i think there are slight tone differences between GQ, Esquire and Grantland, but i think they're all coming from a similar place
― Mordy, Friday, 27 April 2012 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
I read it fairly often during Oscar time. Mark Harris is terrific.
This. Harris is my favorite Oscar blogger.
― jungleous butterflies strange birds (Eric H.), Friday, 27 April 2012 15:50 (twelve years ago) link
grantland doesnt seem to have any editorial mission other than lets make something cool which inevitably turns out not that cool
― lag∞n, Friday, 27 April 2012 15:51 (twelve years ago) link
I do love sabby pruti nerding out on basketball plays tho
its p funny how they just keep hiring everyone in the world(blogs)
― lag∞n, Friday, 27 April 2012 15:52 (twelve years ago) link
simmons is sometimes good on the nba sometimes incoherent always v schticky, i like molly lambert tho I havent read her that much at grantland idk why
― lag∞n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:00 (twelve years ago) link
grantland is a dumb name and grantland rice was a horrible monster
― lag∞n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:01 (twelve years ago) link
yeah my familiarity with this site is minimal but the whole look of it and the name and everything, it seems almost deliberately bland, kind of surprised it is seemingly fairly successful. i guess they just hire traffic-driving types like carles?
― ✧✧✧✧✧✧@are.forever (some dude), Friday, 27 April 2012 16:03 (twelve years ago) link
well it's backed by ESPN and has a number of famous writers on it
― you can expect punches, kicks and even worse (frogbs), Friday, 27 April 2012 16:10 (twelve years ago) link
bill simmons is the most popular sports writer in the country is prob the main hook
― lag∞n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:11 (twelve years ago) link
linked to all the time by espn prob doesnt hurt
― lag∞n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:12 (twelve years ago) link
oh ok it's a sports thing
― ✧✧✧✧✧✧@are.forever (some dude), Friday, 27 April 2012 16:12 (twelve years ago) link
i thoguht it was just doing a worse job of being gawker-lite than the awl or something
― ✧✧✧✧✧✧@are.forever (some dude), Friday, 27 April 2012 16:13 (twelve years ago) link
its jarring to see ESPN.com have taglines like "Chuck Klostermann just came home from seeing Creed and Nickelback...on the same night!? *turntable scratch*
― you can expect punches, kicks and even worse (frogbs), Friday, 27 April 2012 16:13 (twelve years ago) link
yeah i imagine the pop culture stuff is a fractional part of their traffic
― lag∞n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:14 (twelve years ago) link
lol the OP of this thread
― J0rdan S., Friday, 27 April 2012 16:15 (twelve years ago) link
grantland........ i still read simmons religiously and chris ryan's EPL stuff is great, and keri is pretty good tho i think he made more sense on fangraphs
the pop culture stuff, i'm not quite sure if they've really found their voice yet, tho i recognize that the target audience is still, like, two decades older than me
― J0rdan S., Friday, 27 April 2012 16:16 (twelve years ago) link
i feel like their target audience is *grasps blindly at straws, lights money on fire*
― lag∞n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:18 (twelve years ago) link
also they seem at the backend of the news cycle on a lot of pop culture stuff, but i'm not sure how important that is -- also it sorta seems like aside from tv recaps they're aiming for "you're a 45 year old trying to retain coolness, here's all the stuff you missed today that other people have been flogging for the last six hours"
― J0rdan S., Friday, 27 April 2012 16:18 (twelve years ago) link
which i'm sure there's a market for... just not for me
there's a pretty cutting edge piece on their front page right now about how nicki minaj's "starships" is newsflash not a good song
― ✧✧✧✧✧✧@are.forever (some dude), Friday, 27 April 2012 16:19 (twelve years ago) link
also i think i've picked up a lot of purposeful non-investment in the tone of their music writing, which again is prob not "important" but kinda gets at me
― J0rdan S., Friday, 27 April 2012 16:20 (twelve years ago) link
long thread but important
bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL
― am0n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:25 (twelve years ago) link
also here's his sports version of "adele_plump_female_musicians_sex.php"
http://deadspin.com/5878436/tennis-players-bill-simmons-would-do-another-classic-from-the-secret-sports-guy-vault
― am0n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:29 (twelve years ago) link
also also worst thread title ban NYCNative
― am0n, Friday, 27 April 2012 16:31 (twelve years ago) link
Charles P. Pierce's articles are good (because he's a good writer who hopefully is getting paid wheelbarrows of cash by ESPN to slum)Jonah Keri's 'The 30' weekly baseball round-up is also good
you could set the rest of the blog on fire, the wonder and amazement they have at the audacity of covering omg reality tv is fucking horrible
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, 27 April 2012 18:03 (twelve years ago) link
oh also barnwell on football is solid
― J0rdan S., Friday, 27 April 2012 18:05 (twelve years ago) link
Simmons idolizing Malcolm Gladwell probably tells the uninitiated everything they need to know.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, 27 April 2012 18:08 (twelve years ago) link
pretty much agree with the general consensus on this thread that the pop culture stuff is mostly bad, but the sports writing has occasional gems. i really liked colson whitehead on the poker tournament, and i enjoy the wrestling pieces though admittedly i know nothing at all about wrestling.
― congratulations (n/a), Friday, 27 April 2012 18:12 (twelve years ago) link
pretty much off topic except that it's sports writing, but i read this recently and it is pretty much the best piece of non-fiction i've ever read about poker:http://www.amazon.com/Positively-Fifth-Street-Murderers-Cheetahs/dp/0374236488
i highly recommend
― Mordy, Friday, 27 April 2012 18:20 (twelve years ago) link
yeah that's considered a classic. i think i have it at my parents house somewhere
― dharunravir (k3vin k.), Friday, 27 April 2012 18:22 (twelve years ago) link
also it sorta seems like aside from tv recaps they're aiming for "you're a 45 year old trying to retain coolness, here's all the stuff you missed today that other people have been flogging for the last six hours"
Somehow this description of it made me realize I am OK with being in Grantland's target demo. And realizing that me passive-aggressively saying I'm OK with that means I've been there for years already.
― jungleous butterflies strange birds (Eric H.), Friday, 27 April 2012 18:23 (twelve years ago) link
I guess I didn't really know this was Jonah Keri's outlet now.
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Friday, 27 April 2012 18:26 (twelve years ago) link
Grantland is brimming with NBA playoff excitement. You may have already noticed.
?????
― you can expect punches, kicks and even worse (frogbs), Friday, 27 April 2012 21:00 (twelve years ago) link
this is the only thing i've seen on grantland worth reading
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7789978/a-racetrack-killing-history-organized-crime-hot-springs-arkansas
― am0n, Friday, 27 April 2012 21:05 (twelve years ago) link
Grantland is great for me because it allows me to a) catch up with cable shows that I can't be bothered downloading but get bought up in polite conversation amongst hipster circles in my part of the world and b) sometimes read some non-retarded writing about North American sport.
― Clive "The Chip" Crinkly (King Boy Pato), Friday, 27 April 2012 23:05 (twelve years ago) link
all of their articles are too long
― polyphonic, Friday, 27 April 2012 23:25 (twelve years ago) link
this is one of the best non-specialist pieces abt stan lee i've ever read:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7906504/the-surprisingly-complicated-legacy-marvel-comics-legend-stan-lee
― pat rice memorial barbecue (Ward Fowler), Friday, 11 May 2012 13:52 (twelve years ago) link
the Greg Oden piece is really good and IMO exactly the sort of thing this site *should* be doing
― frogbs, Friday, 11 May 2012 13:59 (twelve years ago) link
I like this site, even though I find Simmons really annoying, unless he is talking about any team in the NBA except the Celtics.
Charles Pierce is excellent.
― One Way Ticket on the 1277 Express (Bill Magill), Friday, 11 May 2012 14:14 (twelve years ago) link
imo the site has like a 40/60 hit/miss ratio which really isn't all that bad. i do think they've assembled a pretty good stable of writers. the pop culture stuff seems to be kinda bland but it's not offensive which is probably half the battle.
― call all destroyer, Friday, 11 May 2012 14:15 (twelve years ago) link
They are at least trying to be relatively intelligent. Most of ESPN content, on all of its platforms, is written/produced by morons, for morons, so to see at least an attempt at being smart is somewhat refreshing.
― One Way Ticket on the 1277 Express (Bill Magill), Friday, 11 May 2012 14:18 (twelve years ago) link
it's certainly better than it was! the character pieces are definitely good, especially the Amarillo Slim one
― frogbs, Friday, 11 May 2012 14:19 (twelve years ago) link
i really wish this wasn't the kind of thing molly lambert wrote for grantland:
http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/59116/tabloids
― Mordy, Thursday, 4 October 2012 21:15 (eleven years ago) link
What is an example of something she has written that isn't a complete waste of time.
― pun lovin criminal (polyphonic), Thursday, 4 October 2012 21:34 (eleven years ago) link
i like her stuff from thisrecording.com:
http://thisrecording.com/today/tag/molly-lambert
― Mordy, Thursday, 4 October 2012 21:53 (eleven years ago) link
would much rather read about sweet celeb gossip than some stupid bullshit about telephone poles
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, 4 October 2012 22:02 (eleven years ago) link
http://ll-media.tmz.com/2012/01/26/0126-leo-erin-heatherton-zip-line-launch-ex-1.jpg
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, 4 October 2012 22:04 (eleven years ago) link
i find the celeb gossip stuff really boring and i don't even get that she's doing anything interesting w/ it? idk, celeb gossip is maybe a cultural blind spot for me and maybe there are grantland readers that are like, "thank god molly lambert is finally breaking down gossip in a compelling + vital way, this was much more important than when she was writing critical theory about gender identity." seems like a waste to me.
― Mordy, Thursday, 4 October 2012 22:14 (eleven years ago) link
mordy totally otm grantland wastes the great molly lambert :(
― horseshoe, Friday, 5 October 2012 01:59 (eleven years ago) link
"It’s testament to a phenomenon that’s far broader than Grantland, and for which the site bears little blame: the rise of the sports snob, the guy who just can’t believe that someone could think something so dumb."
I think this dude hasn't hung around a lot of sports fans because this is not a remotely new phenomenon particularly with baseball.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Monday, 2 November 2015 21:26 (eight years ago) link
zach lowe, on his most recent couple podcasts kept referring to grantland as "a website that still exists" right up until Friday's entry.
fairly certain he's going to land somewhere, his being one of the strongest hoops minds out producing work right now, i just hope it comes soon
― INTOXICATING LIQUORS (art), Monday, 2 November 2015 21:30 (eight years ago) link
completely disagree with the passage on bill barnwell. barnwell vs received wisdom is where he is valuable. freddie casually switches from talking generally to talking specifically about other football journalism in particular but he is ignoring the high volume churn of tv pregame guys, commentators, talking heads, internet commenters - those are the collective loudest volume opinion on football and they're dense with dumb epigrams and misguided cliches that could do with being dismantled. and he's being generous to the main body of football journalism anyhow; he's misunderstanding his own (apparently limited) experience for universal experience. anyway, it's when barnwell is putting original ideas forward rather than rebutting wrong ones that he stumbles the most.
― Roberto Spiralli, Monday, 2 November 2015 21:50 (eight years ago) link
I'm think I'm mostly going to miss Shea Serrano. Like Mike Tanier when he got booted from Sports On Earth, I can't see him landing much of anywhere that he can do what he does best - hip hop, R&B, bad movies and sports, all at the same time - unless maybe he winds up at Deadspin. I could still pretend I'm boggled why Tanier didn't end up at Deadspin except for the fact they already have Magary doing their weekly NFL thing, and Serrano going to Deadspin also seems redundant somehow but maybe not. SBNation, I hope, but then what happens to all the rapper quad charts?
Rembert Browne and Brian Phillips are also really important to me but the idea that they don't end up doing great things somewhere else just seems absurd. Phillips in particular seems like he could anywhere, I just worry that nobody else will ever let him do this: http://grantland.com/features/sumo-wrestling-tokyo-japan-hakuho-yukio-mishima-novelist-seppuku/
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 01:27 (eight years ago) link
On the sports side, I'm curious what Jonah Keri's ESPN reportage will look like. I don't think he's going to slot in well as a hot take artist who can drop in at Mike & Mike.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 01:34 (eight years ago) link
I never listened to it, but I loved both Emily Yoshida and Molly Lambert from the "Girls in Hoodies" podcast, and that there was a "Girls in Hoodies" podcast to offset the "Men In Blazers," etc. Yoshida going to The Verge made me sad.
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 01:39 (eight years ago) link
Oh shit, what's going to happen to Jason Concepcion's "Ask The Maester" weeklies?
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 01:43 (eight years ago) link
literally the only 2 articles this site ever ran than were memorable to me were the action bronson one and the gunplay one, maybe also that dude who was so hilariously far off-tm abt true detective season 1
― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 01:51 (eight years ago) link
basically every grantland writer will get hired to to do exactly what they were doing at grantland, if they want. this will be good for their readers but less good for the writers because only a few of them will be able to make espn money outside of espn. the sports writers will just ported over to big box espn.
― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 3 November 2015 01:52 (eight years ago) link
Jason Conception must be pissed about cancelling his dothraki classes
― panettone for the painfully alone (mayor jingleberries), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 01:53 (eight years ago) link
that freddie post is interesting in its assessment of cultural criticism but it's completely insane to me that while writing about a publication that died because of finances he's unable to connect the economic reality of cultural criticism to what he calls "upper middlebrow" i.e. if a publication that did an entire week's worth of cross-platform content on paul thomas anderson couldn't survive then the last thing that publication needs to do is dedicate those resources to wong kar wai
― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 3 November 2015 01:59 (eight years ago) link
Yeah, and neither seems a sound strategy if views and making money is your goal.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 02:02 (eight years ago) link
Jordan I wish that was true and I'm on the other side of the business from you so what do I know really, but seriously, the chances Jason Concepcion gets to do all these things: http://grantland.com/contributors/jason-concepcion/ (keep hitting 'more') seem basically nil. The piece where Jason and Rafe Bartholomew went to go witness the Filipino basketball scene together isn't going to happen anywhere else, and I loved that one.
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 02:09 (eight years ago) link
If you read Grantland for the sports coverage, then yes, many of those writers will probably get to do the same stuff somewhere else, but we're missing them doing any of the other stuff they got to do, which to me was the main draw of the site. I didn't ever care that much for the straight coverage of major league sports, I cared about when they went sideways into unfamiliar territory or got to approach the major sports from angles that only worked in the context of that particular playground.
Again, like Sports on Earth before it got all serious and boring. At least the Dissolve just elected to die quietly instead of turning into a strict review site.
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 02:14 (eight years ago) link
kind of agree, amidst the middlebrow grantland also ran some pretty offbeat stuff. i wasn't a big reader of their features but was re-reading that weird existential sumo story they did yesterday, not sure where else anyone will get to do that.
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 02:43 (eight years ago) link
Yup.
IMO, the Brian Phillips travel pieces are about as close to John McPhee's old school best as we get.One could argue that kind of journalism has been superseded by television expedition stuff like Top Gear specials, Parts Unknown and Dirty Jobs, but only one of those three things is still going and who knows how long Bourdain wants to keep that up. For me, prose always wins out, but now we know it can't ever sell ads like teevee, and that just spells bad news for history.
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 04:01 (eight years ago) link
fdb is terrible and stupid as usual, his commentary revealing his own anxieties more than any actual truths
But there’s also a profound distrust of any art that’s cast as stuffy, or elitist. Opera, ballet and experimental theater are all routinely derided for their supposed elitism, even as they struggle to merely survive in a brutal financial landscape for the arts.
yes those roving bands on miscreants laughing about opera and ballet heavens.
Not Merzbow, but Chvrches. Not The Paris Review, but The Atlantic.
who will speak for the paris review i ask you, who who.
I’ve found his work difficult to enjoy, for a simple reason: essentially everything he writes is written against some other opinion or attitude.
physician, heal thy etc
Grantland writers looked out from the very center of trendy, hip, knowing opinion and spoke as if they were speaking from the margins.
did i just say "physician" already? crap
In the era of the Internet, our opinions often feel like what we are, like we have no self aside from our opinions. And what better way to define a self than by contrasting it with all the selves it’s not?
yep, more of the same. dude can't read the back of a cereal box without somehow feeling like its putting him on the spot for not fitting in with its cultural construction of individual consumptive desire or something.
― big WHOIS aka the nameserver (s.clover), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 04:45 (eight years ago) link
http://observer.com/2015/11/why-we-should-mourn-and-cheer-grantlands-demise/
I didn't read their film coverage enough to weigh in on this:
Grantland was the epicenter of this cult of the upper-middlebrow. In a well-crafted (if somewhat overwrought) eulogy of Grantland for The New Republic, Alex Shephard and Mark Krotov highlight the site’s Paul Thomas Anderson Week, a multimedia, cross-site event that brought a tremendous amount of firepower to examining the filmmaker in every way imaginable. The event produced a lot of incisive commentary, and with its combination of various media and diversity of lenses, demonstrated the huge potential of web-native publishing. But it’s worth noting that Grantland on PT Anderson was an impossibly perfect combination of subject and venue. Mr. Anderson, an incredibly gifted filmmaker, occupies the upper-middlebrow perfectly, making movies that are labeled “indie” but which are treated like an event by our press, the kind of movie you usually take in at a specialty cinema but which aren’t impossible to find at the multiplex. Again, this isn’t a critical judgment of Anderson’s work, which is fantastic, but a recognition of a certain sweet spot in our culture industries that signify good taste without inviting accusations of pretension. It’s hard to imagine Grantland devoting a week to Lars von Trier, let alone Wong Kar-Wai
― curmudgeon, Monday, November 2, 2015 3:58 PM (7 hours ago)
grantland was pure middlebrow, like probably exactly what dwight mcdonald had in mind when he used the term
― k3vin k., Tuesday, 3 November 2015 05:02 (eight years ago) link
Yes those Charlie Pierce and Wesley Morris pieces were pure middlebrow
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 05:06 (eight years ago) link
The sports blogger Tom Hitchner wrote recently about the tendency of sports commentators to find random, dumb, uninfluential opinions to dispute, even when those opinions are held by almost no one, simply to represent themselves as the wiser and cooler party. Too often, writers at Grantland played into this tendency, engaging in verbal eye-rolling about the idiocy of those who might disagree with them rather than just making their case.
I think this is OTM about a broader trend but I wouldn't pin it on Grantland. I feel like Freddie is very sharp on how online discourse works but I always have to filter out his various tedious bugbears about popular culture.
― impossible raver (Re-Make/Re-Model), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 09:42 (eight years ago) link
@BenLindbergh Haven't told my parents about Grantland, because 1)I like that someone still thinks it exists and 2)I'm testing how irregularly they read me
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 3 November 2015 15:42 (eight years ago) link
NYC event
http://www.gelfmagazine.com/gelflog/archives/nov_23_grantland_appreciation_night.php
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 11 November 2015 17:07 (eight years ago) link
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-second-coming-mtv-news/
not sure if we have a beefs thread for this but the breathless praise for grantland at the start of this piece just reminds me how weird it is that there were grantland readers who actually thought the non-sports stuff was the good part of grantland
― k3vin k., Saturday, 3 December 2016 22:33 (seven years ago) link
wes morris was actually good, rembert was fun. i would actually occasionally read it whereas now the only non-sports stuff i'll even look at on the ringer is serrano or concepcion in funny blogpost about some hbo show mode, every other non-sports writer i react to the sight of their byline the way i did to steve hyden's on grantland. the sports writing isn't as good at the ringer either though it's fine enough, i still check in. i think in a weird way the ringer misses a jonathan abrams than a lowe or barnwell; like they're still doing something like the analysis lowe and barnwell brought but the really solid features abrams could turn out they don't really even seem to attempt. even if #longform doesn't generate the clicks and was responsible for the worst moment grantland had, it's still the kind of brand building thing that can give a patina of 'quality' that can make ppl think they're smart to love/read a sight even if they really go there to find out what character on game of thrones j.r. smith is. it is kinda funny that the sports writers i really enjoyed at grantland stayed at espn and the ones i kinda loathed ended up at si.
― balls, Sunday, 4 December 2016 01:05 (seven years ago) link
I very much miss the Grantland versions of Rembert, Brian Phillips, Emily Yoshida and Molly Lambert.
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 4 December 2016 06:16 (seven years ago) link
<3 katie bakes but it seems like a struggle
― mookieproof, Sunday, 4 December 2016 06:23 (seven years ago) link
how weird it is that there were grantland readers who actually thought the non-sports stuff was the good part of grantland
yeah sorry folks but the fact that ppl read this stuff makes me think they live in an alternative dimension where there are 48 hours in a day or something
― a but (brimstead), Sunday, 4 December 2016 19:33 (seven years ago) link
got what a shitty hypocritical post. sorry
― a but (brimstead), Sunday, 4 December 2016 19:34 (seven years ago) link
― k3vin k.,
I read Morris and Mark Harris all the time.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 4 December 2016 19:36 (seven years ago) link
Rembert Browne's recaps of Designated Survivor almost make me want to start watching the show
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 10 December 2016 00:24 (seven years ago) link
the recent simmons-jalen podcast has some fun inside stuff on the early grantland days and how jalen got started
― k3vin k., Friday, 26 January 2018 22:40 (six years ago) link
the simmons/jalen relationship is super heartwarming btw, very clear they are close buds and care about each other. basically everyone who’s worked with bill says he’s a great guy it seems
― k3vin k., Friday, 26 January 2018 22:41 (six years ago) link
i loved that pod. jalen is a good personality. i listen to jalen and Jacoby on occasion. hilarious that jalen basically stalked bill as a fanboy.
― fgti spinner (Spottie), Friday, 26 January 2018 22:57 (six years ago) link
Former Grantland and SI.com writer Jonah Keri sentenced to 21 months for domestic abuse.
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/disgraced-montreal-sports-writer-jonah-keri-sentenced-to-21-months-for-domestic-abuse-charges-1.5831494
― Mr. Snrub, Wednesday, 23 March 2022 20:00 (two years ago) link