On Wednesday, Grantland
launched their official YouTube channel.
The launch was highlighted by a feature short documentary that took a
behind the scenes look at former Iowa State and current Houston Rockets forward
Royce White. White suffers from a severe
anxiety disorder and the documentary takes an inside look at White’s emotional
rollercoaster on draft day.
Grantland is the brainchild of ESPN writer Bill Simmons and
the website launched a little over a year ago.
The success of Grantland is apparent when you look at the overall growth
since the launch and also launches of similar websites like Sports on Earth started by Joe
Posnanski in a joint venture between MLB Advanced Media and USA Today.
Personally, I think that Grantland has done some great
things for sports journalism. It showed
that longer form writing is not dead and that there is an audience for it. The conventional Internet wisdom says that
people jump around from site to site, page to page and only read short, press
release style pieces. Grantland has
proven otherwise, showing that there is a demand for quality stories with
quality writing.
The future potential of Grantland is also very interesting
and could push sports journalism in new directions. At Wimbledon this year, staff writer Brian
Phillips wrote a
series of pieces that really highlighted the Grantland mission of
storytelling and a story focus as opposed to a cut and dry approach. This series of pieces showed the potential
for big event storytelling as opposed to reporting, which could broaden the
digital landscape of sports journalism.
Although I don’t think that the YouTube channel was in
response to the launch of Sports on Earth, I do think that it fueled the fire a
bit. The short documentaries have been
in the making for a little while now after ESPN announced that the wildly successful
30 for 30 series would be extended. This
move leaves Grantland at the forefront of the storytelling side of sports
journalism with any challengers left with a big mountain to climb.
In the future, the Grantland Youtube channel will continue
to feature short documentaries and also episodes of the BS Report with Bill
Simmons. It will also be interesting to
keep an eye on the different types of content developed for the channel and
also on the site in general. With the
development of this channel along with the groundbreaking design of Patrick
Hruby’s Outside the Lines piece about Dock Ellis, innovation seems to be on
the horizon for sports journalism. It remains
to be seen what innovation will stick, but Grantland is sure to be somewhere
near the front of the pack.
Follow Kevin Rossi on Twitter @kevin_rossi.
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