about 1- 3 pages for each athlete. There are barely any small articles or small descriptions about individual athletes, there are only a couple of them, the rest of the magazine is made up of the larger articles. Sport’s Illustrated is quite the opposite in their organization, as it contains many small articles and descriptions as well as containing main articles that are usually much longer (closer to 5-6 pages long). However, both issues contain one main article on an individual athlete that is longer than the rest of the articles. Slam’s main focus is on athletes with the love for the sport of basketball and their game. Even though Sports Illustrated focuses on athletes, they focus on many different sports which is a much broader subject. The whole focus isn’t necessarily always a sport aspect, it is also on athletes lifestyles and backgrounds.
The first difference that stuck out to me was the advertisements. Slam’s advertisements are more athlete centralized, focusing on basketball-oriented advertisements. The advertisers are trying to appeal to Slam’s audience by implementing mostly African Americans into their sports write-ups. Only a couple of ads in the magazine weren’t geared towards the traditional, African American, basketball athlete. Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated advertisers vary from all ranges of sports to normal everyday products that have no affiliation with the magazine. The cost to put a full-page color ad into a Slam Magazine costs advertisers 10,000 dollars compared to the 453,000 dollars that it costs to put the same advertisement in Sports Illustrated. Sports Illustrated also contains a lot more advertisements then Slam magazine does due to the bigger audience that they attract and many more sales that come with the increased audience.
Right when I opened up both magazines, I was greeted with advertisements from two different car brands. Slam Magazine’s was for Toyota and it displayed a young African American man dressed in business attire getting into a Corolla with the title as “Hustle > Head Starts.” Meanwhile, Sport Illustrated’s advertisement was for Chevrolet, which was a basic soft-sell advertisement with just a picture of the vehicle being promoted followed by a short caption. The way the advertisers display their content can help to show the cultural difference between the two magazines. Toyota used Slams platform to demonstrate a person of color using their car with a “slang” captain relating to the audience. Chevy’s use of a basic ad in Sports Illustrated is to influence multiple cultures and demonstrate diversity within their magazine. A specific advertisement in Slam that does a good job of demonstrating its cultural impact is a “Lusters SCurl” ad that is found on page 7 of the magazine. What’s being advertised is a shampoo for afro curls and portrays a young African American man to try and sell their product. Thus, demonstrating that Slam magazine’s cultural standards are very swayed in one direction.
The headings/word choice and images also are depicted more towards one side than in Sports Illustrated. In the word choice being used, the authors use subtle cultural slang which appeals to the targeted audience. For example, a journalist uses slang such as “is a killa” and “step-back trey” in describing an athlete on page 29 in Slam. Also, in the articles, the authors use of language is more laid back than the Sports Illustrated articles. Slam allows the writers to use crude explicit language in interviews and in their writing while Sports Illustrated blurs out these words for their audience. Like in an interview on page 45 with Lamar Ball, the father of famous high school basketball player, the journalist keeps in use of the “s” and “f” words that Lamar used in the interview. Sports Illustrated however blurred out this type of language in their article with Alex Rodriguez on page 44. The images used in Slam also set a cultural setting in the magazine. It uses fewer formal images and more of action and candid shots. The writers pick examples of black athletes scoring on white athletes in two separate articles, found on pages 40 and 54. What’s interesting about these images is there is no other place in the magazine of athletes scoring on other athletes besides these two images. It’s something subtle that is normally not thought about when just glancing through and reading the magazine helping to set cultural standards in the magazine.
Having both magazines can be beneficial to any audience. Slam can help the reader to see cultural differences between their culture and other cultures. It also helps in learning a little more insight on a journalist use of words and images to entertain and inform the intended audience of African Americans. The reader can see the audience fragmentation as well, the magazine specifically breaks down its audience into smaller and smaller groups with its use of advertisements and articles. Having readers also read Sports Illustrated is beneficial in increasing their overall knowledge in the sports genre as it covers a wide variety of sports and is written to be read by many cultures. But there can also be negative impacts of reading magazines written with one target audience in mind. With Slam only focusing mainly on basketball and the cultural limitations that they use; it limits not only the people that might read the magazine but also how the information gets looked at and spread by others. Both magazines do a good job in the media convergence department as they both have online magazines, websites, and social media to reach out to a further audience.
When I first picked up Slam Magazine, based on just the cover page I was expecting to be reading a more cultural side to basketball, but it surprised me. Even though the images and writings are more focused to another audience I still really enjoyed the articles and it offered vast amounts of information and displayed them in an interesting way. With me being from a diverse background it was easy for me to interpret the slang and know how to perceive everything. I found out, at least in this case, different cultures can easily relate to each other just by the coming together for sports. The audience in Slam are attracted to the publishers use of images and word choice and also how the advertisers display their advertisements. They are also well-rounded in knowing the sport of basketball and the culture that surrounds it. In just the sports genre and reading and analyzing Slam Magazine and comparing it to Sports Illustrated helped me to understand and appreciate different cultures more.
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Twitter: @CalebHershey1
Email: cjh6118@gmail.com