ONE Grantland staffer said - that’s also in the article. One angry person, someone who might have just lost their job, said it. Doesn’t make it the truth, or at least the whole truth.

That Is a common practice it cuts down on angry employees directing their anger on the higher ups. I work for a parts supplier to the “big 3” when Chrysler filed for bankruptcy, it crippled out plant. Instead of making HR available for workers to ask questions 3rd shift employees that were getting off work, were…

Nah, they’ll find a way to monitize. If Yahoo can make a Bills/Jaguars game profitable, they can do the same, only five times better.

I’d also add that asking hires not to mention they are leaving until it is finalized, especially where you are trying to hire away a group, is pretty common in a lot of fields - I have seen it happen with law firms quite a bit. Not because the new place wants to maximize the pain for where they are leaving (although…

He was a good, and well liked, Editor-In-Chief. The 30 for 30 series he started was excellent. He lost interest in his writing, but the trade off was fair.

Or alternatively:

I don’t think it’s implied anywhere in the story that they used the loss of the editors as a reason to shut down the site.

Grantland was always notorious as a money-losing venture for ESPN, who apparently is losing money anyway, and the writing on the wall when Simmons left was that Grantland would *probably* die soon,…

He’s vindictive as hell, but damn if there ain’t a beautiful method to his madness. ESPN screwed him and he had enough leverage and enough of a mean streak to viciously hurt them back.

Oh my god. There’s something about that which seems even more inhumane and dehumanizing than people finding out the same time as the press. It’s like herding cows into the slaughterhouse.

I said this above but I will say it again here. If people quitting without notice was enough to shut the whole thing down - then they already wanted to end it. I call bullshit on that part. They experienced a huge exodus of talent duo the shit show after Simmons left. I am willing to believe that was the reason.

Yeah, that all comes off as kinda “I’m bitter that Bill didn’t want me at his HBO gig”...

How do four editors leaving put the jobs of dozens in danger? That does not follow. Who is the source and what’s their ax to grind? Editors are not exactly an endangered species. Four editors leave and the site has to close? Four editors leave and its a hard couple weeks to replace them. That’s it. The site closed bc…

Will companies ever learn how to handle mass layoffs in a professional and dignified manner? Seriously, it feels like the one common denominator with mass layoffs, specifically in media, is that all the staff finds out about it at the same time as the general public.

Or maybe Simmons told the editors to keep it quiet so they couldn’t be fired until they jumped ship, since they are at-will workers. No, no, that can’t be it. CLEARLY IT WAS A SIMMONS CONSPIRACY! NO ONE DENIES THIS!

He hired away some of his old hires, giving ESPN a pretext to close the whole thing? It’s a very flimsy criticism, imo, but there are tons of vehement Simmons haters out there grasping for straws. Instead of looking at this and coming to the logical conclusion, that ESPN is a terrible company, they try to spin at as…

“That’s myyyyyyyy wisssssh!”

What did he do? He was fired. I do not get it.

“We find it’s always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there’s less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.”

I thought educated guesses were the only type you can’t find in SC.

“Why the student—who in available footage appears to be merely sitting at her desk—had to be thrown around her classroom by a much larger adult has yet to be explained.”