Boston Globe launches weekly sports tab
The Boston Globe launched a new weekly sports tabloid today.
The Globe’s Johnny Diaz reports:
The 24-page, full-color, oversize tabloid - called OT, which stands for “Our Town/Our Teams” - costs 50 cents and will be published every Thursday. The sports weekly will feature articles by boston.com sports columnist Tony Massarotti and Boston Globe Magazine writer Charlie Pierce, among others…
OT will include columns and analysis by boston.com sports bloggers Chad Finn and Eric Wilbur as well as previews of upcoming games involving the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins.
20,000 copies of OT will be sold at 420 outlets in the Globe readership area, Diaz reports. The magazine is just one of a line of niche pubs cranked up by the globe over the past couple of years.
Read more about it in the Thursday Globe.
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UPDATE
Brian Gross sent us pages today. The design is very clean — just what you’d expect from the Globe.
Like any good magazine, the book is designed in spreads. But our 400-pixel-wide limit would make these luscious pages way too damn tiny here. Therefore, we’ll show you three spreads, one page at a time.
First up are pages four and five, containing all sorts of fun briefs and tidbits and an introductory column:
In particular, that “In the Dirt” column looks like it’ll be a fun read each week.
Page five is dominated by a photo of the week and some major quote action:
Next up: A Red Sox spread. Wonderful use of typography and white space on page 12:
This page is across the gutter on 13:
And finally, here’s the Patriots spread on 16 and 17:
Dan Zedek, the Globe’s design director, writes:
OT is printed on better stock and stapled.
This was an amazingly quick launch: about 10 weeks from first discussion of the idea to first issue hitting the stands. Grant Staublin and Brian Gross, our excellent sports designers, are designing the magazine as a freelance gig. Likewise, we hired a staff of three editors to work on OT and they work with various feeelance writers.
Finally, Tito Bottitta designed a very cool site for OT.
Our pals at SportsDesigner were swell enough to post the entire first edition in PDF format. Download the whole thing there.