How SI won the LeBron Free Agent Sweepstakes Part II

Those who know me know that I love Sports Illustrated. It's been a staple of my daily news and feature sports reading for years to come, for all sports.
But with the rise of broadcast media and the slow downfall of print, the magazine's place in the journalism market has been mildly confusing, if not outright distant, at times. After all, despite the changes in Internet culture and the shortest news cycle in history, SI still operates with its print magazine (published once a week) as the backbone of its operation.
On Friday, just after noon on the east coast, SI made a splash. And it came thanks to a few connections with LeBron James.
SI reporter Lee Jenkins had pursued the story of James' free agency for a long time. His editors told him to pursue it, but admitted they didn't "place big money on it coming to fruition," according to adage.com.
Then, it did.

"Then last Saturday, Mr. Jenkins, who was flying to Cleveland on Friday afternoon when Ad Age spoke with Mr. Stone and Sports Illustrated Editor-in-Chief Paul Fichtenbaum, emailed his editors saying the story was a possibility. Out of caution, he didn't mention Mr. James' name in the email.

"The first thing we asked is whether there were any conditions attached," Mr. Stone said. "There were none."

On Wednesday, Mr. Jenkins traveled to Las Vegas. He met with Mr. James on Thursday night before writing the essay with him. Mr. Jenkins emailed the essay to his editors around mid-morning on Friday. "Everyone reading it was learning the news for the first time," Mr. Stone said."

To keep the scoop of the year from leaking to a herd of full-time reporters doing nothing but waiting to find out what James' decision would be, the magazine's editorial side kept the secret from its business side. While Jenkins and James penned the essay that would light the Internet on fire, the magazine was bunkered in and crossing its fingers that news wouldn't break from Yahoo! Sports, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer or ESPN, who promoted James' original Decision in an hour-long special with Jim Gray. 
No, this time, the magazine wouldn't turn a seemingly routine free agent decision into a media circus. And apparently, that's just what the LeBron James camp wanted.
Jenkins himself went unusually quiet. While not a prolific Twitter user, his account was silent from July 7 (which held only a retweet) until the news broke four days later.

As soon as Sports Illustrated and Jenkins published the news, it set off a frenzy. LeBron was coming home. ESPN was in full First Take mode with analysts and commentators talking about The Decision II, and page designers at newspapers across the country pulled out their best work — including this from Cleveland itself:

James, no doubt with plenty of help from Jenkins, was eloquent in his approach. Unlike the last time, he was "not having a press conference or a party. After all, it's time to get to work."
Unfortunately for SI.com, a simple Google search just hours after the news broke does not link back to Jenkins' original story, according to adage. That's the nature of the Internet — that the one outlet that originally covered an event will now be drowned in search engine optimizers looking to find a few extra clicks to their websites.
But in an age where Internet journalism rules and dot-coms are trusted equally (and sometimes more) than traditional print media outlets like daily newspapers and magazines, the old-timers got one more punch into the rising new media competition.
Welcome home, Sports Illustrated. And also to LeBron James.