SportsDesigner.com

Derby on downward path

Is it just me or is national interest in the Kentucky Derby waning?

I perused through a few sports fronts online last weekend and was surprised that many didn't even put the race on the cover and the ones that did seemed to favor it because of the dead horse. Makes you think if the race had been less tragic, more papers would have teased it only.

Here's the preview section cover from the Lexington Herald-Leader. It's the year of "election themes."

The cartoon buttons were carried over to the online presentation, used in a scrolling index that readers could click on for capsules.
The print section was formatted with a foldable pocket guide to the Derby.

Goodbye agate?

The East Valley Tribune, in the Phoenix market, faced a common problem: Reduce the news hole. They needed to slash two pages from the daily section.

The solution has NOT been met with happy readers.

The paper eliminated nearly all of its sports agate.

Writes lead sports designer Nick Gayes:

We did away with box scores, write ups, expanded standings, pitching reports and leaders and condensed everything down into this small space (see the gray box). In this we have short standings, scores, pitcher and hitter of the day, and a few small notes. These notes can be either a transaction or something about a game, etc. We no longer acknowledge every game.

Remember folks, this is a paper in a "major-league" city. Their team has the best record in baseball.
Here's a look at the previous baseball page:

Is this the future of the sports section?

Coincidence or not, designer Ben Howard of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is gathering ideas for an APSE presentation on the "Sports Section of 2013." Tabloid? No jump covers? No agate? Bikini models? If you've got ideas for Ben, email him here.

Passing this along

Oklahoman Deputy Sports Editor Mike Koehler (who first suggested the Best of SD competition in summer 2006) has taken to industry blogging with www.PrayingForPapers.com, a site you may find relevant if you're a journalist of faith looking for solace in an industry not always conducive to it, or if you've taken an interest in the industry's trying times and are in need of a reminder of how all-too-real the human effects of those times are and can be.

Still thinking big

Announced this week: Spokane will host the U.S. figure skating trials in advance of the 2010 Olympics.
What to do, what to do ...

Illustration by Jon Fisch.

Manny's quest for 500

The Boston Globe's Jared Novak produced an amazing Flash graphic for Manny Ramirez's drive to 500 career HRs.

Each dot represents a Manny homer. You can break it down by stadium (including ones that don't exist anymore) and then it tells you the pitcher and pitch count for the HR. A huge amount of information.

You'll need a recent version of Flash to view the file and it may load slowly.

Derby 2008

The front page of today's Louisville Courier-Journal.

Louisville also has a pretty extensive Derby section up at its Web site.

UNRELATED: A fascinating story of sportsmanship and a softball home run out of Washington state.

Don't open the sunroof

Seattle hosted a regional APSE meeting earlier this week. On the docket was a "Best Ideas" slideshow, which included a lot of the typical cool designs, nice charticles, art heds, that sort of thing.

One duo of pages, if I heard correctly, had an interesting story out of Spokane's Spokesman-Review. Now I've never worked someplace where we did a hunting preview and quite frankly, this page below would have the phones ringing off the wall in my neighborhood, but I guess some readers may have thought it was a Photoshop trick.

Hence, when it came time for the 2008 fishing preview ... oh, what the heck, you want Photoshop?

Bonus points if you know what kind of car that is.

Great Flash examples

Jacob Gude provides a list of 30 Beautiful and Innovative Flash Designs, plus tips on when and when not to use Flash.

You get what you pay for

Rob Pegoraro of The Washington Post reviews the free online version of Photoshop, Express. I'd say he's not impressed.

He says its biggest utility is as a Facebook accessory.

On the downside:

This site suffers from way too many glitches, even for something labeled a beta. Some hide in fine print: Photoshop Express's terms of service allow Adobe to reuse your photos at will, an excess of sloppy lawyering that the company says it will correct. Others are more obvious, such as the way it kept losing captions I'd added to some photos. After I shipped an album of pictures over to Facebook, the captions that did survive wound up on the wrong shots, while the pictures had been shuffled into a seemingly random order.

Thankfully, most of the "artistic" filters are not in Express.

Monday also saw Photoshop guru Mark Hamburg leave Adobe for Microsoft to work in "user experience."
I suppose that's what I should call my newspaper job: User Experience Specialist. It's tough enough explaining my job to the relatives NOW.

Jake Long; social stalking

Jake Long of Michigan is the No. 1 pick in the 2008 NFL draft, going to the Dolphins. The Onion takes a crack at him with this breakout.

Strong side:

"Good leadership skills, should anyone decide to listen to an offensive lineman"

Weak side:

"Scored a four on the Wonderlic exam, which means he is incapable of putting his clothes on by himself."

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Do social networks love you/stalk you?

Thanks to Fisch for the funny video find.