[tonystubblebine]

I'm in your boat and was pretty disappointed by the initial incarnation of The Ringer.

I heard Bill say on a podcast that he had a different theory about where media had gone. It was faster, mobile and more immediate.

So the initial implementation of The Ringer seemed like short, trite pieces produced quickly. Like you'd get a dumb Game of Thrones piece within 15 minutes of an episode airing.

Thankfully, they seem to have backed off and gone back to long form, loving fan pieces with obscure links and embeds. For example, this Donald Glover piece: https://theringer.com/you-have-to-take-donald-glover-serious...

TLDR; I'm curious what you think of the more recent Ringer stuff. Because to me, it's so much better and is exactly why I loved the old Grantland.

[aaron-lebo]

Thanks for linking to this.

I too loved Grantland and have been disappointed with Simmons' more recent efforts, but this is good. And Atlanta is fantastic.

[tonystubblebine]

Thanks! Yeah, a lot of the new Ringer stuff has been great. The Simmons model of content written by true fans is a great model. The low quality version of that doesn't work. But they seem to have figured it out and new posts have been much higher quality.

[Touche]

One thing that Simmons has never figured out is that just because someone shares your interest for football doesn't mean they share your interest for mafia movies.

Instead of making 1 site (or 1 show) that is a grab-bag of various things-that-Bill-Simmons-likes, why not have several niche sites that cover different topics?

I can't read The Ringer because I don't want to get movie reviews from the same place I get NBA game breakdowns.

Also, the ratio of joke articles to serious articles is all wrong. It should be 1 joke article for every 10 serious articles, at least.

[Doctor_Fegg]

Slight tangent, but this is why I stopped reading The Verge. Their editorial product went from tech to tech + sci-fi + American pop music + cars. Which I guess is great for a large subset of their readers, but alienates those of us who read contemporary fiction, listen to classical music, and ride bikes.

(By contrast, the one print newspaper I still buy, the (UK) Observer, does all of the above and more.)

[xrd]

I think this is interesting because I actually am fascinated by a great writer like Simmons, who is one of the last honest sportswriters. I'm curious about his other tastes because I view him as an authentic cultural critic. But I do wonder if I'm in the minority or you are with that opinion! Good comment.

[Touche]

I see Simmons as a fan with a platform. That's what I like about him, he's unabashedly a fan. I don't mind when he makes references to pop culture and other things he likes, but I mostly read/listen to him for his take on sports.

So when some other person writes on his website that "SoundCloud Comments Are the Only Good Comments", I just don't care about that. At all.

[bearcobra]

Do you think the problem is the site navigation? I subscribe to a couple of newspapers and it doesn't bother me at all that I get both movie reviews and financial news from something like the NY Times. I generally have found this to be true with the Ringer as well. The fact that I found a movie review to be insightful drives me to read more of the sports coverage because it carries a similar expectation of quality.

[Touche]

Yes, navigation is a big part of it. Currently for sports the nav lists NFL and NBA. That's all. I know the site covers more sports than that, I've read the articles. There's a college basketball podcast, an MLB podcast. But there's no "Baseball" section to the website.

Fixing the nav would help but it wouldn't be enough if 50% of articles are humorous.

[douche]

I'll have to start checking it more frequently. It even appears that Bill has actually started writing again. Maybe there'll even be a mailbag again someday...