If there’s one thing most sports journalists agree on, it’s that the standard game wrap story — what happened, who scored how many points, who made the go-ahead free throws — is essentially a thing of the past. Modern sports fans don’t need those stories. The Internet has made them obsolete. For beat writers to avoid the same fate, they have to start adding value outside of recounting the game.

This is not such a complicated proposition. Access is still scarce. Those with it, who use it to do more than ask lame questions about how the player was feeling that night, have a chance to lead the way.

Which is my somewhat long-winded introduction to this interesting bit of sports media news today: The Wall Street Journal is expanding its sports section, which currently runs on Fridays, all the way through the rest of the week. (Minus Sundays. The Journal doesn’t have a Sunday edition.) It’s a part of the Rupert Murdoch-ification of the WSJ, but that doesn’t bother me. The WSJ is big enough and bad enough to be both its traditional self and a more dynamic, interesting publication for non-financiers. What is particularly nice to see is sports editor Sam Walker’s vision for the section:

It wants to use the new section to produce analytical articles and statistics- and graphics-laden packages that put a forward-looking spin on the news, Sports Editor Sam Walker said. “We’re not doing game coverage,” he said. “These are stories that are idea-based with big themes.”

Yes! We don’t need game coverage. We sports fans can get that anywhere. I want the same analytical mind that produced the fantastic Fantasyland to coordinate a section of must-read profiles, columns, features and statistical analysis, and I want it every day. This is the new newspaper model, at least where sports are concerned. It doesn’t preclude access. It just does more with that access than tell you what you already know.