Grading The Golf Websites Week: Golf Digest and Golf World

hanks for the feedback on your favorite sites and on golf.com. One of the interesting points arising on the golf.com comment thread involved free online content and the decision of some to no longer subscribe to the print edition due to online availability. This has to be one of the trickiest areas for a publication, but I've long been a believer that paying magazine and/or web subscribers should have access to special content and print archives (the NYTimes.com model until recently) and while it would be deadly for a blogger, only breaking news pieces or original content be open to all online readers. It seems to me that ESPN.com/ESPN The Magazine has done a fine job of handling with this balance (of course I say this as a non-subscriber to the "Insider" service!).

This brings us to the dilemma for GolfDigest.com and GolfWorld.com, who share their site in partnership with ESPN.com and of course, with highly successful print operations. Obviously I am in an awkward position because I have contributed to GolfDigest.com and Golf World this year, but I still would like to offer a few comments to kick off the discussion.

The new layouts are greatly improved over the previous site layout, though I would like to see a larger text font (which explains why you get the big letters here at GS.com...what can I say, I'm an old man). The Golf Digest blogs are excellent in concept.  The three blogs covered by those who also file prints stories delicately balance the fine line between offering complimentary yet still-distinct coverage from their print work. So while I would love to see more from Frost and Nixon on the equipment blog and less hemorroidal discomfort induced by the sheer pain of sitting through Matty G's "Ambushes," their online work along with Ryan Herrington's excellent college golf blog prove that there is a place for blogs that compliment the print editions.

Both sites offer a terrific amount of content from the magazines. But sometimes I wonder if it's too much? Might they be better served putting more of it behind a subscriber only wall to enhance the value (oops, there I go all Tim Finchem on you) for the paying customer? Or would that only scare you away?

I know as a reader I would like to see more podcasts and writer Q&A's similar to what the New Yorker has been doing, would you? Any blogs you would like to see and by which writers?

Okay, enough about me, tell us what you'd like to see on the GolfDigest.com/GolfWorld.com sites.

"Who would recommend any youngster to go into journalism these days?"

Since we know the only safe jobs in media are on Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, Alistair Tait reports the somber mood in Britain as an admired colleague (Lewine Mair) and respected paper (Daily Telegraph) ominously part ways. And in such dignified fashion.

“It was horrible the way it was handled,” she said. “I was called to a meeting on my return from China (where she was covering the World Cup) but it wasn’t held anywhere near the sports department, presumably in case I caused too much of a fuss. I was taken to an office where someone from human resources told me I was being made redundant in a tone that was completely cold and officious.

“I got no thanks for 20 years of hard work. It was all over in about 15 minutes.”

Mair’s departure has shocked newspaper writers over here. That’s why there was such a somber mood at today’s lunch in London to celebrate Padraig Harrington’s award as European golfer of the year.

If any newspaper was expected to hold onto its golf writer, it was The Telegraph. Arguably no British paper in recent years has given as much in-depth coverage to the game than this broadsheet. The general view is that if it could happen at The Telegraph, no one is safe.

Meanwhile, the street gossip is that The Times is set to ditch 10 percent of its work force. It has two excellent golf writers in John Hopkins and Peter Dixon. However, as Mair’s example shows, quality doesn’t matter when the bean counters start looking at ways to cut back.

These are worrying times. Who would recommend any youngster to go into journalism these days? Not me.

Grading Golf News Websites Week: Golf.com

As I explained yesterday, the holidays allow for reflections on the sport we love. And since we're seeing a major shift toward an online presence for most publications, it seems like an appropriate time to think about where the emerging world of online news coverage is headed. And it beats watching the news.

So to kick off the week, let's start with SI Golf Plus and Golf Magazine-controlled golf.com.

I admire the meticulous look, organized structure, nice use of imagery and prominent-without-being-onoxious placement of ads. The news items are easily found in and ESPN.com/NYTimes.com way and updated rapidly, though I wish they'd leave the wire story author's name on all pieces they post (it's a blogger thing). Their columnists are solid, with Alan Shipnuck's weekly Hot List just the right balance of snark and information, while Gary Van Sickle reliably posts items worth reading. It'd be nice to see more content from Alan Bastable, Paul Mahoney, Michael Walker and Peter Kostis among others.

Okay, now that I have that off my chest, any golf.com readers care to tell us what they like and don't like?

Grading The Golf Websites Week!

Golf Channel has Bay Hill week, I have grading the golf websites week. Hey, as the kids say, it is what it is.

Since this is a slow news time and we appear to be in the developing stage of websites surpassing their print counterparts in importance, I thought it would be fun to analyze a golf news-website-a-day over the next seven days or so.

I'll offer a few quick comments but mostly this is about your insights as a web user. The people involved in these sites may be looking in, so try to keep things constructive, please. Think about what you like, don't like and what you'd like to see more of from the sites.

To kick things off, I'd love to hear you rank your top 5 golf news-related websites. If you'd like to offer up a few comments about why certain sites earn regular visits, that would be even better.

The End of Newspapermen Covering Golf Near?

With the news that Jim McCabe has left the Boston Globe to replace Rex Hoggard at Golfweek (now at GolfChannel.com), Sal Johnson recaps the dizzying changes in golf newspaper coverage over the last decade. I also understand there has been a shake up at the Daily Telegraph, so it's not just an American issue.

Let's face reality, this isn't an isolated problem to fall on just the Boston market but a total purge on golf writing in not only this country but around the world. Just in the last couple of months we have seen the golf writers of the Los Angeles Times, Thomas Bonk, take a buy out. In Chicago, Ed Sherman of the Chicago Tribune left after the PGA Championship. Vartan Kupelian is no longer with the Detroit News, the writer of a paper in Washington is waiting to see if his contract will be renewed in '09. Just this week Bill Huffman is writing his last column for the East Valley Tribune and in neighboring Phoenix, the Arizona Republic told it's golf writer John Davis that he would be cut in half on golf, had to focus on just local golf no longer writing about the PGA and LPGA Tours and would be on the copy desk for half of his 40 hour week. Cities like Atlanta, St. Petersburg, Florida, Palm Beach, Florida, Kansas City, Houston, Texas and Hartford, Connecticut no longer have golf writers. Of course many of you may wonder why this is so important, but in the scope of things it's very important and one of the growing problems for the PGA Tour in the months ahead.

Life Images: The King

Check out these John Dominis images of Arnold Palmer from the Life archives now on Google (and available for purchase):

SI, Golf Magazine Buyout Offer

Richard Perez-Pena reports on a request of 100 volunteers for a buyout at Time Inc. and notes:

Hardest hit in the first round is the group that includes Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated Kids and Golf magazines. In a memorandum to his staff, Terry McDonell, managing editor of Sports Illustrated, asked for 40 people to leave voluntarily, out of an editorial staff at the magazine group of about 250 people.

"I think it's bad for the sport that so many print people are no longer covering it."

Neil Sagebiel at the Armchair Golf blog interviews ESPN.com's Bob Harig about a variety of issues including the impact of fewer newspaper reporters covering golf:

ARMCHAIR GOLF: One of the latest casualties in the golf writing ranks was Thomas Bonk of the L.A. Times. Where do you see this thing heading as a golf writer?

BOB HARIG: It's bleak right now. I think it's bad for the sport that so many print people are no longer covering it. Newspapers still have tremendous reach and they have all decided that they don't need to cover golf. Their attitude is people can get the information elsewhere. Well then, you're telling them to go elsewhere – or forcing them to. If you don't cover it with your own guy, human nature says that you're going to give it less attention. So there is a medium that's not getting covered. I don't think it's good for the sport at all. I think they want as many voices and as many publications covering them as possible. You also have probably the most popular athlete in any sport and they choose to ignore it except for getting by with the bare minimum. 

Dean Barnett, R.I.P.

John Kirk's lovely tribute on GolfClubAtlas tipped me off on the passing of someone I only knew through email and his writings, though we tentatively planned on meeting and playing Rustic Canyon sometime this winter. That's one round I'll sorely miss playing (and you know how much I love slashing it around for five hours). But Dean's passion was so strong and his eye so unique, I couldn't wait to take him on a tour.

Dean wrote one of my favorite golf architecture stories, which you can read here. This spring he also filed this entertaining blog item on The Players v. The Masters.  He was working on a follow up to his architecture piece titled "Saving Golf" and had quizzed me about a variety of topics via email. For a Red Sox fan, he sure got it.

He was a respected figure in the conservative blogosphere and his passing prompted a nice tribute from Mitt Romney, as well as this from the Weekly Standard. The Boston Globe also ran this obituary.

Walters Wins Suit Against TravelGolf

Jeff German reports for the Las Vegas Sun. This can't bode well for the future of TravelGolf.com:

District Judge Jennifer Togliatti has awarded Las Vegas golf course developer Billy Walters a $9 million judgment against the owner of a large Arizona-based Internet company he alleged had defamed him.

Walters charged in a 2006 lawsuit that Robert Lewis, a Flagstaff businessman who runs Travel Golf Media Inc., had falsely disparaged him and two of his golf courses, Stallion Mountain and Desert Pines, on the Internet after he refused to sign a new agreement to promote the courses on the company’s many Web sites.

The new contract, the suit alleged, required Walters to pay three times the promotional fees he had been paying Travel Golf Media.

Lewis published a series of posts with critical reviews and unflattering photos of the golf courses over two months in the spring of 2005, the suit alleged.

Walters’ lead lawyer, James Pisanelli, argued that the defamatory statements had caused Walters emotional distress and injured his personal reputation.

The Demise Of The L.A. Times

In a couple of years when the largest paper west of the Mississippi is relegated to nothing more than a news website, they'll be asking how a once proud and highly profitable operation was destroyed. While I can't comment on the overall operation (LAObserved has covered it well), one department near and dear to this blog has been recklessly destroyed.

Thomas Bonk, a 27-year staffer was part of this week's staff buyouts, leaving us with just a handful of newspapermen and women covering golf. Bonk had been covering golf full-time for at least 12 years by my faulty memory count.

Here's what's most astounding about this: the most famous athlete in the world and one of the planet's most visible human-beings is Tiger Woods. He is a southern California native and part-time resident who hosts a tournament here, where, incidentally, the Los Angeles Times is published.

Along with the AP's Doug Ferguson, no writer was more consistently breaking news or demonstrating some form of access to Team Woods than Bonk. And recently, Bonk was regularly breaking news and offering important information related to the game with a weekly online column. For a paper that has touted its need to be breaking news online and in general beefing up its website coverage, Bonk delivered. It makes little sense that you would release someone fulfilling the stated mission, particularly someone with access to and a relationship with one of the world's most newsworthy and inaccessible figures.

And remember, this is a paper with six sports columnists. Not one has a clue about golf.

Peter Yoon, a talented and developing golf writer, was a victim of an earlier staff purge. The only other Times staffer capable of covering golf is Chris Dufresne, one of the top college football writers in the land who better serves the paper taking advantage of his arsenal of sources covering college football or his old beat, college basketball.

Of course, this is a paper that just fired one of its two primary film critics and numerous talented entertainment writers in the same town where there's a multi-billion dollar industry called Hollywood, so I suppose the beat writers for UCLA basketball and USC football might just be doomed too.

"A nearly 60-year-old golf magazine at the 'vanguard'? Yep."

Golf Digest has won an innovation award for...drum roll please...its break 100 at Torrey Pines deal. I know, I know, you were thinking it was for having the most rankings in American magazine history, but no, Simon Demenco at AdAge writes about The American Magazine Vanguard Awards and says...

A nearly 60-year-old golf magazine at the "vanguard"? Yep. It scores an AMVA this year for its Golf Digest U.S. Open Challenge. As the magazine explains it, "Last year at the U.S. Open, Tiger Woods said no average golfer could break 100 on a U.S. Open Course because the conditions are so tough." The editors asked themselves, "What would it be like if we got an amateur out on the course within a few days of the U.S. Open to see how he or she plays?" After the contest was announced, some 56,374 people submitted entry essays, 117,331 people voted for the winner (from a list of five editor-selected finalists), major sponsors (Rolex, Lexus, American Express and AT&T) came on board to back a brand-new TV special -- and the special itself, also called "Golf Digest U.S. Open Challenge," with guest golfers Matt Lauer, Tony Romo and Justin Timberlake, scored a 2.4 rating -- outpulling the Friday round of the actual U.S. Open.

Hoppy's Hero: Me, Myself and I!

I always go to John Hopkins' Spike Bar column for my weekly golf instruction, so I was disappointed that this edition left out the vital information I need to get through the weekend.

Instead, my heart was warmed by his "Hero of the week."

Hero of the week: Me. Well, why not? I watch golf, cover it, read about it, write about it, listen to it, listen to others talking about it, watch it on television, cock an ear to it on the radio. What I do not do is play it. Not often at least and not as often as you do, I am willing to bet. Now that the Ryder Cup is over, I am going to go and play at my club, Royal Porthcawl. Fore!

Take that Bernie Darwin!

WorldGolf.com: "Fight breaks out on shuttle bus among drunk media after Ryder Cup Matches"

Brandon Tucker files the best exclusive of the week:

According to our shuttle bus driver from Valhalla to downtown Louisville, her van turned into The Octagon.

“There were two Americans in the van and the rest British,” she recalled. “One of the Americans said something about Sergio’s putting…and they started arguing.”

It’s about a 30-minute drive from Valhalla to the downtown hotels. The argument escalated along the way.

“When we arrived at the hotel, they got out of the van and went to blows,” she added. “They scratched my van!”

First and foremost: what is there to argue about Sergio's putting?

Scribblers and lens luggers: I want names and details. Now!

The Worst Seat In The House?

The spectator friendly press room at the BMW Championship does have a San Quentin feel, no? Kind of a leftover set piece from The Green Mile? I was wrong, this makes watching golf at Bellerive look exciting.