Mashable's Lauren Indvik recently shadowed the men and women behind Sports Illustrated and published a case study of their workflow. There are some interesting lessons here for other publishers who are developing a digital strategy. Indvik writes: ...web and print are divided mainly by article length: the web is for shorter, newsier hits and print is a repository for long-form journalism. Quality is consistent largely because most of Sports Illustrated‘s staff touch every extension of the brand. Nearly all the writers (95%) produce content for both the web and print, filing short news pieces for the web while building out longer,...

The Wall Street Journal and CNet report that Time and Apple have reached an iPad subscription agreement whereby print subscribers to Time, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune would gain free access to the iPad edition. This deal is the first of its kind that I know of—up to this point, Apple has been firmly opposed to print publications allowing their subscribers free access to iPad editions because it cut Apple out of the 30% fee it got on the electronic editions. The details of the deal don’t seem to be public knowledge, but I would expect it to involve Time...

From the press release: Time Inc. and Sports Illustrated announced the introduction of new "All Access" digital subscription plans that will deliver the iconic print magazine to consumers at all touch points (or on all platforms) beginning today with Android tablets and smartphones as well as on the web at www.si.com/magazine. This is the first of Time Inc.'s emerging digital subscription programs, designed to offer consumers a flexible approach to accessing its branded titles. Earlier this week, Time Inc. announced plans to make TIME, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated available for subscription on the HP TouchPad when it is introduced...

Sports Illustrated, still sore over Apple’s refusal to allow iPad magazine subscriptions (the way it wanted to do them, at least), seems to be taking a “We’re going to take half our balls and go home” approach. Peter Kafka at All Things Digital’s “MediaMemo” section reports that the most recent issue of the Sports Illustrated iPad edition no longer supports viewing the magazine in portrait mode. Instead, when you turn the iPad into a portrait orientation, you get a little error message at the bottom saying “This page is intended to be viewed in landscape mode. (There’s nothing wrong...

Bloomberg reports that anonymous sources have told them Apple is currently in negotiations to create a digital newsstand for the iPad in which publishers could sell magazines and newspapers. The newsstand would be separate from the app store in which some periodical apps are currently sold, and would permit subscriptions—a point of contention between Apple and some publishers lately as Sports Illustrated was apparently forbidden from offering a digital subscription of its own, and there are ongoing disputes as to who should control subscriber data and how to divide revenue from subscriptions. Bloomberg reports that the store could...

One more thing about that iPad People Magazine app, the one that has reportedly been the target of a paparazzi controversy: it’s going to be the first ever iPad translation of a print magazine that is going to be free to subscribers of the print magazine. Ad Age reports that the wrangling with Apple over implementing this offer was the real reason the app has been delayed, not the photographer dispute. In other words, a “subscription” to the app will literally cost exactly the same as a subscription to the print magazine—putting it one up on those other...

D - All Things Digital has an article about how some magazines are really unhappy with Apple's App Store policies - or lack thereof. As Chris mentioned a couple of days ago, Sports Illustrated's app was rejected at the last minute by Apple because it was a subscription version. This forced the magazine to go to a single copy version using iTunes as the middleman. According to the article Time, Inc. executives have been "going nuts" trying to get Apple to approve a subscription plan. Evidently Time, Inc. thought its plans for a subscription model had been approved, especially since...

On Thursday, Folio posted a piece about the tight control Apple keeps (or at least tries to) over what goes into its app store. Some of it was already well known, such as Apple’s rejection of third-party development environments which caused Wired and Adobe to have to create a separate iPad version of the Wired magazine app. But particularly interesting was this bit about Sports Illustrated: More recently, a source told FOLIO: that Sports Illustrated was forced to withdraw its subscription model for an iPad app, even though the magazine felt like it was following...

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner passed away this week, and his death—lamentable as it is—provided an opportunity for Sports Illustrated to take advantage of the flexibility offered by digital publishing, Peter Kafka reports on AllThingsD’s “MediaMemo”. While it’s too late to change this week’s print edition of the magazine, the iPad edition is getting a new cover and a new cover story eulogizing Steinbrenner. “We all sort of looked at other, and said, ‘you know, this is an opportunity to do this,’ and why wouldn’t we?” [Sports Illustrated editor Terry] McDonell says. iPad readers...

In light of the web browser vs. apps articles I mentioned the other day, it is interesting to note TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld’s coverage of Sports Illustrated’s demonstration of a new, HTML5 version of its magazine at Google’s I/O conference yesterday. The e-zine, Schonfeld noted, was much like SI’s tablet prototype from a few months ago—except that instead of being an app, it was entirely within the browser, using HTML5 features to generate more app-like functions, such as a pop-up navigation wheel. These prototypes point to a more Web-friendly future for magazines, where they can...