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Online Journalism News

Guardian.co.uk relaunches sports section

Posted: 22/04/08 By: Laura Oliver
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Screenshot of relaunched Guardian sports website

The Guardian has relaunched the sports section of its website as the latest stage in a step-by-step overhaul of the site.

The sport area has adopted the flexible design for the section's homepage so the layout can be adapted to better reflect the news agenda.

The new look pages will also support embedded video and give more emphasis to content from the site's sports blogs and features, which are now featured in a navigation bar on the right-hand side of the homepage.

"As an editor you're always looking at how you can improve things and make things better, both in terms of look and content," Sean Ingle, sport editor of Guardian.co.uk, told Journalism.co.uk.

"Having a wider screen allows us to be more flexible: we can have big pictures and we can embed video. We're still getting to grips with the tools, but the idea of being able to embed video or YouTube clips into articles is great."

A feed of links to sports writing, video and audio from elsewhere on the web has also been brought in as part of the relaunch.

"The days of thinking that your paper or your website has all the best writers and people on it have gone. If we can change two or three of those links a day it hopefully encourages our readers to scroll down the page and more importantly encourages them to trust us," said Ingle.

The overhaul of the sport section has also extended to the site's football channel, which now features pages for individual clubs.

These pages will eventually include every league club in England and Scotland, according to Ingle, with a 'long-term project' to expand coverage to major European clubs.

The sports revamp is the latest phase in a complete redesign of Guardian.co.uk, which has so far seen the relaunch of the travel section and plans for new community features on the site.

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