ESPN shuts down "Grantland"

So these writers aren't getting anymore grants from ESPN?

 

You mean being paid to do a job?

 

Is getting paid for a job you were hired to do considered a grant these days?

 

Very few reasons to click on ESPN these days.

 

I thought that's why it was called that

 

Not surprising after Simmons left I figured It was just a matter of time. It's unfortunate tho because Grantland is my favorite website besides clutchfans... I hope that Jalen and Jacoby and Cheap Heat can still record episodes

 

From my understanding it wasn't making money. Too bad, it was great content

 

Welp, ESPN is officially dead to me.

 

Very, very disappointing. I've probably read at least one piece on Grantland every day since it launched.

It just goes to show that it's tough out there for smart sports writing. A vast majority of sports consumers would rather just watch First Take or read incredibly thin front page content from ESPN.com than read things like what Grantland was creating.

Sports fans, and in particular, sports writers, of a certain age go out of their way to talk about how great The National was during its brief run. I now wonder if, 30 years from now, I'll be the guy telling everyone about how great Grantland was.

What makes this situation worse is that it doesn't appear that there are any real winners here. ESPN handled Grantland poorly from the minute they parted ways with Bill Simmons. Greg Bryant of Deadspin is reporting that the staff was told over a conference call this afternoon that ESPN was suspending Grantland, but I know from following people like Michael Baumann on Twitter that some people (probably the freelancers) found out about it on Twitter.

Then, on the other hand, Simmons seems to have had a hand in expediting the writers he claimed to care so much about into this type of uncertainty. According to the Bryant piece, the defections of four Grantland editors to Simmons's new venture last month was the true beginning of the end for the site, and worse yet, Simmons told those four that a condition of employment with this venture was that they couldn't give ESPN any advance notice that they were leaving, so as to maximize the damage to Grantland. Former Grantland writer Holly Anderson has also used Twitter to subtweet about her displeasure with Simmons leaking information to Jim Miller, who has been reporting about Grantland's demise for Vanity Fair.

 

They pulled the plug on Grantland before "Black Grantland"?

 

I think ESPNs inability to monetize Grantland was due to their own incompetence and not the lack of a market for what Grantland offered. Look how fast Simmons got a lucrative offer after leaving ESPN. I am sure Lowe would too. That's because there is a large market for what those guys can create, and smart companies like HBO know it. It is giant companies like Disney in which creative minds get wasted , because their sheer size allows them to remain viable and to profit without staying innovatige, efficient and smart.

The problem with our society, and the reason things like Grantland are the exception and not the rule, is that massive bureaucratic companies like the Disney conglomerate control a huge amount of the wealth and functioning of our entire society.

 

Loved grantland. ESPN sucks

 

Get Simmons to re-hire all those guys, make a site called "Slamland" and do the same thing, except there's a daily running collaborative feature making fun of all the stupid **** espn does.

 

ESPN just killed off the one ounce of respectable content they put out.

 

How about we get rid of the FiveThirtyEight crap? I don't go to ESPN to read about Jeb freakin' Bush. Get outta here with that ish. Give me more Grantland, not less. Best content in ESPN.

 

What? There's always relevant, solid news, like the latest Johnny Football trainwreck, whatever NBA player the Kardashians are ruining that day, which people hooked up from fan comments, or the weekly NFL domestic abuse report. Life changing stuff.

 

I like FiveThirtyEight, I just don't get why ESPN had any involvment outside of their sports content. They started out as a politcal site analyzing the stastical odds of elections based on various polls.

 

I always thought having FiveThirtyEight as a sub-section of Grantland (similar to The Triangle and Hollywood Prospectus), as was originally planned, would have been the best way to involve them. Then again, I suppose it worked out, because FiveThirtyEight has been allowed to survive, and it seems unlikely that ESPN would have spun them off into their own site if they had started out under Grantland's wing.

I think we'll learn more about ESPN's long-term affinity for FiveThirtyEight after the 2016 election is over. Given that we're just about to enter the period of time when interest in presidential politics is highest, it doesn't make a lot of sense to cut bait now.

 

ESPN blows