The Simmons Site

Sorry, but the burger analogy is phony populism. People don't eat at McDonalds because it's good. They eat there because it's convenient. Ever eat at a five star restaurant in New York or Paris? The food actually is better. Any place that cares about the ingredients and cares about the individual way it's put together actually is better that the burger joint that works as a paint-by-numbers operation. If people don't want that, if they're in too much of a hurry, they'll go somewhere else. The burger argument here seems to be that, because McDonalds is the most popular burger in the world, Grantland better be McDonalds. It had better be exactly like everything else. But also be different.

Flowery prose is not, by definition, tripe or navelgazing. There is a reason certain works have stood the test of time, and it's not because a bunch of eggheads got together in a room and said "This makes me feel smart, and it will make others feel small." The quality of the prose -- and how it resonates with the reader -- is what defines its success or failure. It's pretty dangerous territory to sit and try to decide what the Everyman Burger Lover wants. I got an email from a cousin last night, a 24-year-old kid who I certainly wouldn't consider an intellectual, and he spent 10 paragraphs talking about how stoked he was about Grantland, and how great it was. And even he doesn't represent his demo, it's not as if ESPN.com is going away. The front page of that site (which I guess is the closest thing to McDonalds in this analogy) is still thriving and doing well. No one says, especially on the web, you can only eat at one restaurant.

 

Klosterman made some great points about watching live TV sports vs. tapes in today's piece. REALLY good points.

The one which got me to thinking the most was that we'll probably never be able to watch a truly memorable happening on DVD without already knowing about it, because today's social media simply won't allow it.

 

Agreed- that was a good column. I liked this part:

1. The removal of commercials erodes drama: If I record a sporting event, there's no way I'm sitting through the commercials. That would be like volunteering for a DUI. One of the central pleasures of self-recorded TV is eliminating our forced exposure to advertising. Yet this is probably an error, at least when consuming sports. It's during those moments when nothing is happening that the drama of a game becomes most palpable; this is why static sports like baseball and golf generally feel more gut-wrenching than fluid sports like soccer and hockey. By purposefully skipping all the game breaks, I'm inadvertently skipping the gaps that manufacture tension. I should probably just sit through every commercial and let the tension build. But I'll never do that, because that would make me an idiot.

Funny to read on a site who's business model is based on advertising. Certainly not what the advertisers want to hear.

 

Klosterman's essay today was good. Classic Klosterman.

Despite his reporter background, he's just better at the off-the-cuff essay than actual reporting.

 

When was the last time a "24 year old " was considered a kid?

If he liked Grantland, you should direct him to ESPN PG2. He will really love that.

 

Is that any less pathetic than coming on this site every other day to cheerlead for my friends- leading discussions about the same three or four writers? When you won't even stand up for yourself in this business yet spend almost every free minute shining somebody else's reputation, that's really sad.

 

Bullet meet bone.

 

As someone who generally watches recorded sports or, at the least, a DVR delay, that piece was exceptionally good.

So is the model that once the stories fall off the page, you can't go back and find them? Someone here noted a piece by John Walsh but I can't seem to find it. Same goes for Dave Eggers, who I think is the best writer of our generation.

 

I don't think anyone denies that Grantland is potentially a very good idea (Simmons' strength is big ideas). Whether the execution makes the good idea something I like reading on a regular basis is of course still up for grabs. The site will succeed in attracting an audience, at first anyway. ESPN has the marketer's ideal customer base -- people who like things because ESPN tells them to.
Really, if I ran a sports media company, I'd hire Simmons to a massive salary, give him a big office and tell him to come up with ideas for projects, which he'd then be largely responsible for implementing. This of course would make it necessary for me to forbid him to publish in our operation, because he's too valuable to me to waste his time in that way.

 

+2.

 

Embarrassed to say that I never heard of or read anything Dave Eggers has written.

This little passage from Mr Destructo has certainly peaked my interest:

* — In related news, Dave Eggers will also write for the site, just in case you were worried that you didn't know what Dave Eggers was worried about Dave Eggers doing next. But the worry is probably ironic — or not: perhaps his biggest worry is the uncertainty that his worry is genuine, and not a self-reflexive worry about how one behaves... like, it's actually a primal worry whose power is being overwhelmed by the social-procedural worry we adopt as a normative function of making ourselves vulnerably accessible to others. If there's a way to highlight the preceding sentence and increase the font size on your iPad, do so, then get up to get a refill at whatever Barnes & Noble café you're in. You are now special, and other people can see that.

 

You guys do understand the point from Piotr is sarcastic, right? He's never been one to shy away from going after a sacred cow.