Boston Globe creates weekly sports tab

The Boston Globe recently started a weekly sports tabloid, which may reveal how daily newspapers are going to adjust to the new media market – by creating niche publications. The sports publication, called the OT for “Our Town/Our Teams,” will include 24 pages of features, columns, and blogger commentaries.

Despite all the elegies, newspapers remain significant, something that was especially clear when newspapers like the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune printed hundreds of thousands of extra copies for readers. Combined, that’s more than a million extra copies for one day. The NY Times printed 225,000 extra copies, the Tribune distributed more than 200,000. The Post printed an extra 350,000 copies, selling the special editions for $1.50 (three times the normal daily rate.) The USA Today printed about 500,000 additional copies.

Gonzo (sports) journalism

Hunter Thompson was more than a drug-inhaling, liquor-imbibing, self-aggrandizing radical journalist. A new book claims the man who put Gonzo into journalism, writing subjectively, profanely and sarcastically, was also a sports journalist. Not that Thompson made many deadlines, apparently. In Outlaw Journalist, UF journalism professor William McKeen reveals that Thompson loved sports, covering Super Bowls, heavyweight title fights, and marathons. CBS Sportsline’s Greg Hardy interviews McKeen about the man whom he calls “the world’s luckiest failure as a sportswriter.”

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