Stat, Your comments are usually great. But making a snarky comment about something one admittedly doesn’t know about is something a philistine does, no? Like the guy who asks why one would want to go to Europe. Or perhaps you are just being supercilious, in which case you should do some research - Bill Simmons is one smart dude.
I too liked reading Simmons when he was Sports Guy–pretty funny. But I made the mistake of hearing him talk one time and found that he had an incredibly annoying, smug-sounding voice. I could never enjoy anything he wrote after that.
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I believe Napoleon said that all great figures in human history were petty. Someone should tell Goodell that that is not the only qualification.
Wasn’t really snarky. I watch the NFL on occasion, as well as a Blazers game, but just not seeing why the demise of a Sports website is really of interest to me really (outside of the tertiary topic of media consolidation).
Just not a huge sport guy.
Yeah, the others very much. Wesley Morris won a Pulitzer before joining Grantland and is now head cultural critic at The Times. Molly Lambert’s Mad Men recaps were the gold standard for cultural critique of the most cerebral show of the “Golden Age” of television. Rembrandt Browne is now working at New York Magazine, and his piece of Ferguson was the best I’ve read all year. And when they wanted to just talk sports, Zach Lowe is hands down the best basketball writer in the game. He is probably the best sportswriter period, but the other competition for the title would be Jonah Kerry, Rani Jazayerli and Sean Mcindoe … who also contribute to Grantland. That’s not to mention all the phenomenal freelance longform writers they featured on the site.
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Exactly they put out some amazing material. Sure some of it was horribly navel gazing but which media website hasn’t done that once or twice.
I don’t think I ever finished a Barnwell article. Was he paid by the word?
Simmons himself is a third-rate adolescent clown.
Thirded
I speak as someone who has worked in broadcasting for nearly 30 years and I’m not going to mince words. The bloodbath at ESPN, which decimated the production staff in Bristol, CT, was only the tip of the iceberg. The suits are doing whatever they can to keep their personal gravy train going for as long as possible and if that means that talented people have to be let go to affect the bottom line, so be it. Pair that with the childishness of most executives, whose thin skin can never handle the attitude of talent and you have this.
Simmons is a very talented man. Talented people tend to be a little “off” and hard to deal with. They are also arrogant, often with good reason. You don’t tell creative people how to create if you don’t want to get an earful. You put up with it and eventually the creative types come around to a middle ground. You have to let them think that they thought of it otherwise they will simply refuse out of principle. Bad managers don’t realize this and ESPN is filled with bad managers who can’t decide their way out of a paper bag.
That said, ESPN is a shadow of what it used to be. It’s anchors do nothing but fill time with snark. Why? Because programming costs money to produce. Having three people sit behind a desk acting like assholes to a steady stream of the same highlights is easier.
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Won’t be the last, my first and last thought after reading all the headlines is what is Grantland, never heard of it… I only came here to the comments to see if someone would have then answer, seems THX does. And from the description, haven’t missed much is anything.
Sanfordcw. Couldn’t agree with you more.
I don’t come to TPM to read ‘Who cares’ comments. If I want that level of insight I can go to any number of mass media sites with their uninformed comments from people who revel in showing how little they care or know about a topic. You don’t have to like or even know anything about "“G” - in fact there’s no major reason to know. But then do a favor to the other TPM readers and commenters, and just skip the topic.
Grantland focused on long essays that offered some meat on a variety of subjects. There were many topics so of course no reader was interested in every article. But at least there was a chance of learning something new or worthwhile - which there is no danger of doing on the rest of the ESPN site. Finally, contrary to ESPN’s official statements of support for Nate Silver , I wouldn’t expect ESPN to continue to support 538 once the election season ends.
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This is, of course, bullsh*t. If you own an enterprise that’s getting (among its target audience) big readership and lots of positive buzz, but you’ve decided it “doesn’t fit in” with the rest of your set of media properties, you spin it off or sell it to some other poor sucker. Shutting it down with zero notice is what you do when you never wanted to do it in the first place.
It was an experiment in quality sportswriting, with an emphasis on strong opinion pieces and long form journalism. It, and especially Simmons’ work there was uniformly good, a cut above 20-second soundbite sports coverage. ESPN mismanaged it badly, spanked Simmons when he (quite accurately) called out ESPN Sacred Cow Roger Goodell as a liar and then it castrated the remainder of the writers, choking off Grantland’s air supply till it died/was killed.
Not everything revolves around politics. I read it often, and I still read TPM. Go figure.
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Consider it raised. Add to that the fact that I’ve never heard of Bill Simmons.
I’m sure there are things you revere that I consider useless. If they were to disappear, would my lack of caring make it any less painful for you? Would you simply shrug your shoulders and say, “On to the next thing”? Is it just that you think the things you enjoy are somehow “better” than the things that other people enjoy? I’m curious.
Again, my interests are not the issue. That this is not a sports guy/gal community either. This is a political focused website hence the questioning of the relevance aside from the tertiary aspect of the impact of media consolidation impacting smaller media property vehicles and mismanagement thereof.
You can only read so much about Boston sports teams.