The sports dept. suggestion box

Welcome to the Los Angeles Daily News' (and the Los Angeles Newspaper Group's) newest and most ambitious sports blog.

Its subtitle means what it says: As the LANG sports editor, I'm hoping you'll use the comments section (click on "Comments," above) to talk with me and my fellow editors and writers about the way we cover sports in print and on-line.

Now, a lot of the entries here will be opinions and observations from someone who in nearly 25 years in L.A. newspapers has written a thrice-a-week sports column for 10 years; covered the Dodgers, college basketball and horse-racing beats; covered multiple World Series, NBA Finals, Super Bowls, college football national championship games, L.A. prep football title games, local stops on the golf, tennis and auto-racing tours, and Kentucky Derbies (16 of those!), and covered a World Cup and a Stanley Cup final.

But the entries that will set From the Sports Desk apart will be the ones that invite and answer your comments and questions about the decisions that go into these sports sections and websites.

As you probably know, newspaper companies are going through what we'll euphemistically call a transitional phase. More competition from other kinds of media are forcing us editors and reporters to do things differently, or ought to be. We're as open to readers' suggestions as we should have been all along.

So let us know: What stories are we underplaying? Or overplaying? Which of our regular features do you really enjoy? Or always skip? Are there essential opinions we're leaving unstated? Those sorts of things. It's all fair game.

You can reach me by e-mail at heymodesti@aol.com. But I'd love it if you speak up at this new blog. Let's get the conversation started.

I'll anticipate your first question: Why is there a photo of Joe Louis above?

Answer: Because America's most important champion also was sports' most famous greeter, of course.

As I say, welcome.