The 122-year-old Sporting News, under new owner American City Business Journals, is reinventing itself as a twice-monthly print publication focusing on analysis and commentary, supplemented with a daily online version containing scores and statistics. "People know the brand, they just know it as an old brand, something their father read," said publisher Ed Baker. "We're creating a new Sporting News, modernizing and contemporizing it in a way that makes sense for today's rabid die-hard sports fan."

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Hearst Magazines is rolling out a service called ShopText, which allows readers to buy products, ask for samples or enter contests by sending a short text message in response to an article or ad. Meanwhile, Rodale's Men's Health and Wenner Media's Rolling Stone are moving forward with another system called SnapTell, which enables readers to receive information by submitting camera-phone images of products.

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Marketers now can use Google Analytics to assess whether their spots placed via Google's TV Ads program are driving traffic to their Web sites. Participants receive automatic reports indicating when the TV spots appeared, their cost, the number of impressions generated and the CPM, along with metrics showing any correlation with visits to the marketers' sites.

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Last July, The Washington Post rolled out LoudonExtra.com in the hopes of engaging readers in Loudoun County, Va., with news of area events that did not rate coverage in the newspaper or on its main Web site. The niche site has yet to attract its desired audience, raising questions about the viability of the "hyperlocal" approach.

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