Grantland so far

Yup. Good idea. Poor execution.

 

Right. Where's the memories from the LA Times of Jim Murray and company? Mark Heisler could probably write a great piece on those days, and he seems to be available for freelance work.

How about the Washington Post of the George Solomon-Shirley Povich era, when they were giving women and minorities (and plenty of white men, too) breaks at a never-before-seen rate? Jane Leavy has written for Grantland; I believe she's a Solomon hire.

I'd even love one on The Kansas City Star of about five-to-10 years ago, even. Think about how many writers (Wright Thompson, Joe Posnanski, Jason Whitlock, Jeff Passan, Jason King, Elizabeth Merrill, Sam Mellinger, etc.) have gone on to national renown from that desk. Conveniently, three of those writers I just mentioned happen to work for ESPN already!

Another good one would be the days when Red Smith, Dave Anderson, George Vecsey and Ira Berkow made up the prime of "Sports of the (New York) Times."

Or the days of the real Tribune-Sun Times battles in Chicago.

But yes, playthrough, Simmons is just paying tribute to the newspaper he grew up with, which happened to have a great sports section. There's a clear Boston (and, to a lesser degree, New York) slant on Grantland.

 

I don't know. I think it was more of a personal story of how Nell
Scovell got into journalism.

She seems fairly accomplised to not have to write a proxy story for Simmons.

Really liked her Will Mcdonough part.

 

Good to see another Wright Thompson food review.

 

Sullivan and Will McD . . . the Irish screwing the Irish . . .

Too funny.

 

That's pronounced "faddah." ;D

 

It is pretty clearly a regional site.

That became obvious when the AL East was assigned a "correspondent" and the rest of the divisions might as well have been consigned to the independent leagues.

 

I think the Grantland quarterly for $48 is a great deal. Four copies of a specially bound and laid-out collection of the site's columns for $12 each? That'll give me 10X the price in enjoyment. Just make sure you don't order it with USPS shipping. That adds $38 to the price. FedEx shipping added $0. Mistake? Don't know, don't care, as long as I get my books!

 

Emailed customer service about the $38 charge to get it reversed. They did. They said my ZIP code was dropped out of their mailing system so the charge was added, even though it shouldn't be. So if you order it, make sure you don't get charged shipping.

 

It's pretty hard for a sports site to become a go-to entity when it takes off the entire bowl week for vacation.