The Fantasy Sports Writers Association has announced the finalists for its seventh annual writer awards, and, as usual, RotoWire is all over the list.

The fantasy content hub drew 19 total nominations, including one for its baseball print magazine and seven categories in which at least two staffers will be competing against each other. Among those, RotoWire placed at least two entrants into writer of the year categories for baseball, basketball, hockey, auto racing and college sports.

RotoExperts.com and Yahoo! Sports tied for second most nominations, with each garnering six. Yahoo’s list included one for its baseball magazine.

ESPN nabbed four finalist spots, Sporting News grabbed three and KFFL.com showed up twice. Football Diehards rounded out the multiple-nomination field with two entries in the category for best football magazine.

Individuals up for multiple awards include …

– Yahoo!’s Andy Behrens (best football Web article, football print article and humor article)
– RotoWire’s David Regan (baseball writer of the year, baseball series and baseball Web article)
– ESPN’s Tristan Cockcroft (baseball writer of the year and baseball Web article)
– RotoWire’s Derek VanRiper (baseball writer of the year and baseball Web article)
– RotoExperts’ Chris Ryan (baseball series and humor article)

It’s worth noting that the FSWA changed its judging procedure this time around. For the past couple of years, the board of directors was in charge of whittling the entire class of entries down to finalists in each category, passing those along to a trio of journalism professors to decide on the winners.

In 2010, however, the professors took on the whole judgment process, grading all entries on a 100-point scale. Thus, the finalists in each category represent the top three finishers in the grading.

The full rundown of finalists appears below. Winners will be announced the night of Jan. 25 as part of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association winter conference.

Football Writer of the Year
Ladd Biro, The Sporting News
Dave Richard, CBS Sports
Matt Schauf, RapidDraft.com

Best Football Series
Ryan Bonini, KFFL
Michael Fabiano, NFL.com
Mike Gilbert, RotoExperts

Best Football Article on the Web
Andy Behrens, Yahoo! Sports
Christopher Harris, ESPN
Tim McCullough, RotoExperts

Best Football Article in Print
Andy Behrens, Yahoo! Sports
Cory Bonini, KFFL
Matt Waldman, Football Guys

Best Football Print Publication
Football CheatSheets
Football Diehards
Sports Illustrated

Baseball Writer of the Year
Tristan Cockcroft, ESPN
David Regan, RotoWire
Derek VanRiper, RotoWire

Best Baseball Series
Matt Lutovsky, The Sporting News
David Regan, RotoWire
Chris Ryan, RotoExperts

Best Baseball Article on the Web
Tristan Cockcroft, ESPN
David Regan, RotoWire
Derek VanRiper, RotoWire

Best Baseball Article in Print
Brent Hershey, Baseball HQ
Chris Liss, RotoWire
Jeff Stotts, RotoWire

Best Baseball Print Publication
RotoWire
The Sporting News
Yahoo! Sports

Basketball Writer of the Year
Carson Cistulli, RotoWire
Shannon McKeown, RotoWire
Brian McKitish, ESPN

Hockey Writer of the Year
Evan Berofsky, RotoWire
Jan Levine, RotoWire
Janet Eagleson, RotoWire

Racing Writer of the Year
Adam Ansell, RotoExperts
C.J. Radune, RotoWire
Mark Taylor, RotoWire

College Sports Writer of the Year
Brad Evans, Yahoo! Sports
Chris Morgan, RotoWire
Jesse Siegel, RotoWire

Golf Writer of the Year
John McNamara, RotoWorld
Scott Pianowski, Yahoo! Sports
Greg Vara, RotoWire

Newcomer of the Year
Jake Ciely, RotoExperts
Mario Puig, RotoWire
Lane Rizzardini, Bruno Boys Fantasy Football

Best Humor Article
Andy Behrens, Yahoo! Sports
John Paulsen, Bulls-Eye
Chris Ryan, RotoExperts

In the latest sign of fantasy sports’ ability to swim in the mainstream, Compete.com released last month some stats on the Web habits of fantasy players.

Compete drew results from a panel of “more than 2 million” Internet users based in the United States for the month of September, compiling numbers on daily reach, search habits and time spent on various fantasy sites.

The fantasy sports subdomain on Yahoo! and the games subdomain ESPN.com, respectively, came out as the clear top two in unique visitors, each more than doubling the next ranked URL. Worthy of note, however, is that NFL.com’s fantasy area came in third, even if you were to combine the results for each of the three ranked CBS Sports subdomains (football, baseball and college football).

Streak.espn.go.com led the way in average stay, checking in at nearly 5 minutes more than No. 2 fantasy.nfl.com. That URL, of course, takes surfers to ESPN’s Beat the Streak game, which won a Fantasy Sports Trade Association award for 2009. FleaFlicker.com and fantasy.foxsports.com followed in that category.

RTSports.com led the way in visits per person for the month at 20.56. Only two other sites beat Compete.com’s overall tally for the category (14.71): baseball.cbssports.com and myfantasyleague.com.

Other data points drawn into focus in the Compete.com release were:

– Unique visitor numbers don’t tell the entire story. Fantasysports.yahoo.com was the top site for UVs in September (6,115,530) but “attention” increased 130 percent — still not bad, while fantasy.nfl.com attention increase by 370 percent. Perhaps the increased focus on video at fantasy.nfl.com is behind its relatively higher attention.

– For search, ESPN was the clear winner for September. It captured three of the top five search-share positions: “espn” was the number one keyword sending traffic to the fantasy category, “espn fantasy football” was the number two keyword and “espn.com” was number four.

– Fantasy players drop off as the season wanes. Baseball.cbssports.com, which reached its season high in April of 516,761 UVs, was down to 347,416 in September with attention down (44 percent) and visits per person down (25 percent) from August. It’s likely that many players lose interest as they move out of contention and content related to the next fantasy season emerges (football, hockey and basketball). Wise brands should track these trends and use the insights to drive campaign creative and media buying.

More results can be found in the table below …

A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

– We missed this about a month ago, but apparently Matthew Berry, Nate Ravitz, Stephania Bell and Fantasy Focus producer Jay “PodVader” Soderberg are all available free-agent players in Madden ‘11. Berry is a linebacker, Ravitz a receiver, Bell a running back and Vader a blocking tight end.

– This writeup on the weekend football scene around Hermosa Beach, Calif., doesn’t present anything particularly out of the ordinary. It does, however, offer a worthwhile snapshot of the direct impact fantasy football can have on indirectly related businesses.

– This Dallas-area fantasy football league has been going strong for 25 years, with the screwy scoring system to prove it.

– And now some fun at another’s expense: Any time I come across an article that purports to instruct one on how to become a fantasy sports writer, I’ll probably be interested. If it’s worthwhile, I might pass along a link here. If it’s the complete opposite, I might also feel compelled to share. HowToDoThings.com is apparently a high-traffic site, and perhaps most of its content is very helpful. “How To Become a Fantasy Sports Writer,” however, was obviously written by someone who has no idea how to. The first paragraph introduces an incorrect assumption (”there is no doubt fantasy sports writers are in high demand these days”), followed by an unnecessary step (”you should start as a real sports writer”). A few of the ensuing sentences are not useless, but I’ll let you decide which. I can’t argue this final line, though: “For a start, you may also try out some sites that are hiring fantasy sports writer to be paid $30 per article composed of 200 to 300 words.” If you find someone willing to pay you $30 for every four paragraphs you write, jump on it.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

To most of the folks who read this site (and those of us involved in producing it), there’s no questioning the increasingly significant role of fantasy in sports and the way they are covered. Every so often, though, we get new signs of how widely that impact is felt.

On Monday, Nov. 15, the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism (at Penn State) will host a free online chat (1 p.m. ET) to discuss the way that fantasy is affecting sports coverage in the media.

Moderated by Curley Center associate director Marie Hardin, the hourlong chat will include a pair of guys familiar to most or all of us around the industry: Nate Ravitz, deputy editor for ESPN.com fantasy sports, and FantasyGuru.com’s Joe Dolan.

Joining those two fantasy pros will be Alexandre Simon, the NHL’s senior director of digital business development, and Malcolm Moran, Curley Center director and the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society.

“The continued emergence of fantasy sports influences content and prompts decisions about coverage,” the article announcing the event reads. “Fantasy sports can also pull media organizations to decide between the possibility of emerging audiences and the reality of existing consumers or production costs. Those competing agendas, changing outlooks and the implications of fantasy sports on sports journalism will be discussed.”

The session, titled “The Intersection Between Fantasy Sports and Sports Coverage: Implications for Journalists and Predictions for Media Organizations” will be available at: http://comm.psu.edu/sports/live-chats online.