Minor League Sports News Gets A New Home - MLN - The Raw Feed Moves

EMedia Newswire - Boca Raton, FL (PRWEB) June 28, 2006 -- The Raw Feed, the first newswire syndicate of minor league and independent sports news content that was available in RSS (XML), has undergone a major facelift and moved to a new home at http://www.mlntherawfeed.com.

The news site now has a gloss print look and feel. It also adds powerful tools that will deliver sports microcasts to interested news outlets, sports blogs and readers using news software like My Google or MY YAHOO!

MLN - The Raw Feed, a service of Minor League News (MLN), has delivered a daily digest of press releases, game recaps (highlights), player transactions, business news, suspensions, team weeks, and other stories in baseball, hockey, basketball and football since 2003.

"There's a whole world of sports out there that most fans in the big cities and who follow the major leagues never even realize exist. For more than 88 million fans though, who go to minor league and independent professional sports events, MLN - The Raw Feed has been the pipleline to bring them daily news that isn't drowning in spam or influenced by league-based, league filtered news outlets," noted Brian Ross, Sr. Editor of MLN Sports publications.

Slick New Design

Redesigned by Ross, a prior USA TODAY® Hot Site Award winner, using the luxurious look and feel available from the publishing software at SquareSpace.com, the RAW Feed now is not only more of a quality look, but a more powerful sports news source as well.

"The new Raw Feed website will bring a big bump up in news access to readers, including the ability to microcast news for the specific needs of teams, local news media, sports blogs, and even My Google, MY Yahoo! and other web-search RSS newsreaders with specific sports interests."

The Big Picture Or Microcasts - You Choose

Available at the website (http://www.mlntherawfeed.com) users can read the news in standard HTML at the Raw Feed site as they would any other website, or they can subscribe to a "news feed" that will send headlines to the news reader of their choice.

Feeds (channels) are broad like Minor League Baseball, or specific "microcasts" for readers following the Pacific Coast League, the San Diego Padres, or even very narrow-band news like players coming off of the Disabled List.

"We know that our news, which has been carried for the last few years by a growing number of other media outlets, often gets filtered down manually," Ross noted. "We've tried to make a number of these news streams available in a more tailored format to reduce the hassle in the process. We also want to offer microcasts to regular readers who might just want specific types of minor sports news."

Microcasts are ideal for fans of a particular league, sports professionals working in a segment of the market, or fantasy baseball fans who want specific types of information.

Ross said that there are currently more than 60 different microcasts running, with links to them being added daily at the new Raw Feed site.  He also noted that MLN would remain open to developing dedicated microcast feeds for teams, specialty publications, and interested leagues.

"We look forward to working with leagues and teams to provide news feeds that can enhance their existing systems."

XML Feeds Your Way

The Raw Feed's XML news feeds now come in more flavors too.  The news site adds ATOM and RDF formats to its stable of XML feeds in addition to the RSS offerings.

"The technology keeps changing, and we try to stay at the top of the curve for common standards," said Ross.

News is encapsulated into short briefs that are delivered both to the Raw Feed website and via XML to thousands of other outlets.  Readers wishing to take in more can click on the links that will bring them back to the main site, where the full story is available.

For MY Google, MY Yahoo! and My MSN readers, easy add buttons have been placed at the top of the news sections to allow readers to subscribe with a click or two.

News organizations, sports professionals and fans that picked up the old RSS news feeds will need to re-subscribe to the feeds at the new site.

Flat-Rate Display Advertising Now Available

Advertisers will like the clutter-free ad focus of the new MLN - The Raw Feed that opens the door for national advertisers to sports' micro markets.

"We can now offer large, display-type advertising at flat-rate, just as our print competitors do, for a fraction of the cost with greater reach," said Ross. "MLN offers low-clutter, high visibility space for advertisers, and provides content that will last over the years as the players covered move through their systems of professional sports development. Many of our stories stay relevant for three, five, or more years.

"We believe that visual connection to display advertising branding and message delivery is still vastly superior to targeted text. Not everyone clicks, but they do take it in. You don't brand in the classified section of the newspaper because it's duller than dishwater. Why do it in web publications?  We offer the power of both the display message and news delivery to specific cities and regions in  the other 86% of the United States, Canada, and Mexico that watches our type of professional sports regularly."

New Site. More Powerful Engine.

The Raw Feed draws upon the power of the publishing software at SquareSpace.com.

"After three years at our home server, we made the decision to move Raw Feed to SquareSpace even though it will dislocate a lot of links for a while," observed Ross. "Short term pain, but long term gain. Our old software created a number of publishing challenges, and did not allow us to easily provide photos, quality display advertising, or the depth of microcasting that we wanted to offer to our readers and advertising clients."

The Newest Entry in the MLN Suite of Sports Publications

MLN - The Raw Feed is one of four publications offered by the largest publishing company dedicated to minor and independent sports, MLN Sports Group LLC, which has been bringing the fun of developmental professional sports to readers since 2000. Minor League News also publishes:

MLN Sports Zone (http://www.mlnsportszone.com ) the oldest four-sport minor and independent sports news publication.

The MAJOR BLOGS of Minor League News (MLN) - (http://mlnsportszone.squarespace.com ) The first dedicated sports critics to minor league and independent sports. Opinion and commentary from the leading editors and journalists at MLN.

Open Source Sports Directory (http://ossd.info) - The first public project to catalog every minor league and independent professional athlete from 1900 to the present. A Wiki-based site that allows readers to contribute live to the information in the Directory.