Sporting life

The media landscape is constantly changing and innovating. So running a sports media company formed back in the ’80s might present a challenge today, right?

“Nothing stays the same,” says Shaun Koiner, BSBA ’04. “It’s figuring out how people consume content now, shifting what you do to appeal to different ways of distribution and engagement.” 

But a company formed in the 1880s? Koiner smiles. He’s chief operating officer of Sporting News Holdings — a brand that’s been around since 1886 and that’s now global and more robust than it’s been in decades. 

“A lot of media companies have come and gone — even in the past 20 years,” Koiner says. “But The Sporting News has always stood for quality content, even if the output has evolved. The brand holds meaning for a lot of people.”

And Koiner, who has been associated with the brand since 2011 in different iterations and through three ownership groups, has been in the thick of those changes, including seeing the final issue of a print magazine that had been published weekly for 126 years. Now, he’s helping drive international expansion as the website SportingNews.com covers everything from baseball, basketball and football to boxing, F1 racing and cricket — all while ensuring the brand maintains its storied legacy. 

“Information delivery changes constantly,” he says. “Through multimedia, social platforms, search and, shortly, AI,” he says. “Sporting News is poised to deliver no matter the next new thing, because we’ve been doing it for 137 years.”

Koiner has built his career on being flexible and adaptive, from the time he came to WashU in the fall of 2000 from Hyattsville, Maryland’s DeMatha Catholic High as “a proud Ervin Scholar.” 

“It wasn’t just a scholarship; it was a program,” Koiner says. “The support that came with being an Ervin Scholar, not only with my peers but also the connectivity to older students, staff and administration, was instrumental.”

For Koiner that also meant legendary Jim McLeod. “Anytime I needed to talk through a decision, he was there,” Koiner says. So tight was the bond between mentor and mentee that when McLeod’s Way was dedicated on the South 40 in 2012 a year after McLeod’s death, Koiner was one of the speakers at the memorial.

Koiner’s career has been one of hard work, attention to detail and mentorship meeting opportunity. At one of his first strategic meetings, he found himself at age 24 presenting to a board of white male executives all over 40. “I realized then that I belonged there just as much as they did,” he says, “and I could advance anywhere if I was self-aware and did the job in front of me while asking the right questions.”

But for Koiner, it goes back to mentorship. “It’s about the people who come before you and the people who come after you,” he says. “You don’t do it only for yourself; you do a good job because you want to honor the person who opened the door for you. And you keep doing a good job so you can open a door for the person who comes after you.”