Grantland so far

I ran a Patch site, and tried to run stuff on the weekends for a bit. Traffic was generally down 75 to 90 percent, unless it was something like a local high school championship win. Even with a "breaking news" email alert, the hits would be way down vs. one sent during the week.

 

Yep, and Grantland does nothing super timely. Most is enough review it keeps til Monday morning. The approach seems similar to what a lot of online outlets are doing. Only do weekend stuff when it NEEDS to be done, and usually its bare bones (unless it's crucial event coverage or feeding junkies).

Now, if I could convince my editors to stop pissing away the good stories on Sundays, posting them Saturday afternoon, that would be peachy.

 

The weekend dip is definitely real.

We're in a football-mad state, and our website traffic tends to fall off as much as 30-35 percent on the weekend, even on college football Saturdays.

The week-long buildup to the big weekend event is where the numbers are nowadays.

 

At my place, web traffic is between 8 and 5 during the week and virtually nothing on the weekend.

Football season sees a slight uptick about an hour before kickoff, as people search for "what time does the game start" and about an hour after the game to read coverage.

If you work at a place that holds weekenders until, you know, the weekend, you're doing it wrong. Of course we don't follow my advice, so whatever.

 

No one knows what ESPN is doing to Grantland

From the story:

The central fear, basically, is that Grantland will change. Grantland has run a lot of fantastic stuff over the years, mainly because under Simmons, very good writers could pitch whatever they wanted and get it green lit without much pushback. It’s a free, sprawling site, with sports pieces running alongside movie reviews, TV recaps, deep dives into defunct or esoteric bands, and political commentary. That freedom is why Grantland can be exasperating, and why it can be brilliant. The fear is that drawing back on that freedom may lead to a little less exasperation and a lot less brilliance.

If ESPN’s main trait is omnipotence, it has accomplished that largely through attempting to appeal equally to everyone. It’s an impossible feat, but most of ESPN stubbornly operates as if sports constitute a universe of its own, untouched by things like politics or pop culture. What’s best about Grantland comes out of the ways it cuts against that conceit.

Grantland doesn’t attempt to appeal to everyone at all times. It’s young; it’s fluid; it’s nimble; it leans left; it has its own idiosyncratic concerns. It feels alive. It also isn’t profitable. It’s not hard to imagine Skipper undoing what works about it—slashing what felt like a limitless travel budget that allowed writers to chase stories off the map, or mandating a greater focus on traffic—and it’s not hard to imagine him killing off Simmons’s brainchild altogether. A lot of Grantlanders are imagining it.

When a lot of these writers leave Grantland, they'll curse ESPN and praise Simmons. Who wouldn't love a boss who always said yes?

But ESPN gave Simmons the money to blow in the first place. ESPN was the rich parents; Simmons was the cool, prodigal son who often pushed fairly middlebrow initiatives while backed by a lot of Walt Disney's money.

If he tries to recreate the full version of this site somewhere else, it seems unlikely to financially succeed. It'll make some great meals, but it won't financially succeed.

 

Interesting comment on that post about Hyden getting all the old AV Club staffers back together now that The Dissolve has, umm, dissolved.

Now that would be something.

And a website I'd check hourly.

 

Anyone else notice that the Grantland section on ESPN.com is falling farther and farther down the page? Used to be the second or third thing on the page. Today, I count four items between it and the top story.

 

And maybe it's just me or because it's the middle of July, but there seems to be a lot more days where there are very few articles under each of their two sections. especially on the entertainment side.

 

I think the writing is on the wall for the site. Like it wouldn't surprise me if people are using up their vacation time, looking for other gigs, etc. Plus, you figure that whatever Simmons does next, he's going to try to hire some of his pals from Grantland. Ultimately, I think ESPN.com takes the sports writers they like for the mothership's sections (Jonah Keri to MLB section, Zach Lowe to NBA, Bryan Curtis to MLB) and shutter most of the entertainment stuff.