Sports Illustrated Defends Its Standards After Plagiarism Incident

This past week, Sports Illustrated took down an article on one of its affiliate sites from a writer named Parker Loverich, who was accused of plagiarizing information from Sportico. SI subsequently removed the site, which was focused on prediction markets, from its affiliate program. The incident came less than three years after SI was accused of using AI authors and content under its previous ownership, The Arena Group.

Front Office Sports spoke to SI editor-in-chief Steve Cannella about the affiliate program, which has about 200 satellite sites that operate on the SI.com domain and benefit from its strong search engine positioning while operating separately from the main legacy publication. The interview included questions about whether these sites’ articles are required to be written by people rather than AI, what safeguards SI is taking from a quality-control perspective, and how readers are expected to distinguish affiliate sites from the traditional SI property.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Front Office Sports: As you reflect on this a week or so later with the gambling story that got taken down, what happened? 

Steve Cannella: This is one of our On SI sites. As you know, this is a network of sites that are run by independent publishers on our domain, specializing in coverage of specific teams, schools, or niche verticals. And this was one of those sites where a writer, frankly, did some things he should not have. And it was brought to our attention, and we discovered it. We dealt with it. We have a zero tolerance policy for publishers who don’t live up to our editorial guidelines. And when we discovered this, we immediately took steps to remove the content and remove the writer and the publisher of that site.

FOS: So it was an actual writer. It wasn’t AI and a fake byline?

SC: Correct.

FOS: What is your policy for the On SI sites in terms of whether stories need to be written by actual people?

SC: They’re expected to live up to the same editorial guidelines that everyone at SI national is. So yes, stories are expected to be created by humans, not AI.

FOS: How many of these affiliate sites are there?

SC: Right around 200 right now.

FOS: How does the revenue split work in terms of what goes to the sites and what goes to SI?

SC: They’re independent publishers. The details of those deals vary from site to site, but in general they’re independent publishers who work on a rev-share.

FOS: In your position, how do you safeguard something like this from happening again in the future?

SC: I think the same way every other media outlet is trying to safeguard against this. We’re not the only ones who recently have had to deal with something like this. In the world and media landscape we live in, it’s very easy for people who don’t want to go about things the right way to try to look for shortcuts.

The best way to safeguard against that is exerting as much oversight as we can and taking very specific and definitive steps when we discover something like this happening. At the same time, a constant reminder of what our standards and editorial guidelines are—how everyone in the SI banner is expected to create their content. When people don’t live up to that, they lose the privilege to be part of the publication.

FOS: SI has these two parts. The legacy business still has some pretty robust reporters like Albert Breer, Pat Forde, Chris Mannix. Then you have all these affiliate sites that range from being reporter-driven to fan-driven. How do you expect the general public to know the difference when sites like this are still under the legacy Sports Illustrated banner?

SC: There’s different branding on the sites. The On SI sites are branded that way—so it’s like Dallas Cowboys on SI, New York Giants on SI, etc. That’s one significant marker in the way we’re putting the content out in the world. Those publishers and writers are expected to identify with those sites, not as a Sports Illustrated staff writer or senior writer. We do have guidelines in place on how that content and the creators should be identified.