Boston.com Launches New, Redesigned Sports Site

BOSTON - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Boston.com announced today its launch of a newly redesigned sports site. While continuing to deliver fast-breaking news and unrivaled access to Boston's professional sports teams, the site has a bolder look, and new features that augment the expert reporting of the extensive Boston Globe sports team as well as the site's blogs, video presentations, and interactive features.

Boston.com Sports already dominates the local online sports market. This year, it is drawing an average of 4.5 million visits per month from Greater Boston. Nationally, it has an average of 9.8 million visits per month. Like the introduction of daily video commentary on "Globe10.0," and the development of a full roster of insightful and thought-provoking blogs, the redesign is another major step to further engage loyal and passionate Boston sports fan.

The updated site includes "Globe Sports Wire," a new feature that collects the latest updates throughout the day from the Globe newsroom. Fans can follow the latest posts about players, practices, contracts, injuries, controversies and more. Fans can also choose to sort the latest news by their favorite Boston team or teams.

Season timelines for the Patriots, Celtics and Bruins have been created so that fans can quickly and easily revisit the Globe's coverage of games already played and look ahead to upcoming games in the schedule. Archived coverage of the Patriots and Celtics recent championship seasons are also available for fans to enjoy.

Joe Sullivan, sports editor of The Boston Globe, guided the process capitalizing on the complementary talents of the Globe's and Boston.com's staff. Boston.com recently hired a new sports editor, Matt Pepin to oversee the site. Mr. Pepin comes from Middletown, N.Y., where he was sports editor of Varsity845.com and the Times Herald-Record newspaper.

Commenting on his new position, Mr. Pepin said, "It's a thrill to be working with some of the country's greatest sports journalists in the country's most knowledgeable sports town. I look forward to getting local fans even deeper into the game than they already are."

In connection with the launch of the redesign, the Globe is launching a multimedia campaign, "We are Boston Sports" to highlight the Globe's deep connection with the teams and fans of this region.

"Our staff continues to bring local sports coverage to new levels of excitement and expertise," said Mr. Sullivan. "This campaign makes a promise to fans that we'll give them the exclusive news and perspective they can't find anywhere else."

Readers and advertisers can get a quick walk through of what's new by visiting Boston.com's Sports home page: boston.com/sports; or visiting boston.com/sports/redesign09/about_the_changes/.

Source for Boston.com site visits: Omniture, January-September, 2009

About Boston.com:

Boston.com is one of the most visited regional portals in the U.S and is wholly owned by The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2008 revenues of $2.9 billion, which includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers, and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company's core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

Boston.com
Bob Powers, 617-929-2270
V.P. Communications and Public Affairs
powers@globe.com