Sporting News Today thread (what do you think?)

Last graf of the MediaWeek story:

In describing the new venture, (publisher Ed) Baker likened Sporting News Today to the short-lived early 1990s daily sports newspaper The National. The goal of this new, modern-day version of The National is to raise Sporting News' overall news-breaking cache in the digital media world. "We bought an antiquated product," he said of the company's 2006 purchase."This is the new Sporting News. No one is going to have more comprehensive information anywhere."
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Does Baker know The National lost $130 million in less than two years? I can't imagine American City Business Journals subsidizing the new SN, including the print version, past a tenth of that unless the month-to-month numbers continually improve.

 

He probably knows what happened to The National, which is why they're not trying to distribute a printed daily or hiring every newspaper's star with an unlimited expense account.

 

Exactly, the savings alone on not having to secure delivery in 50 states or spend money on the printing is going to make it hard to lose money quite as fast as The National did.

They're also smart enough not to be headquartered in NYC and have to pay every employee $80,000+.

 

The fact that they're getting all the scores and agate in puts them ahead of The National.

 

I didn't see enough stuff from all the staff writers they've hired. Couldn't some of these guys have geared up with some columns, features, news stories, enterprise? Seemed like it was a lot of wire roundup and quick hit (five questions, things to watch) types of things.
And, yeah, the fact it showed up in my inbox at 10 a.m. was kinda disappointing. Guess the pony express rider's horse threw a shoe.

 

Uh, I'm guessing the staff will be more fully involved in future editions. It's been one day so far.

 

For some of these writers to leave their metro gigs, SN must be paying pretty good jack, no?

 

Not sure if this was mentioned, but I think I saw in there somewhere that the actual magazine is going bi-weekly in August. So it won't have timely stuff compared to Sports Illustrated, and probably won't have the budget to do long take-outs like ESPN the Magazine. I'm not sure what that leaves as a possible niche in the business sense.

I did wonder if pages could be printed out sideways so that they fill out an 8.5X11 piece of paper; might make the type bigger and easier to read. Nevertheless, I like to see something new out there, so I'm rooting for it.

 

Day One, yes. But quite a few of the writers have been hired over the last few months. The point is, why not fire off a few good stories in your debut edition to whet the appetite?

 

Yeah ... I'm kind of looking at it that you'd want to put your best possible face on for the first day.

 

I'd rather put out a representative issue than blow everything out the first day and have subsequent issues pale by comparison.

The staff they hired isn't National-sized (smart move) so this is probably what it will look like.

 

Probably cases to be made for both launch strategies, I'd say. I lean a little more toward having some kind of splashier front on the first day, but I can definitely see your point.

As I said before, my concern was so much football coverage. Lead story being a Michael Vick update? That didn't make sense to me.