Today in Tabs: Grantcanned

Friday, Haley Mlotek and Alexandra Molotkow unceremoniously departed girl-Awl The Hairpin, and media Twitter looked up, heads cocked, like “was that thunder or just a truck going by?” Then ESPN announced that Grantland was over, and now the STORM-BLAST came. Peter Kafka reported that ESPN was still fully committed to Mexican food blog 538 and single-page list of articles The Undefeated, both of which presumably use a lot less bandwidth than Grantland ever did. The Grantland staff were fired via Twitter, basically, although most of them surely had a suspicion this was coming, and media Twitter instantly turned into a wake for the site which was consistently good and interesting and thoughtful and well-edited in a way literally everything else associated with ESPN is not.

Then the Takes arrived! Vox’s Todd VanDerWerff activated the new “Palimpsest” Chorus plugin to add the data point of Grantland’s shutdown to his absurd argument from August that the internet was better in 2005, six years before Grantland even started. Business Insider’s Cork Gaines searched Google for meaning, but found none. Alex Shephard and Mark Krotov got drunk at The New Republic and just kinda wrote down whatever came to mind. The Toast’s Nicole Cliffe took the opportunity to assert that there is no such thing as independent media without some equivalent of a husband with hedge fund money behind it. And it’s true, Grantland never made money, according to momentary post-Bill Simmons editor Chris Connelly. All it could offer were what ESPN dismissively called “quality writing, smart ideas, original thinking and fun.” And who wants those? The Take cycle ended this morning with a classic piece of Freddie deBoer well-actually-ing in The Observer titled “Why We Should Mourn and Cheer Grantland’s Demise.” In conclusion, while the future will contain no Grantland, it could have four times as much Business Insider.1

SXSW managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of a lesser defeat last week. After cancelling a panel about using design to reduce harassment online due to harassment online, the Austin internet marketing disaster announced a hastily-convened full-day event devoted to issues of harassment. Unfortunately one of those issues was apparently “Harassment: maybe it’s good!?” because the Gamergate panel that started this whole fiasco was also invited to participate. Everyone was basically like

At press time, SXSW was still a dumpster fire.

Forrest Wickman’s “Against Subtlety” is a little too obvious. This leaked Jeb! slide deck makes a great case that Rubio is the only viable candidate. Oddly, Ted Cruz is not running a real campaign yet. It turns out Mark Zuckerburg is only the CEO of “Faacebook,” oops. How coffee became Good. War on drugs declared bad when white kids start using drugs. You absolutely must read Elspeth Reeve on gymnast Simone Biles, and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t care about gymnastics at all. You know, there ought to be a site dedicated to really smart sports writing for people who aren’t necessarily sports fans…

I Have Been Waiting Forever For This: Today in Bats

Today’s Song: Alanis Morissette, “Death of Cinderella,” an unreleased “Jagged Little Pill” outtake basically

~He went like one that hath been stunned, and is of tabs forlorn~

This Today in Tabs should have happened on Friday, really. It was a bit much. Hopefully it wasn’t too subtle! As always, find us on Fast Company or subscribe by email. Thanks today to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for proofreading help.