• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, February 25, 2016

One of America’s best-known sportswriters, Bill Simmons, is joining forces with publishing platform Medium to launch his new online sports publication, The Ringer. According to Medium, The Ringer will be the first premium content Web site hosted on its platform.

Like Simmons’ previous endeavor, Grantland, The Ringer will feature thoughtful long-form sports journalism, making it a good match for Medium, which specializes in text-heavy multimedia content.

For its part, Medium noted some of its advantages for publishers in a post announcing the partnership: “We eliminate the need for any investment in tech [and] provide access to a growing network oriented towards meaningful engagement…”

The Ringer should launch sometime in the late spring or early summer, according to the partners. In the interim it is also publishing a newsletter with updates about the site and riffs from writers.

While Simmons’ is the biggest name to sign on to Medium so far, the platform has already formed some other notable partnerships, including former Wired writer Steven Levy, who launched tech site Backchannel on Medium.

This isn’t new territory for Simmons, who also hosts a podcast and is producing a show for HBO. He started his career with his own Web site, “The Boston Sports Guy,” before joining ESPN, writing for ESPN.com, hosting a colorful podcast called The B.S. Report and launching Grantland in 2011. It quickly earned a reputation for edgy, insightful reporting about sports, as well as popular culture, including TV shows and movies.

However, Simmons soon got into hot water with ESPN, beginning with his scathing criticism of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in the fall of 2014. Rather than back down, Simmons escalated by daring his bosses to fire him in a podcast – which they later did in May 2015. In October of last year, ESPN shut down Grantland, laying off around 40 editorial and production staffers.