The Press Box - 25 for 25 Industry in Memoriam: Remembering the Publications Lost in the 21st Century

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel are back with the second edition of The Press Box's 25 for 25. Today, they look back at the publications lost in the 21st century—including ESPN the Magazine, Gawker, and many others—and ask: What do we lose when a media company disappears? And how should we remember them, if at all? Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel D. Anderson Producer: Brian H. Waters Additional Production: Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everyone, it's Amy Polar, and I'm launching a new podcast called Good Hang. In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice. Just be yourself, and the guests will come. Don't be the celebrity that this is their like sixth thing they're doing. I love true crime and cooking podcasts. Is there any way you could combine the two? Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast. So, join me for Good Hang. It's rough out there. We're just trying to lighten it up a little. media consumers welcome to press box brian curtis joel anderson and producer brian waters here more on

brian in just one second but joel this is the second podcast in our 25 for 25 series that's right and this is our tribute show our version of the oscars in memoriam reel where we honor publications that are no more yeah that have passed into the great feature well in the sky Yeah, well, and some of that is like a theoretical death, right? Like, it's just, maybe it's just not quite the same. They've moved on under another name and assumed identity or something, right? Mm-hmm. I think I want this pot to do a few things.

Okay. One is honor or at least remember the work our fellow journalist did. Yeah. Before losing their jobs. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, look, it would be foolish of us to not even think of that in this context, because it's people who have lost their jobs and, you know, these great media, you know,

earthquakes that come every now and again, right? So yeah, it's, we, this is, we're not poking fun at people or anything like that. I think it's important to remember that. Absolutely. And I also want us to introduce publications to people that they might not remember. I hope there's some eBay shopping that happens among our listeners after this. And I suspect there will be. I also think we can give people a sense of the way the media world has changed over the last 25 years. Because as we go through this list, you're going to see the changes in the way we cover sports, news, food, even video games. Absolutely. I mean, it actually, it was just sort of delightful. Like you read up on some of these magazines or other outlets and you just, you can,

you're placed back in a specific sort of time and you're like, oh, I mean, I'm just, you're placed back in a specific sort of time. And you're like, oh, I remember when this thing was alive and bustling. And it was a part of my life or my media diet. And yeah, it was sort of nice to be reminded of these places and the role they played in our lives. It's like watching an old movie or even seeing an old television commercial from our youth. Yeah. Like, I remember when I was clicking on that site. I remember when I was turning those pages.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It was in my Google Reader feed, you know. All right, Joel, you and I pick 25 publications. The only qualification is the publication has to have died, or as you say, entered zombie status in the 21st century. Right. Could have been created in the last century, but it has to have died in this one. Right.

And much like the Oscars in Memorial Reel, we will have our own Michelle Tractenberg-style omissions. This is not going to be a complete list. No. but of the 25 publications we're paying tribute to here, we asked two questions. What was it and why did it die? I want to start with 538. Okay.

Add a little bit more to our goodbye from a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, sure. What was it? Well, it was Nate Silver's blog that became Nate Silver's website at the New York Times and then at ESPN and then at ABC News. it died because it was shut down as a part of a wave of layoffs at ABC and Disney earlier this month. We got an email from Maya Swidler recently. Maya is a reporter at the AP and a veteran of 538.

She's been a listener of this pod for a really long time. And anytime a really good reporter listens to us, that makes me feel extra happy. I thought Mai just put it perfectly when she talked about the legacy of 538. She wrote, I think 538 was an example of two different journalistic experiments, one of which failed and one of which I believe didn't. The first is a personality-driven site that emerged from the sensibility of the blogger era. In that regard, sites like Grantland and Vox were sister sites. That era has been ended by the advent of platforms like Substack and Journalists as brands.

Okay, so 538 was that. Maya continues. The second experiment, this idea that data journalism can be done well and done daily and exist as a self-sustaining or standalone publication is the one I've been thinking a lot about since last Wednesday's news. In my time at 538, it was clear to me that the publication could have sustained itself financially with a business plan that paywalled things like the forecasts or offered some sort of subscription option. The parent company just didn't have the interest or the bandwidth to do so. I refuse to see the failure to implement that model as a rejection of proof of concept. But I also don't think it's a coincidence that the most successful competitors,

like the upshot or split ticket, exist within bigger publications or are not full-time ventures. It's a big investment from a time and staffing perspective, so I wouldn't be surprised if these types of publications remain hyper-vertical or as a team within a larger organization. I like that. That makes a lot of sense. I also, I mean, I'm really focused on the idea that data journalism done well. Because I think, you know, for a lot of, I mean, I don't want to be overly broad, but a lot of journalists are scared of numbers. And you don't want to get too deep into it or you don't want to make a mistake.

Like, you know, getting something wrong is a big deal in journalism. I know a lot of people may not think that, but it actually is. And playing with numbers can do that for you. But with 538, you did see that there was a way to make it compelling and to tell stories through numbers. And I'm not, they may not been the first people to do that, but it seemed like they were the first to sort of have that as the ethos within the organization itself. Yeah. And when she talks about the subscription thing, you see that in Nate's substack. Like, I may give you the top line number. I may give you the free story here and there,

but you're going to have to pay for the rest of it. Right. And during times when, hey, I want to know what's behind that top line number of whether Donald Trump's going to win or Kamala Harris is going to way it's like oh yes i am interested in that yeah i will pay you for that and to mya's point also about how this may exist within a larger media organization going forward the new york times just introduced a new poll tracking project and william p davis writes on the times website we're building on the work of the politics website 538 dot dot dot to make the transition as easy as possible we are providing the data in about the same format as 538 did okay So 538 lives.

All right, Joel, I broke our next 24 publications down into categories. Okay. I'm going to hit you with these. We'll each do one per category. Category number one, when ESPN cared about sports writing. That's tough. Well, I guess this is my turn to go. ESPN the magazine.

And so what was it? it was a bold expansion of ESPN's brand dominance and sort of an attempt to stamp itself as a somewhat serious enterprise. You go back to the 90s. People, ESPN was still, I mean, it's funny to think of ESPN is still not an upstart, but it had not necessarily established itself in the culture in the way that it is today now, right? Like, I mean, it was possible, I mean, I remember when ESPN2 debuted, right? Like, they showed, I think it was Duke U and C game. on there, right? Like, so there was still a lot of new stuff, a lot of newness to ESPN. And so this was like an attempt to say, hey, look, we're a serious media enterprise here. And we can, we can do something.

We can compete with Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone, right? Like, we could put all this together. We've got access to all these great athletes. People will want to talk with us. We've got these great minds. We can present it really lovely on a page. Like, let's try this thing. And they threw a lot of money at it. And that, in short, is kind of why it died, right? It was an expensive luxury at a time when ESPN was hemorrhaging a lot of money because of changes in the cable industry. And I can just say, you know, I mean, you know, we can go from here, right? I, you know, I wrote for ESPN in the magazine twice. So two of the bigger honors of my career, one, Meg Greenwell, Megan Greenwell was the editor there at times. She assigned me a story about Adrian

Peterson. You remember when Adrian Peterson was going through his legal trouble for, he was accused of abusing his son? I do indeed. So they sent me to Palestine, Texas, to write about it and talk to people that knew him and, you know, corporal punishment and all that sort of stuff. And I got to do that. And then there was another piece a few years later, Doyle Green Beckham. I don't know if people remember Doriel Green Beckham. He was a top wide receiver candidate out of Missouri, Springfield, Missouri. And he ended up having to transfer to Oklahoma. He signed with Missouri out of college, out of high school, and then had to transfer to Oklahoma because he had, you know, one of those, another one of those, like, abuse cases

or whatever, involving a girlfriend at the time. And he never played in Oklahoma. Like, he transferred to OU. He spent a year on the scout team. Did not play. And so the story was about, what is the NFL see in this guy? Like, are they going to draft him, whatever, whatever. So anyway, I did that story.

and it was just, I mean, those are two of my favorite stories I've ever got to do because ESPN the magazine, man, like if you were in the game, you wanted to write for them, right? It was an event when a piece came out in ESPN. You remember on the front of the ESPN homepage, there was a module that said, in the MAG. Yeah. And especially during the 2000, early 2010s, maybe late aughts. When those stories came out, it was like, oh, wow. Yeah, time to stop, time to read whatever this is. Absolutely, absolutely. And I look, I mean, there have been so many, I mean, just, I mean, I think, I mean, we just think about the people that are there like Mina Kimes, Dan Levitard, Pablo Torre. There are a lot of people that are like famous journalists today that got their starts right there. And it was a platform. Like, you could, there was a time that you could be a great writer at ESPN and it would mean that you would end up on TV, right? Or you might end up on radio and it was sort of a pipeline. And so when you get there at ESP,

And especially if you're a writer, you're like, I can do this great writing. And also it might lead to something. But I started the ESPN in 2017 by 2019, unfortunately. It was closed curtains on that place, man. And, you know, I mean, for me, myself, I mean, personally, I mean, we're talking a little bit about like our relationship to these outlets. When that closed, I was like, oh, I know I don't have a future at this company anymore. I'm not, nobody's going to put me on TV. So anyway, I always think of ESPN magazine is having two eras.

Okay. The first one was the founding era when it comes out and it was very aggressively designed. Yes. In this how do you do fellow kids kind of way? Right. Reminded me of when the deuce came online and all the graphics looked like they've been created with spray paint. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. We're appealing to the kids here. Yes. Yes. Yes. And you had some lebitard as told twos in that period, but that was kind of one era. And then the second era is when they hired the people you're talking about. When Mina came on board, when Pablo came on board, when Wright Thompson was going strong, Seth Wicker Sam was going strong, Kevin Van Valkenberg, that whole crew. And it really took a step up in terms of the quality

of pieces that were in that magazine. Wouldn't you say that at that time that it kind of, it was during that era that it's sort of the perceptions of Sports Illustrated and ESP and the magazine sort of flipped at that time, right? 100%. Whenever I talk to young journalists, they'll mention like, oh, I love Wright Thompson, any of those people, I'm always like, here's a great experiment.

Go read the first pieces right Thompson wrote for ESPN magazine, all of which were anthologized, by the way. Then go read the second wave of pieces right Thompson wrote for the magazine, and you'll see how people improve. Yeah, right? He leveled up and leveled up and leveled up. Seth Wickersham did the same thing over the course of his time. there. And it really shows you how people, young people, if you invest in them, if you give them time,

give them a platform like that, they will get better and better. Money, um, money editing, resources. I will say also, it was the ESP in the magazine that I got to say to four seasons for the first time in my life. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, these are the small details we need to plug in. Uh-huh. Yeah. This discussion. Uh, I'm going to give you one from the same category and it's Grantland. Oh, right. What was it? Uh, it was built. Simmons's brain turned into a website. I love that. It starts in June 2011. Whenever people ask me about Grantland, I always say, this is the thing that made it distinct to me, which is when you thought in that era of pantheon-level places in journalism, let's say the New Yorker. Well, if you

made it to the New Yorker, even made it into the New Yorker once, you were going to have to write a New Yorker piece. You know, maybe there'd be a little Brian and Joel sprinkled in there, but it was going to be a New Yorker story. That was the thing you had to do to make it across the threshold. New York Times Magazine, same thing. A little bit of your sensibility, maybe your story choice, but it would be their piece. Granlin comes along and it's like, actually, that's not what we're looking for here.

We're looking for you to do the best version of you. So whatever Brian Curtis can get to and whatever his sensibility leads into, that's what we're looking for. We're not looking for you to fill in a template. And that was shocking at the time. I mean, now we, you know, in the world of Substack and, you know, Twitter's so much bigger. Everything's so much bigger and everything's so much more personalized. But let me tell you something. In the media world of 2011, that was mind-blowing.

Oh, man. I mean, you felt like if you could somehow get into Grant, that you had made it, right? And because you were free, you were free to sort of be yourself. Like you could read Shea Serrano and be like, huh, okay, there's sort of a way to make, you know, to do this differently and not, you know, totally have to just do the long form piece, right? Or maybe you came to it like me, like, they got Chuck Closerman?

Chuck Closerman is writing for these guys? Charlie Pierce is writing for these guys? What? It was just such a Malcolm Gladwell gets to write for these guys sometime, right? So, yeah, you could see. that there was a way to make it and still sort of be yourself a little bit as a writer. 100%. And you know, the word long form got attached to Grantland a lot. Because that's when people in our business started using long form in the same way they would talk about an endangered

species. It was like the white rhino of journalism. But when I think about Grantland, I don't really think about longform so much as I think about voices. You mentioned Shay, Brian Phillips, Wesley Morris, very different form, Bill Barnwell, Jay Kang, Andy Greenwald's TV reviews, Katie Bakes. I mean, I could go on and on-line. Zach Lowe. Yeah, exactly, right? Like, is Zach Lowe long form? Well, his columns were kind of long, but mainly he was Zach Lowe. That was the important part. Right. It's funny. And I could, we could go on about assignments here. My favorite one, I think I got early on from Rafe Bartholome, who was an editor there, is he was like, you know, I read this story about this guy who's going

to use sporting events and soliciting piggyback rides. And he's being called the piggyback bandit. And I remember getting on a plane without a huge plan from New York to Seattle, going around Washington State, and then going to Helena, Montana, and then going to Fargo, because this is where the piggyback bandit had struck. And then winding up in St. Cloud, Minnesota. I think that was my last stop. I mean, again, if I ever have like Condi Nass-style golden age stories to tell it stuff like that.

Yes. It's like, just go get the story and come back and write it. Oh, man. That's so fine. I'm sure it'll be good. Grantland lasts till October 2015. So slightly, it's only a four-year run. Man, it sure seemed longer than that.

Yeah, sure does. Bill left ESPN in May of 2015. And he and Sean can tell their own stories about the closure of Grantland. But this is what I remember. October 30th, 2015, my daughter, Stella, had just been born. Oh, yeah. My wife and I are in the maternity award, and you know this feeling because it's very fresh for you. It's happiness and relief and fear and all these emotions going around in your head.

And I look at my phone and I have just gotten a text from the interim editor of Granland, who in sometime in subsequent years unfollowed me on Twitter. He kind of became my herbie, if you will. But this interim editor texted me and said, check your email. And I'm like, what? Oh, no. Yes. And that was the email saying, hey, there's going to be a conference call.

We've got some bad news about Grantland. Oh, Brian. I've never heard. Oh, God. What a cloud they put over that day for you. I'm sorry. Just a lot of emotions going on at the same time. I can only imagine.

So let me tell you something, when you're holding a new human being in your arms, and she's the most beautiful human being in the world, let me just tell you that it hits differently. Oh, yeah. It's sad as it was and as bad as I felt for everybody, it certainly hit differently. All right, Joel, here's our next category, the Gawker Empire. Man, that's right. So Gawker.

So what was it? Where the conceit behind it seems to be, and you tell me if I'm wrong here, Brian. What if we try to professionalize blogging? This is gawker.com specifically within the gawker empire you're talking about. Yeah, gawker.com. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, make a business out of it. Make a business out of this. Like, let's see if we could pull some people together and, like, report on some news and have some fun with it, right?

And, of course, it was like, I mean, these are names Nick Denton, Elizabeth Spires. Like, I mean, that's with some odd-ass names for me. Like, I mean, that was the names you heard all the time of like 2007 to 2008, right? they started this up and you know it initially was you know they they did a lot they did so many different things let me let me but let me give you some some gawker ass names max reed a j delara my man Tommy craigs Leah Beckman Alex Perrine what do you think about those names I mean this this is again this is these aren't just odds ass names these are big ass names big ass man there were a lot influential people hugely

influential people and it influenced a lot of online media coverage for better and worse, I would say, during that time. Look, there was a piece. Do you remember I had a one-night stand with Christine O'Donnell? Vaguely? Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, I mean, so this is just a sort of thing. This is Christine O'Donnell, the former Senate candidate in a Delaware area. Yeah, and a piece discussed an alleged sexual encounter with her. And it wasn't really sex because she, I think. Yeah. It wasn't up if you're more.

It wasn't actually saying. There you go, yeah. But I mean, so you balance it against that. And I mean, look, there are a lot. The seeds of the fall of a lot of people started on Gawker. Louis C.K., Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein. Like, those, the investigations into those guys, you could argue. started in blog post on Gawker.

Like, that's how influential it was at the time. Guiding the mainstream media, I would say, and shaming the mainstream media at the same time. Absolutely. So you talk, it's funny you mentioned a shame because I guess this is where we should talk about how it died. Is it too silly to just say Hulk Hogan versus Gawker? Like Terry Bollaha versus Gawker, which is the little name of the lawsuit.

And the background here for people that don't remember, back in our, October 4th, 2012. Gawker posted a short clip of Hulk Hogan. I mean, it's actually kind of funny to think about it given, you know, B-dub, our producer, big wrestling guy here, but

posted a short clip of Hulk Hogan having sex with the estranged wife of a guy named Bubba the Love Sponge. It's just all sounds like, I mean, this is all very important media history in its way, and it also just sounds so.

It's so unbelievable, but please continue. So goofy. So, yeah. So anyway, Hulk Hogan says, please take it down. Nick Denton refuses. And that leads to a lawsuit. Fast forward to March 2016 in a courtroom in Florida, where Hulk Hogan is awarded $140 million of damages, right?

And so it's like $55 million for economic harm, 60 million for emotional distress, and then like another like 25 million in punitive damages. Gawker eventually reaches a $31 million settlement with Hogan. And that's a lot of money. Gawker did not have that much money. And so you could argue that pretty much is what led to the end of Gawker. And there's another piece of this that's really interesting.

And I think that actually sort of presages our current political climate. It comes out that the person that helped fund Hulk Hogan's lawsuit was a guy named Peter Thiel, a billionaire investor who is now known as part of the MAGOM movement, a far right guy, far right technology guy, you know, financier, all that sort of stuff. And the source of his beef with Gawker was that they had outed him in a post all the way back in 2007, right? So Gawker made a lot of enemies along the way. And it was just sort of, you know, like sometimes when you do that, you really

run the risk that people will hold under that grudge for a long time and they will come back and bite you. And that seems to be what happened here. And it's sad, man, because I mean, wouldn't you like to have a, like it would be really nice to have Gawker right now, wouldn't it? I think so. I mean, it's, it's in the one hand, we see it as a product of its time. And also something that really defined its time. But you're right. Like, why wouldn't we want that now? Yeah. You know, and, you know, when I think about Gawker, too, we can talk about like their editorial and the people that worked there. But they also just figured something really out really early, which was, you know what? We're all sitting in our desks and we want websites

that put up new stuff all day. When you talk about professionalized blogging. Oh, yeah. And you just refresh, refresh, refresh, oh, oh, here we go. Oh, I want to do this, right? We now go to social media to seek that same high. But that was gocker. I mean, that was absolutely. 20 posts a day, man. Like you could you could count on something new, basically about every hour if you were following Gawker, which is like perfect for the person sitting at their desk. It's like it gives you enough time to do that, maybe get a little work done, you come back and something else is there. And that's sort of how we consume news at the time. I mean, even before Twitter and all the other social media networks took such a primary role in our lives, right?

Let me give you a companion site, which is old deadspin. Oh, man. Now, this is a member of the zombie tier. Yeah. Though it's questionable because is it a zombie if it can't lurch forward with its arms out? I don't. That's a good question. We need some zombieologists to weigh in on this. That's been founded in 2005 by Will Leach Esquire.

Like Gawker, it was so many things. It was journalistic. It was gossipy. It was political. We remember the Mantaeo story, of course, which just speaking of earthquakes. in sports writing. And that was just one of those. Like stop the press's moments. I remember even Grantland having like a dialogue about that story.

Like we had, I think Malcolm Gladwell was involved in. We just had to stop and talk about what had just happened. But who would even do something like that today? Like what outlet would even do that? You'd hope somebody would do it. But again, it would be.

It would be. And I'd hope that Deadspin had instilled some skepticism, both in like the media watchers and also the people who are reporting that stuff who just never like looked up the fact or chased down the fact that this woman did not in fact exist who was part of this lini kakua thank you for remembering the name a couple of the things about deadspin if you think of the odds this is this moment when the old class of powerful people in sports writing those columnists who are on the first version of around the horn were giving way to a new class of sports writers who were from the internet.

And we were moving into this moment that what the internet people were writing was mattering. And what those people were writing increasingly wasn't mattering. I mean, Deadspin had a feature called Why Your Hometown columnist Sucks that made the point in not subtle terms at all. The other thing I'd say about old Deadspin is it was. So big, Joel. Oh, man. It's one thing to have like, you know, a website with a sports focus, but a very finely honed political viewpoint.

We've seen writers do that. We've seen smaller sites do that. Twitter accounts do that. This is like if you had the political sensibility of ramparts and the circulation of Time magazine. It was so big. I mean, just so big. and just seem to tower over almost everything else in the category.

Absolutely. I mean, look, man, I mean, just Jason Whitlock, ESPN, quote, Black Grantlin. Like, just Google that. You know what I'm saying? If you don't remember it. There's your afternoon. There's your afternoon. You don't even have to go to eBay.

Like, look, I mean, Deadspin sort of fundamentally altered the career of one of the most outspoken dudes in sports commentary in the country today. And like how ESPN rolled out, which is still sort of a boutique site on it. website, right? Like they still have a lot of resources to it and it's still going strong. But it's not what it was supposed to be. And that's in large part because of Deadspin. You mentioned the Hulk Hogan lawsuit. If we're talking about why old Deadspin died, that's certainly in the story. November 2019, so this is 14 years after Deadspin's founding, the staff got a stick to sports memo from their newish bosses at Geo Media.

Reading all these articles about those events, by the way, and I don't even recognize I only recognize the names of the people who were the executives because I read them in those articles. Like I haven't heard from them. It's like one of the people or something like that. Yeah. I haven't heard from them since. That's funny how that happened. All right.

Dave McKenna and Diana Moskowitz were there to turn out the lights when the staff left, the old Deadspin staff left. And it, by the way, came with a Bernie Sanders tweet. How perfect is that as a coda and funeral oration for old Deadspin? I stand with the former Deadspin workers who decided not. to bow to the greed of private equity vultures like jim spanfeller this is the kind of greed that is destroying journalism across the country and together we are taking we are going to take them on much of that staff is now over a defector but in the spirit of odombea mcdowl's water bill let us raise a glass to old deadspin and shout out to again the great megon greenwell who was the editor-in-chief

as that the curtain came down over there all right next category joel this is a little bit of a personal one it's joel and brian's big breaks Yeah, man. That's it. So we're going to talk about BuzzFeed now. And so what was BuzzFeed? So what if we built a whole serious, potentially billion dollar worth media enterprise out of cat listicles, right? Okay. And look, maybe the easiest way it's to start with this is to tell the story how I got hired there. Please. in the 2012 I'm one year away from going to grad school I'm a high school sports reporter

high school and college sports reporter at the Tampa Bay Times there's a posting that comes up for a senior sports writer at BuzzFeed don't really know what BuzzFeed is but my friend Shoney Hilton works there I've been I blogged with the Shani for a number

of years at a site called Post Bougie she's pretty high up on the chain there So I send her the listing and I say, man, you know, if maybe I had another year, this would be a great job for me to apply for. She says, well, why don't you apply for it now? So I said, oh, okay, why not? I get in. I, you know, make that group of finalists to get a chance to go for an interview. So this is my first visit to New York in like a decade. Like, you know, I go to the newsroom. And I'll never forget, I felt so goofy because this is me, I'm 35 years old. And this is 2013. I wore a suit to my interview. At BuzzFeed. The person interviewing me was my good friend, Ben Mathis Lilley. He was wearing swim trunks and a Michigan T-shirt. Sounds about right.

Yeah, right. And so anyway, I go there, kill it, get that job. And it was my first day of work. I swear this is true. First day of work. We go downstairs because it's tacos. They would make their, you know, BuzzFeed provided lunch for you, basically, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Yeah, right, they would cater lunch for you. They had a lot of money, right? So I go down to get my tacos on the way down there. It's like, oh, yeah, by the way, Kanye West is in the building. And he's meeting with Jonah Peretti and a couple of other people. And you can see Kanye West in this office room. And I actually took a picture of it and posted it. And later I found out that I wasn't supposed to do that.

This is my first day of work. But anyway, I mean, look, the thing about BuzzFeed is that a lot of people sort of mocked it as like, you know, the listicles and silliness and everything else. And when I got there, they were really trying to ramp up a serious news division, which I might add they did and did very, very well, right? Absolutely. And you see the spirit of that with Ben, which he takes over, Ben Smith, that is, to the Times where he writes a media column that was excellent now over at Semaphore. With notes, I would say, of BuzzFeed. It's very different. and Ben of all people is like, I have my finger on the pulse of what the internet is and how the internet digest news now.

Right. BuzzFeed News was a product of that and semaphore is his own distinct product. I would say that. I mean, this is, I mean, where it was. This is not long after I get there. In 2013, the Atlantic, the Atlantic called it the most influential news organization in America today. Wow. Yeah, man.

I mean, that's how big a deal it was. And at that time, I mean, they had so much money. And they were able at that point to, and I remember, and I'm not trying to like second guess anybody or anything, but I remember in like 2014, 2015, I think what I heard was that we hired two people a day every day over those two years. And I remember thinking, where's all this money coming from? How are we making this much money? But anyway, we BuzzFeed expanded and had correspondence in 12 countries, right?

And by the end of 2017, employed almost 1,700 employees worldwide. That's like New York Times level of staffing, man. There was a lot of money and a lot of energy around that place. And this is probably the way you felt at Grantland. It is like, oh, I'm a part of something really special here. Like, I mean, nothing will ever feel like that again in my career, right? I remember there was a moment I was at Grantland. And this is when a Dallas sportscaster, Dale Han,

Hansen was starting to do his big political segments on television, on the local newscast in Dallas. And I'm like, say, this is a Curtis piece. Yeah, it's media, it's sports. I grew up with Dale Hanson. I'm going to go down there and write it. And I was like, let me see, wait a second. It's been done by BuzzFeed. And let me look at the author's name.

Joel Anderson. Yeah, yeah. How did he beat me to this? Yeah, man, isn't that crazy? I knew Dale Hanson. Also, I mean, I learned how to make gifts at BuzzFeed. That's how committed to the cause I was. Yeah.

It was actually a very labor-intensive process. But I learned to do that. But that's just how you, if you worked at BuzzFeed in that time, and there's so many talented people that worked there, like, go look up the people that came through there. I mean, since then, they've had people that have won National Magazine Awards, the George Polk Award, the Pulitzer Prize. It was nominated for the Michael Kelly Award.

Like, BuzzFeed News had some real heavy hitters. Not, I mean, whatever, if I was one of those people, great, if not cool. I won't be offended if you say I wasn't. They had a heavy hitter in my book. I appreciate you saying that. I mean, they had a podcast, another round that was hosted by my friends, Tracy Clayton and Hebben Nagatu. They interviewed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 during the 2016 campaign, right?

So there was a lot of energy. There was a lot of great and talented people there. But of course, as I mentioned, they spent a lot of money, man. And that's kind of why, I mean, this thing didn't work out. I mean, there were headwinds that were going to come anyway, but the money sort of ran out, and it didn't meet those valuations, which were sort of outrageous in retrospect. But they just could never meet the sort of hype that they had on Wall Street, and that sort of doomed them, I think. Do I also remember this, a Joel Anderson feature on the father of Michael Sam that made the Best American Sports Riding?

That's right, man, I did that. Man, see, look, and this is a testament. to the time that it was. A real quick story. So the way that that story happened is that we were trying to distinguish ourselves as a sports division that cared about LGBTQ involvement in sports, right? And so we got a tip that there was going to be an NFL player in the draft, a high-profile player that was going to come out as gay, right, or whatever.

And pardon me if I get the verb, it's wrong there. But at any rate, we got beat on it. I was really close to being able to report that Michael Sam was the guy. And then that night, as I was talking to Sarah Tuol, who's one of the former NFL player who was very active in those circles. And I'm on the phone with him. And then it's like, oh, shit, New York Times and ESPN have reported, you know, piece it together.

And in part because I was on the story. So they were trying to get out ahead of us. And so I was so pissed. And I remember he ends up getting drafted. and as he gets drafted and it was a big event on news, right? And so they show him kissing his boyfriend

and I remember looking at it and being like, you know, black people there. I don't know Michael Sam is black. Where is his family? And so that's how we got down the road to be writing that story about his father. But BuzzFeed gave me six months to write that story.

I spent a whole summer down in Houston trying to chase his father down and everything else and chasing him all over Texas. So, yeah, man, it was a whole totally different era. But I mean, BuzzFeed at that time and was really, really committed to doing good and important news, I would say. I'll tell you where my big break came from. It came from Play. Oh, really? Is that right? The New York Times Sports Magazine. Huh. I'm thinking it was Grantland, but okay. Play preceded it. Okay. It lasted from 2006 to 2008. What was it? Well, it was the attempt to

create the next great literary sports magazine you mentioned this earlier this is 2006 there's a lot of us children of sports illustrated yep who were looking at s i and going wait what happened to the bonus pieces what happened to those those stories that you would read and just be like wow that was just great i read that and that was just such a satisfying read that i didn't even think i was going to get this week well the new york times stepped into the breach This is long before the athletic kids and said, what if we had a sports magazine? And what if we only published it four times a year? It was a quarterly sports magazine.

Weirdly, they also had a real estate magazine at this time called Key, like the key you put in the front door of the house. That's an interesting period of media time. Get it. But I was working at Slate. And Mark Bryant, who was the editor of play, he had been the editor of Outside Magazine during its 1990s glory years. He cold called me. I remember in being in my apartment, the Lower East Side, when I got this phone call,

I was 27. And he says, hey, you know, your name came up. I've read some of your stuff. Would you be interested in writing a media column for me at Play Magazine? I'd like to sit down with you and talk to you about this. So he says, name a place around Times Square. So I didn't really have many at my fingertips. So I asked somebody, I can't remember, or maybe I did a Google search.

I can't remember what happened. I picked this cavernous Bobby Flay restaurant. And I remember sitting down with Mark for that first meeting, him being like, well, this is an interesting place. I was like, yeah, that's, it is, huh? What do you have against Dallas barbecue? I really should have done that. That would have been more on point. But we hit it off, and he said, you know, write me a memo.

There were no commitments. Write me a memo. So I write this memo of media column ideas, one of which was about, wait for it, Bill Simmons, who everybody was reading at ESPN at the time. Funny how history all comes around. Genius. Man, you must have been just so, that had to have felt like, oh, I've really made it, man. Right?

Absolutely. I mean, just you remember, like, in those days, so again, this is 2005 when we're having these conversations. It's like print in a way was still bigger than digital. Or it felt, even if it would digital was taken over, Gawker style, it felt like print that you were, you were chosen, right? You had hands had been placed on you, like, especially than you were at times. That was for the people that were very serious, like very serious.

People, very serious journalists, which I'm sure I thought of myself in that way at that time. Play went on to publish some amazing pieces. David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer. If you haven't read it, stop the podcast right now and read it. Michael Lewis's profile of Bill Parcells when he was coached the Dallas Cowboys, which is another amazing piece of journalism. Really? My favorite one I wrote there is I called Mark or I wrote him an email and I said,

hey, my 80-year-old grandfather is one of the best senior softball players in the world. And I can prove this or sort of prove this because he's won 12 senior softball world championships. And he's still playing. At that time, he was kind of a player coach, a little bit of the Pete Rose late career move for him. And of course, play says, that sounds great. I fly to Phoenix. A New York Times photographer, magazine photographer, flies to Phoenix, take pictures of my grandfather and I wrote this profile of him.

And let me tell you something, Joel, like my grandfather for the rest of his life, just that, that he had a copy of that. And he was always pushing. I was like, have you read this? And everybody's like, yes, you've shown me that every day for the last 12 years. But thank you very much for suggesting it. Oh, man. But that, I mean, that was one of the most gift.

Oh, my God. It was so cool. And I had been wanting to write that for a while, but I was kind of saving it. Like, I want to make sure it's in the right. And then it was in New York Times. Play dies in 2008, mostly because of the Great Recession. That's a killer that's going to come up on our list a whole bunch of times here. The next year, the New York Times would actually have to take a loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.

I remember Carlos Slim. Not a happy period for the paper. I think play probably would have gone monthly if economic circumstances have been different. That would have been interesting. but it was the next great literary sports magazine for a couple years, and then Grantland would be the next one. Can you imagine a time when New York Times was struggling with money? It seems crazy, but it was on the ropes.

It really did seem like, like, you know, not that its future was in peril, but that the kind of publication that it was going to be was in peril, right? 100%. We were having conversations about the times that we now have about other newspapers. Washington Post. among them. All right, next category. And speaking of which, the flyby nights. Yeah, man. Well, so, Brian, did you ever get a job offer from Fusion? No, but I remember the job offer from Fusion being both omnipresent and a joke online. Was it Dave Weigel who was like,

congrats on your new job at Fusion? And he tweet that out every few weeks. That's so funny. That's so funny. I mean, yeah, man, the thing was is that so anyway, for people that don't know, Fusion, it was ABC News' third attempt at starting a 24-hour news channel, and they teamed up with Univision. Univision was going to be doing the programming, ABC News's frontening the money. And the thing was at the time, when it started out, it was this sort of straightforward effort to capture the growing Latino population in the country. And I'm sure now people would file this underwokeness, run amok or whatever. But you could see the vision, right? because people had found out that, like, huh, a lot of the second and third generation Latinos in America were now watching TV in English, not necessarily Spanish.

Maybe we can capture these people, and they're advertisers that are very interested in having access to those people. So you can sort of see where they were going, you know, where they were going. Problem is, and this is sort of why, you know, you could get to why it ended. imagine starting a cable news network in 2013. You know what I mean? Like you're not really aware of the headwinds that are coming at you, but you can get a feel for them. And that's kind of what caught up with fusion.

But look, man, I mean, it did have, when they started laying out those initial hires, I'm like, this makes sense. Alexis Madrigal, Dota Stewart, Felix Salmon, Anna Holmes. I'm going to throw this fifth one at you. And it's going to probably shock some people. Tim Poole, former director of media innovation. Wow.

Fusion. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's how long ago this was, right? A very lefty organization, you would think. But anyway, so yeah, so that was, they had these big names. They had the backing of ABC News and Univision. You'd think money is not a problem.

But the problem is that, man, it's really hard to break through. Like, when you're going to start. a news channel to get people to like change their viewing habits and to start all over. It's like, and they didn't even necessarily have the big distribution that a lot of other of those big other networks had. And so that was one of the things, right? It's just like, am I really going to watch Fusion? I already got MSNBC on, you know?

I completely agree. And it was, it was part of this trend that happens around that period of time where people you knew would come to you, like, hey, I got this offer. And it was usually way more money. Yep. Then the depressed wages we were making in our normal jobs. And you would say, well, what is it? What's happening at this new, new and well-moneyed website?

And they'd be like, I'm not totally sure. Yeah, man. And you'd have to have this weird conversation, be like, hmm, am I going to tell you to turn down more money, lots more money in a lot of cases? Right. Because we don't totally understand what's going on and what the prospects are for this new place. I mean, also you're talking about people that are already coming out of one failing industry.

You're talking about writers for the most part, right? And it's like, you know, those lifeboats, there's not very many of them. And it's like, well, I mean, I get the right for TV. And maybe, you know, you can go on to ABC News or maybe you know, maybe somebody will come in. Maybe there's a future there. Maybe there's a future there, right? Did you ever watch Fusion? I don't think I did, to be honest.

Okay. So you never saw come here and say that? I don't believe that that I did. No. You didn't watch no, you shut up. up. No. You didn't watch Sports Talkers.

No, who was on sports talkers? Rebecca Delgado Smith, Billy Scafuri, and Adam Lustick. Okay. All right. So I didn't either. I just thought maybe you had. But, you know, I will say it did kind of open with the bank. I mean, it had America with Jorge Ramos, who many people know it was a longtime

Univision anchor. Yeah, just retired. Yeah, man. He had interviews with Barack Obama and Ted Cruz in that first and that rollout, man. So they started, I mean, with the bang, but, you know, it obviously wasn't destined to last. Let me give you another leaky lifeboat, the messenger. Oh, oh, oh, no. What was it?

Well, it was kind of the last great megap flop, or at least the last one until the next megaflop. Started by Jimmy Finkelstein, who'd made a pile of money selling the hill. And I'll pause and let you fill in whatever comment you want to make there. In 2023, he says, I want to do a different site. And Ben Mullen and the New York Times would report that he would put in 50 or raise $50 million for this new site from people like Josh Harris, who owns the Sixers and commanders. He would hire 550 journalists. That was the goal. Which Mullen noted was about the size of the L.A. Times newsroom.

We're promising $100 million in revenue. first year. I mean. And again, post-pandemic, this was wild stuff. Didn't, when you heard that announcement, I immediately thought, oh, this is going to fail. Like, it never occurred to me that they had a future. 100% agree. But here was what was different about those conversations versus the fusion era conversations.

The business was so depressed and is so depressed that if people had come to me and said, hey, should I take this job at the messenger? I said, I might have said, why not? Yeah. Because for a lot of people, you're thinking in two and three year chunks here. You're not thinking of, hey, I want to get the 20 year run started right here. It's like, what's going to pay the bills and allow me to stay in the business? Maybe I can do a little work, get a contract that'll pay me out long enough that, you know, if it doesn't work out, that I can figure out the next thing, right?

Why did it die? Well, the messenger turned out to be what we think. thought it was. It didn't even make it nine months. Starts in May 2020 and was gone the following January. Damn. Didn't get to 550 journalists, but Mullen said they hired 300, all of whom lost their jobs.

Instead of generating $100 million in revenue, it generated a little over $3 million in 2023, $3 million. Once again, a lot of really good reporters there who did good work, Mark Caputo, Adrian Carasquillo, who's now over at the bulwark. I have this rule, Joel, that I'll codify at some point for you that no matter how bad the publication is, there will always be journalists who do amazing work there.

Absolutely. They will, because they're just more journalists than there are jobs. There's so many more jobs. You will find good ones, right, who will come and will do good stuff for you. And people that want to try something different. You know what I mean? Like they're like, yeah, why not? Yeah.

also almost merged with the LA Times right before it died which would have been like you know the leaky lifeboat you know going back to the Titanic that would have been funny also January 2024 this is one of the all time terrible moments for media we were all dusting off the word existential for our think pieces that was the SI scare the LA Times layoffs and now 300 more people dumped into the job hunting class I remember that right oh yeah so anyway we won't we won't we won't Remember the messenger per se, perhaps, but we will remember it as a false oasis in a really desperate time for this business. All right. Next category. Just for men. Sintillating, if you will. So we'll, this is, I'm on Playboy here.

Now, is Playboy gone or are we in kind of some weird zombie? It's kind of some weird zombie. It kind of exists sort of. if you punch playboy.com into your browser, something will come up. Okay. But is it the Playboy that many of us remember from our youth? Actually, I've got to ask you this. Brian, what was your first exposure to Playboy?

We were talking about uncles the other day on the podcast, and my uncle had a stash. That was it. Okay. I remembered Playboy, but the first issue I ever came across, I discovered that my dad kept some of his lad mags and a small little briefcase in the guest bedroom closet. And I went in there, pulled it out, and it was the one with Pamela Anderson undercover. So that probably is worth some money. What do you think?

I would think so. You would think so. Anyway, so here's some of the proposed names for Hugh Heffner's brainchild, but when it got started. So you can see how they really settled on something here that worked for them. Top Hat. Okay. gentlemen okay

sir pan which I don't somebody have to explain pan to me bachelor okay Playboy was the

the better of those right it was they all have a real high end kind of sparkle to them yeah I guess I could see a gentleman magazine

maybe yeah yeah they all but again they're all doing a sophisticated version of what was actually inside

the magazine or part of what was inside the magazine. Part of what's side. So anyway, Hugh Heffner wrote in this first issue for people that did, I mean, you children, if you don't remember Playboy, if you're a man between the ages of 18 and 80, playboy is meant for you. We want to make it clear from the very start. We aren't a family magazine. If you're somebody's sister, wife, or mother-in-law and picked us up by mistake, please pass us along to the man in your life and get back to your lady's home companion. which is sort of seemingly undercuts the idea that it was going to take part of some sort of sexual revolution if you could dismiss women as part of your customer base like that, right? So it seems flawed right from the start. But despite all of that, here's again another short list of people who pose for Playboy. I don't know if people remember some of these names, but I'm just going to throw them at you here. Jane Mansfield, Kim Basinger, Nancy Sinatra, Latoya Jackson, Katarina Witt, Gabrielle Rees, Pam Anner.

Anderson, Suzanne Summers, Farah Fawcett, and the current owner of the L.A. Lakers, Jenny Busce. Wow. Do you remember that Jenny Busset posed for Playboy? Yeah. When we say posed, right, there's different ways to pose for Playboy, right? This, you know, I'm photographed, you know. Photographed, right. Like, there's a, it was a very tasteful.

And in fact, I can read you some of which, actually Jenny Bust says she posed. I posed for Playboy magazine at the time of my life when I was 32 years old and recently divorced. It was a decision that freed me from the expectations of others and allowed me to accept my body and myself exactly as I am. She said about that May 1995 pictorial. So anyway, but yes, there was many different ways to pose. Did you subscribe to Playboy? I did not, to my knowledge, subscribe to Playboy. Okay.

I will. I have been, that sounded like a real political, but I'm wondering like, did some friend or, you know, somebody give it to me when I was in college, which would have been. Let's just say I didn't, I didn't renew a subscription to Playboy if I had one. I have been, so Playboy, as I'm sure you're about to point out, was just loaded with high-end articles. Absolutely, man. So that's what I was going to say. So, I mean, I subscribed to it, you know, in my like 25 to 28 era. And I had, I subscribed to a bunch of magazines. I just have them spread out on my coffee table. And the joke always used to be, well, people read it for other articles. But seriously, like Playboy had some great

articles and among them, the Playboy interview was a huge honor. Like, if you got interviewed by Playboy and they went long on you, I mean, think about this. I mean, you could argue that the Malcolm X autobiography stems out of this long interview with Alex Haley back in the 60s, right? He interviewed Jimmy Carter, which elicits this great, and, I mean, you know, iconic quote, I've committed adultery in my heart many times. That is from a Playboy interview, right? An enormously famous quote. Yep. Enormously famous quote.

So I mean, Playboy, I mean, in addition to the pictures, it did do a lot of work. It was, you could think of it as sort of a cosmopolitan project, right? And it bought it a certain kind of mainstream status. Mm-hmm. Despite a lot of its content. And it's funny. Speaking of eBay shopping, occasionally I'll find a reference to a story that's in there. They're very hard to find online like the story.

So I will go. And one time it was a piece that David Halberstam had written about Howard GoSell. So I'm like, awesome. Like that sounds like my kind of thing. And I just remember ordering it from eBay and I've never felt so sheepish. This is like within the last five to 10 years. So I'm just like, okay. And then, you know, getting it at the house and there's like explanations.

Like I'm not looking for an early 80s playboy. It's a very specific purpose here. I'm going to keep this in a public place so everybody knows that I'm on the level here. But also, you know, what Playboy did too, that was a big deal that appeals to us. I mean, in addition to the, you know, college football All-America teams, man. That was huge. Once upon a time, you might argue that it might have been the sports biggest honor outside of Heisman. I think so. I think probably so. Yeah. Anyway, but why did it die? I mean, because it was, as you can imagine,

we're giving you all the stuff. It was tremendously popular. But some things happened after the 1970s. Some other magazines started doing what Playboy did, but dirtier. So, like, you know, penthouse, right? And a bunch of other places. Then, you know, the rise and the accessibility of porn. And then, you know, kind of the lad bags, you know, like Maxim and FHM and stuff. Like you could really, if you did not have to buy a magazine wrapped in cellophane behind a newsstand at Barnes & Noble if you wanted, if that's what you were in it for, right?

Let me give you a different men's magazine. It's men's vogue. Okay. there was Vogue original recipe. And then from September 2005 to October 2008, so almost three years, there was men's Vogue. And what was it? It was On a Wintour brand extension. On a Wintour by this point was an institution of Condé NAS.

Vogue was a cash cow for Kande. She'd already spun off Teen Vogue, which is alive, at least online, in current, in present day. but what mens vogue was doing is it was kind of an answer to some of those lad mags you referenced right of the aughts the first cover subject was george cloney really george cloning and let me give you some men's vogue covers from the early aughts and tell me if this is not a certain vision of mid aughts manhood. Hugh Jackman. Okay.

Vigo Mortensen. Okay. Yeah. Barack Obama. Wow. Okay. Eli Manning. Eli.

Manning. Okay. Patrick Dempsey. What? Okay. All right. If you just take those five gentlemen, I think you have a pretty good idea. I guess.

I see what they're going for here. Yeah. Some pretty great stable of riders because they could borrow. New Yorker writers like Nick Palm Garden and John Seabrook. I was also a contributor. I'm going to go ahead and reveal this is almost like I'm not as sheepish about this as I was about the Playboy question. But there was an editor over there who contacted me. I did a few things for him.

And Anna Wintour had a rule that she wanted all interviews to take place in person. Okay. So when I was assigned to write a, I want to say three to 500 word, essentially long caption about the golfer Adam Scott, I was put on a play. playing to London to interview Adam Scott in a hotel lobby for, I don't know, it's no more than an hour, let's say probably more like 45 minutes. I stayed in London for several days and flew home and wrote my three to 500 words. I mean, I just missed those days.

That sounds like I never got to go to London, I would say, but that sounds like a lot of fun. The editor was Jay Fielden, fellow Texan, who came up through the Vogue mothership. One time I was escorted into his office at Conday headquarters. And oh my God. I mean, he was dressed like, you know, the photo you take for the editor's letter. Oh, yeah. And I was dressed like Brian. Oh, man. So you didn't dress up to go into that office? Well, I didn't know how. I mean, I was like, I came from the opinion journalism world where, you know, if you wore a Brooks brother's shirt and rolled up the sleeves, you were at the height of fashion. I mean, you were living large. I just have this image of Jerry Freilly, the late great Jerry Friend.

Oh, my God. I'm going to like Hawaiian shirts into the press box. So, yeah, you had a tough time to adjust it at that. You didn't, yeah, how could you have known? Once again, the killer here, the Great Recession, 2008, which takes out a lot of media. All right, Joel, next category. We did just for men. Let's do just for kids.

Yeah. Okay. So Mad Magazine, man. And I was, I don't know if this is surprised people or not. I was a huge Mad Magazine fan. I collected as many Mad Magazine as I had maybe Sports Illustrated or anything else. What was Mad Magazine? Well, what if you made Saturday Night Live and Tua magazine?

That's kind of the way I think about it, right? And it was just kind of sometimes it was really great, and it captured the mischievous and, like, righteous spirit of, like, the great cartoonist and comedians. And sometimes, and I think the comedian I'm going to use here as a reference point is going to be recognized by maybe three people. But sometimes it was as funny as cool Bubba Ice. You can look up Cool Bub Ice if you want to.

No disrespect, Cool Bub Ice, but I mean, come on. Anyway, it started as a comic book in 195 and transitioned to a magazine by like 55. And I guess would you say it was like a little more chill and sophisticated than like the onion, right? Or the onion got its inspiration from Mad Magazine, I would say. Almost certainly, yeah. And a little more, I don't know, the aesthetic was just a little different than the onion. Yeah, right. They were doing something different because these were based on cartoonists more than anything.

These were people that were more cartoonists than they were writers, although a lot of them were very, very good writers. And, you know, like maybe people might know it best by the Alfredy Newman, you know, the sort of freckled, gap tooth, big-eared kid who did the what-me-worry. That was sort of the slogan of him and the magazine. So it was just sort of a reverent, right? And they talked about politics. They talked about sports.

They talked about American life. in a way with a sort of sarcasm and in a reverence that just, you know, they did theoretically did not take themselves very seriously. No, they didn't. I mean, it's funny. I think if we look at the generations before us, the generations that created S&L that created the Simpsons, Greaten Carter last week on this podcast, we were talking about inspirations for Spy magazine and Mad magazine was right up there. Like, Mad was the thing. Yeah. That was absolutely the, the Bible for people who wanted to be, and in fact would be funny for the next several decades. Oh, man, if you wanted to write for any of those, I mean, man, just the idea of humor magazines.

Like, we don't really do that sort of thing anymore. But like, if you wanted to write for National Lampoon or Saturday Night Live or whatever, like, you may have to have gone through that pipeline and write it math. Yeah, it's also funny how the internet just quenched a lot of that thirst. Yeah. You know, like Mad would do whatever the new movie was that whenever new movie was out, there'd be a cover like the next month. It'd be like, we sink the Titanic. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And now it's like if you want jokes about the new movie, just log on. Like there's, there's so many of them. It's so good. You know, tweet after tweet after tweet, right? And so yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of, I mean, if you want to know why it didn't make it. I mean,

it's a familiar story. The internet kind of killed that. And I did exist, like you could, and I think if I get this right, you can still order Mad magazines. They sort of cater to a much more, a much smaller customer base and, you know, they could, you can get it delivered to you. But it's like, it's like kind of a smaller elite crowd. Hey, look, man. The power brokers in comedy.

Look, man, if you are a mad fan, I want to hear from you. Because, I mean, I thought it was, I think it did a lot to make politics accessible. You said it was Just for Kids, and a lot of kids did read it, but I think it was targeted towards adults. It's like, kind of like cartoons in and of themselves. It was a way kids entered the adult world. Absolutely, absolutely. And Saturday Night Live served the same function. For my Just for Kids nomination, I want to give you Nintendo Power.

Oh, I just, a wave of nostalgia just swept over me. Dude, I mean, way back in 1988, 1988, excuse me, it starts. right before the release of Super Mario Bros. 2 for the original Nintendo. And what was Nintendo Power? Well, it was the answer to the question back in 1988. How do you figure out things about video games? You were alive then.

There were a couple ways. The biggest one was some guy at school tells you on the playground. Oh, my God. And then the second version was you somehow convince your parents to let you borrow their credit cards. You can call a tip line. Kids get your parents' permission before you call. And an operator, I believe I did this exactly once. Like, an operator would somehow know the answer to whatever video game question you had

about presumably any video game. That's crazy. So you could, did you have to call to get the contra code then basically? Basically, exactly. Then Nintendo Power comes along. And it is at one end. I want to hand a sales guide to get you to buy more video games. But it also contains the answers.

you seek. Yeah. And Joel, I don't if you remember this, but on Saturday mornings during cartoons, there were commercials for Nintendo Power.

Oh, man. I have a vague memory of this. It sounds right. I'm glad it's vague because Brian Waters has got this cute up for you right here.

Oh. Six great issues plus six free strategy guides on a hot new game. That's twice the power for still 15 bucks. Wow. Call now.

Some real 90s-ass music in there. Oh, man. That's amazing. I love that. It felt like somebody listening that. commercial and then went and designed ESP in the magazine.

I mean, dude, I was eating, I was eating frosted flakes, you know, that's right there, man. Flipping through those pages. I'm flipping through this. Oh, yeah, man, let me get this. Yeah, TechMobile. Yeah, there was a, there was a, I finally convinced my parents to let me subscribe because you've got a free video game called Dragon Warrior for subscribing people from

that era will know what I mean. Nintendo Power lived 24 years died in December 2012. It lasts it that long. Yeah, and it only dies because, A, Nintendo didn't want to renew the contract with a company that had taken over the publishing of the magazine. But once again, the answer, and this will become a refrain here, if it's not a recession, it's the internet. Right. Let me tell you, my son, Owen, I just finally got him his first video game system. He's in sixth grade.

Okay. And we were kind of like, yeah, let's reduce screen time, that kind of thing. But it was getting sad because he was like checking out books from the library about video. video games that his friends are playing. He was having a literary relationship with video games. What? So I got him a Switch and I got him Zelda Breath of the Wild. I'm not a gamer.

Anybody can probably tell from this. And now when he gets stuck, he's like, Dad, can you look up what we're supposed to do? And I'm like, oh, let me Google the answer to that question. And that once was what Nintendo Power did. I mean, man, you know, that you're involved in the video gaming of it at all is a testament to your being a great father. Well, eventually I became a great father.

It just took a few years. All right, new category for you, Joel. Sports writing is dead. You know, there was a time when you could go to a newsstand, and there were so many sports magazines. There were sport, you know, ESPN the magazine. But, I mean, one that I always just kind of think of because it just, it was so big and so thick,

but also looked so boring. the sporting news. And it was once known as the Bible of baseball, right? So it's a magazine that's found and goes back to 1886, and it was founded by the director of the St. Louis Brown's baseball team. It was basically meant to... That's a throwback. Yeah, right?

The St. Louis Browns, right? And it was based out of St. Louis, obviously. And so basically, it was at a time when newsstands were abundant, you could flip open the sporting news and be treated to pay. page after page of baseball information, just like data, players, minor league stuff. Like, it just, you could be overwhelmed with this stuff. And it was sort of a, and you see if you agree with me of this, sort of a non-glamorous black and white news print pub that it was like for really serious sports fans.

Like, you didn't go there for stories. Like, you were going there for like information, right? So people who thought Sports Illustrated was too silly. Yes. or too glossy. Right. Like, I don't want to care about that. I want to know about, you know, what my third baseman and AAA did.

And when is you going to get called up? And that's the sort of service that Sporting News serve for quite a while. And but eventually, you know, like in 1942, I mean, remember, I told you, it was founded in 1886. It took until 1942 for the sporting news to add in-season football coverage, right? I show you how far back it goes and like sort of what its mission was. But I mean, it's still, did you have a subscription to the sporting news, Brian? Well, I think it was like actually my first act as a press critic, as a young press critic, is I got tired of Sports Illustrated and I asked my mom if I could switch to the sporting news. Really?

And I'm not sure why I did that. I'm not sure what, you know, John Cruck cover of SI propelled me over there. But I actually made that switch for a while. And then I think I went back. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing is, is that if you had sporting news, it was really good in tandem with Sports Illustrated and maybe later ESP in the magazine. All you had was the sporting news.

It was kind of rough for you. But the one thing that Sporting News did that also kind of floated it along for a while was it did these yearbooks, right? And I'm one of these people. And I'm still like this. I'm looking for the NFL draft guide for 2025 or the preseason conference. college football preview, sporting news, and they sell their conference edition. So if you live within the Big 12 footprint, you got your sporting news, Big 12 edition. If you live on the West Coast, you've got Pack 12 or whatever.

So they kind of kept themselves floating along for them. But it just, again, like a magazine or an outlet that was kind of that old and fusty, you can imagine that it did not fare that great in the Internet age. And now it did attempt to sort of merge with AOL sports website, Fan House. in like 2011, but, you know, that worked with, you know, I guess mixed results. And really, it was in December of 2012 after 126 years that it published its final issue of the magazine. So, I mean, it's been gone now, man, like almost, almost, you know, 13 years, dude.

So that's, I didn't realize it had been that long. But I think we miss it, man. I still, like, I think that the service at the sporting news. servers that if you're a sports fan, you have so many fewer options to get information about your teams in terms of the written word. You can go on the internet and you can kind of piece it all together. But the one thing that the sporting news did is it put it all in front of you right here. We were all reading the same stuff. And I kind of think that, like, you know, I just kind of missed that era. Big repository of data too. And USA Today Sports section had a lot of that when data

was not easy to find and you wanted stats beyond what you just read in your normal sports page. All right, my contribution to the category sports writing is dead is sports on earth. Oh, I remember sports on earth. I do remember sports on earth. I took a straight and test for them. Oh, did you really? I did. Yeah.

I was going to call it a strange and largely happy marriage between old school and new school sports writers. Starts in fall 2012. This was a three-year sweet spot where if you were a big sports personality, you got a website built around you. Yeah. So, Granlin is 2011.

Peter King starts the MMQB site in 2013. And smack dab in the middle of that is a site that seemed to be built around Joe Posnansky. That's, man. Posnansky was white hot, right? He's done the Casey Star. He done SI. And he comes in and I'm like,

okay, this is Joe Posnanski's website. And then he leaves after seven months to go to NBC. so not Joe Puzzaninsky's website not very long yeah some really amazing alums though will leach chuck colpepper emma spanned lindsay lindsay vallett who's now over at the washington david roth a bunch of writers from the classical did stuff for sports on earth the ringer's very own michael pina was it sports on earth mike bea luchy Howard medigal mike lupeka sure was it uh wrote for them i did not know that. Wow.

It's on Earth. Okay. Man. Will Leach would say that Sports on Earth would publish 14,000 stories, including 1400 by Will himself. Damn. And 1,500 stories by Matt Brown. So I guess they were on the Pazanansky Iron Throne.

Wait, which Matt Brown? Uh, Sports on Earth, Matt Brown. Okay. There you go. That Matt Brown. That Matt Brown. Okay. Uh, what killed it?

Well, it was owned by Gannett's USA Today Sports Media. group that's a bad start right there yeah well let me give you another one and major league baseballs mlb advanced media to two teetering concerns melb and ganette uh ginnett got out in 2014 there were big layoffs uh the lights are finally turned off in january 2018 and in a very cruel and stupid move they pulled down all the archives which is one of the fates that unfortunately has befallen a lot of online publications. Absolutely. And that is Sports on Earth.

All right, Joel, next category. We did sports writing is dead. How about general interest magazines are dead? Yeah, man. Okay, so California Sunday, which really kind of overlapped with my living out there. You know what I mean? It was pretty active while I lived out there.

And it was sort of this serious and really ambitious attempt to give California the kind of high-quality general interest mag that rivaled those in New York, because that's always with California. We have this, if you live in California, you have sort of this inferiority complex to New York, right? 100%. Why don't we have our New Yorker? Why don't we have a New York Magazine? Why don't we have the New York Times Sunday magazine but out here, right?

And it really was something that California had been missing since, like, the L.A. Times had its magazine ended in the 1990s. And so there's this, you can see where maybe people might try to fill that void, right? And that had never been anything like it. So it was founded in October 2014 by Douglas McRae and Chas Edwards. And it was the way that it got started is it was included as an insert with the Sunday editions of L.A. Times, New York Times, Sacramento, B, San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Diego Union Tribune. Did you ever get a chance to read one of those? I did. Absolutely. When I moved out here, we're still going strong. Yeah, man. It was really, really good. Like, I mean, I just, but I think this.

thing, and you tell me, because the magazine won National Magazine Awards or Ellie's, whatever you want to call them, they did a lot of cool stuff. But I think the thing that was sort of, that emerged out of that that I regret the loss of the most is pop-up magazine. It was a live performance, and it based a lot of the editors from California Sunday helped to prop this up. And basically it was like, you'd go to a show and writers would perform their pieces. for you. Like maybe they would do a video accompanied it. Maybe they would have to bring somebody on stage. Maybe they just had audio, whatever.

And again, I had a personal connection to this. My wife toured with pop up magazine for a couple of years. And it was if anybody wants to buy the story, the short version of it is that her parents ran a brothel in San Francisco in the 1970s.

Oh my gosh. If that's interesting to you, hit me up. I mean. Yeah, you're in on that. It was a good. It did very well. But anyway, but look, man, I mean, trying to start up magazines, especially that are attached to newspapers, I mean, you can kind of see where like the economics of that is not going to pan out. But pop-up magazine was a huge success. Like it made a lot of money, but without, you know, sort of that anchor, it was not able to last. You could do a whole history of people who have looked at California and said, why don't we have the cool magazines?

Why aren't we as lettered as our East Coast friends? I think Clay Felker, who created New York Magazine, came out here and tried to start a magazine. There have been so many. Yeah, man. And again, sitting here in California, again, don't want to diminish anybody who's doing stuff online, doing very cool stuff.

But I'll talk to people at parties, and they want to create publications for L.A. and publications for California, because it seems so ripe and so obvious. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's a huge place, and there's so many interesting parts of the state. There's so many great stories

that have left uncovered, because even the newspaper themselves are not really able to cover all that ground. And so you'd think, man, somebody can sort of capture this and make something of it. But I'm going to, so Gawkers Ken Lane wrote up on the announcement of the founding of the magazine, he wrote this, okay, and so it sort of predicts what happens. Newspapers are bleeding print subscribers, of course, but Sunday subscribers are still a very desirable demographic because they're generally wealthy people in the, the most expensive zip codes.

Still, the success rate of such things is dismal. And that, that, that, a business model based on the money hemorrhaging New York Observer, was one of many dubious decisions, but it was terribly exciting for a couple of months. This was a, he was talking about his magazine that he worked for that was similar to that. And he's predicting, he's looking into the future and he's saying, I just don't think that this is going to be able to make it. Unfortunately, he was right. Let me give you another one that didn't make it.

it's talk. Talk magazine. What was it? Well, it was Tina Brown's sequel to the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. So Tina Brown is the editor of the 90s. Tina Brown, man. Yeah, man. She leaves New Yorker in 1998.

And this time she's not going to reinvigorate a foundering magazine, but create one from scratch. And she's going to create one that has elements of the New Yorker, but I think the 23 and me test would probably say the talk was much closer to Vanity Fair. Right. Now, this is so 1999 it hurts. She starts with a huge party. Of course.

And the party is on Liberty Island. Liberty is in that is where the statue of Liberty is. Oh, shit. Meaning we're going to take all the boldface names and put them on boats and take them, take them to the island. Man. And I'll give you two facts about that party, which I learned from a David Carr column that will illustrate everything you need to know.

Macy Gray performed during the party. And George Plympton narrated the fireworks. Oh, my God. Narrated the fireworks. That is the Tina Brown M.O. Right there in two sentences. That is just, yeah. Well, let me tell you something.

1999. I'm senior in college in Austin. I don't know anything about New York media. I don't know what Condé Nast is. I don't know anything. the cultural penetration of talk was to such a point that I went out and bought it at a newsstand because I was like, I need to know about this, this hot new magazine that just came out. I still have that first issue somewhere and I found in it the little subscription card

and I had filled it out and written in my Austin address but never sent it in, which perhaps is why talk didn't make it. But that first issue, Joel was amazing. There was a huge interview with Hillary Clinton. you had Gwyneth Paltrow in bondage gear. Really? You had a profile of presidential candidate George W. Bush by Tucker Carlson. Wow.

And you know how whenever we have a Tucker discussion, he was a, you know, he was a great magazine writer once upon a time. People always pulling that out to then describe whatever planet he's on now. I read this piece this week. He was a great magazine. That piece about George Bush was so good. I've read some of his writing before it. I was like, oh, I have to admit, I don't, you know, whatever you think of the dude, he was, he was a good writer.

Oh, my God. He had Bush mocking a woman that Texas had executed on death row when he was governor in that story. I mean, it is, it is a really good, interesting piece. Why did Talk Magazine die? Well, it only lived till 2002, so 99 to 2002. Hurst and Miramax, which were the magazine's twin benefactors, decided to pull the plug. We talk about recessions. there was also one after 9-11.

There was a 9-11 ad slump. That's a big killer of media. It had 650,000 subscribers. Man, do you think they're, I should say this out loud, but I mean, I just, whenever I hear a subscribe, what does that mean? Like, does that, I mean, that can be, I'd have to go look at my subscription card, but it may have been, you know, $10 for a year, right? Yeah, right, right, right.

It was not much money. And ad, ad rates and the kind of advertisers are getting more bigger. But again, we could talk. about all that I don't think the magazine ever figured itself out editorially but what was really happening and David Carr pointed this out is that party was symbolic right magazines were beginning to be over the general interest magazine and that instinct in journalism was beginning to be over for all but a few publications certainly big hulking launches of media companies were beginning to be over what was also interesting about

about it is after the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. And if you go back to the UK, even the Tatler, it was the first thing that Tina Brown had failed at. Man, really? I didn't even think about it that way. You know, when you're talking about this, it reminds me of George. Do you remember George?

Oh, my God. George. Did George last in the 20th century? We probably could have done that one, too. I think it fell short. I think I was going to put it in there. And I was like, it fell just short of making it to the 2000. But it just, that era of,

of like journalism and like the big, splashy, yeah, yeah. Glossy thing. Tina's quote to the New York Times after talk folded was, there is nobody more boring than the undefeated. Damn. And at the moment of her first public failure, Tina Brown was 48 years old. She was a man, you know, that is shocking to me because, you know,

for whatever reason to me, first of all, I'm two years younger than Tina Brown, was at that age. Tina Brown to me in my mind is perpetually 64 years old. I don't know how to explain it, but you know how somebody just is the same age to you. So I'm shocked to hear that she was only 48 then, but okay. I'll tell you stories about working for it at the Daily Beast someday. But first, let's do this new category. Remind me why this didn't work. So Ebony Magazine, man. So what was it? Time Life magazine, but for black people. People's a surprise winner Brent Staples of the New York Times op-ed department said its founder's styled it as sort of a love letter to the black elite.

And it was founded by John H. Johnson. And, look, I mean, he was a legend in black publishing. He also did Jet Magazine as well. It published its first issue, November 1st, 1945. Wow. And it was, like, focused on black sports and entertainment figures, right? And so they're trying to, like, promote a sort of glossy or more. sophisticated view of black people in the country because if you can imagine in

1945, the general consensus on black people was pretty much up the grabs, right? And like who we were and what our lives were about. And so this was sort of an attempt to push back on that. But inevitably, as America pushes on through the years, you get to the 1960s, you can't just talk about athletes and celebrities. You got to talk a little bit about politics. And so they started venturing off and we talked with Stokely Carmichael and other people in, you know, Malcolm X and people like that. Like they started showing up on those pages. But fundamentally, and it was John H. Johnson, the owner, says this because people

criticize them. They're like, you're worried about all these positive images about black people and, you know, we're catching hell out here in this country. What are you doing? And so John H. Johnson says, we're not the NAACP. We're a business. So, so it may. need a lot of waves, man.

And it really, like, if you are a person my age who grew up in a black household, you have vivid images of going to an old person's house and them having stacks of ebony magazines there or going to like, you know, if I had to go tag along with my mom to the hairdresser, you know what I mean? And there's all these ebony magazines in there. And it really, you know, told the story of our, you know, told the story of our life, told at least a part of a story, but some people would say it didn't tell the whole story. So there's like the sort of like the agnostic political beliefs here. But also in May of 2001, they published this list of 100 most influential Black Americans. Do you know who did not make the list? Can you,

you can probably guess. Tell me. Clarence Thomas. Oh my. Yeah. And so like, it's just like, okay, like if you're going to do this thing, you know what I'm saying? Like, what are you like, Right. You could see where people could come in to criticize because it didn't, you can say that Clarence Thomas is influential without endorsing him, right? But anyway, so all that to say, Ebony Magazine is, you know, it provided the blueprint for a lot of black writers and black thinkers to get into the business. But you could argue in some ways that they did their job too well, right? Because in other magazines and other outlets say, hmm, we could hire somebody from here to do that and write a piece of. black life for us. And I mean, I'm a member of that generation of writers. I didn't not have to write for a black publication to get on. So these people sort of paved the way. That magazine and that publication paved the way for people like me, for people like Tana Hossi Coates. Not that I'm comparing myself to him, Jelani Cobb, Nicole, Hannah-Jones, people that would have had to work in a black publication. Now we work at the New York Times. Now we work at the Ringer.

Now we work at whatever, whatever, the Atlantic. And so with that in mind, it's so, you There's less of a need for it. Black people stop subscribing to it as much. And it's, I mean, there's obviously the Internet and everything else that plays a role in it. But that is also a big part of why it kind of stopped publishing. The last issue was published in, I think, 2019. That was the last edition of it. So, yeah, so anyway, so, I mean, look, I don't know, Brian, had you come across Ebony Magazine in your travels at all? That's a good question.

I'm trying to think of it in childhood, especially if I would have said. I'm sure I saw it. It might have been on a newsstand, something like that. But yeah, certainly around. Yeah, I certainly was aware of it. Well, anyway, I mean, the thing is, there's often a lot of talk about black writers at elite publications. Like, we need to have our own publication.

You know, what if we all came together and did something like that? And really what their people are trying to recreate is Ebony Magazine. Let me give you one, Brill's content. Hmm. What was Brill's content? Well, it was the. Press box except as a glossy magazine. Started by Stephen Brill, who was a journalist and author, created the American lawyer.

And in the summer of 98, Joel, he said, what if I start a magazine about the media? And he would tell the New York Times, this magazine is either a really stupid idea or a really great idea. It's starting a new category or it's nothing. And if you look at the first issue, it looks like a 1990s gloss. like GQ or details. It had ads for Armani and Winston cigarettes, but it was about the media. And Brill would write in their first issue,

consumers of news and information in this information age should know how what they watch, read, or log on to is produced and how much they can rely on it. Not a bad credo. So a lot of these issues are online. I encourage people who like this podcast to go look. There's some very cool stories about like they sent Catherine Rosman who's now at the New York Times to Indiana to write about the guy who'd covered high school basketball for four decades there. I'm like, wow, I wish I'd written that story. That's a great idea. There are some that are right on the edge of media self-parity. Like there's a cover that says kids, grieving families. Is anyone ever off limits? And then there's a hand holding a microphone in somebody's face. But, you know, what did. did was something I bring up here all the time, which is it covered the media beat, not as the

job change beat. It really grappled with what journalists were doing. And that first issue, Steve Brill wrote this entire narrative about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And sometimes we now call it the Bill Clinton scandal. And he really wrote about how that had been covered and how Ken Starr's office had driven so much of the coverage. And he got everybody on the phone from the news anchors to the New York Times reporters to the CNN anchors to everybody. It's a fabulously interesting piece of journalism. Why did it die? Well, it lived only three years, 98 to 2001.

Again, that recession is not helpful. And Brill even said this. The current economic climate, let alone September 11th, is no excuse for us. If we'd build a vibrant, independent, successful magazine, which is what I told the world I was going to do, we would have survived the economic climate we were in. I still really enjoyed reading Brewer. real's content. Man, can you think you can go on eBay and get and get some of those? Yeah, well, I'm going to get them before this podcast out, so none of our listeners outbid me. Brian, Brian is the

dealer then. New category, Joel, for you, old school sports writing. Oh, man. Sports Illustrated. I don't need to do a whole, you know, preamble into that. We can just grieve its loss right now. But what was it? Well, I mean, basically, basically, what if we thought and wrote about sports as if they were an important part of American life, which was sort of a novel idea at the time, right? In the 1950s, like, you really seem to start as a professionalization of sports leagues. You know, it's like a new thing. You know, people have all, sports have always been a part of American life, but it's like, wait, how much of our time and attention should we be dedicating to sports? What Sports Illustrated comes in and with an attempt to sort of contextualize, like, why we should think about sports like that. right um and look it starts in 1954 and it really filled a void because at that time there was no general weekly sports magazine at that time right you know what i mean like i just there just wasn't yeah and it's time life so it is launching with a bang right it's biggest the magazine company in america can you believe it wasn't profitable for the first 12 years actually probably yeah i mean

if you look at those early 12 years and some of this i learned from you know sports illustrated veterans it was like yachts on the cover and stuff like that. It did not feel like the sports thing you want to read. Right, right. It took a time, but also like, I mean, it took American sporting life to mature a little bit too. Like, it's the television, like the NFL becomes more of a thing. The NBA starts up, you know what I mean? And like college sports. That's kind of when you start seeing Sports Illustrated really reach its heyday. But I mean, like, I can't even, I'm trying to think what's what I want to ask you here. Just think about the people that worked for this.

Like, I'd say Frank DeFord, man. Like, you're the guy. I mean, I think the guy. One time Jason Gaye said, should we have a Sports Illustrated writer draft? And I was like, I think he's number one for me. Oh, you take him over Gary Smith? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Really? Okay. Any day of the week. Dan Jenkins. Yeah. There you go. Old school Rick Riley. Rick would be a first round pick as well.

I mean, for people that, like, for people that, like, he kind of became a caricature of himself to a lot of people in later years. But, man, if you read a, like, Rick, read Rick Riley on that great playoff game between the San Diego charges and the Miami Dolphins. Something's like, like May of 1981 or something. I read his piece about Bryant Gumble the other day that he wrote 1988 after Greg Gumble died.

And I was like, holy cow, this is good story. It was incredible. Just some of the best. What was your favorite? Do you have a favorite sports illustrator story? It's a good question. I'd have to look at the DeFord opus to be one. I think Frank was my favorite writer because he could do anything.

You know, he could do that feature where he hangs out. He could go to a small town and just write about this thing that you don't know about. It's really good. And he could also write those kind of big, voicey, here's my opinion at 3,000 words. Sports Illustrated stories. He could do it all, man. I mean, he just was a kind of man for all seasons, you know, pun intended, because I just felt, I just felt he was the guy. He had a great moral compass about him that I would say that a lot of

those writers might not have had. Oh, absolutely. And look, so I'll give you this and maybe people will be able to look it up. I don't know if it's still as available as it was, but it ran in September 30th, 1996, and it was written by William Nack, who was a great horse racing and boxing writer. And the story is called The Fight's Over Joe. And it's about the grudge that Muhammad Ali hold, I mean, I'm sorry, that Joe Frazier holds against Muhammad Ali years after their, like, great trio of fights, right? Like, in retirement, Joe Frazier still wants to beat Muhammad Ali's ass. It's the first time, and I wish somebody, maybe somebody can help me with this,

that somebody used the phrase, living rent-free in somebody's head. That expression stayed in my head forever. And then I heard people saying it, and I was like, do people read that William next story? Like, how did that become popular? Man, if you would if you'd give me a million guesses like who created the phrase rent free and someone said Bill knack would not have been that would have been a million and guess a million and one It stayed it stayed with me forever. So anyway, I mean without you know look Can I ask a question about the president of SI? Because s. I of course we would put I think on the on the zombie tier right? It is still alive But are you as surprised as I am that the good part of s I?

The Chris Mannix part of sI we just saluted his piece on Woj the other day and I got to do that with him in person when I saw him a few months ago. Are you surprised I am that that part is still trucking along even after everything? I mean, man, the thing is is that because there's not enough great outlets or even existing outlets out there, there's still going to be so many good writers, right? We just talked about that a little earlier. Who are allowed to do good things, though, in a case of SI. I mean, I'm someone who's written that, oh, bit, like nine times.

So I understand, like I feel like I've pronounced its death. so many times, but I look at it and there's still pieces of come, I'm like, it's still good. Like, there's still this tiny beating heart of SI within this content farm that is really, really good. Who doesn't want to sometimes read a Pat 40 column, man? You know what I mean?

He's still out there doing it for him. So Michael Rosenberg, right? So, yeah, I am a little surprised because you kind of think, sometimes you think, oh, Sports Illustrated is dead, right? But it's just not what it was, but there's still some really, really good writing going on over there still, too. My

entry in old school sports writing is the new york times sports section it was kind of two things it was for years a kind of high minded version of a normal sports section so you had yankees and you had giants but the columnists were bob lipsite and george vesey reporters like pete thammel and howard back and then round about the 2010s under editor jason stallman it became this kind of high flying feature section. Right. And the daily sports news got shoved at the side. It had some moments like those early Sports Illustrated covers where you're like,

well, this is interesting, but am I supposed to be reading about this today? You know, it's really interesting because the first time you go visit New York. And I don't know if you were like this. Whenever I would go to a new town, I couldn't wait to read the local newspaper. Absolutely. And so I'm getting all the newspapers. It's like Newsday, Daily News, you know, post. in the New York Times and I was like, the Times is the only one that didn't really seem to have.

You know what I'm saying? They didn't really seem to have a sports presence here, right? You know what I mean? Yeah. And it was just a weird, it just felt like such a weird abdication because they were covering everything else. And that brings us to what happens, right? It's 2023. The Times had bought the athletic the year before for half a billion dollars. So that, you know, funeral speech that all of of us reporters keeping our back pocket for publications that go out of business, we really couldn't use it this time because it wasn't like the Times was abandoning sports. It was actually investing a billion dollars in buying a new sports section and grafting it onto itself. But doesn't it seem kind of weird? Do you ever feel weird when you go to the New York Times and

you just click on a sports link and it's like the athletic? And I'm like, oh, I'm not, but again, athletic has great writers, great work. Like, I mean, you know, you know, look, I, That's a great place to work. But you just kind of like, oh, that's not the New York Times. You know, I still have not like resolved it in my head that that is the New York Times Sports Section. I have the same reaction all the time. Okay.

And to me, the reaction to the Times Sports Section dying was so fascinating because some of it was sneering. Yeah. And I feel it was Times people that were like, we're going to let those athletic people in here. No, man. We're Times people. And I'm like, hey, did you see the section in the last couple years?

Like you opened the door for the athletic. people to come in here. But then sometimes I read an athletic story and I'm like, who, did someone look at this before it was published? Did someone look at this while they were writing it? I mean, did we the quality of pros and I use that term loosely, they got in here? Like, holy mackerel. There's a lot of variance at the top to the bottom, right? But whenever I'm trying, it's funny now that it's become this way because whenever I'm trying to keep up with sports today as they are. I go to the athletic before I go to anything else. I don't know about you. I do too. I mean, I think it's, I think especially with ESPN retreating from sports

riding in a lot of ways, it's become the go-to. It's become the sports site. I give them a lot of credit for building that. All right, we got four more to go, two more categories. The next one is old school brands. Old school brands. Okay, so what do you think about MTV News? who do you think about that? So what wasn't an effort to lean on the coolness and legacy of Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren to compete with the BuzzFeed and the vices and diffusions and whoever else is, right? I mean, so any of us, you know, we're Gen Xers, right, Brian, you're Gen XER. I think that's where I count myself, yes.

I'm a Gen Xer. And so, yeah, you subscribe to Nintendo Power. We are just like that. Absolutely. Yeah. We recognize the G. Joe, public service announcements. So MTV News, you know, kind of starts in 1987, just, you know, with the program,

we can rock. And it's like Kurt Loder talking about, yeah, I don't know, mega death or, you know, whatever, Beastie Boys, whatever. And then they decide to, you know, MTV News becomes so important culturally that, like, if you are a political candidate, you kind of got it going MTV News because that's theoretically where the kids are, man, are the, like the 18 to 24-year-old cohort. or did you need to kind of come out and vote for you, right? Absolutely.

And so anyway, so they're thinking, like, as BuzzFeed's having all the success, Fusions having all this success, you know, VICE is having all the success. They're like, hmm, maybe we could, we've got all this, we've got all this cool, we got all this attention, but we've got this brand,

like, why don't we try to do a little something on the web, man? And look, they hired one of your homeboys, man, from Grantland, Dan Fearman, right? He is one of my homeboys, yes. Is he one of your phone boys? I just made an exact, I just assumed because y'all were at. We worked together, Granin. He hired me there. Sure. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So he's one of the people that gets started up there in like November of 2015.

And he staffs up. And man, they actually hired some, you know, pretty good people, man. Like, I mean, the Jamil Smiths, Charles Aaron, Anna Marie Cox, Jessica Hopper, just to name a few, like some really big names. And they're going to try to do a big thing. And also, you know, the great Holly Anderson, who is not actually. related to me, but should be. And they've got these people, but again, it's just kind of like everything else. It's like, what are you going to be? What role are you trying to feel in the media climate today? Like, what am I going to go to the MTV News to do?

And I think that kind of is what the real problem was for them. It's like, what actually did we need MTV News to do? Yeah, and how supportive will the parent company be of that vision? Right. Because whenever I hear about something ambitious being launched within a larger parent like this. I'm like, how long are they going to be like, this is exactly what we want? Absolutely. This is what we will dump some money into. Well, right. Because the thing is when you start off, it's going to take some tweaking, right? Like you're going to try some things. So you've got to

get some time through that. And then you build up to that. And then you need some time to build audience. I just told people, Sports Illustrated lost money for the first 12 years. And like in a much different economic climate, right? So you've got to give a place some time. That's not. not what happened here in tv news like within two years they decided to pivot the video for a lot of the same reasons you think they did not capture the sort of audience that they thought they would and like again it didn't really it wasn't meeting it the need it wasn't meeting a need that anybody had expressed out there i'll give you an old school brand gourmet oh what was it well it was kind of the michelin starred food magazine oh man how did that lose how did that work that's a great

question so stephanie cliford put it like this in the times gourmet was to food what vogue is to fashion starts back in 1941 ruth wrichael was the last editor when it closed in 2009 and as you know aughts 2010s this is when food writing seemed like rock criticism oh my god yeah it was the thing the cool people were doing and my theory was always that it was easier to be an aging food critic than it was to be an aging rock critic something just a little more comfortable about that. Like I go out and I dine on things. It just somehow feels a little more comfortable to say, at least from my point of view than saying, I got the new record. Do you hear this? Going out and eating is an old person's event. Going to a concert, that's a young person's game.

Yeah, maybe just a little more comfortable anyway. You get Anthony Bourdain, of course, who felt less like rock critic than actual rock star, Jonathan Gold, see magazines like Lucky Peach, sites like eater. Well, in 2009, Condonet's clothes gourmet. And the actual. And the explanation, and this again, according to Stephanie Clifford, is not just the recession once again, but that advertisers were going places like every day with Rachel Ray and the Food Network magazine.

That, you know, gourmet was this glamorous old world French restaurant in a universe of diners, drive-ins, and dives. Yeah. So we love food. We love to talk about food, right about food, but it had just become a different kind of pursued. Well, yeah, I mean, like, I mean, the idea of gourmet, like people like gourmet, but it

needs to sort of come under the guys of being like affordable and like sort of, you know what I mean? Like even the naming and of itself sort of precludes the idea that it's going to have a broad appeal. Exactly. It feels like an elite concern. Yes, it's like gourmet, no, man. I just like, what is, you know, what, what, uh, what diner am I going to be eating at tonight? What do you do with a brisket? I mean, that's, that's me. If you just look at my Google search, this is like best taco truck within 10 miles of.

Nobody wants to get dressed up to go to eat anymore. I mean, that's part of it. If I had to sum it up, I mean, maybe then that seemed like a thing, like you just talk. Yeah. We want to,

there's an aspirational quality to it, but the aspiration is I want to go to that next taco truck. I want to find that next great little thing rather than I want to put on a suit. Yeah. And go spend $20,000 to eat. All right, Joel. Final category.

I called this the I don't know how to categorize this group. What do you got for me here? So I would say that crack, cracked. Cracked. Cracked. I mean, it's like bootleg Matt Mad magazine. I mean, they would say that themselves, right? Like, I mean, they basically copied like Mad's layouts and style.

And like they even like had kind of their own Alfred E. Newman type character. And so somebody actually really. captured it really, really well. It's an independent comic book guy that created named Dan Close. And because I remember this is the era when I'm a big Mad Magazine fan. Mad Magazine only came out like eight times a year, like at a very weird kind of production schedule. And so this is what Dan says. No one was ever a fan of Cracked. We would buy Mad every month, but about two weeks later, we would get anxious for new material. We would tell ourselves, okay we are not going to buy cracked never again and we'd hold out for a while but then as the

month dragged on it just became okay I guess I'll buy cracked then you'd bring it home and immediately you remember oh yeah I hate cracked um so what a love letter what a love letter I mean like it I mean it was really created as a knockoff of Mad magazine which is sort of funny I mean you know when you think about the aggregation sites that sort of have popped up in years. And it's just like, well, we could just be doing what they're doing, but we'd do it cheaper or whatever. And like, this is kind of like an attempt to do mad on the cheap. And it was, you know, it had its place.

Like there was some good and a lot of great cartoonists and writers did write for crack. It's inevitably, every publication probably is going to have. But that was sort of the service that served. Like if you did, if you could not find Mad magazine, if you, whatever reason, you got a little, you know, a little thirsty for some humor content, you'd go to Crack and hope that it could feel that need. Sometimes it could. Sometimes it couldn't. Is it just me or did I feel like we got served up tons of like crack.com articles? Yeah. Well, in the last like 10, 15 years, you'd be some of your friend would send you something. I'd be like, why am what? How did this get to me? How did you find this?

Yeah, man. I mean, they really, so did they just master search for a while? They did. I mean, and they, so the magazine gets killed, like, you know, fairly early on, but like they figured out a way to still sort of manipulate the algorithms or whatever, so they could still sort of produce. But it was, I guess, I'm trying to think. Like, it's not the onion. Like, whatever a couple of levels below the onion is, like, that's what crack. That's sort of the role that it served there. But it's, you know, look, I mean, I'm happy that people had the opportunity to make money writing there. And I mean, there was a time I should just say. And I remember. this vividly as a kid for some reason when crack hired away mad's uh one of its big cartoon is don martin it was a big fight and they tried to like hire away a lot of mad's staff and it didn't work ultimately right uh but i mean i love that there were like humor magazine standoffs like that we're coming we're raid your best talent yeah man we got don martin guys and al jaffa he wrote he wrote for them a little bit too or did some cartoons for them but no it was hard for them to sort of stand on their own when you thought about it.

For my last one, I'm going to give you one more Condé Nast magazine. Okay. Portfolio. Oh, my goodness. I remember Portfolio. It was about business. It launched in April 2007, months before the recession began. And even then, you remember this.

The action felt like it was online. The big magazine launch felt like it was a thing of the past. But here comes portfolio. First issue has bylines from Tom Wolfe and Michael Lewis on the cover. They also hired Gabriel Sherman and Felix Salmon, who's apparently made a journey through a number of the publications. He's got some stories. We should get him for this series.

We do. We need an after action report from him. First issue of portfolio had 332 pages. Damn it. And including 185 ad pages, according to the New York Times. You could get somebody a concussion with that if it falls on them. Oh my God. It only lasts two years, 2007 to 2009. Once again, the recession helps it bite the dust. And I'll give you this one story from David Carr, who wrote about it for the Times. He says,

to illustrate a November 2008 article arguing that credit derivatives were the elephant in the room at J.P. Morgan Chase. Just take a moment to let that article description wash over you. of course the magazine sent what one staff member who was not authorized to speak publicly said was $30,000 to procure the services of a real elephant to menace a model at a photo shoot what $30,000 to hire the elephant come on man i mean man i mean i mean i thought bus feed was was wasting money you know what i'm saying oh my god that jule is our 21st century media graveyard. That's, we covered a lot of ground.

I mean, there's so many, the thing is, is it like if you, you know, we could do this again and pick another 25, right? We really could. And you know what? I feel depressed talking about all these publications that don't exist or don't exist in the same way. But I also feel kind of inspired in a weird way because there's some big swings in there. There's a lot of great work in there, even at places like the messenger.

Yeah. Even in places like the messenger. Even places like the messenger. And they were just like, I mean, I don't know. It's like when you look through, to me, whenever I look through journalism like that, I always just come away with kind of a happy glow. I'm just like, look at all this stuff. Look at all the stuff that people did. I wish they still had jobs or better jobs so they could do that stuff.

Yeah, man. I mean, that's the thing. It's just like I just fret for like the loss of jobs and the loss of opportunities, man. And I think about, especially when I go talk to college kids, I'm like, man, there's a lot of places that you could have got you started that just don't exist anymore. But I think the thing is that that spirit is still out there. People are going to keep trying, I think. And like, that's like if there's any thing that we can take any heart from it, there's always like some crazy person out there that's like, what if I started a publication for people?

I think they'd read it. And, you know, maybe, you know, there'll be something to eventually replace cracked. Before we go, we need to say a few words about Brian. Waters. Our super producer here at the press box. I struggle for the right words here because, especially when we're doing a two-hour podcast about magazines and no longer exist, I don't want to make this sound like a sad occasion. Like Brian, Brian Waters is okay. Brian Waters is leaving us at the press box because he's going to do a ton more work with the ringers wrestling podcast, wrestling video efforts, all kinds of stuff. He's going off to do great things. So the word I settled on

was he's tagging out. Yes, tagging. I like that. Good for you. He's tagging out. And Bobby Wagner is tagging in. He's going to be our new producer here. Coming over to race.

I just want to say this about Brian Waters. And he's going to, his ears must be burning right now. I can't see him in the Zoom, but hopefully his ears are burning. He's done a fantastic job working on this podcast. Yeah, man. He's done an amazing job. I mean, I cannot tell you, Joel, how many times I text Brian, inevitably on nights because I'm three hours behind him or on weekends or when I'm sitting in the lobby of a New Orleans

hotel and texting him, hey man, Chris Berman is late. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know when this is going to finish. I don't want to be able to send you this file, but we really need to get it up tonight, you know, just unreasonable things like that. And Brian always writes back immediately and his attitude is always like, I got this. I can do this. I am like just personally grateful to Brian because I have kind of come to you guys in a mess. Like I my life has been in transition for basically the last nine months. And Brian has just been so gracious and generous with his time and like just working with us. Even before we started this, I was like, hey, Brian, I need another 30 minutes. Are you okay? Is that cool? No big deal. It's just like you, when you work for a long time,

you just forget like not only is like pairing competence with like generosity, right? And And that's, it's a great word. Yeah. It's not, it's not as common as you think. And so I know Bobby's going to be great. I'm not worried about that. But like, you still fret losing a dude like that on your team. You know what I'm saying?

Generosity is, is so perfect because like, Brian has kids. Brian has a partner. Brian has wrestling shows to attend from coast to coast, wrestling shows to host himself. Yeah, man. And, you know, it's like, what I love about podcasts is when you put it on somebody else's podcast, and you're like, wow, they made it. look easy. But it wasn't. Brian was the reason this podcast looked easy if it in fact did.

I'm sure we did our best to make it look like an uphill struggle every week. But anyway, I just want to say thank you to Brian. We will see much more of you and miss you at the same time as you stand over there in the corner of the squared circle. Waiting in emergencies notice to be tagged back in. All right. He is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. And for the last time, or at least the last time for a while, production imagine. by Brian Waters. Thank you so much, Brian. Joel, we're back next week with Shoemaker on Monday, with you on Thursday. Can't wait to talk to you. Looking forward to it, man.