SLAMonline.com is the website support for the basketball magazine SLAM. The magazine originated in 1994 and was a combination of all things basketball and hip-hop culture as the two were both reaching the peak of their respective popularities. This marriage still remains today. However the average readership has shifted since going from an underground New York publication to a national magazine with worldwide readership.
LeBron James of the Miami Heat is likely to top this years Top 50 list
The editors will have written for the urban youth although the audience will have been white American males between the ages 16 and 24. This has opened up somewhat since the magazine’s incarnation but the average amount of readers between 13-20 is at 67% (2011 SLAM Media Kit). Some of this has to do with the original readership being ten years older but also the marketing of the magazine has changed with it’s various owners over the years. This includes Primedia which already had a stable of national and international publications including Soap Opera Digest and an entire Action Sports Division featuring titles such as Skateboarder Magazine and Surfer.
The magazine represents itself as the “everyman’s” opinion of basketball. It has the benefit of not being a direct affiliate of the National Basketball Assocation (NBA)(although the two have a good working relationship), the sport’s primary league, and therefore the magazine’s editors are able to offer opinion rather than filtered facts that appear on the official NBA.com. SLAM also delves into other basketball worlds by covering a a vast range of college and high-school basketball teams and players. In the modern world where almost everything is available all of the time, the die-hard basketball fan wants to hear about the latest up and coming basketball star before anyone else. Therefore they focus the final third of the magazine to be more or less entirely dedicated to players before they turn professional. This technique has also paid dividends for the magazine as many of the players who eventually become top athletes then return to the publication for interviews having already built up a good relationship.
SLAM is a growing brand and the website is a clear understanding of the idea that print is dying. It’s a more regularly updated tool that has guest writers and bloggers that offer insight on a wider range of basketball than the magazine can. For the past five years the website has rundown the ‘Top 50’ players. The editors take note of statistics (of which basketball seems to have an endless supply), player impact on their respective teams and most importantly; personal opinion. This ‘Top 50’ ranking is currently being unveiled and similar to previous years each contributor to the site enjoys the privelage of writing about at least one player. I will be blogging about most of these releases and will pick up on various positives of each submission as well as how I think they could have improved each post, I will highlight favourite comments from the readers and provide an overall summary once this is concluded. Hopefully during this process I will entertain and inform you of a world that I am a big fan of, the global society of international basketball fandome at it’s best.
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