SB Nation's relaunch will be both "technological and editorial," as college sports blogger Spencer Hall has been named SB Nation's "first editorial director," according to Charlie Warzel of AD WEEK. Hall, who joined SB Nation in '09 and runs the college football blog EDSBS.com, will "oversee SB's main site while maintaining his blog and trying to showcase the work of the network's thousands of writers." Hall said, "I'll take the 300 plus-sites and try to corral some kind of common vision and coordination between them, which is very daunting and sounds almost impossible, but as an Internet native writer and someone who's been around SB Nation for a while, it's something I think I have a pretty good handle on." Warzel noted SB Nation is following in the footsteps of web native properties like ESPN's Grantland, and is "making investments in long form feature writing." That section will be headed up by Glenn Stout, editor of the "Best American Sports Writing" series. The blog "plans to publish three or four long form pieces per week." Hall said, "We are not going to stray away from our core idea of focusing on the fan experience from every level" (ADWEEK.com, 9/25). SB Nation yesterday debuted an overall site redesign, with new logos for its network of more than 300 individual blogs and a new content management system making SB Nation more optimized for mobile platforms. The updates, tagged "SB Nation United" by company officials, are designed to boost uniformity with regard to both content and ad sales. Jim Bankoff, Chair & CEO of SB Nation parent company Vox Media, said, "We think this helps a lot with overall branding, which admittedly has been disjointed in some spots between the individual blogs and SB Nation as a whole" (Eric Fisher, SportsBusiness Journal).
