Media organizations and websites often have to make the difficult decision of redesigning and rebranding. They have to look fresh, new and exciting. Tradition can become staid and stale, especially when trying to draw new consumers. Naturally, a new brand also runs the risk of alienating the original audience, coming off as an unnecessary change or perhaps implying that what people loved before doesn’t quite matter anymore.

Sporting News is a name and brand that means a lot to past generations of sports fans, especially baseball fans who once viewed it as “The Bible of Baseball.” But transitioning from old to new media has been a difficult process for the publication in recent years. As a magazine, the decision to reduce coverage of the four major pro sports — notably baseball — and devoting more resources to NASCAR was a gamble that turned out to be a mistake. Then the harsh realities of trying to survive as a magazine while readers were increasingly moving online forced Sporting News to reduce its publishing schedule. By 2013, the company shuttered its print edition, only publishing yearbooks for newsstands.

With a talented staff of writers and editors — among them Jesse Spector and Ryan Fagan (MLB), Alex Marvez, David Steele and Vinnie Iyer (NFL), Sean DeVeaney (NBA), Bill Bender (college football), Mike DeCourcy (college basketball) and Michael McCarthy (sports media) — Sporting News has established a foothold online, providing plenty of content worth reading for every sport.

But looks are important too, and that classic Sporting News logo was reflective of a time that passed long ago. To open a new era, the publication decided it needed to make a change, update to appear more modern. On Tuesday, Sporting News unveiled a new logo, along with a new look for its website. Here is the result:

About Ian Casselberry

Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.

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