Whitlock dumped from The Undefeated
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TheSportsPredictor
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No longer undefeated.
LongTimeListener
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I think Mike Wise is, though.
Dumping him from his pet project, but keeping him for other stuff sure smells like "We have a contract and don't want to get sued, so we can't outright fire him."
Songbird
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Greg pulled out his pen-knife again.
Can Jason Whitlock Save ESPN's "Black Grantland" From Himself?
Residue.
Can Jason Whitlock Save ESPN's "Black Grantland" From Himself?
Residue.
BDC99
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YankeeFan
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New York Mag on the "messy saga of ESPN's "Black Grantland":
In the ESPN solar system, the network’s Bristol, Connecticut, headquarters is the sun, which makes its Los Angeles office something like Pluto — many miles away, and its status as a planet recently up for debate. In early May, ESPN parted ways not-quite-amicably with Bill Simmons, who founded Grantland, the pop culture and sports site based out of L.A. That office is also home to the Undefeated, a not-yet-launched site meant to explore race, culture, and sports. In 2013, John Skipper, ESPN’s president, hired Jason Whitlock, a prominent and controversial sports columnist, to launch the site. Whitlock agreed, and, in a moment he would come to regret, went on Simmons’s podcast and declared that the site would be, for lack of a better descriptor, a “Black Grantland.”
It took only hours for a mock “Black Grantland” Twitter account to be created — “Our articles are 3/5ths shorter!” — but nearly two years later, the actual site still doesn’t exist. It was supposed to launch in August 2014, February 2015, sometime this May, and, most recently, June 24. In late April, as explanation, Deadspin ran a 10,000-word story titled “How Jason Whitlock is Poisoning ESPN’s 'Black Grantland,'” which detailed Whitlock’s difficulty attracting talent to the site, and the striking dysfunctions in his management of those who had joined it.
On May 26, Skipper visited the Undefeated office to check up on the site. I was supposed to go to L.A. that week, too, after ESPN and Whitlock agreed to a profile of Whitlock and his site. I was to join Whitlock at an annual Memorial Day barbecue at his mother’s house, in Indianapolis, then fly on to Los Angeles, to visit the Undefeated’s office. My flights were booked when Whitlock called from an unknown number 12 hours before my departure. Half an hour later, he had uninvited me from both trips for reasons that were off the record, but did little to convince me that others I spoke to who have worked and interacted with him, at ESPN and elsewhere, were being overly harsh in describing him as paranoid, dismissive of young writers, and difficult to work with.
Perhaps Whitlock simply saw the writing on the wall: Three weeks after that call, Skipper removed Whitlock from the site he’d been hired to create, before that site had even launched. It’s difficult to say exactly why ESPN let Whitlock go. (Both sides declined to comment on the record for this story.) The Deadspin article was read throughout Bristol, but several people at the company said the problems had been well-known for some time. ESPN has so far insisted that both of its L.A. outposts have bright futures, though the trajectories of both are less clear without their founders at the helm. The Undefeated’s aborted lift-off is instructive in understanding both the difficulty of the task at hand — a massive sports media organization creating a website examining the most pressing social issue of the day — and the precarious position of such “affinity sites,” including Grantland and Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, in the ESPN universe.
Jason Whitlock and the Saga of ‘Black Grantland’ -- NYMag
In the ESPN solar system, the network’s Bristol, Connecticut, headquarters is the sun, which makes its Los Angeles office something like Pluto — many miles away, and its status as a planet recently up for debate. In early May, ESPN parted ways not-quite-amicably with Bill Simmons, who founded Grantland, the pop culture and sports site based out of L.A. That office is also home to the Undefeated, a not-yet-launched site meant to explore race, culture, and sports. In 2013, John Skipper, ESPN’s president, hired Jason Whitlock, a prominent and controversial sports columnist, to launch the site. Whitlock agreed, and, in a moment he would come to regret, went on Simmons’s podcast and declared that the site would be, for lack of a better descriptor, a “Black Grantland.”
It took only hours for a mock “Black Grantland” Twitter account to be created — “Our articles are 3/5ths shorter!” — but nearly two years later, the actual site still doesn’t exist. It was supposed to launch in August 2014, February 2015, sometime this May, and, most recently, June 24. In late April, as explanation, Deadspin ran a 10,000-word story titled “How Jason Whitlock is Poisoning ESPN’s 'Black Grantland,'” which detailed Whitlock’s difficulty attracting talent to the site, and the striking dysfunctions in his management of those who had joined it.
On May 26, Skipper visited the Undefeated office to check up on the site. I was supposed to go to L.A. that week, too, after ESPN and Whitlock agreed to a profile of Whitlock and his site. I was to join Whitlock at an annual Memorial Day barbecue at his mother’s house, in Indianapolis, then fly on to Los Angeles, to visit the Undefeated’s office. My flights were booked when Whitlock called from an unknown number 12 hours before my departure. Half an hour later, he had uninvited me from both trips for reasons that were off the record, but did little to convince me that others I spoke to who have worked and interacted with him, at ESPN and elsewhere, were being overly harsh in describing him as paranoid, dismissive of young writers, and difficult to work with.
Perhaps Whitlock simply saw the writing on the wall: Three weeks after that call, Skipper removed Whitlock from the site he’d been hired to create, before that site had even launched. It’s difficult to say exactly why ESPN let Whitlock go. (Both sides declined to comment on the record for this story.) The Deadspin article was read throughout Bristol, but several people at the company said the problems had been well-known for some time. ESPN has so far insisted that both of its L.A. outposts have bright futures, though the trajectories of both are less clear without their founders at the helm. The Undefeated’s aborted lift-off is instructive in understanding both the difficulty of the task at hand — a massive sports media organization creating a website examining the most pressing social issue of the day — and the precarious position of such “affinity sites,” including Grantland and Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, in the ESPN universe.
Jason Whitlock and the Saga of ‘Black Grantland’ -- NYMag
Songbird
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Howard Bryant.
Every other story will be seen through the lens of tennis. Just kidding.
Good luck there, Howie.
ESPN Wants Howard Bryant To Reboot "Black Grantland"
Every other story will be seen through the lens of tennis. Just kidding.
Good luck there, Howie.
ESPN Wants Howard Bryant To Reboot "Black Grantland"
NotMikeLupica
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That's not a bad idea. Then, finally, the ESPN The Magazine's back page column will return to sports and not be about "post-Ferguson America."
PaperClip529
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Bryant confirms on Twitter that he's joining the website, and announced that the likes of Jemele Hill, Michael Smith, LZ Granderson and Bomani Jones will contribute in the future. This website might have a prayer. Man, people must have hated the thought of working with Whitlock if those names are only jumping aboard now.
Just the facts ma am
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You haven't been able to find a African-American writer from the main ESPN web page for some time now. Bring back Page 2, lol.
1. I think hate might be the wrong word. Wary. Paranoid, mercurial people make me wary, too. Hard to trust em.
2. Bomani Joned intrigues me the most out of that lot, but he also may be an infrequent contributor.
HappyCurmudgeon
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Nah, hate is quite the accurate word in this case. Flat-out refusal is another way of putting it.
The fact that Bryant is coming on and was able to secure those commitments immediately isn't coincidental.
Why do they hate him? On the behalf of others who worked under him? His worldview?
I don't know Whitlock, but judging from his interactions with me and others here (when he was here) and having read what he's written and what others have written and said about him, I sure have the impression that Jason Whitlock would be in the running for worst boss to work for of all time.
HappyCurmudgeon
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I think he has issues with people disagreeing with him moreso than the opposite. The Undefeated, in his mind, was built to execute his opinions and his views. So the writers had to be in-line with his thinking. Clearly someone line LZ Granderson isn't going to agree with him on much so why would he write under his banner?
From a managerial standpoint I've never gotten the impression he understands how to treat people in general and especially women and given that he's pretty open about his enjoyment of strip clubs that doesn't shock me.
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