NEWS FLASH

To Succeed, Grantland Needs to Be the New Yorker | Bill Simmons’ much-awaited, highly hyped new culture website is officially up and running. Simmons’ introductory essay is, among other things, a nice look at how to break into the late-night television game, but I need to see more content before I decide how I really feel about the venture. The challenge Grantland faces, I think, is to convince readers that even though they might not be familiar with the subject of the piece, and even though it might take a serious chunk of time to read, it’s consistently worth the investment. Very, very few publications have that kind of pull: the New Yorker for one kind of audience, the New York Review of Books for another. If Grantland can become the first web-native publication to pull that feat off, it’ll be impressive.