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ESPN suspends publication of Grantland ‘effective immediately’

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Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

ESPN will no longer publish any of Grantland’s outstanding content.

In an official statement, the sports media giant communicated this news without a real explanation as to why Grantland is no longer going going to be published through ESPN, other than a general “we’re going in a different direction” spiel.

“Effective immediately we are suspending the publication of Grantland.  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.”

In many ways, this divorce was bound to happen.

As most are likely aware, Bill Simmons started Grantland, and he is no longer in the good graces of ESPN. In fact, he’s been quite outspoken about how ESPN didn’t ever promote Grantland the way he expected the site to be promoted, even before he left the company.

Then, four Grantland staff members left in mid-October to join Simmons at HBO, signaling the doom of the website.

The official statement released by ESPN on Friday notes the company will still continue to promote long-form story-telling, which was the hallmark of Grantland’s excellent content.

“Despite this change, the legacy of smart long-form sports story-telling and innovative short form video content will continue, finding a home on many of our other ESPN platforms.”

It will be interesting to see how things shake out, both for Grantland and ESPN. James Andrew Miller reports all Grantland writers will have their contracts honored, and he says the intent is to use them on other ESPN platforms.

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