Grantland Filter July 27, 2011 8:41 PM   Subscribe

With less than 2 months under it's belt... Grantland.com has been featured on the blue 14 times... is this product placement? Is this unprecedented? Do users of Grantland not get the concept of RSS feeds?

... and not a single person has used the sarcastic "Grantland Filter" phrase
posted by matimer to Etiquette/Policy at 8:41 PM (72 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

Is the content interesting?
posted by Lemurrhea at 8:44 PM on July 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


It's hit or miss.
posted by oddman at 8:49 PM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


No.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:49 PM on July 27, 2011


No. Not really. Some do, some don't.
posted by donnagirl at 8:59 PM on July 27, 2011


It's just a natural result of the fact that Grantland runs fewer stories on police brutality than any other site.
posted by koeselitz at 9:02 PM on July 27, 2011 [14 favorites]


IS THIS WHERE WE POST OUR FAVORITE GRANTLAND THREADS??
posted by ericost at 9:02 PM on July 27, 2011


Strikes up The Anvil Chorus.
posted by unliteral at 9:04 PM on July 27, 2011


I never heard of Grantland before this MeTa thread. Pepsi Grey?
posted by grouse at 9:08 PM on July 27, 2011 [9 favorites]


OMG! I never knew about this site before I read about it here on the Gray. The first thing I saw was this article on STATIS PRO baseball and its awesome statistical greatness. In 1983 I replayed the entire 82 Cardinals' world championship season using issues of Sporting News I had kept from the previous summer when getting the neighbor's mail wanting to make sure I was using realistic lineups. I keep telling my kids that these computer games are just arcade diversions and that the best hardcore stats-based games are a thing of the past. Sure they roll their eyes, but one of my kids has the highest VORP and MLV in the high school league here, and my other has the lowest WHIP and ERA. Not that I use the stats just to give them the best positions and lineup spots -- it is demonstrable proof that they are superior as the data shows and as soon as I can find the instructions I am going to make a STATIS PRO card set and have their team take on the 82 Cards.

So based on one evening of reading, I also say that the frequent appearances of greatland.com is just proof that it is an awesome web site and we should expect even more postings and rather than complain maybe we should start a project to create some metrics showing the relative power of web sites appearing on the blue and calculating a value over replacement site (VORS) so that complaints like this can be dismissed using evidence from data on the blue.
posted by cgk at 9:09 PM on July 27, 2011 [5 favorites]


Link please?
posted by cjorgensen at 9:11 PM on July 27, 2011


CNN just reported that example.com acquired Grantland.com
posted by babbyʼ); Drop table users; -- at 9:15 PM on July 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


I think if you check out my posting history, you can at least rule out spam as the motivating factor behind my post today. I'd never heard of the guy or the site; a friend who loves classic rock and good writing sent me the link, and (unprecedented for me) I enjoyed it immensely, and thought "finally, something on the web I actually *want* to share with other people."

I searched for klosterman's name and only got four hits, and the grandland.com url didn't return all that much from search. I had been assuming the site was his own "look-at-me-I-can-write" site, not some kind of epic thing. So sorry if I added to the oversaturation, but at least it came from a place of sincerity.
posted by davejay at 9:16 PM on July 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


Methinks the davejay doth protest too much.
posted by ericost at 9:19 PM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


The Klostermann post is only good for the Edgar Winter video. The article itself is crap, but the page does have the video embedded. The choice to link to the blog or youtube is the poster's.
posted by Ardiril at 9:23 PM on July 27, 2011


Methinks the davejay doth protest too much.
posted by ericost at 9:19 PM


Nice try, ericost. What have you got to hide???
posted by babbyʼ); Drop table users; -- at 9:25 PM on July 27, 2011


I just ran away from home
Now I'm going to post Grantland
I just crashed my car again
Now I'm going to post Grantland
I just robbed a grocery store
Now I'm going to post Grantland
I just flipped off President George
Now I'm going to post Grantland (x2)
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:26 PM on July 27, 2011 [4 favorites]


I didn't notice this, but any site that has a 'Klosterman' tag is good for me. It looks like I linked to it because it ran an article on LA Noire that was really good, but it wasn't conscious.

Holy shit sincere Carles from HRO
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 10:05 PM on July 27, 2011


I'm going to Grantland
Grantland
Site on the internet
I'm going to Grantland
Mefites and Googlers with toolbars
And we are going to Grantland
My Mefite companions suspect astroturf
They've been burned by that before
But I've reason to believe
We all will be received
In Grantland
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:10 PM on July 27, 2011 [18 favorites]


davejay : I enjoyed it immensely, and thought "finally, something on the web I actually *want* to share with other people."

Ardiril : ... The article itself is crap

arbitrator?
posted by setanor at 10:17 PM on July 27, 2011


Holy shit sincere Carles from HRO

wow
posted by setanor at 10:25 PM on July 27, 2011


Quit picking on my little brother Grant.
posted by crunchland at 10:54 PM on July 27, 2011 [5 favorites]


Grantland is kind of a big deal site with big deal writers trying to make a go of their own thing. I know it has come up a lot and pretty much every post they do I end up seeing mentioned by someone I follow on Twitter, but if I had to guess how many times we've featured a Grantland post, I would have said 3 or 4. 14 is a surprise, but it's pretty much all awesome essays, so I'm ok with it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:54 PM on July 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


Hmm. Grantland must be taking over. Hadn't heard of the site until yesterday, when I read on the soccer blog The Run of Play that one of their writers is taking a gig with Grantland. It's a pretty glossy site, that's for sure.
posted by Numenius at 11:05 PM on July 27, 2011


Link gives fury
Beverage coloured
News to me

Am I doing this right?
posted by arcticseal at 11:28 PM on July 27, 2011


It could be worse. They could have Roger Ebert writing for them.
posted by crunchland at 11:58 PM on July 27, 2011


...about Lady Gaga
posted by joost de vries at 12:37 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


arbitrator?

The article is okay.
posted by WalterMitty at 12:40 AM on July 28, 2011


Never heard of it.

Thanks for ruining my unawareness.
posted by bwg at 12:52 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


I guess I've never clicked on a Grantland post in the last two months because I've never heard of it either. I'm not sure if I should be smug about my obliviousness or ashamed at missing what is apparently a rising trend on Metafilter.
posted by like_neon at 1:44 AM on July 28, 2011


Is this where I send Hugh Grant my underwear? (if I was even wearing underwear! HAH!)

OK, J/K -- I'm totally wearing underwear and am only kind of so-so on Hugh Grant; don't taze me, bro.
posted by taz at 3:00 AM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


4916 posts have linked to nytimes.com. That's a little bit more than 400 posts per year. Grantland has a ways to go before it reaches that level of ubiquity.

Also, it's only 13 posts, the oldest one is a false positive. Furthermore, in some of the posts the Grantland link is just one of many links. It's not as ubiquitous as all that.
posted by Kattullus at 3:25 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Just 2 of their 19 columnists are women. How many of those 13 mefi posts were (as far as we can tell in this "free form go nuts" environment) posted by women? Is grantland.com where the manly men go to find FPP fodder?
posted by pracowity at 4:37 AM on July 28, 2011


Besides sports, I've also read good things on Grantland about Will Smith, Jennifer Aniston and pro wrestling.

That snippy Deadspin 'This is why Grantland Rice sucked' thing wasn't bad either.
posted by box at 4:43 AM on July 28, 2011


Is this something I'd have to care about sports to understand?
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:51 AM on July 28, 2011


Looking at your watch a third time waiting in the station for the bus
Going to a place that's far, so far away and if that's not enough
Going where nobody says hello, they don't talk to anybody they don't know
You'll wind up in some factory that's full time filth and nowhere left to go
Walk home to an empty house, sit around all by yourself
I know it might sound strange, but I believe
You'll be coming back before too long

Don't go back to Grantland
Don't go back to Grantland
Don't go back to Grantland
And waste another post

At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend
I don't care that you're not here with me
'Cause it's so much easier to handle
All my problems if I'm too far out to sea
But something better happen soon
Or it's gonna be too late to bring you back

Don't go back to Grantland
Don't go back to Grantland
Don't go back to Grantland
And waste another post

It's not as though I really need you
If you were here I'd only bleed you
But everybody else in town only wants to bring you down and
That's not how it ought to be
Well I know it might sound strange, but I believe
You'll be coming back before too long

Don't go back to Grantland
Don't go back to Grantland
Don't go back to Grantland
And waste another post


The Edgar Winter vid was all kinds of awesome, but Klosterman didn't add much. That video is available with countless others on the Old Grey Whistle Test DVD, by the way, for the grand price of £8.17.
posted by unSane at 4:56 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Grantland? Isn't that where every modern dance/performance artist in the world lives?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:00 AM on July 28, 2011


and you smile as you ease the gun from my hand and i'm frozen with joy right where i stand
the world throws its light underneath your hair
forty miles from atlanta, this is nowhere
going to grantland

posted by safetyfork at 5:10 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


I glanced at the front page of Grantland and found it incomprehensible, as if it was written in a language that looks like a familiar version of English as long as you don't read more than three words in a row. The articles have superficially interesting-looking titles full of Frankenstein and anhedonia but then they all seem to be about fake sports like wrestling and "NFL". There's an obvious Borges reference on the front page; is this some kind of postmodern meta joke thing?
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:10 AM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


Yes, this sports website is something you'd have to be familiar with sports to understand. Congratulations, you're superior to those of us who enjoy things.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:49 AM on July 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


It is getting a bit like "Oh, I guess Klosterman wrote another article for Grantland."
posted by smackfu at 5:53 AM on July 28, 2011


fake sports like ... "NFL"

I'm genuinely curious what you find fake about the NFL. Do you mean something like you believe the outcomes are systematically fixed? Or something more like the players aren't injuring each other as hard as they possibly could because they are all buddy-buddy on the weekend and you advocate a return to the days of smash-mouth football?
posted by Dano St at 6:28 AM on July 28, 2011


It's not real football unless it's played on an oval roughly the same shape as the ball.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:39 AM on July 28, 2011


Coming up: The Klosterman Weekend. A man discovers that his best friends are actually sports reporters -- or are they? Highlights: archery and swimming.
posted by pracowity at 6:41 AM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


The only real sports are gladiatoral combat, nude wrestling, and shooting an arrow through axeheads and then beating the shit out of a bunch of dudes.
posted by griphus at 6:51 AM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


Congratulations, you're superior to those of us who enjoy things.

Flagged as "Take it to SportsFilter." Our team sport is US politics.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:12 AM on July 28, 2011


not spam, but we need to lump this in with the Onion.
Grantland must be taking over. Its basically astroturfed ESPN. That's big mouse money to you and me.

I support some sort of judicious moderation wrt to Grantland.

And by judicious I mean ban all Klosterman essays.
posted by JPD at 7:15 AM on July 28, 2011


4916 posts have linked to nytimes.com. That's a little bit more than 400 posts per year. Grantland has a ways to go before it reaches that level of ubiquity.



uhm presumably you see why this is a false equivalence.
posted by JPD at 7:18 AM on July 28, 2011


Goin' to Grantland
It's gonna be great!
I'm so happy I just can't wait!
Gonna see the bucket that Elvis Presley kicked

Goin' to Grantland
It's gonna be fun
We'll get to see all Elvis's guns
Gonna tell us all about his favorite TV shows

Goin' to Grantland
We'll stand in line
We'll get to have a wild time
Gonna get to buy Love Me Tender Shampoo
posted by Chrysostom at 7:26 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


griphus: "The only real sports are gladiatoral combat, nude wrestling, and shooting an arrow through axeheads and then beating the shit out of a bunch of dudes."

Someone should really do a Hercules / Xena post....
posted by zarq at 8:14 AM on July 28, 2011


14 links and no kittens. We're being gamed.
posted by londonmark at 8:35 AM on July 28, 2011


Goin' to Grantland
It's gonna be great!
I'm so happy I just can't wait!
Gonna see the bucket that Elvis Presley kicked Gonna see the steroids that Mark McGwire did

Goin' to Grantland
It's gonna be fun
We'll get to see all Elvis's Jayson Williams' guns
Gonna tell us all about his favorite Court TV shows

Goin' to Grantland
We'll stand in line
We'll get to have a wild time
Gonna get to buy Love Me Tender Troy Polamalu's Shampoo
posted by Challahtronix at 8:38 AM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


JPD: uhm presumably you see why this is a false equivalence.

Well, the reason I picked NYT is that it's been a long-time battleground on MetaTalk for websites that MeFites shouldn't link to because they're too ubiquitous. My point is that Grantland, in generating 13 posts in two months, is far from ubiquitous. I don't see what's so false about that.

I'm not saying that the New York Times doesn't have a lot more content. I suppose a similar equivalent in terms of online content would be a magazine. Time has been linked to 688 times in 12 years, The New Yorker 628 times, The Atlantic 543 times, The Economist 311 times, Vanity Fair 143 times, Harper's 125 times and LRB 107 times. If Grantland keeps up the linkrate it receives now it'll be roughly on par with The New Yorker (though, honestly, I don't think it'll keep that up for long). When it comes to pure online magazines Salon features in 985 posts and Slate in 511. By my standards of ubiquity, Grantland doesn't stand out.
posted by Kattullus at 9:01 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


I don't get this thing where people are all like, "too many people link to X, so everybody needs to stop linking to X!" I mean, last I checked, 50% of the posts on the front page come from Kottke, and the other 50% come from Slate, and nobody ever complains about THAT.
posted by Afroblanco at 9:27 AM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


14 links and no kittens. We're being gamed.

Molly Lambert's contribution to this week's YouTube Hall of Fame is a 34 second video of a kitten cuddling with an iguana so it appears that they're actively reading this MetaTalk post and reacting in real time...

I'd like to see both more posts from GrantLand and a glossy profile of the first gay active NBA player (the lockout notwithstanding) who Bill Simmons accidentally outs (three weeks from now) on Twitter when his BlackBerry backfires when means to DM someone about a Red Sox trade rumor. Preferably the entire piece will take place in an Apple store where Bill is purchasing an iPhone 5 and the bulk of it will end up somehow coming back to the fall of western civilization as the fallout from the failure to raise the debt ceiling.
posted by togdon at 9:42 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Afroblanco: "50% of the posts on the front page come from Kottke, and the other 50% come from Slate, and nobody ever complains about THAT."

We've Been Complaining About Kottke Links Since 2002.
posted by zarq at 9:57 AM on July 28, 2011


Actually, I have no problem with Kottke or Slate. My point is that I think it's silly to complain about sources being re-used. I read the front page because I want interesting content. I could give a crap where it comes from.

I mean hell, we get plenty of obits, and those are plenty repetitive. People seem to love them anyway...
posted by Afroblanco at 10:13 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


1) The Times, The Atlantic, The Economist cover you know - news. A lot of those links are being used to flesh out the topic in the link at hand. The correct comparison would be single link grr bullshit NYTimes Style Section Trendpiece-filter vs Grantland. Note I am in favor of eliminating that as well.
2)14 links to grantland is a tremendous % of the total output of that website. Lets figure they've been live for two months, the have about 3 stories a day so maybe 120 articles there abouts? roughly? and 10% of those are front page worthy? or so good you that they transcend the subset of people who read mefi and have grantland in their RSS reader (like myself)
posted by JPD at 10:16 AM on July 28, 2011


Afroblanco: "My point is that I think it's silly to complain about sources being re-used. I read the front page because I want interesting content. I could give a crap where it comes from."

Yeah, this is how I feel too.
posted by zarq at 10:17 AM on July 28, 2011


I mean hell, we get plenty of obits, and those are plenty repetitive.

ReincarnationFilter.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 10:57 AM on July 28, 2011


Kwine was right (just early).

As the first person to post Grantland and the first person to post Letters of Note, I have decided to hire my services out to SEOers. Dozens of Metafilter FPPs guaranteed!
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:07 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


At a certain point, people are going to realize that "OMG a new Chuck Klosterman piece is on the web" may not be automatically postable if he is writing for a web site now.
posted by smackfu at 11:15 AM on July 28, 2011


Is this the kind of thing one would have had to have noticed 14 grantland.com links on the blue in the past 2 months to understand?
posted by owtytrof at 12:02 PM on July 28, 2011


cjorgensen: Link please?

Fun fact: If you enter a URL into the site search, you can see where on MetaFilter that link appeared. In this instance, here are the MetaFilter posts including grantland.com. It's fun to see if a SLYT has appeared in the comments before, or if the same video was posted in a thread a few times. It's also a good way to check for a duplicate post before your 24 hour post window is open again.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:26 PM on July 28, 2011


Flagged as "Take it to SportsFilter." Our team sport is US politics.

I have no idea if this is sarcastic.
posted by yerfatma at 12:52 PM on July 28, 2011


Hay everyone the Pats traded for Haynesworth, crazy right?
posted by nathancaswell at 1:02 PM on July 28, 2011


filthy light thief: Fun fact: If you enter a URL into the site search, you can see where on MetaFilter that link appeared. In this instance, here are the MetaFilter posts including grantland.com.

Actually, Grantland sorta breaks that because Grantland is mirrored on espn.go.com/espn/grantland. Though they are not the only example.
posted by Kattullus at 3:34 PM on July 28, 2011


Is this something I'd have to care about sports to understand?

I dislike sports, but Grantland has that great LA Noire article and stuff by Klosterman. So yay.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 3:40 PM on July 28, 2011


Methinks the davejay doth protest too much.

Yep, you got me. Grantland was the reason I signed up in 2005 and have made thousands and thousands of comments. It was totally worth it to throw it all away for the free fries.
posted by davejay at 3:57 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


Well, if I wasn't afraid it would seem stunty right now, I would totally post this World Series of Poker piece by Colson Whitehead:

I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. My particular combo of slack features, negligible affect, and soulless gaze had helped my game ever since I started playing 20 years ago, when I was ignorant of pot odds and M-theory and three-betting, and it gave me a boost as I collected my trove of lore, game by game, hand by hand. It had not helped me human relationships-wise over the years, but surely I am not alone here — anyone whose peculiar mix of genetic material and formative experiences had resulted in a near-expressionless mask could relate. Nature giveth, taketh, etc. You make the best of the hand you're dealt.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:23 PM on July 29, 2011


The worst thing about MetaTalk posts like this, complaining that some site is over-represented, is that it keeps people from posting really interesting links, such as that poker story.
posted by Kattullus at 2:14 PM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]


It's funny, I just finished that Colson Whitehead post (great btw) clicked over to my Metafilter tag which was open to the spot on the Metatalk page where this post is located.
posted by nevercalm at 4:05 PM on August 1, 2011




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