Sporting News Today thread (what do you think?)

Not me. When it first started up, I read it every day for about a month or so. Then, for some reason, it got old and I stopped my subscription. I suppose because I can scan the headlines on espn.com or si.com and be just fine.

 

I still get the e-mails every day, but I don't think I've opened it up in a few months.

But yeah, I get them consistently around 4 a.m. PST.

 

Today's e-mail was stamped 7:06 a.m. Eastern.

I read bits and pieces of it on the web site rather than downloading it most of the time. Probably will start downloading it again in March or April

 

I get it and rarely read it. Good thing it's free.

 

i really like it, but it's almost too much every day to get through. i will scan in between doing what i oughta be doing at our place, but the layout, the writing, etc. is really good. amazing how much they get in on a timely fashion. i am impressed.

 

Funny, but it dawned on me as I read the complaints about TSN Today in here---i.e. too much to read; I can go to espn.com and scan the headlines; it arrives too late, etc.---are exactly-EXACTLY-the same reasons many people are quitting reading the paper and our industry is going downhill.

Here we are bemoaning the downslide of print newspapers, wondering why this is happening, when we are explaining why in the same breath.

 

That's a good point.

And the reason for that is because TSN Today is still essentially a print product, only it's online. It's designed like print, it seems to be produced like a print product (i.e. "late" pages and deadlines), and it's delivered kind of the same way, too (the exact same product as your neighbor gets is dropped on your virtual "doorstep" not unlike a newspaper would be.)

So, of course it has some of the same problems that print has. It's ignoring most of the advantages of being online -- timeliness, adaptability/customization, cross-referencing, etc.

 

Not quite. Sporting News is a secondary read for almost everybody. I don't <i>need</i> to know most of what they have. I have limited time to read, so they're a lower priority than the paper that tells me what's going on in my back yard.

 

FYI - if you've signed up to get the email, you don't HAVE to get the email every day to see it. Bookmark sportingnewstoday.com and you're there without having to go through the email link.

People who say it's all wire content obviously aren't looking closely. I don't think there's a sports section out there that can go head-to-head with SN Today every day. Not even close. But getting people to consistently read it is the challenge there. I do look at it every day. Do I go over every page? No, but I hit the sports I'm most interested in and a lot of the other features are nice to have - Q&As, My Profile, Recruiting updates, all the stats you could ever want from every sport that I hate clicking around to find online.

It's been out going on 6 months now, looks solid.

 

Well, so much for that.

http://m.paidcontent.org/article/419-pc2010-sporting-news-to-put-up-an-online-paywall/

 

Well, that will certainly save me the 2 seconds every day in which I delete that e-mail without looking at it. What this means is TSN couldn't sell ads for it like it thought it could.

 

I have the feeling this was the plan all along. Send it out for free for a while, get people in the habit. It's easier to sell subscriptions that way rather than starting cold, even with a brand name.