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Grantland so far

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Alma, Jul 14, 2011.

  1. Quakes

    Quakes Guest

    I'm with Ragu. I don't think I'm their target, even though I'm a sports fan and a former sportswriter who likes to read and appreciates good writing. There's too much pop-culture stuff for me -- although, to be fair, they don't hide the fact that that's a big part of what they do. Most, though not all, of the sports material seems like the sort of observational stuff that's easily tossed off and -- while sometimes interesting or amusing -- isn't illuminating or nourishing, as well-reported and well-written features are. I'd be more interested in Grantland if it were like The New Yorker, or The New York Times Magazine, or Sports Illustrated at its best. (I recognize that all of those are weekly publications, unlike Grantland.) Instead, it's more like Slate.
     
  2. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    After perusing the site the last couple of days, I was just thinking that the sports stuff is getting overwhelmed.
     
  3. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    Great post.

    Do you think Grantland is hurt by launching during the slowest sports season? There is baseball, and really only a few fringe things.

    In the fall there will be baseball, college football, pro football and Premireship football, which should give plenty of opportunities to write more actual sports.
     
  4. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Maybe they should cover more than the AL East so they can expand their possible baseball story options.
     
  5. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    I thought it was odd that they "covered" anything.

    Did Inside Sports ever really cover anything? Did Sports Illustrated, in its prime, ever really cover anything?

    I look at Grantland like a magazine that used to come in the mail. It would have 7-8 articles, and I chose what I wanted to read. But I also didn't sit and bitch if there was a feature on bowling, for example, and I had no interest in bowling. I would just move on.
     
  6. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    This website is nothing like Inside Sports or Sports Illustrated, in terms of scope, staff, and especially reporting, from what little I have seen. I just went over there and clicked on the top few stories, and if any reporting went into them, it apparently included very little interviewing of subjects, because I saw very few (actually none, but maybe my quick looks missed them) quotation marks in any of the 5 or 6 stories I scrolled through.

    For those who have read more than I have and gone there dutifully. ... Is this indicative of the site? Some talented writers, but pontificating about subjects (i.e. -- long essays), rather than reporting on topics and letting the stories tell themselves?

    Maybe that is why I haven't been drawn to the site. That kind of site is fine if there is an audience. I'm just not it. When I read LONG, I want to be educated. I want reporting to have gone into it and for the writer to come out with facts (lots and lots of them), OTHER people's thoughts and a topic that opens my eyes to something interesting or mind blowing.

    This seems like a site of long essays (maybe there are some other things mixed in that I am missing). A lot of it pop culture I am just not interested in reading about from OTHER people. Am I correct about that?
     
  7. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    The pro wrestling story by "The Masked Man" I read last night was a piece of work.

    I eventually had to go to Wikipedia to figure out the core concept ("the worked shoot") referenced in the headline. Seems like a footnote would have helped.

    Having a pro wrestling columnist at this point seems slightly off to me. The trending thing is MMA, anyway.
     
  8. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    I was just thinking about my post above. And went over and had another quick look. Again, I haven't really spent much time there, and I still haven't really read much on there. So I apologize if I am being unfair. I am just trying to figure out this site now.

    Along the lines of my reply to SF above, in which I said I haven't been drawn to the site, I am really trying to figure out why. ... I WANT something like this to be successful.

    Here are some ideas I just had. It seems like the basis of this site isn't really the content (as it has been pointed out, there is an AL East columnist, but they are not covering baseball as a whole with regularity; there is random content apropos of nothing except the writer's whims--see the wrestling piece mentioned above. There are a lot of first-person essays,).

    The one thing that does stick out to me when I look at the site is the bylines. Well, most of them, because I'd say half of them mean very little to me, while the other half are the names that always get bandied about on a site like this. So Bill Simmons (name himself) went out and got a bunch of other names, and my question now is, if that is really the basis for this site, can it be successful?

    I don't know much anymore about what makes successful editorial, especially on the web, but when I was doing non-custom magazines, I did know that from an editorial standpoint, content was king. I read Dave Eggers when he was doing Might magazine in the 90s (and I was helping a bunch of guys do a similar, but not nearly as good indie magazine), not because he was Dave Eggers (I had no clue who he was at first, obviously), but because it was one of the best magazines ever put out, irreverent and funny and creative. It wasn't about Eggers. It was about the work he did. The content is what drew me.

    So the first question. The work on this site? Is it special? Others will have to say, because I have not read enough. What I have tried to read has been OK -- even good in spots -- but as I said above to SF, nothing has compelled me to bookmark it and check in every day.

    My two other questions: Do most of those names (the Klostermans, or take a step back and say, Jay Caspian Kang, etc.) resonate with people other than the type of person reading this thread? I wonder.

    And secondly, and more importantly, if this started as an idea of Simmons getting his all-star writing line-up, and it was about the writers, and not necessarily the content itself (not saying that is the case, but it SEEMS like that might be the case to me), can the thing really be successful over time? Will that really keep an audience? I wouldn't even make it a point to read daily Ernest Hemingway essays if the only point was that Hemingway's name was above the piece, and the pieces themselves didn't do anything remarkable.

    That may be a bit harsh. I honestly haven't read enough to know if the content on there has been more consistently remarkable than not. But the few things I have tried to trudge through were a mixed bag. Which gets me to this post. Is this supposed to be: "Read this, Chuck Klosterman wrote it!" Or is it supposed to be "Read this. It will be worth the time investment!" If it is the former, the site will never work for me.

    I know that Simmons himself has a lot of cachet, so that will give it a chance even if everything I wrote above is correct. But to me, Simmons isn't even Simmons anymore. He is a way more talented writer than he often gets credit for on here. But his shtick that made him famous was that he was the "sports guy," i.e. the fan writing as an anti-establishment guy for other fans. And at this point, especially with the company he is keeping on a site like that (not to mention that opening essay I read on the other thread about Jimmy Kimmel and the names he dropped to tell his story), he just isn't that outsider fighting the sportswriting establishment. Maybe that isn't a problem. But I had burned out on him (and I say that acknowledging that he has heaps of writing talent [sometimes in need of an editor, though]) a while ago, which again, is maybe another reason why that site is not aimed at me.
     
  9. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    http://www.grantland.com/features
     
  10. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2011/07/the-sports-guy-goes-hollywood-can-bill-simmons-make-grantland-a-must-read-for-pop-culture-lovers.html

    Simmons makes no apologies, again offering a showbiz analogy. “I'm no fan of the way newspaper sportswriters work, especially when they complain about people like me not going into the locker room,” he says. “All they do is point their mikes at the athletes, trying to hear what they have to say, which is usually nothing. Is that really any different from a Hollywood press junket, where every star gives the same generic answers to the same five questions? It's gotta be the biggest waste of time ever.”
     
  11. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    I understand what Simmons is saying, and I understand what others are saying.

    You do have to do some legwork, though, and usually the best stuff comes from finding those who everyone else overlooks.
     
  12. Cousin Jeffrey

    Cousin Jeffrey Active Member

    It always amuses me when people call reporting, or going into locker rooms, a waste of time. How do they think the news they disseminate is produced?
    David Carr expertly pokes holes in this argument to the head of Current.com in the doc, Page One.
     
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