Life of Reilly: The rise, fall and rise again

Simmons never had that much to say in the first place and his podcast is the very definition of middlebrow pudding.

 

He's also the guy who (maybe) said, "Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."

It was hard work for Red Smith to be that good - just as it was hard work for Jim Murray to be that good, just as it was hard work for Rick Reilly to be that good. It's hard work to be good.

And it gets much harder as you get older. Most writers age out over time. (Murray and Smith were rarities. Smith didn't even start at the NYT until he was 66 years old.)

But some guys get old overnight.

Reilly was one of these, I think. And he got got caught in the gears of a huge cultural change, too. He was one of the internet's early targets - Deadspin arrived in 2005; Reilly made the jump to ESPN in 2008 - and that made it all worse for him.

Anyway, 30 years at the top of your field is a pretty good run.

A nice goodbye to Red Smith here:

A WRITER CALLED RED SMITH

 

There is this laughable idea that Smith and Royko turned in gems every day for 30 years. Man, is it ever untrue. You remember the great ones because they were anthologized or cut out and stuffed in a drawer, but on a daily basis, they wrote a ton of throwaway trash.

 

I don't think so.

He's been writing books; raising a family.

And there is no single platform today as high-profile as SI was in the years you're talking about.

 

I liked Rushin when he was telling nice stories.

Didn't care much for an entire back page of wordplay week after week.

 

I thought the quote was "... wait for drops of blood to form on your forehead."

 

Rob King, who is black, putting Jemele Hill and Michael Smith on SC as the first black duo is not a coincidence.

 

Harder for writers who really know how to make a piece great and desire that every time.

Easier for longform writers/eassyists in general. They've popped up everywhere. The quality of the work overall has declined, as has discernment for what is good work. It's in the depth and breadth of the reporting, not the prettiness of the words.

 

SC6 was a blip compared to the excesses of Grantland. It was like cracking open a 1980s literary magazine, fitted with a superficial millennial lens. What it was, was hilarious, in that sense, because I damn well know a lot of those pieces got painfully low reads - embarrassingly low, in some cases - and the operation was functioning as a writer-in-residency, more or less. Who the hell reads "The Month in the New York Times Wedding Section" at ESPN?

 

So they intentionally put two black people together?

It's an outrage!

 

Um, yeah, the intention is what makes it an agenda, no? I didn't say it was an outrage.

 

What's the agenda when they have two white people anchoring together? Which is like 95% of the time?