The N.Y. Times sports section Thursday ran a cover page that was more than three-quarters blank to represent the fact no players were inducted into the Baseball HOF this year, and "reaction came quickly from the media world, and it was largely positive," according to N.Y. TIMES Public Editor Margaret Sullivan. Times Sports Editor Joe Sexton earlier this week "approved the design," which came from Sports Art Dir Wayne Kamidoi and Assistant Sports Editor Jay Schreiber. Sexton said, "Tyler Kepner had written as early as the weekend that this was likely [no one getting elected], so that’s when people’s brains started firing -- or misfiring." Sexton said that he "liked the idea -- the creation of 'a striking, profound emptiness' -- from the start, noting that 'white space is the most undervalued thing' in news presentation." Sexton: "The job of a newspaper is to capture a moment -- small, large, historic, otherwise -- and you can do that creatively and surprisingly. I don’t view it as wasted space but as an effective use of the printed newspaper for conveying the significance of the day’s events" (NYTIMES.com, 1/10). Sexton added Kamidoi and Schreiber "saw the chance to capture the very old, very dispiriting story of steroids in baseball in a freshly powerful way" (THEWRAP.com, 1/10). AD WEEK noted there is a "list of several nominated players and the vote percentage they received at the bottom of the empty box in miniscule type" (ADWEEK.com, 1/10).

OVER THE TOP FOR SOME: The blank page was discussed Thursday on ESPN's "Around The Horn," with the Miami Herald's Israel Gutierrez saying it "could have been more of an impact with strong words as opposed to nothing at all." However, it "makes the point that the Baseball Hall of Fame choice was nonsense." Columnist Kevin Blackistone said, “I’d rather have some smart commentary and analysis from the New York Times that I’m accustomed to getting.” Dallas Morning News columnist Tim Cowlishaw: “I got the point. They could have done it with a picture of an empty dugout.” ESPN’s J.A. Adande said it was an “artistic representation." Adande said "blank space in newspapers and dead air on TV is a failure on the media, just like the media failed to properly question and investigate" the steroid era. Adande: "Just like they’re failing now to report the news rather than making the news, and they have made the news with this nonsensical Hall of Fame vote” (“Around The Horn,” ESPN, 1/10). ESPN's Dan Le Batard said the page was “clever but also, and this is symbolic for me given what the writers did yesterday, very ‘look at me.’" Le Batard: "The sanctimonious writers, ‘look at me, look at what we did with our sports page, look at what we did with our Hall of Fame’" (“Dan Le Batard Is Highly Questionable,” ESPN2, 1/10). Blogger Ed Sherman wrote the page "definitely makes a point." It shows "how design can be a profoundly powerful tool" (SHERMANREPORT.com, 1/10).

LATE-NIGHT LAUGHS: Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart Thursday aired a segment called “Jon Stewart’s Seventh Inning Kvetch,” during which he talked about the Baseball HOF voting. Stewart said among the nominees were Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds and “granted, due to potentially excessive steroid use their bodies were 98 percent Adamantium. But you can’t deny their performances.” This “is a big deal. Nobody got in. I mean, I get why they passed up ‘Monsters, Inc.’ over here,” referring to Clemens, Sosa and Bonds, “but what about Craig Biggio.” Stewart: “The only thing that guy’s juicing is carrots, apples and kale" (“The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” Comedy Central, 1/10).

Brent Musburger was roundly criticized for comments directed at Katherine Webb, the girlfriend of Alabama QB A.J. McCarron, during ESPN's broadcast of the Discover BCS National Championship Game Monday night, but he is seeing several columnists now come to his defense. In DC, Tracee Hamilton writes under the header, "Brent Musburger Has Nothing To Apologize For." She writes, "If the camera continues to linger on the beautiful girlfriend in the stands, what exactly is Musburger -- who is there to comment on what you, the viewer is seeing -- supposed to say? He has game notes on the players, but beyond saying she was a former Miss Alabama, he doesn't have a lot of talking points to work with." Hamilton adds, "I didn't see anything offensive in what he said ... If he said, 'Boy, I'd like some of that,' then fire him. But he didn't. He didn't even come close to that" (WASHINGTON POST, 1/11). In Illinois, Mike North asks, "Do people really have to apologize now for stating a young woman in the stands is pretty? Musburger's job is to describe what fans see on the screen, and he did just that. ... Don't change Brent -- you did nothing wrong by my book" (Illinois DAILY HERALD, 1/11). In N.Y., Phil Mushnick: "Musburger said nothing -- nothing -- wrong. If he was guilty of anything it was of being corny, the way uncles at Thanksgiving tease the teens at the table by saying, 'You must have to beat the boys/girls back with a stick.'" He "reprised a harmless, 90-year-old American folk axiom: The QB always gets the pretty girl" (N.Y. POST, 1/11). NBC's Michelle Beadle said of Musburger's comments, "It cracked me up. It's sort of like you go to a restaurant with your dad and he starts flirting with the waitress -- eesh, kind of embarrassing." She added that Musburger should not be blamed for the situation. Beadle: "Those shots happen when it's a boring game. So blame Notre Dame" (USA TODAY, 1/11).

Grantland.com since debuting a year and a half ago has “found a footing, mixing long-form feature writing with both witty blog posts, criticism on pop culture and deep analysis on major sports such as football and basketball,” according to Jason Del Rey of AD AGE. Grantland Editor-in-Chief Bill Simmons has “filled out the roster with high-profile contributors.” Del Rey conducted a Q&A with Grantland Publisher David Cho and ESPN Exec VP/Multimedia Sales Eric Johnson about “what they’ve found so far and where they hope to bring the property” in ’13. Below are excerpts from the interview:

Q: What have you learned and what's your focus for this year?
Cho: We've really seen what works and what doesn't work, what the audience responds to and also what we feel like the site is becoming and what the brand is becoming. A big part of that is that we wanted to prove long-form content still had a place online, that everything didn't have to be short bite-size nuggets. And I think we've done that. ... Now we’re really focusing on the product and how the content is delivered. ... [We want to] create destination pages that are stronger and feel like products of their own. We felt like we are putting out some good stuff that’s getting lost because we were relying on the home page.

Q: According to Comscore, traffic continues to be flat around 2 million monthly visitors. Do you care about that?
Cho: For us it’s about putting out the best product we can. We always want to get bigger, but to have a site our size 18 months in is pretty good.
Johnson: The site has enough girth and a very attractive demographic that ends up lending well to the sales proposition. I don’t think Grantland is designed to be a major volume play. It’s a sophisticated site with a very unique blend of sports and pop culture and that’s ultimately what we bring to advertisers.

Q: What’s been the ad sales philosophy for Grantland?
Johnson: We started with presenting sponsors, such as Subway, that have a customized integration into the site. Now we're looking at selling flighted sponsorships around events, so you might see us sell one around the Super Bowl or the NBA Draft. We don't have the desire to just sell display rotational ads. They don't fill a need and it's more profitable this way.

Q: The Grantland YouTube channel doesn’t have a sponsor. Are you content with not having a sponsor there?
Johnson: We’ve had communication with Google on the YouTube front and if a sponsor had interest, we’d partner together. We want to have more sponsorships, but we want to make sure they’re meaningful ones (ADAGE.com, 1/10).