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ESPN New York Is Very, Very New York

We will confess: ESPN New York has become a daily stop in our tour of New York sports news sites. Of course, we work here; we kind of have to stop by. We greatly enjoy Adam Rubin — who covers the Mets like the Shakespeare they are — and it’s nice to have a one-stop shop for these things. But like other cities ESPN has set up shop at, it feels more like ESPN’s impersonation of a city newspaper than an actual city newspaper. (Ask a Dallas newspaper reporter what they think of the ESPN Fort Worth–Dallas site, and step away from the spittle.) To wit, our fun thing to mock on the ESPN New York of the day: the Back Page, which allows you to make your own back-page headline of a theoretical, mythical New York tabloid. We know that this is by the promotions department rather than the editorial department, but still: It’s a bit uncouth to try to feed from the gimmicky teat of the papers you’re trying to put out of business. Particularly when — no offense, ESPN — you’ll never be able to out-tabloid tabloids. Don’t even try. Oh, by the way: You’re a website! You can write as long as you want!

ESPN New York Is Very, Very New York