National Sports paper in the US?

?

 

Well, that's what I was talking about -- the prototype. It covered just five events in its 33 pages.

 

Which we're all spaced out by about a month. Also, seems like this website claims to have already launched. Or planned to.
Just a joke, this thing is.

 

Yeah, but you're not thinking outside the envelope on this. Imagine if you did 60 pages daily, had the staff to pull it off, and got everything covered. And think about the possibility of having a day when there are a lot of events. Then, it's a little different.

 

The National wasn't the only attempt. Knight Ridder tried a local sports daily in metro L.A. in the early 1980s. It was called AllSports. KR at the time owned the Pasadena Star-News, which was among the first few (maybe the first) dailies to paginate. They'd strip out all the copy around the ads in the Pasadena daily and replace it with sports (lots of horse racing). It was mostly wire, but there was good, young, inexpensive talent putting it out. It was not a bad product, but there weren't enough people interested in reading all that sports copy.

So we've seen it fail in big-budget and small-budget versions in print. I remain skeptical about all-sports Web sites being profitable yet. Can ESPN.com stand on its own or is it still propped up by the TV money?

 

I'm sure it depends on how you do the bookkeeping. Is ESPN or ESPN.com paying Buster Olney's salary? Peter Gammons? Most of the work those guys do is for the Web site, but I doubt they're on the Web site's payroll if you break down the accounting.

 

So let me see if I am on the same page. Your all saying that there is not a place for a daily sports newspaper in the US? National or Regional.

How about a weekly that does coverage of prep all the way to Professional in a specific area. Like I have said before NY or maybe Texas they love there high school football.

I am asking because I have heard rumors of a newspaper being developed in California if I am not mistaken.

 

New York Post Sports Weekly didn't go over so hot, IIRC.

 

I've worked with several people who worked at The National... Most of them say the reason it failed is because Deford threw money around like it was going out of style...