Following up on his column on ESPN.com a week ago, MarketWatch's Jon Friedman discusses SI.com and its uphill battle against ESPN.com this week.

Sports Illustrated.com's executives are counting on the prestige of their 52-year-old magazine to trump the pizzazz of chief rival, ESPN.com.

SI.com, a division of Time Inc. offers readers the same brand of excellent journalism that its big brother presents week after week. But on the Web, where gossip and entertainment mean a lot to impatient readers, quality journalism alone may not always be enough to attract big numbers of readers and thrill hard-to-please advertisers.

"Time Inc. Picks Its Web Winners -- And Its Flagship Isn't One" (Matthew Karnitschnig and Sarah Ellison, Wall Street Journal, 10/30/2006)

For a dozen years, Time Inc. veered from one Internet initiative to another in a quest to figure out how to make money on the Web. Almost nothing worked.

On Thursday, Time Inc. Chief Executive Ann Moore went before the board of parent company Time Warner Inc. with an Internet strategy that concentrates resources on Sports Illustrated, People and the company's business magazines -- the titles seen as having the most online growth potential.