The modern world of sports media looks completely different from the one Marc Appleman entered in 1983, when he became a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times.
The veteran sports journalist joined the Press Club of Southwest Florida Newsmaker Luncheon at Lujack’s on April 24, where he discussed how he has witnessed the industry’s transformation over the years.
“When I started, we were still using typewriters,” Appleman said. “It sounds primitive now, but it was so different back then. I usually had about 20 minutes to write a 1,000-word game story.”
Appleman dedicated a large portion of his career to ushering in a new era of journalism, working with organizations such as AOL Sports and FOX Sports to establish their early digital presence.
He said the shift to digital journalism brought both solutions and challenges. While audiences gained the ability to access and share news in real time, the growing demand for immediacy pushed sports journalists to dig deeper for stories.
“There was no longer any need to report the next day on a game with the score or anything like that, because you knew the score the second it happened,” Appleman said. “It became much more feature-oriented. People know everything that happened during the game, but we need to come up with something that will be of interest off the field.”
The turn of the decade marked a major career pivot for Appleman. After years of covering sports for the Los Angeles Times, he was offered the opportunity to join the Sports Illustrated team.
From 1990 to 1995, Appleman served as associate editor and director of TV and radio at Sports Illustrated Kids. He said that because the magazine’s target audience was children, the staff could pursue a more creative editorial vision.
“We tried to humanize the athletes and personalize them, but also to do the exact opposite of what you would expect them to do,” Appleman said.
The first issue of Sports Illustrated for Kids featured legendary basketball player Michael Jordan on the cover, alongside two children identified as his “friends,” Brad Pielet and Nancy Deller.
Appleman said that once the first edition hit newsstands, there was an immediate shift in his working relationship with professional athletes and their agents.
“As you might expect, within days of him being on the first cover, the agents for Wayne Gretzky, Magic Johnson, and Cal Ripken, Jr., were all calling,” Appleman said. “These are people I could barely reach on the phone when I was at the LA Times.”
In addition to differences in source accessibility and coverage style, Appleman also noted differences in the magazine’s readership.
While sports publications typically leaned toward male audiences, Appleman said the demographic for Sports Illustrated Kids was more evenly split between boys and girls.
“We found in the focus groups that many of the readers were girls,” Appleman said. “So we focused heavily on young women athletes and women’s teams at the time. Now, women’s sports have grown so much, and it’s a totally different game than it was back then.”
Since Appleman’s time at Sports Illustrated Kids, women’s sports have exploded in popularity. Some of the most notable examples of this growth can be seen in organizations such as the Women’s National Basketball Association, which reported its most-watched regular season and postseason in 2025, according to Nielsen.
Appleman highlighted the growing prominence of women’s sports, noting that there has never been a better opportunity to get involved, whether as a viewer or a journalist.
“This is the golden age of women’s athletics, and I think it’s only going to get bigger and better,” Appleman said.
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