This Week’s Top 10 WaPo Sports Stories

This week’s most popular WaPo sports subject. (By Erik S. Lesser For The Washington Post)

Since there seems to be some amount of interest in the Washington Post’s coverage decisions and click rates in these parts, I’m going to introduce a new Friday feature: the Top 10 most viewed WaPo sports stories of the previous seven days (i.e., Friday through Thursday). I believe official newspaper policy is still that our coverage decisions are not governed by click counts, but for the merry gang of Internet media critics, it’s at least grist for snarky anonymous comments about other sports. (And needless to say, if I were in charge, clicks would be king and the entire sports section would have nothing but Redskins news, down to 1,500-word profiles of the dude who washes the team socks.)

Sadly, my list will not include page view numbers; only the rankings. Happily, sports columns will be included, when applicable. This week, no columns made the cut. Also, this list does not include blog posts. And many thanks to WashingtonPost.com Sports Editor Jon DeNunzio for doing the actual labor here.

The list:

1. A ‘Cleaner’ of Athletes’ Dirty Laundry, by Les Carpenter. NFL feature about sports attorney David Cornwell.

2. New Life at the Plate, by Dave Sheinin. MLB feature about Josh Hamilton, from Feb., 2007. Yeah, it was a slow week.

3. Five Years After the ACC’s Expansion, Is Bigger Really Better?, by Steve Yanda. Part I of two-part college series analyzing the impact of ACC expansion, on and off the playing fields.

4. Tied Together By a Tragic Bond, by Adam Kilgore. Feature on Nick Gaines, the younger brother of former star wide receiver Billy.

5. Course of Recovery, by Katie Carrera. Action sports feature on injured BMX rider Stephen Murray.

6. ACC’s Forward Progress Limited, by Steve Yanda. Part II of two-part college series analyzing the impact of ACC expansion, on and off the playing fields.

7. Redskins Score a Legal And Financial Victory, by Del Quentin Wilber. Metro news story on the rejected legal challenge to the Redskins team name. Not quite sure why this showed up here.

8. QB Brennan Agrees to A Deal With Redskins, by Jason Reid and Jason La Canfora. Redskins news story about the team signing its presumptive third-string QB. In the paper, this was a 250-word brief on page 2 of sports.

9. Redskins Have Deals With Kelly, Brooks, by Jason Reid. Redskins news story about the team signing a wide receiver and a punter. In the paper, this ran on page E8.

10. AL Run Continues With Marathon, by Dave Sheinin. MLB gamer, in this case about the extra-long all-star game.

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