Bill Simmons’ new site, unveiled as “The Ringer” last week, has reportedly found a significant new partner. According to Jay Yarow of Business Insider, they’ve signed a deal with publishing platform Medium:
We have learned that Simmons will partner with publishing platform Medium on his new project.
Medium has funded and hosted some original publications. For instance Medium runs tech site, Back Channel, which is edited by former Wired reporter Steven Levy.
However, Medium pared back some of its investment in original content last summer.
Simmons’ prior site, Grantland, was focused on high-brow longform content, which fits with the sort of content Medium generally hosts.
Simmons will be by far the highest-profile content creator Medium has partnered with to date.
This is an interesting move, as it’s not clear what Medium will really add to Simmons’ site. It’s been described as “part writing platform, part publisher” by Jamie O’Grady, editor-in-chief of Medium sports vertical The Cauldron (before the Cauldron teamed up with Sports Illustrated last September; it’s still “presented by Medium” and shared on Medium), but Simmons certainly doesn’t need much help on the publishing side (The Ringer notched 100,000 Twitter followers within a day and currently has over 145,000). He also already has a remarkable group of editors, many of whom worked with him at Grantland. So, what will Medium add to Simmons’ site?
Perhaps Medium (founded by Twitter co-founder and former Blogger executive Ev Williams) offers a better writing platform than the alternatives out there, and perhaps it will further amplify Simmons’ reach. It is notable that it’s stirred some controversy in the past, though, especially thanks to the way it’s embraced unpaid writers. A May 2014 Digiday piece estimated that “over 90 percent of the 1,200 stories posted per day come from unpaid writers, who view the site as a way to increase their exposure and influence” and wrote it had “been home to its share of unfortunate articles.” Maybe partnering with Simmons will help Medium elevate their content reputation, and maybe their interface and publishing advantages are so good that it’s worth it for him to work with them. From the outside, this is an unexpected deal, though. We’ll see how it works out.
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