Simmons feature

Story did not catch my interest till this little passage :

“I like the post-assassination Jackie,” Simmons said during a Kennedy riff one recent afternoon in Los Angeles. “She was superhot.”

Very Classy Bill .

I marvel at the guy's ability to remember things from a young age. He was born in 1969. Assassination took place in '63.

 

Oh, come on Boom. I can say James Dean was hot, and I wasn't alive.

There are these things called photos?

 

Wow, nitpicky much? Irrelevant.

The profile didn't tell me anything I already knew, which qualifies it as a waste of time. But I like Simmons. I respect what he's done. He's a premier sportswriter, not a journalist or a reporter, which he's never claimed to be.

He is what he is, and at the moment what he's built is pretty impressive.

 

For one thing, sports is not exactly the NYT's wheelhouse.

Look, a significant percentage of us wonder what the hell happened to America, to journalism, to people. Is it that hard to accept that Simmons is wildly popular because he reframes absolutely everything into his own very specific paradigm?

This is the future. There will never be another Simmons, because in the future, there will be a Simmons for every major metro locale. It's a wonder there isn't a Simmons for the LA Lakers already -- talk about a crowd just dying for their own Simmons. A Lakers-focused Simmons would be worth many millions a year.

 

Completely and entirely disagree. While the Times does not operate in the same way as traditional metros, it has great sports coverage and fantastic sports writers. The writer of this piece was not a sports writer. Richard Sandomir might not have offered the same magazine-y stylings, but he would have done a much better job.

 

It's a good thing he got out of the beat-writing business with ledes like this ...

http://blogs.bostonmagazine.com/boston_daily/2011/06/06/bill-simmonss-humble-beginnings-yup-this-is-our-writer/

 

It's less cringe-worthy that Simmons wrote it than that his editor allowed it to be published.

 

Agreed.

 

I actually think Simmons is a much much more creative sportswriting entrepreneur and editor than he is a writer. He has ideas and executes them very well and most of all, is still coming up with ideas. Day to day columnizing, I think he hit the wall (it's there for everybody, me, too) a few years ago.
A majority of readers, of course, always have and always will stick with a writer they first liked no matter how stale said writer gets. That's why popularity is A test of writing merit, not THE test.

 

Such bullshit that writers are expected to work hard and earn things like a column. Totally unfair.

 

Also, I'm curious as to how working for peanuts as an independent then AOL.com local writer was so much better.

 

Herald should post all of his old articles again. They own them, so why not? The hits would be great. Could even convince Grantland.com to be a primary advertiser, probably.