The Ringer Officially Launches

Still not too huge on the name, but I'm so glad a large portion of the Grantland crew is back together. They were by far the best at sportswriting and tv recaps.

 

After looking at the site, I'm not understanding why it took so long for them to get this up. I've mentioned this in the forums before, but I wasn't a fan of having to read some stuff on Facebook notes, which I forgot even existed. And @Jason Tate I totally get what you mean about the header haha.

 

Simmons' show on HBO premieres in 3 weeks. It was almost certainly scheduled to coincide with that.

 

I've read a couple pieces on their already today. Definitely enjoying it and glad to have a lot of the Grantland staff members back in action.

 

Yeah I don't doubt that. Just seemed unnecessary since they already had the podcasts, newsletter, and FB posts going. That should have been more than enough reason to have the site done sooner. It also just looks like most of the other partnership sites with Medium, like Backchannel: Backchannel

 

I'm guessing it taking so long to go up had more to do with legal issues regarding ESPN (non-compete perhaps?) or his contract with HBO than it did the site design. Also, why is that header so comically large? Headers shouldnt take up half (or more) of the screen.

 

True. I think the ESPN contract was up around September since his podcast started back up shortly after that. Either way, I'm enjoying the content. But yes, that header takes up like 75% of my screen. It gets smaller when you click on posts, but still way too much of it on the home page.

 

Maybe I've just never noticed it before on other sites, but at the top of every article it shows an estimated time to read. I wonder if that encourages users to actually read more.

 

I noticed that too and I think that might be my favorite part of the site so far.

 

Medium does that for all posts. It's a great feature. I use Instapaper as a read it later service and they also have estimated read times. Might be one of my favorite things about both.

 

I still think I preferred the format of Grantland compared to this

 

So glad this is through Medium. Article reading on there is great and the whole service in general is top notch. Estimated read time is the best feature on any social network