The Simmons Site

Obituary
Grantland.com

After a brief, tragic fight for life, Grantland.com died Sunday.

The website was 12 days old.

Its creator, Bill Simmons, said that with Boston finally becoming titletown with all four major professional sports franchises having won championships in the past decade, it was better to go out on top then limp along a shell of its previous non-winning self.

"I just thought it was time," Simmons said. "I had conceived the site, I had brought the site to life and it was my baby, but I thought with the Bruins winning and that dick Jones writing that Boston sucked. I was done. I pulled the plug."

But even that remains in doubt.

"It seems that someone at ESPN made a colossal mistake," said one source in the web industry. "It appears that despite being a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, no one at Disney/ESPN had bothered cutting a $75 check to maintain the web registration."

The site had recently been buffeted by criticism from the Poynter Institute, a group that quite frankly needs something better to do.

Fans of the site, where long-form narrative journalism had been given a home on the web, were disappointed in Grantland.com's short life.

"I mean where else can I read about Elaine's closing," asked one. When told that at least three other sites and even that asshole over at Deadspin had weighed in the legendary bar's closing. "Well, fuck."

Others decided to dance on Grantland.com's undug grave as Bill Dwyer, with the L.A. Times, has already assigned top columnist and noted ESPN hater T.J. Simers to flay the website's efforts.

Funeral arrangements are pending. A wake is scheduled to be held at, well it won't be at Elaine's, but at that other bar in New York where writers hang out. If you don't know which, then aren't really a writer anyway.

 

Exceedingly well played.

 

Shit, I thought he was being serious.

 

My god, that Blake Lively column was horrific. All I really care about is pop culture, and that column had no point, even for pop culture.

I'm sad for Molly Lambert.

 

If someone expects me to read past a non-satiric use of the word "tits," he or she is horribly mistaken.

 

Hey, I used tits in a lede once!

 

Go on ...

 

don't most women

 

Are you saying women lead with their tits?

 

"The Podunk Panthers' season went tits-up Thursday ..."

 

This quote from the Poynter review....

...is bugging the hell out of me.

Is there a REASON to juxtapose sports and pop culture? Other than doubling your content, do the two genres (if that's the right word here) really work together? To me, it feels very forced and disjointed, like throwing a handful peanuts in with the jelly beans because someone thought it would be cool.

 

I think the assumption is people who watch sports on TV, also watch the tube for other things.

And people who watch HBO might also watch sports.

By not being a strictly sports site, and including pop culture, it can increase the audience and also be more attractive for advertisers.

You can now cue buzzwords like "vertical silos" and "multi-platform integration" now.

The downfall could be that lots of places are doing pop culture and lots of places do sports. Merging them together doesn't mean it is going to be a happy marriage.