>>17561325"The Greatest Paper That Ever Died
Radically brilliant. Absurdly ahead of its time. Ridiculously poorly planned. The National changed everything about sports journalism — and torched $150 million in the process.
The National Sports Daily, on the one hand, is a long-dead and short-lived newspaper that, for 18 months, between January of 1990 and June of 1991, attempted to cover sports in a way that no other American publication would, could, or had ever even imagined. On the other hand, the paper is emblematic of the parts of culture and media that were not yet ready to converge. Typewriters and satellites. Mexican titans of industry and American daily news. Content in too many forms. Born from an impetuous whim only a billionaire would call a business plan, the paper quickly began its operations, grabbing all of the talent money could buy. Frank Deford, a writer who had achieved legendary status by the age of 50, was made editor-in-chief; columnists and a feature staff were gathered, poached, and lured from everywhere; every beat in the athletic spectrum was covered, charted, and ranked, from golf to professional wrestling..."
https://grantland.com/features/the-greatest-paper-ever-died/"Deford immediately set out to get what was referred to by Bill Simmons as a "murderer's row" of sportswriters to join The National."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Sports_Daily"When Deford tapped Meltzer to write a wrestling column for The National in 1990-91, it helped Meltzer’s underground ‘zine reach a new audience. In addition to publishing his exhaustive and widely quoted wrestling newsletter, Meltzer today is a columnist for Yahoo covering the emerging international sport of mixed martial arts.
In his 2007 NPR commentary praising Meltzer’s wrestling death study, Deford called him “the most accomplished reporter in sports journalism.”
https://benoitbook.blogspot.com/2010/01/frank-deford-wrestling-media-and-me.html 
