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"Outside The Lines" featuring... Bill Simmons!

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by MacDaddy, Oct 2, 2008.

  1. BartonK

    BartonK Active Member

    I used to read Simmons religiously, every new column, and I'm not ashamed of that. But in the last year or two, I've found myself drifting away. He keeps hitting the same points (he hates the Bruins' ownership and Doc Rivers, he loves the Sox, etc. etc.) over and over. Maybe it was his irrational defense of the Patriots after Spygate, or his columns after the Celtics won the championship, but I'm just not interested anymore.

    Love those ghost-written pieces that are supposedly by his wife, though.
     
  2. Shaggy

    Shaggy Guest

    Not to pour on, but I echo everyone here. Way too long, paragraphs that are book chapters (and exactly how you DON'T write for the web) and nothing more than an average 12,000-word Sports Guy column (that I lose interest in quite quickly).

    It pains me to see this in Outside the Lines, one of the last great stops for true sports journalism. I would love to hear a good explanation for that mistake.
     
  3. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    Finally finished it. Some thoughts...

    1. "Outside the Lines" is essentially the umbrella that E-Ticket stories were folded into. So when you say things about "the falling standards of OTL" it's really the falling standards of what used to be E-Ticket, not really the television show we've all grown to love.

    2. This was, in so many ways, atrocious. I wanted to like it. I read some of the comments on this thread before reading the piece, and thought "I bet I'll be able to find some stuff in it that I enjoy. I love long pieces." I was wrong. Even as a Red Sox fan, I could barely feign interest near the end. It needed to be trimmed by half, and possibly 2/3rds. It read like fan rant on a Sox message board that gets 10,000 atta boys from other Sox fans who simply skimmed it. Easily one of the most unfocused 9,000-word features/essays I've ever read.

    3. I understand exactly why it ran at the length that it did. If you were an editor, and this landed on your desk, where would you even begin? If you tried to take a red pen to this, you'd end up looking like Umma Thurman in "Kill Bill" (perhaps an appropriate movie title) there would be so much red. I can only imagine the frustrated thought process: "The guy on my website -- who has a huge ego, gets a huge paycheck, and has has shown he is massively insecure when it comes to some of his writing -- wants to show the world how awesome he is? Well, here you go, Bill. Want to include footnotes that aren't funny, insightful and distract from the piece? Aw screw it, why not? I can't make sense out of this warble."

    4. The Footnotes. They may be, as jgmacg pointed out, a tribute to the late, great DFW, although Bill has used them in the past. I believe he said that he used them in his book, however, because he liked that Chuck Klosterman and Wallace used them, so this is really a tribute to Klosterman paying tribute to David Foster Wallace. Which is bizarre. Kind of like Hootie and the Blowfish covering "All Along The Watchtower." I want to give ESPN.com editors some free advice here, just in case they're listening. These could have worked, but they made the story more difficult to read by forcing you to scroll down, read them, then scroll back up to read the story, ad infinitum. A better way to do this? Run the footnotes on the side. Footnotes work in books because you can glace down, read them, then glance back up. You could have done that if the footnotes were on the side, in the margins, but not when you had to scroll down (sometimes nearly 1,000 words) read them, then scroll back up. Even better? Get some kind of flash technology (the same thing that shows up when you hold the cursor over the quote button and a bubble pops up that says "Insert Quote") that brings up the footnote. And then disappears. Without ever clicking you away from the main page.

    5. I think Bill has real value, and even though I have some issues with some of his bitterness, I enjoy reading many of his stories/columns. But I really would like to see him get a little more discipline and focus. I think it's hard to get any better when you have an army of sycophants telling you how great you are. The man clearly wants, desperately, to be a writer of some regard. That matters to him. I think what he fails to realize is those who let him ramble like this, while earning him more atta boys from Sox/Celtics/Patriots Nation, are doing him a disservice as a writer. He is not without some talent, but backslapping he gets from those outside the writing life has made it impossible for him to get any better. Any legitimate criticism can be brushed aside with cries of jealousy, and beat goes on.
     
  4. silentbob

    silentbob Member

    Shaggy, when you get a chance, please forward me the instruction manuel on how to write for the web. I must have missed it. Thanks.
     
  5. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    The Constitution is about 4,500 words, the Declaration around 1,500. A Bill Simmons piece can find a way to conform to some standard of brevity. It's part of maturing as a writer. Life's just too short to read this much crap about things he's already written reams about.
     
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