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Philadelphia Inquirer Needs YOU

Philadelphia Inquirer sports projects editor David Sell (formerly of Colorado Springs) sends along word that the paper is looking for a sports news editor with an emphasis on design. Read all about it here.

L.A. Times: Finals Games 3 and 4

More NBA Finals fronts, these from the Los Angeles Times, from Games 3 and 4.

Two things.

1. If you MUST be down 3-1 in an NBA Finals (2-3-2 setup) series, you may as well be humiliated in the process. Lakers can play the "nothing to lose" card a lot easier than if there'd been some officiating controversy or back-and-forth struggle (and of course it will be deservedly glossed over by history that L.A. nearly pulled the same comeback off in Game 2). As it is, it can't get any worse.

2. Speaking as a lifelong Celtics fan, that better not happen.

We'll continue posting Finals pages as they come. Also have some San Diego pages from the U.S. Open, and, of course, it's College World Series time, so let the inundation begin.

Sports pages from Griffey's 600th career home run

Ken Griffey Jr. is the sixth player to reach the 600 career home run plateau (fourth if you asterisk a couple other dudes).

At The Seattle Times, nearly four pages in Tuesday's section featured Junior, who hit 398 of his HRs with the Mariners.

Jon Fisch crafted the poster page (originally paired with an artsy full-page Nike ad, but that ran a day later for production reasons).

Check out more Seattle pages and a bunch from The Cincinnati Enquirer after the jump.

In Cincinnati, a special section was in the works from the beginning of the season.

Designers for the special section were Ron Huff, Jim Pleshinger and Maggie Tomasek. Tomasek also did the live sports cover.

Couple more pages (last but not least) from The Seattle Times and designer Jeff King:

Here's hoping Junior comes back to Seattle real soon.

TSN Going Digital

Word has spread about the new plans for The Sporting News.

We already knew the magazine was going to become a bi-weekly publication this fall.

Now, we also know it will be delivered to subscribers' inboxes every morning, via electronic editions.

The full story from the New York Times is here.

Credit TSN for doing something. Having long ago lost its luster as the venerable dean of sports publications and unable to viably compete with Sports Illustrated and later ESPN The Magazine, TSN was in need of a concrete, multi-step plan to change. Let's see what happens.

NBA Finals: Game 2

The Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times covers.

As a bonus, a PDF of Boston's Game 1 cover and of the Globe's inside agate page, well worth the look: Download GlobeGame1andInsidePage.pdf

Varney to lead SND 30

Hoorah!

Dennis Varney, lead sports designer at the Lexington Herald-Leader and an all-around great guy, will be Edition Coordinator for the 30th SND Best of Newspaper Design Creative Competition.

I remember eating breakfast with Dennis at Cosmo on SND 29's inbound day and he said he couldn't believe he'd been at the Syracuse event six times. Time flies.

Did I mention he's a sports designer??

Buried in boxes

You may remember I wrote a while back about the East Valley Tribune, near Phoenix, cutting its space by eliminating most baseball boxes.

Reader reaction was highly negative and the paper has since brought back the boxes and is trimming in other areas. Designer Nick Gayes gives us a look (below) at how the baseball page has evolved at the paper.

1. Baseball page used through 2006
2. Gayes' 2007 redesign
3. May 2008 template, which cut boxes and created a daily summary
4. Current version. Boxes sans write-ups.

Gayes says the paper is moving to a narrower web width in July and the plan gets more modification, mainly spilling D-backs coverage to another page.

Sports editor Bob Romantic wrote about the changes, and reader reaction, at the APSE site.

" ... newspapers seem to have this self-fulfilling prophecy that more people are getting their news from the web, so we keep cutting the print product and forcing readers to the web. In the end, newspapers become less and less relevant. And since print is where most of the ad revenue is still generated, it seems like an extremely flawed business plan."

At some point we all wonder when cutting things just drives customers away instead of saving money.