It’s just a guess, but 99 percent of newspaper sports sections are doing the internet wrong. There’s not enough reader-writer interaction, the blogs are poorly implemented, and few newspapers become destinations where you can then jump off in a hundred directions – which is the true beauty of the net.

After much research, the one paper we found doing it right: the Washington Post. Now we must admit we grew up reading the paper, so perhaps we’re a bit biased. We date back to the days when Tony Kornheiser’s Sunday Styles column was a must-read, David Aldridge was in the house, and the paper actually put some legwork into Virginia and Virginia Tech. This was, however, pre-PTI, pre-ESPN.com. Thankfuly, American Idol did not exist.

Though a few sports sections of the larger papers have embraced the net – individual writer blogs at most papers – none have done so to the extent of the Washington Post, which has provided a blueprint for the rest to follow:

* First and foremost, the DC Sports Bog. Clearly, the paper gets it – while it’s great to have individual writer blogs, those guys have enough work to do. Every major newspaper needs a blogger to be the focal point of the sports section’s online presence, and this is where Dan Steinberg comes in. It helps that he goes to the occasional Wizards practice and returns with his own reporting, but the key is that he posts multiple times a day, which keeps readers coming back. Let’s see what happens with this new TV show he’ll be all over, but for now, this is the best newspaper blog in the business.
The LA Times seems to be moving in the right direction here, but take for instance the Kamenetzky brothers. They do fine work on the Lakers and Dodgers blogs, but does the fact that they freelance for ESPN the Magazine matter? Guess what we’re asking is – will they ever fully go after ESPN’s Ric Bucher for his continued slurp jobs on Kobe Bryant? We like Bucher’s work when he’s not talking about Kobe, but the guy acts like Kobe’s blasted publicist. It gets old. At some point, it needs to be addressed.

* The extremely unoriginal idea of their columnists imitating their TV show is actually a good one. We poked fun of it weeks ago, but then we found ourselves coming back for the video each week. Would we rather read TK and Wilbon? Sure. But not mailed in columns because they’ve got to prepare for a host of other things. And yes, it’s obvious that their TV experience helps here, but Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles all have writers on TV. Why not produce video for your own paper?

* Columnist/beat writer weekly chats. Love these. It’s one thing to email a columnist; it’s another to interact with him on a weekly basis in realtime, even if he dodges some of the pressing questions you’ve got. We show up at Wilbon’s chats and ask questions, but alas, they go unanswered (usually, they’re agitator questions, along the lines of how his relationships with Barkley, Jordan, etc hamper his journalism coverage. You know, stuff we’d ask him in an interview if he ever got back to us).

* Clearly, the WP got the message about original video (not including Wilbon and TK), and the Post has tons of it each day. We have seen some video in other sports sections (mostly it’s just AP footage), which is a step in the right direction.

One of the big sticking points at most outlets appears to be linkage. As if linking to another website/newspaper/blog is going to drive readers elsewhere. But they’ll never come back!

Get over it. They will. As we’ve written elsewhere, sports blogs are just catching up to political and entertainment blogs, which have been dominant in each industry over the last five years. If blogs can have an impact on an election, why can’t they help tidy up the sportswriting industry?