Looking for the Next Bill Simmons
Jason Fry |
April 12, 2010 8:01 a.m.
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Oberjuerge took a tour of Yahoo, CBSSportsline and SI hoping to find another writer from the ranks of the “all-around, every-topic-is-game, 5,000-word-plus essayists.” But he found mostly sport-specific beat writers and bloggers. So where, he asked, are Simmons’ competitors?
It’s a good question, and Oberjuerge has an interesting take on the possible reasons why. His theory, briefly restated, is that the collapse of print has throttled potential competitors’ development. The up-and-coming guys who should have spent recent years honing their craft at suburban papers until they were ready to make the leap to the next level don’t exist, and the surviving print guys are entrenched folks who loathe the Web.
From a print perspective there’s some truth to that. But as a Web guy, I’d ask a different question. Looking at the makeup of most mainstream sports Web sites, the better question might be, “How did we even get one Bill Simmons?” And my answer would be that we got lucky.
Actually, we got really lucky – because I think there is indeed another writer who fits what Oberjuerge is looking for. Like Simmons, Joe Posnanski has an enormous following, covers the waterfront, is startlingly prolific, and writes frequent long-form pieces. (His blog is subtitled “Curiously Long Posts”.) And Posnanski essentially followed the blueprint Oberjuerge sets forth: He’s a newspaper veteran who embraced the Web as a place where he could write as often as he liked at whatever length he liked. Simmons, on the other hand, essentially invented himself on the Web after trying the conventional print route and feeling like he was spinning his wheels.
Which brings me to what I think is the heart of what Oberjuerge is grappling with.
Look at the rosters of writers at the Web’s top sports destinations and you’ll see that very few of them have Web pedigrees. Whether it’s the sites Oberjuerge mentions, or Fanhouse, or the rest of ESPN, or the new ESPN Locals, the ranks of both writers and editors are thick with print veterans.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I’ve always insisted that great storytelling is great storytelling, regardless of the medium, and those sites have shook off a lot of print’s strictures. Most everybody now tweets and files in real-time, there are print writers who’ve become excellent curators (Buster Olney springs to mind), and there’s plenty of smart business sense on display. But whether in print or on the Web, the columns produced by print veterans mostly hew to print forms — the “800-word from-the-mountaintop declamations” Oberjuerge mentions. Given the print pedigrees you find everywhere, that’s not surprising – it’s the playbook most everyone at those shops internalized long ago.
But that isn’t Simmons’ tradition. Where his peers are mostly print writers who have traded ink for pixels without changing much else, he’s a pure Web guy. (I always thought Simmons’ ESPN the Magazine columns felt curiously abridged, like they ended when he was just getting rolling.) Simmons is often written about as if he’s synonymous with either ESPN or Web sports, but he’s essentially unique within both those worlds. If he were starting out today, I bet Simmons would feel just as blocked and frustrated trying to break into the established Web-sports firmament as he was trying to make his mark at the Boston Herald and the Phoenix.
So if you want to look for the next Simmons, you need to look outside the established order of the mainstream Web and print media, because for now they’re essentially the same.
Oberjuerge says he imagines there are big-picture Web guys out there, “not getting paid, living off Ramen and churning out stuff.” And I’m sure that’s true — but the nature of the Web and building a Web audience encourages people to work on a smaller canvas than that.
Yes, there are national sports sites for which any topic is game – Deadspin comes to mind, and it and the sites it inspired have brought a number of writers big audiences and book deals. But that’s a very hard recipe to follow. A better way to succeed is to find a niche – and general sports commentary is the opposite of that. Moreover, today’s trends in Web applications, advertising and traffic measurement all center around the strongly local: Instead of going for big numbers and an amorphous audience that visits occasionally, the drive is to find a smaller audience that visits a lot and desires a true connection.
So it’s no surprise that most sports bloggers begin with far more local interests and ambitions, and attract far more local audiences. But some of them are quite successful nonetheless: Oberjuerge describes the up-and-comers as “buried and lost,” but I think a lot of sports bloggers would find that puzzling. They’re making names for themselves and having a ball covering just the Big East or the Mets or Tim Tebow or walk-off wins. (And recall that this was Simmons’ original recipe: He began as the Boston Sports Guy, and his detractors often harp on his Boston loyalties.)
There will be more sports columnists who are prolific generalists. There will be columnists who take to the Web and happily escape the 800-word confines of the print tradition. But until the leaders of mainstream Web sports sites come from the Web, print writing models will predominate, and up-and-comers will find those doors just as closed as Simmons did. Meanwhile, those up-and-comers will be learning to be successful — and may find they’re perfectly happy – as the Bill Simmons of smaller realms.
Jason Fry is a freelance writer and media consultant in Brooklyn, N.Y. He spent more than 12 years at The Wall Street Journal Online, serving as a writer, columnist, editor and projects guy. While at WSJ.com he edited and co-wrote The Daily Fix, a daily roundup of the best sportswriting online. He blogs about the Mets at Faith and Fear in Flushing, and about the newspaper industry at Reinventing the Newsroom. Write to him at jason.fry@gmail.com, visit him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter.
As one of the ‘buried and lost’ guys you reference, I do feel that Simmons had two distinct advantages over today’s writers. First, he was ahead of the curve, writing in the early 2000′s when there were much fewer sites, so even though he started somewhat niche (i.e. Boston) he also had limited competition – there weren’t 40 sites out there covering the same thing. Second I think the consumers of sports writing has changed a little. For readers that only had papers and magazines, Simmons’ writing was a natural extension. It seems like the keys to readership today is speed. People don’t want to read a long form article that really looks at a issue, they want the news immediately and they want something short and to the point. His third advantage that separated him from other writers is his non-paper background. He writes from a fan’s perspective, not a journalist’s ‘in the clubhouse’ perspective which is something that could only evolve on the direct to consumer web. Will there be another one? The question is whether espn.com’s competitors are looking for one. Would sites want other long form commentators when deadspin writes one sentence jokes and links to news stories?
I agree, Jason, that niche sportswriting on the web is where it’s at. I don’t think we need another Simmons, but I do think it would nice if every major sports city had its own Simmons – someone who writes personally and (mostly) thoughtfully on what it’s like to be a fan in that city.
I think that was Simmons’ greatest strength in his Boston years — he was able to so accurately capture the essence of how it felt to be a Boston sports fan that he really was able to take on an authoritative voice. I hate all things Boston sports, but as I read “Now I Can Die in Peace,” I kept thinking, ‘I wish somebody would write book in this style about one of my sports teams.’
As it is, I’m left to determine the mood and ethos of Packer/Brewer fandom by absorbing the aggregate of bunches of blog posts and comments. I think there’s a niche for a gifted writer who could connect that ethos to a single fan’s experience. From what little I’ve seen, this is kind of the style of what you do at Faith and Fear — I’d like to see more elsewhere.
Read Simmons’ Augusta column. It’s pretty bland and boring; not anywhere near his best. But the first point he unloads on is the fact that Augusta doesn’t cater to his need for total access.
And that is the key to Simmons’ success and the reason why there are no other Simmons-like success stories.
Simmons, as the other commenter pointed out, was in at the very beginning of the internet. And the internet is a democratic entity. It’s a leveler. Everyone has access to any bit of information. It makes things equal. But not at first. Simmons got in on the ground floor and built an audience. Now he’s the pied piper of the ‘common sports fan’.
Meanwhile, with the internet a part of everyday life, the common sports fan could just as easily wax poetic on a blog about all sorts of sports topics just like Simmons, or perhaps even better than Simmons. But with everyone trying to have their voice heard, it’s impossible to discern a quality note among the cacophony. I mean if you really wanted to find the next Simmons you’d have to sort through all the debris of people trying to write at that level but failing. Sure, the newspaper industry was flawed, but at least it sorted out the people who couldn’t write from those that could.
The internet doesn’t do that. With the internet, great writing simply exists in the ether next to all the bad writing.
I had a blog once. But I stopped doing because it didn’t matter whether I did a good job or a bad job, because writing on the internet and hoping to be the next Bill Simmons is no job at all. I’m not saying I was as good as Simmons or good at all. But my point is that the next Bill Simmons is probably tending bar (which Simmons used to do) and updating a blog that no one reads.
Thanks folks for reading and commenting — it’s much appreciated.
Dave, to be clear, the “buried and lost” phrasing was Oberjuerge’s, not mine. I do think the point you and Trey both make is a good one: Simmons did have a lot less competition when he started writing, and so was able to build an audience and stand out more quickly. Re Deadspin, you might like the work Tommy Craggs and Pat Jordan have done over there recently. (Craggs’ evisceration of Joe Morgan is one of my all-time favorite sports stories.)
I also agree that writing from the fan’s perspective has always been a part of Simmons’ appeal — but that tradition really goes back at least to Roger Angell, who has always walked the tricky line between clear-eyed observer and rabid fan pretty well. Angell is certainly the inspiration for what I try to do as half of Faith and Fear — many thanks for bringing up that work, Mark! (I shall now be struck by lightning for even mentioning myself in the same sentence as Angell.)
Trey, I have to disagree with you about the cacophony — I think that’s more an artifact of search than what people read and link to.
I agree Simmons did have something of a first-person advantage, but I really do think the cream rises over time online and the good stuff gets found, linked and paid more attention to. It does take a frustratingly long time to get rolling, though — it was about a year of pushing the stone uphill before my other blog, Reinventing the Newsroom, started to get some momentum.
Anyway, thanks everybody for your thoughts….
i’m a fan of simmons, not a big fan, but i did read a lot of what he wrote.
I always thought this guy was Simmons-like:
http://flagsflyforever.blogspot.com/2011/12/offseasonchristmas-manifesto.html
I’m 18 years old and have grown up loving and reading every word of Simmons’ 6000 word columns. Reading his work inspired me so much that i created my own sports blog, hindsightsports.com. I am begining to pursue my dreams of one day becoming a Simmons-esque online sports columnist.