Phillips' Phocus: Grantland's end begs for demanding consumers

These are troubling times in the media world. That much was made clear last week when ESPN announced it was shutting down Grantland, the sports and pop culture longform baby of the exiled Bill Simmons. Now five months removed from The Boston Sports Guy’s departure, Grantland – the stepson ESPN never wanted – is gone too. “After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise,” ESPN said in a statement. “Grantland distinguished itself with quality writing, smart ideas, original thinking and fun.” I think one of the few problems with Grantland is that not enough people knew what it was; a result of ESPN rarely acknowledging its existence – beyond that contradicting press release – over the last four years. As Simmons has said before, it always seemed as if the World- wide Leader wanted the site to fail.

Which is a shame, because the content Grantland churned out on a day-to-day basis was thoughtful, intelligent, humorous and, if nothing else, unique in the way it went about its storytelling. Yes, the length of what was written was often extensive, but word counts should not matter when the writing is captivating and informative.