Anybody know of any more papers with separate prep sites?

Like this:

http://www.pdpreps.com/

The content looks like its mainly boosted by the paper's regular print bylines, but the look of the site is completely different than the regular newspaper site.

Are there a lot of other places pushing their preps content to these sites that promote separate brand names? And what's the thinking behind it?

 

Yea, pointless unless you're making it exclusive there. Otherwise your online staff is doing double work to drive traffic away from your regular site.

Even then, you're still taking away from your brand name.

 

Medianews does one in York, Pa., and Belo has one in the Inland Empire of southern California.

 

Nice. Thanks, Stitch. That's exactly what I was talking about. It seems that they are exclusive (not doubling up on work). I wonder what kind of response these sites are getting.

 

More than a dozen papers are using http://ourvarsity.com/

 

How many of these are just using redirecting domains? Get a different look without sacrificing the traffic to your main domain.

 

PDPreps is actually based off the site from Lakeland, Fla., which was a template for the NYT company:

http://polkpreps.com/

The New York Times regional papers are going this direction.

 

It bothers me that these websites are so unclear about what newspapers are contributing to them.

 

Really? If you go to the Press Democrat website and go to the sports tab, the only preps option is PDPreps. Beyond that, the PD stands for Press Democrat. It even has a prominent link that returns you to the newspaper's full website.

I suppose the others are less clear, so if you weren't including that on, my bad.

 

Friday Night Ohio (football) from the Canton Repository.

 

Here's my point: I am not from the area. To me, PD stands for Plain Dealer when it comes to newspapers. I would have no idea from PDpreps.com what area of the country is being covered or what newspaper is generating the content.

 

(I laugh.) Our high school site -- a site that I'm sure is designed by someone who doesn't know the impact of league/nonleague, 4-quarters/overtime, etc. -- imposed top-down from the suits, lacks so much functionality that we post a raw scores list on our newspaper's main website that is a popular draw for our consumers (and our editor, who is a big HS sports fan).