GoGolfNW.com premiere

Area golfers have a new reason to celebrate the coming of spring — the premiere of GoGolfNW.com, a free comprehensive online guide to regional golf from the company that publishes The Spokesman-Review and spokesmanreview.com.

The GoGolfNW.com Web site is a useful, one-stop resource for golfers of all skill and interest levels who live or play anywhere in the Northwest. Site users can read and share comments about their favorite courses, catch up on the latest local and national golf news, and communicate with other players. Golfers can also search an extensive database of more than 300 courses spanning western Canada to Oregon, and learn everything from basic yardage or how to book their next tee times online.

Moderated message boards and blogs encourage Web visitors to discuss their favorite courses, post a picture of a fun experience, find others interested in forming foursomes, and share the story of their perfect — or least perfect — game. GoGolfNW.com will also give area golf courses and golf-related businesses opportunities to share their services and special promotions, so visitors can look forward to seeing plenty of product giveaways and great deals.

GoGolfNW.com is a service of Cowles Publishing Company, produced in association with The Spokesman-Review and spokesman-review.com. Members of The Spokesman-Review’s sports staff will contribute regular stories and columns to GoGolfNW.com. and additional, exclusive content will be provided by some of the region’s top freelancers, avid golfers and club pros.

In addition to its online presence, GoGolfNW.com magazine will appear as a tabloid publication twice a year and be inserted into all copies of The Spokesman-Review and be distributed at golf shops and locations throughout the Inland Northwest. The magazine, which replaces the newspaper’s former periodic golf sections, will be produced by The Spokesman-Review sports department, under the direction of sports editor Joe Palmquist.

“Our goal is to create the ultimate site for local golfers,” said Kathleen Coleman, who heads the newspaper’s Digital Business and New Product Development department. “Like all good sites this one will grow, change and evolve based on the feedback we receive from its users — so we’ve pledged ourselves to a process of continuous improvement to keep in touch with user needs and expectations.”

Coleman said new local and national features will be added to the site all year.

GoGolfNW.com is the latest in a series of digital and multi-media initiatives recently undertaken by the newspaper company, according to Shaun O’L. Higgins, director of Sales and Marketing. The newspaper’s editorial department, in association with RadioSpokane, now provides daily local news reports on KJRB (790 AM) radio in Spokane. It produces spokane.net, a local community portal; spokane7.com, an entertainment, arts and culture site; and, launched within the past year, BizFinderNW.com, an online business directory featuring nearly 25,000 local listings; along with SpokesmanAutos.com, SpokesmanHomes.com and SpokesmanJobs.com.

“We have plans for several additional sites in the coming months,” Higgins said, “while continuing to strengthen spokesmanreview.com, our most heavily trafficked site.” Spokesmanreview.com boasts 600,000 unique visitors monthly, with average monthly page views now ranging from 3 to 4 million.