While Bill Simmons patiently waits for his contract to expire, Grantland will continue and its new leader at least temporarily is Chris Connelly.
Here is the press release from ESPN.
Chris Connelly, the award-winning reporter and essayist whose work includes contributions to E:60, Outside The Lines, ABC News, Grantland and many other programs and publications, has been named Interim Editor-in-Chief of Grantland.
“We are thrilled to have a journalist of Chris’ caliber join us on an interim basis as we go forward and build on the smart, fun, adventurous, creative, unexpected and vital spirit of Grantland,” said Marie Donoghue, ESPN’s executive vice president, global strategy and original content. “Chris has been an award-winning journalist and storyteller in sports, music and pop culture for over three decades, and as a longtime contributor at Grantland, he appreciates the incredible team we have assembled.”
Added Connelly, “Bill Simmons had the vision to create Grantland, and his leadership, ideas, and inspiration made it singularly great. I’m looking forward to helping the writers, editors, and producers on this amazingly talented staff create more of the outstanding work for which they’ve rightly become known.”
Connelly will continue to contribute stories and reporting to Outside the Lines, E:60 and other ESPN programs including SportsCenter and the annual My Wish series. For ABC News, Connelly will continue as a contributor for 20/20 other ABC News programs, where he covers popular culture and other manifestations of the zeitgeist.
Prior to joining ESPN in September 2001, Connelly spent more than a dozen years at MTV, where he was a host and interviewer specializing in movies; later, he was also a correspondent for MTV News. He earned a News Emmy nomination for co-writing Where Were You at 22? — a documentary he hosted about the young lives of the presidential candidates of the 2000 campaign.
A graduate of Amherst College, Connelly began his journalism career in print, initially at Rolling Stone -– where he wrote the magazine’s first cover stories on Madonna, Tom Cruise, and U2 — and then as an editor and writer for the late, much-beloved movie magazine, Premiere. Born and raised in New York City, he lives in Los Angeles.