A news release this week from the Baltimore Sun Media Group announced a record number of page views last month on both its baltimoresun.com and baltimore.metromix.com Web sites compared to a year earlier.

The number of page views on baltimoresun.com increased by 27 percent to 35.2 million in August, and the number of unique visitors increased by more than half to 3.8 million, compared to 2.5 million in August 2007. Metromix reported an increase of 63 percent, notching 1 million hits this August. The release attributes the increase to the Summer Olympics and the paper’s Michael Phelps coverage and to the growing popularity of the site’s blogs.

The shift also makes sense in light of the paper’s shift toward condensing its print version, which I reported on this summer in a series of stories. From a journalist’s perspective it’s nice to see that while people are shying away from subscribing to newspapers they are still going to us in some form to stay informed.

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Seeing as I’ve written about The Sun’s buyouts, layoffs, redesign and general overhaul of the newspaper as we knew it, I’ve nominated myself to give the official low down of the redesigned paper, which debuted Sunday. (In case you haven’t heard by now, the paper has consolidated its business, local, national and international news into the “A” section, has another devoted to features and its third section covers sports.)

It’s all about semantics: The Sun is now officially The “Baltimore” Sun and has changed its masthead accordingly. I suppose this is to emphasize its renewed focus on local coverage and not meant to be an insinuation that people around here don’t know where The Sun — oops, I mean The Baltimore Sun — is published. The features section, which will focus on a certain theme each day of the week, is also renamed the “you” section. I’m flattered.

The Sun. We know drama: The sports section has a neat feature where columnists face off on an issue, kind of like ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” but for the written word. Monday’s argument is over the Ravens’ quarterback debate. The paper has also placed some eye-catching photos above its masthead to liven up its front page, which grabs readers’ attention and gives them an idea of what’s inside.

The celebrity treatment: Instead of the gritty old black-and-white headshots that used to accompany most columns, writers are getting full color torso shots or head-to-toe photos of themselves alongside their copy. Maybe it’ll get better as time goes on, but for now the photos look a little awkward with these guys just standing there, hands in pockets, trying to look relaxed. I don’t know about any other journalists, but if I liked being in the spotlight, I’d have gone into broadcasting. Is this something the readers want?

Less is more? That’s the biggest question here. The Baltimore Sun has put as much positive spin as it can on the fact that it’s cutting its content, but are you satisfied with the level of coverage? Or does the new design leave you feeling like you need to go to another source to really catch up on the day’s news?

LIZ FARMER, Business Writer

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According to an article in the Baltimore Sun today, having Maryland residents Katie Hoff and Michael Phelps in the thick of the medal race in Beijing has put droves of Baltimoreans in front of the tube.

The article references Nielsen ratings of Olympic viewership that put Baltimore as the top market with a quarter (25.2 share), or 275,000 households, have been watching the primetime games via the NBC affiliate WBAL-TV Channel 11.

All of that TV viewership has no doubt leaked over to the worldwide web, where NBC and its affiliates are offering up a host of viewing options.

For companies and other entities worried about loss of productivity and bandwidth crunch, there is Annapolis-based eTelemetry. The company’s Metron 2.0 technology blocks and filters Web sites and also lets the boss know who’s doing what and what sites the employees have been going to.

Howard County, which has received a lot of attention over the whole four-day work week thing, uses Metron in an apparent bid to make sure those days worked don’t include watching the women’s beach volleyball team run roughshod over the competition.

Do companies need to rein in online Olympic fever? Or, as with many places, should they chock it up to a passing morale booster like the bracketology of March Madness time or the armchair coaches tweaking their fantasy football roster?

BEN MOOK, Assistant Business Editor

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In June, Sun columnist Laura Vozella took aim at Mayor Sheila Dixon for a little shopping spree she took with her former flame, developer Ronald Lipscomb.

As the details of their affair emerged, Vozella chronicled their high-end shopping habits through documents obtained by the newspaper:

In Chicago four years ago, in the space of one day and three Michigan Avenue blocks, Dixon and Lipscomb dropped more than $7,000 at Armani, Saks Fifth Avenue, Coach and Niketown.

Dixon was the bigger spender, whipping out her own AmEx for $570 Jimmy Choo sandals from Saks. She also spent $600 at Coach and $4,410 at Giorgio Armani. Along with the Saks beauty aids, Lipscomb spent $150 at Coach, $636 at Armani and $237 at Niketown.

Yesterday, the mayor struck back. At a news conference announcing events planned for the upcoming Baltimore’s Fashion Week, Dixon told the crowd she was disappointed Vozella wasn’t present.

“What a shame,” she said. “We could have taught her a thing or two about fashion. This is the sarcastic side of Mayor Sheila Dixon.”

No word yet from Vozella on the mayor’s comments.

The mayor also got a little snippy when Jeff Hagar from WMAR-TV Channel 2 News asked if she saw any irony in her involvement with the fashion event in light of this summer’s revelations about her love for steeply-priced stilettos.

“I don’t even connect the two,” she said. “Now, you as the media, you have to do that because this is what you want to do. You want to try to destroy people’s characters…I look good, I wear great shoes and I want these young people to know that they look good as well.”

DANIELLE ULMAN, Business Writer

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It’s the end of an era — for the last three years, veteran Sun sportswriter Roch Kubatko has been entertaining Baltimoreans with his “Roch Around the Clock” blog and running commentary on Baltimore sports. Drawing more than 100,000 page views every week, Kubatko’s blog quickly became one of the most visited blogs at the Baltimore Sun and was often the most visited sports blog within its parent Tribune Co.’s newspapers.

But with The Sun’s recent overhaul of staff and content (dictated by the Tribune) and the second round of buyouts and layoffs since January, it appears as though Kubatko, who has been at the paper for 21 years, has had enough.

After taking the buyout offered companywide, Kubatko said “goodbye” in his last Sun blog posting today. Just hours later, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network announced Kubatko will be joining its team officially on Friday and bringing his popular blog to MASNsports.com. It begs the question, how difficult was it to get Sun management to let him keep his blog, title and all, to a competing news medium?

Kubatko will also appear on MASN’s O’s Xtra and Ravens Xtra, the Orioles Hot Stove Show and the Anita Marks show. During baseball season, he will also co-host several pre- and post-game shows for the Orioles Radio network.

Kubatko is just one of the more visible examples of the longtime writers who will be soon leaving The Sun due to its staff cuts and paper redesign. How big of a loss is this for The Sun and how big of a gain is this for MASN?

LIZ FARMER, Business Writer

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