Sporting News Launches First Online Newspaper

Wednesday, July 23, 2008


Sporting News debuted it's first edition of Sporting News Today this morning and so far it's been welcomed with mixed reviews. I've talked to a few folks, and scoured some message boards, and the overwhelming feeling is that it's too difficult to use. The paper itself lays out in a format similar to a PDF file and you use buttons at the top to click from page to page. A handful of pages are advertisements, but for the most part the thing is packed with content. The thing is an amazing 33 pages long and you even got a look at Terry Francona that you, "won't find on Facebook!" They claim it's the first of its kind, and I can't remember seeing anything like it before.

The fact that they are delivering this thing 365 days a year blows my mind, and while the graphics and content are going in the right direction, I just don't think the format is going to work. Printing it out would be the way to go, but you'd be killing a lot of trees and wasting a lot of ink. It'll be interesting to see if it catches on and I encourage you to subscribe and check it out if you're interested.

Sporting News Today (Sporting News)
Sporting News Today Signup (Sporting News)

Posted by Awful Announcing- at 10:30 AM

7 Comments:

The first of its kind? Try GBIprint.com. I think it beat TSN by a couple years.

Anonymous said...
Jul 23, 2008, 11:01:00 AM  

Hey, those are their words not mine...

"Introducing SPORTING NEWS TODAY—the world's first daily digital sports newspaper. Featuring over 200 contributors from across the country, Sporting News Today delivers every major story, every team, and every score to YOU—the passionate fan—each morning, 365 days a year."

Jul 23, 2008, 11:09:00 AM  

As a sportswriter and editor who has spent countless nights designing pages on Quark, picking photos and writing captions, I love this. I'm only 25, but working in newspapers made me a newspaper purist, and I just enjoy reading things more in this format, with charts, graphs, etc., alongside stories.

Obviously the industry is dying (which is why I got out of it, unfortunately), so this is an outside-the-box idea that I like. I'm sure it will be tweaked, but hopefully it will catch on, and stay around for a while.

Steve said...
Jul 23, 2008, 11:16:00 AM  

The content is very good and while I wouldn't call the format easy to use, it wasn't terribly difficult.

Ted Hill said...
Jul 23, 2008, 11:17:00 AM  

Some newspapers have a model of this (I know the Star Ledger has an online version of their printed paper that comes in PDF).

This is pretty cool, but I can't imagine how much work it is (and late at night) for what return? I know it's the first one, but they don't have one real ad in it, other than SN programs, etc. I'd expect this to be a 50/50 split within a month or I don't know how they can sustain the 200 contributors.

And I'm sure their bloggers are happy about SN faithful spending two hours reading this every morning.

That said, good product.

Anonymous said...
Jul 23, 2008, 11:46:00 AM  

I think this is great and I already signed up.

I like the format, a newspaper style with all the ease of the internet. The only complaint I have is that the type is either too small, or too large. Needs an adjustable setting, unless I'm missing it.

Plus you know it will get better as they get input from readers. The first model of something is never the same months after the fact. Look at how all our blogs have changed over time.

Thanks for the link, AA.

Anonymous said...
Jul 23, 2008, 1:11:00 PM  

i'll be the contrarian. i think it's kind of atrocious. hey, i love newspapers in general and love getting the sunday ny times in print. but that medium is dying, and this tsn today seems to try to buck that trend. the ny times has tried something similar to this with with their times reader. other magazines have tried it too, and none successfully. it just doesn't work on the interwebs. the internet is interactive, allows for sound and motion, and allows users to navigate and digest content in ways print doesn't. this is ignoring all that and trying to simply recreate the print experience digitally. didn't we already go thru this around 2001 and didn't we decide it doesn't work?

Anonymous said...
Jul 23, 2008, 4:24:00 PM  

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