I love the idea of journalism start-ups. It means another batch of exciting jobs, perhaps good jobs, and exposure for writers both well-known and on the rise.

One of those launched today: SportsonEarth.com

And a former colleague here in Abu Dhabi, Chuck Culpepper, is one of the main writers for the venture.

A first-day verdict?

Nice content, but not enough of it. Shaky presentation.

Grantland.com was rather like that, when it launched last year. Hard to navigate and not inviting to look at. It went through a redesign, and it seems easier to follow, now, and it seems as if it is successful — and maybe SportsonEarth, which seems inspired by Grantland, will follow that path.

SportsonEarth is dedicated to thoughtful and long-form sports journalism — but without the long-form pop culture pieces that Grantland does (and does fairly well).

SportsonEarth (yes, odd name; waiting for an explanation behind it) has a more narrow niche, then, but the world of sports ought to be plenty big enough to find an audience in some numbers.

One of the best reads on Day 1 was by Culpepper, who is covering the U.S. Open as his first assignment for the site. He suggested that a grand slam tennis tournament without Rafael Nadal just doesn’t feel right.

The lead man — the senior columnist — at the site is Joe Posnanski, who worked at Sports Illustrated and the Kansas City Star, and the writing stable includes the SI alumnus Leigh Montville and the Deadspin founder Will Leitch.

None of them are Bill Simmons, but we have only one of them, as we have noted before.

Hard to say, after one day, where the site will go, but I would hope it is quickly populated with meaty entries, and frequent new entries. One of Grantland’s shortcomings is a lack of updates — they do little or nothing on weekends, which finds them ceding cyberspace to, well, everyone else.

MLB Advanced Media and USA Today Sports are behind the new site, which is good, because they have some money, but how the finances work … your guess is as good as mine.

It was a little disquieting to see very little media buzz about the site. I didn’t see it, anyway. Did the site just fail to get the word out? Is it considered too much like Grantland to warrant much attention?

I hope the venture succeeds. More good writing and more good journalism jobs … I’m always for that. Entertainment, edification, opportunities. Those are good things. From today, we have a little more of it.