Ongoing Grantland issues

[dirtybird]

Didn't see this posted anywhere, might've missed it. Figured it was slightly outside the ESPN layoff topics.

http://deadspin.com/whats-going-on-with-grantlands-nfl-podcast-1737360062

Basically some pettiness all around. James Andrew Miller has done some good stuff on it as well.

 

[sgreenwell]

Barnwell wrote something for the site today, but Mays hasn't had anything on there since four days ago, so he might be done or hired by Simmons, I imagine. No podcast from either one this week, when usually, they do two or three a week. The Deadspin article or comments section also mentioned Lowe, but he has an enormous NBA preview on the site today, and did a podcast a few days ago, so that's probably where his efforts were being spent. They haven't updated the contributors section completely yet, since Rembert is still there.

Connelly has a podcast with Aaron Sorkin posted on the site today, which is roughly his third or fourth piece of content since Simmons' ouster. So, I'm not sure how tightly he's running things, or if he's transitioning into the job, or if he's simply going to be a manager as opposed to a content creator too.

 

[Steak Snabler]

Simmons is doing a TV show and a podcast. Not sure where an NFL numbers cruncher like Barnwell fits in. He's already got Cousin Sal for the degenerate NFL gambler role.

I guess he could do his own podcast under Simmons' umbrella.

 

[Alma]

Some Grantlanders are carrying on with a lack of professionalism and immaturity more befitting of Hollywood actors.

Your job's up in the air? Do the ****ing thing right anyway. That's character. You don't turn part of a podcast into some high school yearbook sendoff for departed colleagues and you don't - if that's what is actually occurring - pout in a boycott. And if you're that sour-assed over it, resign like Craggs.

Bill Simmons has taught people not as funny or as totally lucky as he is to be just as churlish as he was.

They won't reap the same rewards.

 

[Alma]

Barnwell wrote something for the site today, but Mays hasn't had anything on there since four days ago, so he might be done or hired by Simmons, I imagine. No podcast from either one this week, when usually, they do two or three a week. The Deadspin article or comments section also mentioned Lowe, but he has an enormous NBA preview on the site today, and did a podcast a few days ago, so that's probably where his efforts were being spent. They haven't updated the contributors section completely yet, since Rembert is still there.

Connelly has a podcast with Aaron Sorkin posted on the site today, which is roughly his third or fourth piece of content since Simmons' ouster. So, I'm not sure how tightly he's running things, or if he's transitioning into the job, or if he's simply going to be a manager as opposed to a content creator too.

Grantland will either wither and die entirely, or it'll clean house, try to keep the NBA writers, and otherwise start over. I don't like writing "clean house" because those are paychecks, jobs, etc, but if folks signed up to work for a man and not the giant network that signed every one of his checks and even made it possible for him to keep his Xanadu running for four years, well...go follow your John Galt out to the mountain.

 

[Della9250]

Rembert had a story up a day or two after it was announced he was leaving, for whatever that's worth

 

[jr/shotglass]

Rembert, from everything I've read, was the original one-trick pony.

 

[LanceyHoward]

Barnwell wrote something for the site today, but Mays hasn't had anything on there since four days ago, so he might be done or hired by Simmons, I imagine. No podcast from either one this week, when usually, they do two or three a week. The Deadspin article or comments section also mentioned Lowe, but he has an enormous NBA preview on the site today, and did a podcast a few days ago, so that's probably where his efforts were being spent. They haven't updated the contributors section completely yet, since Rembert is still there.

Connelly has a podcast with Aaron Sorkin posted on the site today, which is roughly his third or fourth piece of content since Simmons' ouster. So, I'm not sure how tightly he's running things, or if he's transitioning into the job, or if he's simply going to be a manager as opposed to a content creator too.

I listened to Lowe's podcast with Kevin Arnovitz and he started the segment by saying that he had been missed some podcasts. He said something like "Holy crap, what a three weeks" and then later in the show referred to the changes at Grantland. So I think his absence was related to management issues.

 

[LanceyHoward]

Grantland will either wither and die entirely, or it'll clean house, try to keep the NBA writers, and otherwise start over. I don't like writing "clean house" because those are paychecks, jobs, etc, but if folks signed up to work for a man and not the giant network that signed every one of his checks and even made it possible for him to keep his Xanadu running for four years, well...go follow your John Galt out to the mountain.

Evidently Grantland has not been profitable. I don't know if the absence of Simmons salary changes that. But my understanding is that the podcasts are very popular. It would seem to me that ESPN should be developing those. I don't think that it should be that hard to make money off the Lowe, Kerr and Mays/Barnwall podcasts to cover their salaries. I also think they should push a couple of those podcasts onto their radio network. I think the aforementioned writers all produce an hour of listening that is better than Mike and Mike or the other hosts.

I suspect that Grantland will evolve into something more focused on the most popular sports. Does a movie critic really add that much economic value? Does Pierce writing the occasional feature? I think Grantland will change just as Sports Illustrated changed from the eclectic Laguerre edited magazine of the 60's to the more focused product of the 80's.

 

[dirtybird]

Some Grantlanders are carrying on with a lack of professionalism and immaturity more befitting of Hollywood actors.

Your job's up in the air? Do the ****ing thing right anyway. That's character. You don't turn part of a podcast into some high school yearbook sendoff for departed colleagues and you don't - if that's what is actually occurring - pout in a boycott. And if you're that sour-assed over it, resign like Craggs.

Bill Simmons has taught people not as funny or as totally lucky as he is to be just as churlish as he was.

They won't reap the same rewards.

Is there any evidence of a boycott beyond Deadsping conjecture? Beyond that, why can't a podcast that's personality-driven take a few moments to say something nice about someone moving on?

 

[jr/shotglass]

Because it's not about them.

Cold? Yes. But it's not about them. Say it's a personality-driven, it's still about the subject matter.

 

[Vombatus]

Personally, I have never liked the "Grantland" branding. Good/great writing should be able to stand on its own under the ESPN brand. Grantland always sounded to me like some spinoff. And with the 538 and another section below it, Grantland looks even more so now. A sideshow.

I don't think Simmons liked it, IIRC.

I would put all those articles under a new tab, and ditch the Grantland moniker. I'm thinking "ESPNanalysis".

Or ESPNanal for short.

 

[Songbird]

Pierce wrote a pretty decent piece a day or two ago on Draft Kings and FanDuel and the continued grifting of America thru sports gambling.

 

[Steak Snabler]

Here we go again (also, Holly Anderson is angry):

 

[TyWebb]

She expanded on her precisely worded criticism:

 

[SnarkShark]

Adios

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Adios

i.e. we need more money to pay SAS and Skip to yell at each other all morning.

 

[Alma]

I enjoyed reading many parts of Grantland. I doubted, from the very beginnning, that it would last, it did not, and it could not.

Few, perhaps none, of those Grantlanders will extend much blame to Bill Simmons because they've been conditioned by him to think it's ESPN's fault, much like children wouldn't blame parents who bought a house well beyond their means and maxed our credit cards because that child had been conditioned to believe it's the bank's fault.

It's not the bank's fault, if, for no reason, that ESPN is going to honor contracts. That's the right thing to do.

As for the site itself, from the very beginning, Simmons couldn't be modest. He had to have a literary journal and McSweeney's and Pitchfork and the AV Club and Football Outsiders and a way station for novelists between books and the world's leading NBA analysis site and The Atlantic Monthly and Sports Illustrated and about 12 other things, all at once, and he made the site obese.

Really, truly, it was a hipster's buffet. Imagine one of those in food world. Full of swiss chard, monkfish, beets, pomegranites, stone-ground breads. It'd be the greatest restaurant ever to about 5% of a given city. It would also close, and someone would inevitably ask: Who the hell thought it'd be a good idea to truck in a bunch of leeks and kale?

 

[TyWebb]

Adios

Wow. I did not see that coming ... this soon. Obviously I saw it coming eventually.

 

[Alma]

She expanded on her precisely worded criticism:

Here is a person who is enormously talented using social media for one of the worst reasons. And she's right about Miller. But, of course, that's how media writers and star lovers are. That's how they've always been.

Simmons was better before social media, too. I suspect we all were.