Popular Sports Website to Shut Down

After five years of covering the Razorbacks and other teams across Arkansas, a popular sports website goes dark this week.

The Arkansas Business Publishing Group has announced it is shutting down ArkansasSports360.com to focus on its other online and print publications.

The site has been popular with fans, according to Editor Chris Bahn.

But 5NEWS media partner Bo Mattingly, who has a sports website and radio show, says passionate fans sometimes aren’t enough to sustain just a website.

“You’ve got consumers that take it in but it’s been very difficult to get advertisers to go to the digital media and have enough of them to really make your business work,” Mattingly said.

Dennis Kirkpatrick, a University of Arkansas journalism professor, tells students that as the media industry evolves, people in profession must learn to change with the times.

“The rules are the same,” Kirkpatrick said. “You have to be good. You have to be fast. You have to be accurate. But you also have to be ready to adapt to the format in which you’re writing.”

Reporters must be able to reach audiences across multiple platforms, according to Kirkpatrick.

“The day of the sportswriter working for just one publication, those days are not going to be much longer,” he said.

Bahn posted a ‘thank you’ letter to the site’s readers.

After ArkansasSports360.com shuts down, all articles from the past five years will be searchable on ArkansasBusiness.com

A new version of ArkansasBusiness.com launches Friday as the company expands its internet operations and focuses on smartphones and tablets such as the iPad.