Sunday, November 01, 2015

Goodbye Grantland

Once Bill Simmons and ESPN parted in such ugly fashion, you knew it was only a matter of time before Grantland was closed down.  Sure enough, after a respectable six-month wait period, the axe finally fell on the big G on Friday, though apparently it came with so little warning that pretty much all of the staff heard the news via Twitter.

It's an unfortunate ending to a site that I've visited virtually every day for the last four years.  Obviously the lure of "Bill Simmons' new site" got me in the door, but what kept me there was the sheer volume of talent on board.  Consider that Simmons himself wrote (maybe) one column a week and a few podcasts...the other 98% of content was generated by an incredible staff of writers that produced loads of quality material.  My "other people's writing" blog feature has been more or less a "here's what I really liked on Grantland last month" highlight reel for years.  In its heyday, the site was cranking out multiple long-form articles about a wide range of topics every DAY, all of which were worth reading and ranged from very good to instantly-forward-to-your-friends great. 

My internet reading time has been literally just about cut in half.  What am I going to do?  Spend less time on the computer?  Go outside?  Talk to people?!  The mind boggles.

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