My Research Project

For the past week, I was up in the air on what I should do my project on. Nothing seemed to excite me, so I thought about what my personal interests were. I enjoy sports quite a bit and there are days when I wonder if I should have majored in journalism to become a sports writer. But then I thought back to what we have been reading in class and how the world of writing in the digital age is a new frontier on several fronts.

For one thing, I don't even get my sports fix from the newspaper. I go to ESPN.com and Grantland.com, both of which are sports analysis sites. Grantland is a site that was created this past June by a popular ESPN writer, Bill Simmons. I am a fan of Simmons' columns and podcasts that approach sports in a very anecdotal way.

Grantland is staffed by professional writers as well as some of Simmons' friends with far less sports writing experience. The main reason they are writers on the site is because they replicate Simmons' style of writing in unique ways. Of those with less experience, one writer has a weekly NFL column called the 'Bad Quarterback League' (BQBL). It highlights stats of the NFL similar to traditional fantasy football, only it highlights the players with the worst stats of the week.

At the end of last week's column, the writer posted an OPEN INVITATION for readers to submit comments or analysis of their own:

Write To Us/For Us

We are so distraught/excited about the end of Tebow Watch that we have decided to replace it with BQBL reader e-mails. Send your thoughts/reactions/analysis/insults/curses toTriangle@grantland.com and we’ll publish some in next week’s scorecard.

For my project I plan to submit entries until I get them published. I also intend to create a multimedia form of analysis that will be entertaining enough for the Grantland editors to publish as well. My question is: How can a writer replicate the voice of an already established writer and yet create a unique idea that is publishable alongside the original writer?

This is an ambitious project, but I believe I can document the process, refer to the readings, and tie it into one large mindf**k that will make you jealous for not coming up with it.