Grantland revisited

Last year, ESPN announced that in an effort to cut costs it would be disbanding Grantland, a creative long-form journalistic outlet. While the website certainly didn’t garner the same sort of traffic that ESPN’s traditional mediums—television and online—did, it represented the entity’s most earnest efforts at real journalism: true reporting on true stories. It infused creativity, wit and sincerity into its work and soon after its inception became widely regarded as the best place to read about sports and pop culture.

Unsurprisingly, that didn’t fit in with ESPN’s business plan. At face value, this was because it didn’t generate enough revenue. However, a more than cursory look at the situation revealed a fractious relationship between the company and website creator, Bill Simmons, and more importantly, an inability to generate controversy. Grantland was not a place for pundits to pout, click bait to rouse, and anonymous commenters to assault one another. It was a place for people to read thoughtful, often funny, criticism about relevant topics. It’s a lot harder to sell ads that way, and so Grantland got the axe.

There was no shortage of mourning for the website. Yet, a year after Grantland’s abrupt end one thing has remained constant: ESPN’s viewership and profits are declining. Needless to say, several factors are driving this. Over the past decade, ESPN has aggressively pursued exclusive broadcasting rights to major sporting events and leagues, dishing out massive contracts that have struggled to break even. Similarly, the rise of online streaming services has pried users away from traditional cable subscriptions and, subsequently, ESPN.

However, the death of Grantland and the outrage it sparked lends credence to the idea that sports news consumers are—finally—fed up with the product that ESPN pushes. It’s a product characterized by the unsubstantiated ravings of pundits like Stephen A. Smith, a personality the network pays more than $3 million a year for, and that brands its Sportscenter anchors as influencers rather than reporters. It’s a product that, in my opinion, takes its job as entertainer a little too seriously, at the expense of the quality, well-reasoned content.

Grantland was antithetical to that production, and throwing it in the trashcan left a poor taste in the mouths of consumers who are forced to sit through a breakdown of Lebron’s wardrobe rather than watch his highlights. Bill Simmons has had no qualms with attacking his former network, stating early and often that the network cared far more about its ability to generate controversy than its obligation to inform and (appropriately) entertain. More recently, Simmons has been signed by HBO, a widely respected creative outlet whose own streaming service is one of the many that threatens ESPN. In addition to video projects with HBO, Simmons recently announced that he will be launching a new website, The Ringer, with many of the same writers and editors that served on Grantland.

Though stuck in the context of sports journalism, I think that Simmons’ triumph here is emblematic of the public’s growing frustration with American media. Buzzfeed may be proof that listicles full of puppies and click bait headlines aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but the rejection of ESPN’s attempt to charade controversy as news indicates that the value for substance hasn’t gone anywhere. The tradeoff between ESPN’s viewership and the death of Grantland is almost assuredly not equal, but the company’s blatant prioritization of profitability led it to cut off one of its most valuable appendages. Grantland was an outlet that people respected, and when the site’s parent company chose not to recognize that respect they undermined their own credibility as a journalistic organization.

This issue resonates on a much larger level. More than enough has been written about Donald Trump, and that fact alone illustrates why the media has failed in its coverage of this election. Trump is walking controversy; any headline, tweet or photo relating to his latest sound bite will undoubtedly generate traffic. However, coverage of him rarely proves to inform and almost never advances an increasingly important discourse regarding this year’s electoral landscape. Mass media may be a business, but there is an ethical element to journalism that should never be left neglected. Fueling primetime with talking heads, catchy hashtags and controversy is a disingenuous way to cover the news.

Grantland’s spiritual successor, The Ringer, is unlikely to loosen ESPN’s all-encompassing grip on sports media. However, it may continue to illustrate cracks in a business model married to the generation and perpetuation of controversy. That business may generate more clicks, but there’s only so much hot air you can stuff into one balloon.