fh.nn.ru is the address of the official website of the Nizhny Novgorod sports weekly «Futbol-Khokkei NN» (Football-Hockey NN). The home page named the publication directly in its header: "Nizhny Novgorod Sports Newspaper — Weekly FUTBOL-KHOKKEI NN"[1], and the footer of later versions carried the copyright "FUTBOL-KHOKKEI NN. All rights reserved © 1996-2011," dating the paper's history back to 1996[3]. In the 2000 Counter.nn.ru directory and ranking, the address was listed under the "Media" section with the description "Information about Nizhny Novgorod teams: Torpedo, Start, Lokomotiv. Match commentary, news." According to the web archive index, the first snapshot of the address is dated September 30, 2000; surviving texts of the home page date from 2007–2013.

Latest issue in PDF and back issue archive

The site's structure in 2007 was simple: a "Main Menu" of four items — "Home," "About the Paper," "Editorial Office," "Guestbook"[1]. The central place was taken by the "Latest Issue" block: in the July 20, 2007 snapshot this was "No. 28 (662), Thursday, July 12, 2007," with a note that "Adobe (Acrobat) Reader is required to read the paper"[1]. In other words, the paper was posted online not as text but as a layout file — a digital copy of the print issue.

The second-largest part of the home page was the "Newspaper Archive," where, as the home page stated, "you can find past issues of our weekly (the archive is under development)"[1]. The list stretched back to 2000: the earliest entry was "No. 11 (290) 17.03.00," with subsequent issues following weekly, using double numbering — within-year and running[1]. The running count lets us measure the paper's pace: issue 290 in March 2000, issue 662 in July 2007[1], and issue 872 in July 2011[2] — meaning roughly 210 issues came out over the four years between snapshots, about fifty a year, weekly.

Below were the "We Recommend" and "Our Partners" blocks — OJSC "Borsky Glass Works," the "KROK Athlete Equipment Center," "Sports Equipment," "Sports Store" — and a "Statistics" heading, under which, apparently, visitor counters were located[1]. Neither the editorial office's address nor its phone number appears in the surviving home page text; the "About the Paper" and "Editorial Office" pages, where they presumably were, have not survived in our material.

Issue preview

The only piece of actual journalistic text preserved on the home page is a preview of the latest issue broken down by page. In the July 2007 snapshot, "Page 1" opened with the headline "TORPEDO: OFF TO A FLYING START!"; as the home page reported, "last week the hockey players of Nizhny Novgorod's Torpedo returned from vacation, and now they are already at a southern training camp in Tuapse"[1]. It went on to discuss the team's return to the ice at the Nizhny Novgorod Palace of Sports — where the preserved text breaks off[1]. This fragment is enough to see the publication's profile: club news of Nizhny Novgorod teams, delivered in close step with the season calendar.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was noticed early in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: it made it into the 2000 Counter.nn.ru ranking sample under the "Media" section with a score of 438 — this top tier of the counter is examined in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. The address does not appear among the results of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting[5]: the site collected no awards.

Its role was different. This was not an online publication but a representation of a print newspaper: a place where the PDF of the latest issue and the bound file of past issues over the years were posted. For a reader looking for a report on a Torpedo, Start, or Lokomotiv match, this address was the only way to get the issue without buying it at a kiosk.

How it closed

The last snapshot with a live site in our material is from July 19, 2011: the same structure, the same menu, with the latest issue listed as "No. 26 (872), Thursday, July 07, 2011"[2]. After that the page collapses. In the February 1, 2012 snapshot, only two lines remained of the home page: "Official website of FUTBOL-KHOKKEI NN" and the copyright "© 1996-2011"[3]. A year later, on January 16, 2013, the page looked the same, except the copyright had been updated to "1996-2013" and a technical support line with an email address in the mail.ru domain had been added[4] — someone was still maintaining the address, but there was no content left behind the placeholder.

There are no preserved home page texts in our material after January 2013; according to the web archive index, snapshots of the address were taken as late as May 19, 2019. No redirect to another site, no announcement of closure remains in the snapshots: the newspaper's site simply stopped updating, leaving behind a copyright line and an archive of issues that can no longer be reached.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2011 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2012 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2013 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting, 2004 (archive)