The Simmons Site

Heh. You know my point.

 

Let me rephrase.

If it's not godawful - which I think most people, lay or expert, can discern - it will be deemed great for its mere existence and name-dropping factor. As in "well, Dave Eggers wrote it, so it must be good." It may; he's certainly been great, IMO, before. It may not be.

But Simmons has a way of impressing upon ESPN and by proxy his audience, "don't you <i>dare</i> tell me it's not great or I'll walk. I'll quit." His quotes in the NYT profile say as much. He's discouraged before the very launch, which is to say his rear end hasn't been kissed enough and other folks have bent over backward enough for his liking. Simmons is that person.

 

Aside from the personalities or sports content, it will be interesting to see how it fares as a venue for long-form writing, which was traditionally not fared well on the web. But that may be changing with greater penetration of tablets, etc., which have at least led to less use of the "click for more" problem.

 

Yes, that makes good sense. I agree with that.

 

Only 18:40:50 to go!

18:40:49

18:40:48

18:40:47

etc.

 

There's a couple of teaser stories up right now.

 

On the Grantland page? I believe those are the preview stories everyone has been making fun of.

 

I feel like, regardless of how you feel about Simmons or Molly Lambert's bad puns, we should all be rooting for this thing to succeed.

People keep saying "I don't know why anyone thinks there will be an audience for long-form narrative" but I'm not sure why the presumption is it will be nothing but long-form. It's a place where someone who has found a formula that works on-line has a lot of input into content. He might be pissed at newspapers for not recognizing his talents, but shit, I can relate. Newspapers are terrified to take risks. The Herald was stupid to not figure out a better way to use Simmons.

I think, even if the road is rocky and the tallons come out at every mistake, the thing is going to be really good in time. I'll flat out admit I'd practically kill someone to work there. I don't care if that makes me seem less cool to admit that.

I've probably come full circle on Simmons over the years. I love his stuff when it debuted, grew weary of some of it and joined the chorus here probably a few too many times, and now I feel like he's someone who created something while I sat around bitching and grumbling about the future of The Writing Game.

Will it be perfect? I'm certain it won't. But what is?

I'm too young, really, to have fond memories about the National. This is The National of my generation. For the first time in forever, we have someone on the creative side making decisons for a major launch. The corporate side of things may stick its nose in a bit more than Bill would like, but where isn't that true? Right now he has the suction (to use a term from The Wire) and I'm glad he's using it. And I'm going to root for it every step of the way, even as I hold it to high standards as a reader.

 

You're hired! [/sorrycouldnthelpit]

 

Bill ? Oh My .

All Simmons has done is make fun of traditional journalism and now you want to sell out and work for him.

Stay true to yourself and your principles DD.

Too bad AOL came unraveled. That was well on it's way to becoming the new National .

 

I still have high hopes for Patch.com. They've acquired quite a roster.

It's not a talented roster, but its a lot deeper than Grantland's.

 

ESPN is relying on Simmons' ability to direct traffic to the site. It is not relying on him to make exquisite editorial decisions. You have to understand the concept of 'editorial direction' to administer it.

But I share DDown's desire that this works, for one reason: Every time our book editors/agents tell us, 'Hey, great idea, but it's not a book, maybe it's a magazine piece'....and we say, 'oh sure, lots of places want 30,000 words'....maybe now this becomes the viable option, a really good Plan B. Maybe B+, depending on the $. If nothing else, there's hope for great stories that might not otherwise see the light of day.

Disagree with the National analogy, except that it goes in the category of Innovation With Challenges. The National had a bad business model; Grantland may have the same fate. I hope not.