Comment: how all the news fit.(The Talk of the Town)

The world turned upside down after September 11th, and, as a small but noticeable side effect, so did the sports section of the Times. As of January 1st, the world (though seemingly in better shape than it had been a couple of months earlier, knock on wood) remained severely discombobulated. The sports section of the Times, however, is right side up again. Happy New Year.

In its own inky way, the newspaper of record rose to the post-disaster occasion almost as heroically as did the city's uniformed services. Not for the first time, New Yorkers were reminded how lucky they are to have a newspaper run by a public-spirited family that regards the bottom line as a means, not an end. The Times went after the big story with plenty of resources, plenty of heart, and not a little ingenuity. The flipped-over sports section was a by-product of a decision to put the paper's coverage of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks into a daily stand-alone section, slugged "A Nation Challenged." (The name may have been a trifle CNN-like, but the content -- energetic, well organized, spare-no-expense comprehensive -- was pure Times at its best.) The press capacity of the Times can accommodate four sections with late-night deadlines. Normally, the four are business, sports, local news, and the main national and international news section. (The arts section and the fluff supplements -- Dining In/Dining Out, Weekend, and the like -- are printed earlier in the day.) So something had to give. The art department, led by Tom Bodkin, the assistant managing editor for design, had the audacious idea of turning sports upside down and slapping it on ...