ESPN issued a press release on Thursday regarding the new website Bill Simmons has been working on the past 18 months. The site will be named Grantland.com in honor of sportswriter Grantland Rice and it will launch in June. Dan Fierman, Lane Brown, and Jay Caspian Kang will be editors, while Chuck Klosterman, Malcolm Gladwell, and Dave Eggers will be contributing editors. Contributing writers will be Michael Weinreb, Katie Baker, Molly Lambert, Chris Ryan, Robert Mays III, Bill Barnwell, and Patrice Evans.
As for the goal of the site, Simmons says “my No. 1 goal was to figure out how to capture the spirit and creativity of 30 for 30 and transfer it to a website. We wanted original voices, and we found a bunch of them already. We’re going to take chances, come up with a few premises and ideas that you haven’t seen before, and be consistently entertaining day after day. You will never know what to expect when you come to the site – in a good way. That’s our ultimate goal.”
Well, I’ve loved the 30 for 30 documentaries and I know many other people have, so if they’re able to capture the spirit and creativity of those pieces, the site should be a winner. Just by being a Bill Simmons production, it should have instant popularity and credibility. My guess is the site will be a success.
