Best newspaper sports website

I'm working on ideas for my shop's sports web page and I've been pouring over various sites. My question here, is what is your favorite NEWSPAPER sports website and what do you like about it? I wouldn't mind hearing about other sports sites as well, but at this point of my research, I'm specifically curious about newspaper sites.

So who do you like? I like a lot about Chron.com (Houston Chronicle), but I was in the Hearst family for a while, so I kind of got a feel for what their objectives were, so I guess I'm a bit biased.

So what say you?

Also, what trends do you hate on newspaper sports sites and why do you hate it?

 

I can't stand it when a newspaper's site looks like a blog in terms of updates. It needs to be designed by someone who knows how to use a CMS to its full extent, not just throw something together in a week with WP or Drupal.

 

The Boston Globe's sports website is pretty good. I hate when sports sites update their articles after publication. When I go onto a website, I want to get the latest news, not the morning information.

Anyway, here's the link to Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/sports/

 

They're only prep sports websites but I think SEMOball.com (formerly ran by Toby Carrig) and STLhighschoolsports.com do a great job of taking a big area and covering preps on every level. Plus, the sites are easy to navigate and find what you want.

 

You want ideas on how to run successful websites? Why are you asking people who are taking many of the lessons from their failed print industry -- lead by people who drove that industry into the ground with greed and a lack of vision -- and repeating those mistakes on their mediocre and understaffed newspaper websites?

Take a look at the local "dot-come" sites, such as the ESPN sites in Dallas, Chicago, New York, LA and Boston. Forward-looking, trend-setting websites, because ESPN has the resources to build the best. As we all painfully know, newspapers do not, and their products reflect it.

Beyond that, make sure you're fulfilling the paper's mission of serving its readers with engaging, dynamic and interactive content. Content is still king. Give them video, audio, let them interact with each other and your staff, and cover/explain, excellently, what's truly important to your audience.

 

I agree. Sites like ESPN/Boston, Yahoo! Sports, and Fanhouse are great examples of what to do. (Deadspin is left out intentionally).

 

The focus up to this point has been primarily on the strictly dot-coms. I am curious about newspapers because, well, I work for a newspaper and there might be more apt apples-to-apples comparisons that can be made. I don't think it would be wise to solely focus on newspaper sites for the reasons you talk about, but this is about moving newspapers forward into the digital world, isn't it? So who is doing it well? To me, that is certainly worth looking into.

 

The Arizona Republic's design might be the most aesthetically pleasing: http://www.azcentral.com/sports/

The Washington Post's site is probably the easiest to use and easiest to package things and display multiple main items: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/sports/

The New York Times does the best job of regularly updating and keeping major news high, while also highlighting their own big features that maybe aren't about the biggest news: http://www.nytimes.com/sports/

The Boston Globe is really, really user-friendly in that it allows readers to quickly find scores, landing pages and the latest stories for their four major pro sports teams: http://www.boston.com/sports/

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel boasts the best online-only content in the country with their Packers coverage: http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/

And The Star Tribune of Minneapolis boasts the best landing pages for fans of its pro sports teams, particularly the Twins and Vikings: http://www.startribune.com/sports/

 

It's not just you. I can't read the Post online at work anymore. About 10% of the pages load properly. The other 90% either won't load fully or freeze my computer up. Maybe it's a conspiracy to get me to buy the paper. That's what I did yesterday.

 

The Los Angeles Times, by far.

Where else can sports news and Bleacher Report mix so seamlessly?

latimes.com/sports

 

Another section that sections that seems good and innovative online is the Orlando Sentinel. Tim and those guys really push the digital thing really hard and they back it up. I think they do a great job of providing some original content that isn't in the newspaper, which makes it almost a must to read both. But if you have to choose then the Web is the way to go. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/

I agree that the Houston Chronicle site is among the best newspaper sites in the country. They may do a lot of things wrong in the paper but they have people who care running the online edition and it shows.