TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: This here column space this month is arguably a commercial. Regularly scheduled programming will return next month. Are you one of those track nuts with a history jones? Ever wish you could put your finger on a T&FN feature article dimly or vividly remembered? Ever wonder if one of our sport’s stars, or a flash-in-the-pan from the past, got some feature ink in the pages of our 78 years of back issues?
By the way, our past issues archive now numbers just north of 975 editions. Every issue at your fingertips.
If this sounds at all intriguing, we now have an offering for you.
If, that is, you’re a premium subscriber.
Digital versions of every T&FN issue are now available to all ponied up for the “top tier” of our sub offerings. Printing costs are up, mailing costs are up. It’s an inflationary time to be a proud ship in the dwindling fleet of “legacy media.” We’re ever grateful to all our subscribers and now we are rolling out an additional benefit for those who crave the fullest T&FN experience.
What’s the buzz? Searchable online indexes of past athlete profile features, one index each for men and women:
An index for profiles of coaches is coming very soon along with one (more likely two, in fact) for feature offerings that don’t neatly fit under the heading of athlete or coach profile.
Here’s the rundown we gave in our site home page news feed when the indexes (indices?) launched.
ALL-YEARS SEARCHABLE, SORTABLE index of feature articles (some are better categorized as “news”) from the pages of T&FN over our 78-year history. Search for an athlete and click on links displayed in the “issue date” column to read an article.
For articles from our 70 “pre-digital” years (prior to February 2018), the links will take you to a PDF of the issue in which the article appeared. Scroll through the PDF to find what you’re looking for within that issue. Many issues are also searchable and the PDFs are downloadable.
The links for content published since February 2018 will take you directly to the HTML (digital edition) version of the article.
Most eTrack/TN/Track Newsletter articles are not yet linked, though they are cataloged in the indexes and pop up in a search. We plan to add those links over time; that process has begun.
Hope you enjoy this new feature!
Which athletes would you search for? Well, that’s up to you. A few examples:
World and Olympic champion hurdler Rai Benjamin’s image appears on the men’s index page. Type “Benjamin” in the search box and 10 feature article links pop up. Care to go more old school? There are 24 links to Edwin Moses profiles over the years.
The women’s index? Type in the name of this month’s T&FN Interview subject, “Morris, Sandi.” Eleven links since 2015 served up. The current interview will be added soon.
By gosh, this issue is the ’26 High School Annual. Wanna read about T&FN’s first Boys Athlete Of The Year, Carl Joyce? Sure enough, there’s a link to our first issue, February 1948. The index shows the prep miler out of Boston got some ink on page 7. Click the link, then scroll to page 7 in the PDF. Or once the PDF is open, just search for “Joyce” using your browser to the profile piece.
Give index search a whirl if you’re a Premium Subscriber. If you’re not, consider a sub upgrade? Thanks for indulging my sales pitch!
