The Press Box - A 25 for 25 Double Feature: Dean Jelani Cobb on the Future of J-School. Plus, Spencer Hall on “Weird Internet.”

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel preview today’s double-feature episode (0:45), before Joel is joined by Columbia Journalism School dean Jelani Cobb to discuss the future of journalism education (7:44). Then, Bryan and Joel have a quick interview postgame (47:42) before introducing Joel’s conversation with writer Spencer Hall on how his remarkable career has intersected with the “weird internet” (59:07). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonGuests: Jelani Cobb and Spencer HallProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Bill Simmons, and I want to tell you about my movie podcast, The Rewatchables. We're each week, I'm joined by Ringer movie lovers, Chris Ryan, Sean Van Van Lathen, Kyle Brandt, Mali Rubin. We have a whole bunch of people on. We talk about movies. We can't stop rewatching. And now you can watch us cover these movies on video in the Spotify app. We have covered over 350 movies, including Heat, Goodfellas, Boogie Nights, Pulp Fiction.

We have some real heavy hitters coming up here in 2025. Make sure to follow us on Spotify, where you can, watch every new episode right now. Just head to the rewatchables on Spotify, now on video. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to a special episode of the Press Boxes 25 for 25 series, Brian Curtis, Joel Anderson, and the very best producer in the world, Kyle Crichton. Joel, we got a 25 for 25 double header today.

And I think we can describe it like this. how do you learn the journalism business and how do you practice the craft? That's a fun way to play to play to. We're going to play two. We might as well learn the business and then, okay, now that you get your education, you know, how are we going to put that into practice, right?

Like, we have some practical advice. Two paragraphs that just flow seamlessly between each other. That's right, man. You got your degree from the J school and now you need to go out and try to do something with it. make money necessarily, but practice the craft. First up, we're going to have Joel's interview with Jalani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School and a New Yorker staff writer.

He will be talking about the future of, yes, J. School. And then we're going to have Joel's interview with everybody's All-American, Spencer Hall, who writes about college football and everything else. Spencer will be talking about the future of the weird internet. Let's start with Jolani Cobb and how you learn. in the business. Is it worth you and I talking for just a moment about our academic journalistic educations? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Well, let's start with you because I want to know, because, you know, you went to the big, you know, the Daily Texan. Did you do the Daily Texan and all

of that good stuff? I wrote for the Daily Texan. Oh, man. But the rest of it's going to be really brief because the last journalism class I took was in high school. Really? It's a big ofer since then. which is richly ironic given the fact that we're here on this media podcast together. Did you not want to take journalism? Was going to a school of journalism ever a part of your consideration for undergrad and all? Definitely. And I was going to start out that way. That was going to be my major.

Okay. And then I had enough people say, you know what? You can probably just learn a lot of that by going to the Texan, by writing articles by being really bad at it and then a little less bad and a little less bad. And if you get a background in political science, which I wind up majoring in or English or history, whatever, you may be just as well off. What did you end up writing at the Daily Texan? What do you get?

Opeds. Okay. Okay. That's appropriate. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was giving George W. Bush the business when he was governor. Okay.

All right. How about, man? We go back. We go back. I mean, but you still. But you still, it's so funny, you still were not in school at a time when Democrats ever won state-wide office again. That game was already wrapped up by then. Yeah, yeah.

I was writing the opposition editorials there for the Texan. How about you over at good old TCU? Yeah, so it's funny, the fact that TCU had an accredited journalism program was one of the factors of me picking TCU. And in fact, one of the number of factors why I didn't pick a lot of other schools. Like I just was like, well, I know that I want to do this. And I thought nobody in my family had done journalism before. So I thought it was important that you went to a journalism school that had some sort of accreditation. And I think TCU was one of like nine in that particular region of the country at the time.

And so, yeah, that was absolutely a factor. So then when I started playing football, I walked. right over to the journalism school. It used to be, I mean, we used to call it the Maudy building. Now it's called the Bob Schiefer School of Communications. And went over there and presented myself to the school newspaper and they had me to cover the football team, which was very awkward. But I think very useful in a lot of ways.

Kind of, you know, that's about as awkward a situation as it gets. So, yes, I did that. But prior to that, I had done. I didn't work at my high school newspaper, but I was the editor of my middle school newspaper. I did, you know, like little journalism workshop stuff in high school a couple times. So I always knew that I wanted to go down this line and end up at a school that took journalism seriously, seriously enough to have an accredited program. That brings us to Jalani Cobb.

He became dean at the Columbia Journalism School three years ago. What else should we let readers or let listeners know about Cobb's CV? Yeah, well, I mean, he's been working at the New Yorker for a while now, about a decade. And I think the thing that's really interesting about Jalani is that he, too, doesn't have a journalism education. I mean, he's a historian, right? And so that's the way that he comes at it. And I've known of Jelani for probably 20-some-odd years and known him personally about 10. And I always had thought of him as a historian, so that when he became the head of the, you know,

one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the country, it was. interesting and I wanted to ask him about that. So two ideas should inform this discussion. First up, there has been a debate for decades and decades about whether journalists need a formal grad school education like a surgeon does or like a lawyer does. I'll post this piece on both of our press box accounts that Michael Lewis wrote a million years ago for the New Republic about the Columbia J School. Some things are called hit pieces that aren't really hit pieces. This is a hit piece.

Fascinating reading if you're interested in this topic. We're interested in Michael Lewis. So that's one piece of it, Joel. And the second piece is there is a very specific debate about the need of a graduate degree in journalism when the media business is a tire fire. You mentioned to Jalani that it cost $80,000. to go to Columbia. That's for one year. Yeah, man. $80,000. And then the natural question is, okay, I've paid my money. I've gone into debt. And then what? Wonderful jobs await me.

Fame and fortune right around the corner in the media business. Public adulation. Public adulation. No, we can cross that on the other's probably have a better chance. But that's the real question here. And I love that you ask. him right off the bat, that question straight out. Here's the dean, Jalani Cobb, on the future of J-School. I'm stealing this question from Stevens College President, Diane Lynch, who wrote the introduction to the Knight Foundation's report on the state of journalism education. So it's pretty plain here.

How do you educate students for a media world we honestly can't imagine? So that's a good question. some of it is not imaginable, right? But the other part of it is that history is a guide. So we have been here. We were established in 1912. Our first graduating class was 1913. And so we have 113 years of experience.

And when I go back and I look at, you know, the past iterations of this school, you know, things are wildly different. We started out, obviously, it was just print, you know, then radio, then television, then internet, you know, or digital, and all the kinds of other categories. Now, you know, data journalism and doc and people using AI and all these innovative. So the school in that way has evolved in ways that people in 1912 would have said we honestly can't predict. At the same time, I had a conversation with the son of an alum. I believe his mother graduated in the late 1950s or 1960, somewhere around there. And unfortunately, she was near the end of her life. And he was called. He was called,

calling to convey to me how important her time here at Columbia Journalism School had been. And he talked about how she kept her notes. And we talked about, well, what I was like, well, what was in her notes? And a good deal of what she was learning was applicable about how you approach sources, about how you report a story, about what a story even is, about, you know, verification of things. And so the fundamental undertaking of reporting has remained the same in some ways, in some cornerstone ways.

Now, there are new technologies, there are all these other kinds of things. But the skill of reporting has a lot of the same DNA. We don't know what's going to, what journalism is going to look like or what media is going to look like. but we do know that reporting will be required and it will likely require many of the same skills that we've relied upon traditionally. Given that, so, you know, reporting, you know, obviously it's an honorable profession and something that, again, it translates across generations, across media, whatever. But what argument would you make for people to pursue journalism as a

profession or even pursue it as an academic pursuit. Like let's just say that I wanted to go to Columbia Journalism School to teach journalism. Like what, what is the argument you're making for it? You know, it's interesting. I don't, I mean, I don't feel like I have to make an argument for it. I mean, there are a lot of things that people are worried about, you know, for good reason. You know, there's been a decline in the overall number of jobs and there has been, you know, disruption by technology and so on. But the work itself remains the work. You know, it remains viable or vital.

For anyone saying, like, why would you make that argument? Ask them when was the last time they engaged in some information that was reported in one way, shape, or form? And I don't mean just did you get something from TikTok or did you get something from some other source. The person on TikTok was referring to something that was referring to something that was reported. You know, and so the conversation about what's happening in Ukraine, you know, the conversation about what's happening in Gaza, the conversation about what's happening at the CDC, the conversation about these crucial issues, and, you know, reporting is really a national service.

We have to do our part to make sure that as a profession, it remains viable. Now, you know, that gets into, I can talk to you about some of the policy stuff that we're doing here at the journalism school. But, you know, I think before we get into that kind of detail, I think on the top level of it, reporting is more necessary now than has ever been. And that's not just like a sales pitch. I think that's kind of, if you look around and kind of check out the landscape, that's where we are. Right. Well, so that's true. Reporting is as necessary if it's ever been, it's going to be useful and needed in the media climate to follow. But I look this up. So for a nine and a half month program at Columbia, the tuition is $81,500. This is on the website. The estimated total cost for that whole term is close to $125,000. What are you telling students about that sort of massive financial investment, especially given the reality. of the job market, right? Like there's just not as many jobs as it used to be when we first got started. So there are a couple things. One is that I'll start by saying it's the nine and a half

month program that, you know, we are the fastest program in the country. Most programs are a year and a half or two years. And so they're comparing one year of tuition to two years of tuition at other places. And so you have to do that calculation. The other part of it is that it's expensive. I know I'll grant that up front and I'll come back to, you know, what we're doing to address it in a minute. But the other part of it is that because the program is for most people, nine and a half months, you know, for the data program, for the data program and for the documentary program, it's a calendar year. So it's 12 months. But it also means that people are out the door and earning income quicker. You know, there's another six months or another whole year for people who are in other kinds of programs.

where you're not only paying tuition, but you are not earning money. So that's just the kind of background point. But for many people, that's cost prohibitive. So one of the first things that I did when I came in as dean three years ago, was that I launched the first of its kind loan repayment assistance program. So for people who graduate from Columbia Journalism School, and we will soon be kind of branching out to include people who graduate from other journalism schools as well, not just ours. But people who graduate from Columbia Journalism School, if you go into nonprofit news, you are eligible for this program in which we will repay up to $50,000 of student loan debt, up to $10,000 per year for each year, if you remain in nonprofit and the nonprofit.

new sector, you'll be eligible to have that kind of repayment. We're also working on a lot of other fundraising incentives to increase the financial aid. Now, you know, a very significant proportion of our students, I won't get into proprietary data, but a very significant proportion of our students receive financial aid on top of that. So that 80,000 is not the number that most people pay. And so there's that as well. And so we are working to actively meet people where they are and to make journalism a long-term prospect and a long-term undertaking that people can continue to pursue.

One of the other things is that, you know, our sense is that because journalism is a national service, No journalism student or no journalist should graduate with student debt. And if they do graduate with student debt, they should have programs like this that are eligible to pay them off. And so we're, like I said, not only doing this for Columbia, we will, and we have some announcements that will be coming down the line. We'll be doing this with graduates of other schools as well. And so, but this was really just us with the resources that we can gather. this really needs to be a national undertaking. Well, I was going to wonder, are there other, so there are other schools, or had you,

is that some sort of model that you had, I mean, obviously because like nursing, whatever else, like there's a lot of, the professions that do that sort of thing, right, or teaching or whatever. So is that where you got this from? Is it something that came out of the mind? Yeah, we got it from, from law, actually, where it's common, and medicine, you know. So with law and medicine, the loan repayment programs are, they have a slightly different focus because they used to incentivize people to go into the lower paying portions of a generally high high paying profession. And so people need rural doctors.

They need people doing public interest law. So all these things you can't do if you're settled by gigantic student loan debt. And so by repaying those loans, you allow people to have the financial freedom to actually do work that is vital and important. but not necessarily highly remunerative. In our instance, journalism generally, you know, people don't go into journalism to get rich, but they do go in out of a sense very often of wanting to serve their communities,

wanting to give a voice to people who otherwise would not be heard and so on. And so our program was meant to meet people there. and we're not proprietary about it. We're just trying to get the ball rolling for something that should be picked up by lots of schools and lots of places and ultimately should be a national undertaking. It is not likely that that will happen in this near term, even the kind of politics that we have at the moment. But it still is an example.

It's something that has to be kind of a marker that we put down for when people catch up to where we are and say, You know, we really do need to make it a national priority to make sure that we have high caliber, quality journalism that people are able to provide to the public. You're talking about the reality of the profession and getting people into jobs, right? Because that is a thing that, especially in the last generation or so, like, the reality is that people make this sort of outlay of money or take on these loans. They're saying, well, what am I going to get out of it, right? Well, the other side of it is that, and I'm going to read this quote to you, is from 1997, the former president of Brown University and then the president of the Carnegie Corporation is Vartan

Gregorian. I hope I said his name correctly. Quote, journalism schools are teaching journalistic techniques rather than subject matter. Journalists should be cultured people who know about history, economics, science. Instead, they are learning what is called nuts and bolts. Like schools of education, journalism schools should either be reintegrated intellectually and to the university, or they should be abolished. What do you think about that particular... I saw you do a little...

You frowned up a little bit there. So what do you think about that particular assessment of journalism? Yeah, that's not at all applicable to us. As a matter of fact, one of our... I think one of our kind of distinguishing features is the fact that, you know, we are both rigorous in terms of the teaching of journalism, the craft, but also the intellectual

underpinnings of it. And, you know, for that matter, we have a PhD program that is part of the journalism school. And so there are people who are doing in-depth scholarly work, you know, on analytical questions, analytical work around questions of ethics, of technology, of all sorts of other kinds of dynamics. And, you know, for our MA program where people are engaged, not only in, say, the MA politics, we also have MA arts and culture, in business, and an MA in science. And for people who are in those programs, they not only study with journalists on how to cover that subject matter, you know, rigorously, but they take classes in that sense.

subject matter from the corresponding parts of the university. So people who are in the MA business take courses in the business school. People who in MA politics take courses in the political science department. And people who are MA arts, you know, are connected with the school of the arts. And so that doesn't apply to us at all. Okay. Okay. Well, let me, and just to kind of peel off looking at your, you know, I mean, the thing is, if you know, Jalani, I think of you fundamentally, first and foremost is a history, right? Like you are, and your master's, like your, your, your, your academic career, your master's and your doctorate are in history.

So somebody could look at you and say, well, you didn't need to get a master's in journalism or whatever. So what do you say for somebody like that, somebody like you, who obviously is sort of like the picture of like academic, you know, just intellectual diversity, like you've done it all and still have ended up here? It's like, what would you say to somebody that like, well, you didn't have to do it. So why would I need to then? Well, it's funny because there's a kind of coy answer to that, and then that's a more serious one.

The coy answer is that I spent seven years working on a PhD. This program is one year. So you do map on that. The other part of it is that I think it often gets, because I've been known in different contexts in different ways, but it gets, I think, lost. I was a journalist before I became a very. a historian. And so when I graduated from Howard, I was an English major and a history minor. And, you know, I went to work in local news publications in Washington, D.C., you know, including the Washington City paper, which was, you know, then edited by David Carr, you know, the legendary

David Carr. And so I learned reporting in that kind of very old-school way of like, you beginning as an intern and kind of, you know, getting the bumps and bruises and all that and kind of making, working your way up. The other thing that I say to people is that in the old system, there are lots of people who didn't go to journalism school who wound up becoming fine journalists. That's increasingly difficult with the kind of disruption that we've seen. it's harder to go from, you know, the small local community paper to the maybe bigger statewide paper to getting called up to the majors and, you know, winding up at the national publication. And, you know, that route just doesn't exist in the way that it once did. at the same time, what journalism school does is give you those same sorts of experiences and those same skill sets at an accelerated pace.

Even when that route did exist, journalism school was a faster, more efficient way of doing it. And now, you know, I have, and this is not great. I mean, this is something that we do, I think, because so many people take their responsibility these as teachers and as professors very seriously. But now we frequently are still mentoring students who graduated four or five, six years ago. And because it's the dearth of mentorship in the profession. You know, so the kind of stereotypical grizzled old city editor who's been there for 37 years, knows everything, can call the mayor's office, you know, unannounced.

and get the mayor on the phone, like, that guy, that guy is gone. Right. You don't stick the cub reporter with him anymore and get them to show the ropes, you know, because that person, that person's position was eliminated, you know, five years ago or ten years ago. And so it becomes even more important now that you have not only the kind of academic training, but also the one-to-one relationships that people cultivate and develop here. And I'll just say for the people,

because I'm asking this question because I want Jolani to say it to you all, not because I necessarily, but I should say, is somebody who is very interested in teaching someday, the one thing you'd find out pretty quickly is that, oh, you need to have a master's in journalism if you're going to do that, or it would be useful.

It would be very helpful. It'd be very helpful. And also it was like in a kind of accelerator. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. In an interview with Hassam Minaj, you talked about why the Columbia

Journalism School was founded. You know, I'll give this short version for people here. The Pulitzer family looked up. They'd started the circulation war between the Hirsch and Pulitzer Papers, pushed the country into the Spanish-American War, yada, yada.

And they realized the awesome power of journalism. And you said, our students start with ethics. So how does that look and how does that arm them to work in today's media climate? Oh, I mean, first, ethics was important when the school was founded. It is unbelievably more important now because, you know, when the school was founded, people at least trusted the media. Now, you know, we're under scrutiny.

We're under a microscope. People don't necessarily believe, you know, what it is. that we say of what is that we report. And so, you know, I say this all the time. We have to be above reproach. We have to hold ourselves to the highest possible ethical standard. And when we make a mistake, we have to own it quickly. You know, we reported this and we made a mistake.

You know, we subsequently found out that it was actually this other thing. And we have to constantly go out there and do that. And so when we get people in the classroom where we're engaging with these questions around, you know, sourcing and anonymity of sourcing and the circumstances in which you deploy that, the circumstances in which you don't want to deploy that, the questions around objectivity, the questions around financial models and conflicts, which, you know, we've seen more than we need to about that in, you know, in recent months in the past year. And so we have to come out the door equipped to understand what really professional reporting is and what it should be. Don't you, I mean, and just because of the way people sort of entering into it now, like, don't you just kind of wish that everybody kind of got to take a, you know, a basic ethics course to get into journalism? Because, I mean, really, like, people can just kind of start their substack or they can do their TikTok and sort of pass along information. but it seems like there would be some sort of value in having a familiarity, even if it was just like ethics law, right?

Like that would be useful for everybody to sort of have some access to, correct? So you know what I think? Here's like, it's probably unworkable in real life, but in theory this is a perfect idea. It's a great idea. You know, lawyers have to take CLE, continuing legal education, and you have to have a certain number of hours, you know, of that, you know, within any given time frame.

And we really should have that with journalists and ethics. You know, that if you are a person that is reporting and you're reporting for a major organization or not, you are a freelancer and someone, you should be able to take an online ethics refresher every year, maybe even every other year. But it should be, credentialized in the sense that you can say, you're in good standing with, you know, the board of ethical journalists or whatever.

And I think that would be really valuable given, you know, the nature of the playing field that we're on right now. Now, of course, you know, journalism is such a disparate undertaking and so unwieldy and, like, wildly independent. and it would be very hard in practice to actually make that happen. But I think in theory would be beneficial to us. I was going to, so there's nothing approaching that that exists right now. Because as we're just talking about, I was thinking, oh, it would sort of make sense if like Columbia or Missou or Northwestern, you know, the Medill School or whatever had something that was sort of a public, you know, the public or somebody that wanted to get into journalism and access to.

There's nothing like that that exists as far as you know, right? Not yet. Okay. Not yet. Okay. He smiled wide if you ain't watching the video. Okay. In that same interview with the Saminage, you talked about, and this is something that I think a lot of people that are in the business will relate to. You have to have a name that will translate from place to place to place. How do you talk with students about navigating that particular sort of job collaborative? Because if you have to have a name that sort of translate, that's a really weird incentive structure, right?

Like, it can sort of encourage the worst sorts of tendencies to get known. Or, like, I need to need my name out there, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality of my work. Yeah. But the thing is, we're having this conversation about the modern iteration of a very old problem. You know, it's the invention of tabloid news, you know, because you could just do something, the most glaring, sensational, you know, lurid version of a story is going to move the most papers. You know, if we're going back to like the old kind of version of this. Same sort of thing now. You know, people are incentivized to do what we call clickbait or.

or, you know, incentivized to do something, a story that, you know, a really good study was that people looked at what was on the home page of a publication and what was on a front page of the print version of that same publication. Very different. Right. Very different. Right. You know? And so the internet has amplified and indeed. and intensified those kinds of incentive structure questions, but it didn't invent them.

And so we've always had to grapple with the ethical implications of going for the more sensational story as opposed to going for the granular, well-reported, detailed kind of thing. Well, actually, no, you know, there weren't 10 people who would kill in this fire. You know, there were 10 people who would treat it for smoke inhalation. And, you know, it wasn't deliberately set. It looks like it was faulty wiring or like whatever it is, you know. And I think that's what we have to do. And again, I think that goes back to consistently doing the same thing, you know,

from more than a century at the school, you know, different theater of a much older battle. In 2022, you wrote about the reason you left Twitter on New York. And that's a huge part of journalism. I mean, you know, it's a very insular conversation because, as we know, most people offline are not on Twitter. And they look at you kind of crazy if you start talking about Twitter stuff. They're like, what are you talking about? But you said, I generated revenue for an entity that I thought was not informing the public, a place where disinformation could proliferate. What sort of influence has social media, Twitter in particular, had on journalism?

And what sort of advice do you give people, not just students, but anybody, about navigating. that because it's a, yeah, it's a really sort of a tricky thing because you do, like Twitter has helped me to get jobs. A bunch of, you know, most of my jobs over the last decade or so. So like how should people navigate that? Yeah, I mean, I left, I left X or Twitter, whatever is being called this week. But, you know, I let that platform because of the decisions that Elon Musk was making. And I couldn't see monetizing. my own, you know, thoughts or my own interaction or my own work in ways that generated advertising revenue, you know, for someone who I thought was anti-democratic at the very least. So at the same time, you know, I benefited from this too. I mean, people have gotten book deals based on Twitter. People have gotten jobs because they look and see how many followers you have have on social media and, you know, people know that you can bring those followers with you when you, you know, go to a new outlet. And, you know, that's a very real dynamic when people

are out there. So I encourage people to engage, but very, in very specific ways, you know, around things that are, you know, work, around things that are as ethically defensible, you know, as possible. When you get into the realm where you're marketing, your personality, you're probably, you know, heading into the danger zone. And that it should be, as with, you know, journalism, it should be about the story, not about the person reporting the story. And that, I think, is probably the most honorable middle ground that you can find. Because you, obviously, it's silly to say don't engage at all. But there are real ethical questions that come with virtually every single platform

that we could talk about. And so, yeah. Okay, okay. I mean, would you say it is simply, because, I mean, your friend, Tana Hase, he's mentioned to, he tells people don't get on there. Like, you don't need to be on there. Like, that is sort of, and he's not been on there for you. Obviously, you don't feel that strongly about staying away from it or the problems with it.

No, I mean, I think it's part of, it's an avenue for exchange. And even I wouldn't tell people not to get on there because I've had stories that came about because sources were able to contact me, you know, through social media. I mean, lots of, probably all of us have at some, you know, point. or if they didn't come with a story, certainly it was easier to contact someone who was, you know, a comment, a person who you want to comment from, for some story you were already working on. And, you know, there's just a whole array of things.

There are micro communities where it's easier to find out, you know, what's going on with these things. And when I got off of Twitter, my kind of version of that was I never closed my account because, of course, then someone could take my name and do whatever they wanted with it. So I just disengaged with it. I don't post. But every so often I may sign into that account just to see what's going on.

Now, of course, this is all subject to being held hostage by the algorithm. But in some useful way, it's just kind of keeping one eye open in that regard. And so it's something to be, I think, managed. And fortunately, there's, you know, there's more than one platform. So you're not obligated to remain, you know, on any particular one of them. From year 2025, Reuters Memorial Elections was in March. It was titled Trust Issues, credibility, credulity, and journalism in a time of crisis. And in that lecture, you talked about how declining trust in the institution of journalism has

impacted us in its real world consequences. So where are, what do you think we are with trust today? And what can like Columbia Journalism School, what can the people that are working in this field do to help rebuild that trust? Because obviously, we're sort of at a disadvantage and challenging like demagoguery or whatever, right? So like what can we do to to help rebuild that trust that people have in the institution? You know, the thing that I talked about in that, um, was that I'm not convinced that rebuilding that trust is ideal. And secondly, I'm not sure that it's even possible. But outside of that, even if it were possible, I wouldn't be certain that it would be beneficial if we could, if we did. And, you know, what I have said is that in place of trust,

we should encourage an evenly distributed skepticism. So sure, be skeptical of us. You know, just trust us. Or not distrust, but be skeptical. Maybe what we're saying is true. Maybe it's not. But hold the other people to the same standard.

Hold the people who you're listening to on YouTube, the people who you're listening to on TikTok, the people who are prevaying all kinds of conspiracy theories, give them the maybe, too. So maybe that's true, maybe it's not. So on the surface, it seems like I'm putting our work, you know, as journalists who'd have ethical concerns and have reporting skill and so on, on the same level that people should treat it with the same sort of skepticism that they would treat, you know, someone who is, you know, podcasting, you know, from their closet with real, no real data. whatsoever. The difference is we can show our work. And I think that journalism has to take people into the process. So you don't have to give someone a story. You have to give them, even if it's a hyperlink that you click on, you give them access to understanding where

that story came from. So I called this public official, You know, I interviewed and got this information, which sent me to file this Freedom of Information Act request. When I got these documents, I then went to this place. I went to the courthouse and got these other documents. I did all this other stuff. So you walked them through the process. The thing is that charlatans can't do that. The conspiracists can't do that because, you know, they're pulling it out of thin air.

But do you think that that meets the reality of the modern day news consumer, right? It won't. It won't for everyone. It won't for everyone. But it will for a number of people. It will for some portion of people that people will say, yeah. But, you know, I also looked this up and I saw that this guy did his homework on this. And this is why we know that, for instance, you know, the vaccines don't cause whatever it is that we're, you know,

accusing vaccines of causing now. And, you know, I think that serves a purpose, not simply us saying it, but a credible person saying it to people in their circle and their community. Is that a perfect system? No, but I think it's better than the one we have now. But we have a kind of one-sided skepticism, people are skeptical of institutional news. They're not as skeptical of personalities, people who they are invested in, whether it be through social media or whether it be through podcasts or whether it be through, you know, what other form of really horizontal media that they engage with them in. And so we're like, sure, be skeptical of us, but be skeptical of them too. And we'll let it all come out in the wash.

So a couple months ago, Columbia reached an agreement with the Trump. administration. They, more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating anti-Semitism on campus. You wrote in May 25th and the New Yorker, the biggest mistake that some universities have made in responding to the White House has been to presume it is operating a good faith. It is not. How do you think Columbia has handled the pressure that has come under from the Trump administration and which should people think about Columbia reaching an agreement with the Trump administration? You know, I mean, I think that I try, in life, I have a kind of commitment to not harshly

judging people in terms of how they perform on a test if it's a test that they probably shouldn't have been forced to take in the first place. And so there are lots of different kind of contradictory things, lots of things that we kind of argued or criticized and, you know, behind private, you know, behind closed doors. And, you know, there were a lot of debates, you know, around that. And, you know, obviously as a dean, I have some confidentiality. I can't get into, you know, the particulates of all that. But at the end of the day, I don't think the Columbia University deserved what was being thrown at it. You know, we were seeing money for cancer research being taken away. We see money for research. It was one study on the

efficacy of different medical medicine regimes, regimens for infants with liver disease that was like canceled and things that really impact people's lives. So it didn't correspond that if you're saying that there's a problem with anti-Semitism, you punish an institution by. by inhibiting the ability to fight cancer. Right. And that's just a questionable, highly questionable proposition. And so the university has gone through this incredibly tumultuous period. Three presidents, really four presidents, if you count the one that retired, in the course

of like 18 months or so. And, you know, it's really been just riven by, you know, debate and internal disagreement and so on in different communities, different parts of the community. And so it's very difficult to navigate that. So I don't, my primary focus isn't Columbia. You know, my primary focus is, you know, the fact that we have a federal government that is weaponizing, you know, it's. financial support, you know, which, by the way, if we're talking about the history of higher education in the United States, there are a few areas of kind of unquestioned American superiority. If you were talking about, you know, military, if you were talking about probably technology

and export of technology, if you're talking about exporting entertainment, you know, there were things. Also, higher education, widely recognized that the United States. it says the finest system of higher education in the world. And what we've seen is just kind of shooting out the tires from that particular vehicle. And so that's, you know, my assessment of it. For somebody that said, well, Columbia's reputation has taken a needed and necessary hit for having to reach that agreement. Like, what would you say to that?

Like, do you think that the institution has been diminished in any way by having to reach that agreement? I understand my people would say that. And I understand, trust me, I really, really understand the First Amendment academic freedom concerns. You know, and I think I wrote in that piece that I share, you know, those concerns. Those are like vital things. And as a school of journalism, we can't, you know, we can't really exist without, you know, those things, much less that they're kind of cornerstone of democracy. And at the same token, I would kind of invite people to ask about the more viable, you know, avenues of response.

So it becomes a question of not whether you agree or disagree, but whether you think the situation presented itself in such a way that there was any ideal path to navigate. And so there are a couple of analogies I could give you. I'm not going to give any of them, though. But, yeah, and I think that that really becomes the question to me. Dean Jelani Cobb, the New Yorker, Columbia Journalism School. And on October 14th, three or more is a ride. Pre-sale, wherever you can buy a book. That's right.

So, John, thank you so much, man, for joining us today. We really appreciate it, though. Thank you. So a couple of things from that interview, Joel, that I just love. It was interesting when you asked him the big question, and he gave you a couple of answers. The one that resonated most with me is, look, generations of people like him and you and me started off in the business and had a crusty. boss. This may have not quite

been the cigar-chomping whiskey-drinking city editor from the movies, but it wasn't that far away from that either. I wonder what people would think people think of Mitch Krugel. If anybody knows Mitch Krugel, Mitch Krugel is the person gave me my first job in journalism, so yeah,

I wonder. Yeah, Jack Schaefer was mine. I don't remember cigars or whiskey, but certainly there were aspects of the character. And what it was is that person was saying, look, you don't know everything you need to know. You don't even know close to everything what you need to know. So I'm going to be your teacher. And Jelani's point was, what if that person got laid off 10, 15 years ago? And somebody coming into the journalism business now

doesn't have that person in their life to be like, hey, don't ever do that again. You got away with that today? If you do that again, you're fired. So do we need that to happen now in J school rather than in the actual job world? Yeah, man. And that's a great question. I mean, I think the thing is, is I don't know about you. I felt so at one point in my career when we were working under the Jack Shapers and Mitch Krugles, I felt secure. Right?

Like, I felt like they're not going to allow me to embarrass myself. They're not going to print something that will get me embarrassed. And I feel sorry for the kids that have come after us that don't have that anymore. There's no more assurances. I guess the issue is, like, let's say that you want that sort of protection. You want that kind of education. It's like, man, do I have to have $80,000 to get it, though? Because you're not even going to get that in one year out of school, probably.

Because those entry-level jobs, they did pay. They paid us. It might not quite have been a living wage, but it was, you know, it was money. We weren't like, please, here's some money. Please give me a job. It was at least a notional idea that we'd be getting something. The other idea he brought up that I thought was so interesting was about trusting the media. You got to this about 30 minutes into the interview.

And his answer to that was, don't trust the media versus random podcast or random person you read on Twitter. Just make sure your skepticism is evenly distributed. Yeah. I thought that was a really interesting idea. and what do you think of that, right? Well, this is a real uphill climb if people don't trust us. But they don't. And the trust, for reasons you and I have discussed many times,

ain't coming back. Right. You know, Trump's going to leave office someday, maybe. And then it's not like, you know, everybody's going to be like, you know, I trust newspapers. Right. I trust Maggie Hammerman and Peter Baker and all those people to bring me the news and I will never question what they say.

This is just not going to happen. And Schaefer, to bring him up again, used to write that the decline in trust in the media mirrors the decline in lots of other institutions in America, the armed forces, the government, the church, right? This is not, we're not alone here. You know, people are looking at the world in a very, very different way than they did decades ago. But I did like his answer here, which is the journalist can show their work. here's how I got from A to B. The person who used the word charlatan cannot show their work. It doesn't make any sense.

Now, again, is that going to save the journalism business? No, not on its own. But I do think that is if you're trying to appeal to people that may start out being like, I don't know. I don't know about you. That's a good of test as any. I mean, you're doing the best that you can. Like you just do the best that you can.

to hold yourself out in your work is not being above reproach, but you know that you've got all your ducks in a row, right? And that's about the best that you can hope for. Like, yeah, when I'm writing, I guess it really gets back to like who you think you're writing for when you're writing. Because sometimes I think I need to do more of that, right? But yeah, like when I'm writing, I just assume the people that are going to read it are going to agree with me, you know?

And so I don't know about you. I'm like, you disagree. with that? I put all those words together in this information in such a way that I don't understand how you have a disagreement with me. Yeah. And by the way, people should know that's not you saying I'm writing inside a bubble. That's us saying we have a pride of authorship that I

did a good enough job. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That like I did that I've, you know, yeah, double-checked my resources and talk to enough people and I've got a good grasp of the facts and I've marshaled them in such a way that I've made it compelling as well. But yeah.

But yeah, it does sort of make you orient yourself another way if you think you've got to prove something. And maybe there's something to be said for that. Would you make of his answer about Columbia and Trump? Man. So, yeah, I agree with him

that this was not a fight that Columbia wanted to have and that there probably weren't good answers, right? Like there wasn't a great response. Like once the fight has been picked and they'd say, oh, you know, funding for cancer research is up for, for, you know, we'll pull that away from you.

But I don't think it's a sufficient answer because there have been enough other institutions that have pushed back and have had success holding off the Trump administration that, you know, Columbia looks like they kind of got played, right? that there's a way that they could have marshaled up a little bit more defense. But I don't know. What do you think? I agree. And he had this phrase where he said, Columbia didn't deserve this.

Totally true. But nobody did. Right. And really the argument is sort of beyond who deserved it at this point. It's what did you do when it came your way? What was your response? And how will history judge your response? So that to me is what it is.

I mean, newspapers didn't deserve it. Jimmy Kimmel didn't deserve it. You know, universities didn't deserve it. You know, TV networks. Nobody deserved it. Right. Like, that's, this just, that's, you know, I think we all take, we can all, you know, well, most of us can agree on that. Right.

Question is because what did you do? Right. And I, the thing is, I know that Jalani is compromised because I don't, you know, when he's speaking for the larger institution, right? So I, for sure. Do I know if that's his personal opinion? Or is that the company line? And I don't think Jelani is lying to us.

I think he answered us as honestly as he could under those circumstances. So I agree with him that it is not fair that Columbia was put in that sort of dilemma, that they had to make those sorts of choices. But yeah, like you said, I mean, better Colombia than a lot of other places. You know, like if there's a place that's equipped to fight or to defend itself, it's Columbia. It's not, you know, regional, you know, small. small college or nonprofit or whatever, you know, some nonprofit that does very important work,

but doesn't have a lot of, you know, financial support. So yeah, you'd rather it'd be Columbia. And it's just sort of disappointing that they couldn't hold up under that. Let's bring on guest number two. Spencer Hall to talk about how do you practice the craft of journalism. When did you become aware of Spencer Hall or should I say Orson Swindle to use the pseudonym he used to write under? Man, it had to have been 2005, six, not long after. I'm sure I've mentioned here that I used to blog pretty regularly. And I had my own blog. Yeah.

And I just desperately dreamed of making community with the folks over at EDSBS and Orson Swindle in them. And I just love what they were doing. I didn't think that my mind would allow me to write like that because I just don't think, like, nobody has Spencer's brain, right? But yeah, so I looked at him with just a mix of awe and like envy. I was like, man, that guy's really having fun, a fun writing about college football that you just really didn't see anywhere else at the time. Yes, like that was what stood out to me. It's like there were a whole bunch of us out there that were, you know, watching the sport, rooting for teams. And it just didn't feel like any mainstream media institution was anywhere near your wavelength.

Yeah. Unless you were going to a message board that liked your team and hated all the other teams. Yeah. And here he comes along and he understands what college football is about because that's always a big, you know, learning curve. Do you understand it? Did you live it? Are you from it? You know, it's hard to bridge that barrier if you're not, if you didn't.

Right. So he's at every day should be Saturday. Then he goes to SB Nation. There's various things there for various sites there. Now Spencer runs Channel 6, which is a mixture of podcasts and essays. He's part of live events all the time. And is there any, you know, live event crowd that is more into the event than a Spencer Hall live event crowd?

Man, there was, the funny thing about Spencer is I told him, I was like, man, I didn't know if there were so many people out there jocking your style. There's so many people out there that look like Spencer or like, or maybe Wright Thompson. And I had a really embarrassing thing one time where I was in Savannah, Georgia. And I saw a guy and I thought it was Wright Thompson. And I took a picture of him. I was like, hey, Spencer, can you tell me if this is right Thompson or not? Anyway, it wasn't.

But this is a lot of people that are sort of adopting the Spencer Hall ethos. And when they're all together in the same room, it's amazing. And it's just a very lovely and loving community. Like, I think I can say now that Spencer and Holly Anderson, his partner in this endeavor, are friends. And it's just like, they're just the most open-hearted people. And I think that's why people gravitate to their work, because it's really, it's not. mean. It's not like normal message board culture or the yelling that people like to do. It's like, I'm really interested in what makes this culture unique and different in place to place. And they

do a really good job of bringing it to life for people, I think. Through all that, he became a king of the weird internet. A guy who could write a week one college football story that was just called Buffalo. Look it up. 2016. Buffalo. And it would be perfect. And it would make you wish you had the talent for the space or the boss to write something like that. Yeah, man. Here is Spencer Hall on the past and future of the weird internet. Our mutual friend, Beaumani Jones, calls our guest today the best writer in college football,

and I'm inclined to agree. But the way that I want to introduce our guests for this edition of 25 for 25, Weird Media, is with a quote from a profile of him in The Athletic from 2020, way back five years ago. In terms of career path, the thing that always jumps out to me is how much it seems to me that the nerds, the private school people,

the button-down folk, how much they would prefer to be Spencer. That was Jason Kirk who said that. The aforementioned Spencer is Spencer Hall, who is half of the great website, Channel 6, which you can read for a very fair subscription fee, and is one of the host of the shutdown full-cast pie. He founded the groundbreaking college football blog every day should be Saturday and has worked for Fox Media, SEC Network, ESPN, yada, yada, yada, yada. He's done a lot and all those people should be thankful for his services. And he lives in Atlanta, which is just, I mean, I feel like him living in Atlanta is an important part of his personality and the whole story here. So I had to mention that. So Spencer, thank you for coming with us today, bro. My pleasure, quite the intro. Well, you know, I'm trying to do what I can, man. So let's set the terms of the conversation first, right?

Like we're talking about weird media and we're also going to talk about college football. And I don't mean weird in the way that like Tim Walls was talking about J.D. Vance. Sure. It's meant there's a compliment like David Lynch or Andre 3000 or 2007 Mike Leach, you know, something like that. And I mean it as someone who's personality and interest in life story, authentically defy convention or easy stereotype. Like the sort of person who go to Mongolia for vacation, right? Hey, that was a work expense.

Yeah. If the IRS is asking. Does that make sense to you? Have you ever heard of yourself referred to as weird? Yeah. Yeah. And like I'm here because I didn't necessarily fit into easy categories, which is. So like I got started talking about sports on the internet on forums.

And everyone on a forum thought I was weird. So you kind of have to go, okay, I'm obviously going to need my own. space. My own space is free at that point. Didn't even have to pay for hosting. You know, okay, we'll just start a blog spot, see how that goes. And it turns out that, you know, there is a certain, this is a word I use intentionally, a niche for that. And you kind of have to figure things out on your own. So I think that's been, for better and worse, what I've had to do. And it can lend you the sense of being like every day is improvisation. I like that. Yeah. Yeah, every day is some form of improvisation.

Which like in real life, face to face, I'm not a great improv partner. Usually because I'm thinking about something else, it's very hard for me to be present. But if I'm on the page, I'm pretty good at it. If I'm just playing to an audience of one, I'm okay. And that's really what you're trying to do in your writing. I don't understand people are like, oh, well, you know, you have to write for a broad audience. I don't understand it because. I'm not capable of it. Wow.

And I think that's, I've always like, it's never made sense to me when somebody says, you know, why would you be hostile to a stranger on the internet? And I'm like, because this is a bar, a bouncer, and not every bar is for everyone. So I think there's always been like a certain level of not exclusion, but, but you have to be this tall to ride, right, or this weird. And maybe that's a better word, right? Like, this don't have to be this smart. Like, I've written some really dumb shit.

But you at least have to be this fast or this weird or, you know, it's not for everyone. And I found that that's a strength. You know, that's, there's a lot of, or you have to make it a strength. There's a lot of people who I think maybe looking at writing or looking at journalism or whatever this is. And they might say, well, I think I should be this. And I would ask them to look at all of the things that they know they can't be. That's it. Like, just look at all the things that you go, oh, man, I can't do that.

Don't go there. Don't. You know, focus on the things that you sort of naturally gravitate to. It's weird. I don't think a lot of people do that or are given the freedom to do that in their training. Well, I was going to say, maybe that's a freedom issue, right? Yeah. Because, yeah, especially if you come through journalism school, for instance, right?

Yeah. Like you just, do you think that, do you think you could have been you had you done the journalism something? No, no, no, absolutely not. And I don't think I, and by the way, it's not a matter of, oh, okay, I've done this now. I could do, you know, I couldn't do what you do. I couldn't do what a journal. I couldn't do what like a capital J journalist does because I've tried to do it and roundly failed, you know, and had to do something else or do something oblique or kind of come around the side to do it.

There were people who just, it's a definite skill set. I think everybody, all of my sort of generation of bloggers, writers, online people, when we started getting press passes, we ran up against, oh, that's the skill we don't have. Because you'd get into a press conference and you're like, I just asked the dumbest question ever. And a guy who maybe you'd made fun of for being like super basic a couple of years prior when you were anonymous, right, is standing next to you. And they ask a great question. And the coach like goes, oh, that guy, cool. I have rapport.

I can go ahead and give you a straight answer. And that's your whole story. And you go, oh, crap. I don't know how to do that. Yeah, that's, you know, I'm okay now. Like, the only journalistic thing I can do is I can do a pretty decent interview. And even that requires some editing. But a lot of the like capital J journalism stuff that, you know, people, the big hero

journalism stuff that people get into the profession for, I can't do, you know, or I'm not good at. It's not natural at all. Wait, okay. What do you, like, give me some examples of times you think you think you failed at that then? Let's see. I think I have failed at that on certain. Like a lot of it's unpublished where you go, oh, that'd be a cool lead.

I should follow up on that. And you get two or three steps into it and you go, oh, there are several tools I lack to make this happen. Or maybe several layers of support. There are points where you go, okay, a journalist would have a legal team to look at this. A journalist would have all of these things. And you go, I probably shouldn't publish this or I'll get sued.

Right? Or I will. you know, you find yourself, I think it was, it's doubly scary. I think if you don't have backup, right? Which fortunately, I have a great partner for the stuff we right now. Holly Anderson is half of Channel 6 and she is my writing and creative partner. And it is, it is great to have that kind of backup. But like, I think that there's a certain layer of support that inhibits some of what you can do. It frees you up to do some other stuff, you know? Like, hey, we want to do, you know, big lyrical essays to open the season. We don't, have to check with an editor. We can just rip. We can just do that. That's fine. But there are things that like I've never had in training and I've either had to develop them to a rudimentary level,

outsource them or simply go, hey, I'm going to point someone else in this direction. This is not my Ballywick. That's fair enough. Like you said, find the things you can't do, right? It's very important. Now, you can learn some of them. Like I would encourage you to go ahead and learn as many of them as possible, you know? Like, it's very, very weird. I have a graduate degree I don't use, but came in really handy in terms of like a basic understanding of stats, politics, and law. So like, I feel like I accidentally ended up in a good spot because of that. Wait, which is a grad degree in? It is an international affairs. I have a master's degree in international affairs. Okay. What have I done with it? I've explained basic childhood.

I've explained basic assignments to kids, right? Like in history. That's about it. I mean, did you have plans to do something else with it? I was going to work for the CIA. That was my, that was, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with it. And then I got recruited for the directive operations. And at the time, I really just wanted to not exist and disappear. CIA is a great way to do that, right? You're super depressed and you don't know what you're going to do for a living.

The CIA comes around and goes, hey, do you want to not exist? And you go, well, that sounds pretty good. And then you get it, you know, into the actual pitch stuff. and you go, oh, I'd be terrible at this. You have to be very manipulative. And you're basically pitching Amway, but it's America. And you're trying to do it for as little money as possible. And that, yeah, you get into what the job actually would be.

And you go, oh, oh, neither of us wants this. The CIA definitely doesn't want me. And I definitely don't want the CIA. Wow. So when I had a whole other direction, but I'm going to follow this down the wormhole. So when the CIA thing didn't pan out, like, I mean, how far, how far, how far, far did you get along and then at what point you just like okay i'm just got into the the like stage interviews where they're testing like your your language ability and they're giving you personality tests you know

i didn't get into the like i didn't get into the you know training i didn't get a job offer but i got to the point where you go to it's like scary office buildings out in restin yep okay um where you'd they go hey be subtle don't tell anybody and you pull up to the building and there's like a woman with a combat shotgun and a you know a bomb barrier and you go yeah real subtle guys I'm the one who has to be discreet. Yeah. So we didn't work out. Like, what did you want to do?

Because you had said you wanted to disappear. So were you still trying to disappear when you were looking for the next thing? Or did you just say, well, maybe I need to go about this another way? It's bored. That's all. Just bored. And really, you didn't have any confidence to write on my own, which is why, you know, you started under a pseudonym.

And I wrote under a pseudonym for a really long time. It gives you a kind of freedom. It really does, you know, not just from libel, but from all. kinds of other concerns you might have. I wasn't really concerned about losing my job. If anyone found out I had a website, I just felt free or writing under another name. And that was actually kind of a tough transition, was mentally getting yourself over from writing under a pen name to under your actual name and face and space. Okay. There's no Twitter, barely Facebook. Much harder to read large audiences unless you were in mainstream media, but there were

smaller communities on internet. Did you have one? So you said you were on like, were you like with some message boards where you's a google reader group what were you where were you meeting people yeah google reader was good man like that was the the share bros group on google reader was good another very influential forum for me just stylistically um particularly like early internet was hollerboard uh k a hollertronics are you familiar with hollardboard i've i've heard of it before so yeah yeah it was where i met them that's where like i ended up meeting the legend dances with white girls there are also like a number of like I think Diplo was on there

like Diplo was just hanging out right? What? On like yeah on like on the holler board and it was a bunch of DJs and it was very fun because it was a bunch of DJs who would just do a thing which is very inspirational to me. They would do a thing which was ghost face title songs. They would just be like okay

here we're going to do a bunch of ghost like just make up a bunch of fake ghost face tracks and I remember one was there were two that I remember big yokey plates was one big yonky plates And there was one like in a long, it was like 15 bangers, like great fake ghost face titles.

And then it was like 16. Derek. That was it. Just, and I was like, that's inspiration. Real inspiration. So I loved that.

You know, then I think like the dawn is basically when you get like, when you get deadspin and when you get, you know, that constellation of sites. And that's where if somebody shared in one of, those, that's where you started to sort of see things tick up, right? Right, right.

Okay. Okay. Well, so around this time, you start up every day, should be Saturday. You know, like just groundbreaking. Like, I was reading that. You know, it worked just like, man, I wish I could know this dude or write like this guy. So what was the ethos behind it? Like, when you started it, like, what were you hoping to accomplish?

Yeah, distraction. That was it. I was just bored and sort of felt like I sort of hit a lane where I was like, oh, I want to talk about this and I can do it, you know? And it was really just, you know, can you make a goof? Can you make like, can you make a little pip every day? Can you sort of spike? Can you spike your own serotonin a little bit?

And eventually that was like, okay, well, how many times a day can I post and do this? You go, well, it's an exercise. I can do this an embarrassing number of times. You know, I had a little bit of a John Coltrane problem in only one way, which is that sometimes I couldn't stop soloing. You go, okay, you know, Miles was like, I know how to do it. Take the horn out of your mouth, right? Step away from the keyboard.

And I think that was probably just a lot of pent up sort of pent up need to write and enthusiasm about what you were writing for. And then, you know, you get caught in sort of a nasty little feedback loop where you go, oh, affirmation, should do this again, I should do this again, should do this again. You learn to moderate that over time. time. But like the real goal was really just to sort of entertain me and the five people that that I thought were reading. So you're doing EDSVS, you know, you're doing, you know, scratching that particular itch. When did you notice that things really started to change in that space, right? Like,

because you talked about you wanted affirmation, for instance, right? But like there's always like growth, go bigger, do mainstream stuff. So like when did it start to change for you? 08 is really sort of when that like began to turn you know um it's it's different when you get a press pass to the national championship game which the first one was 08 i think that's probably when things started to turn um getting espion getting something by your name sometimes popping up in um you know you pop up in like you know doing a guest piece for uspn or maybe ending up on the fall fine bomb show which like of all the people who have been very supportive don't tell anyone, Paul Feinbaum has always been very, very supportive of what we do.

Like, I mean, like me and Holly and anybody in our crew, he's always been 100% like down with that, which is hilarious to me. I think it's probably because we can say things he can't. And he likes that. So he's so much nicer and kinder and helpful of a person than people probably would ever even think. Yeah. He's also this. He'll, if you do a show, you go, okay, what are we going to talk about? Let's just say Hugh Freeze got hired, right?

You know, okay, okay. So what are we going to talk about? And he goes, well, you know, we're not going to do anything too controversial. You know, it's fine. We're not going to do. Okay, cool, cool. And then he'll go, so Hugh Freeze was fired at Old Miss under, you know, circumstances. Do you think Auburn made a mistake in hiring? Yes. You know, like, and like, he'll immediately, like, steer you into the fire, which I know is coming. And I think is always hilarious.

But the first time it happens, you go, oh, you bastard. Yeah, right. Yes. So I appreciate that, too. Like, he'll play mean with you and I like that. Oh, I went to the live show with Split Zone Duo in Atlanta, a couple of them for the national championship game. And what I noticed that night was it, man, Spencer, you've built a real community. How would you describe your audience to people?

who have not been to one of those who wouldn't be familiar with an audience? Very, very, just big nerds. There's a lot of big nerds. Love you big nerds. We've got a lot of dads and people who feel like their dads. Like, everyone could be a dad, you know? So we've got a lot of like, you know,

men and lady dads in the audience. I think we have a place for people who maybe, maybe enjoy things that I think they think, they think they shouldn't. Like, you know, very smart people who enjoy football. Like, that's, we have a lot of those. We have some perfectly normal people who for some reason still mess with us. And I love that too.

You know, we have people who I think want that kind of community and want to be recognized in other people's eyes as appreciating those things. It's, it's very strange. And it's very strange to me to me. look out and go, okay, I've seen some of you for like 10 to 15 years. It's, it is, it is one of those things where, you know, especially at this point in whatever my career is, you go, all right, well, what's the operation look like? And you go, well, it's, it's not a big tent, but it's, it's a tent. So it's a nice, it's a decently sized

tent and I'm very happy with that. But the, the actual sort of commitment and support and fervor of the community can't really be imitated. Like I don't like our, you know, we do keep metrics on this kind of things. Like Holly and I keep metrics for Channel 6 and we keep metrics of the forecast and like, you know, open rates and like when the response to any kind of request we have is so intense and so thorough and consistent that, you know, why would you want anything else? You know, like I know who I'm, I know in large part who I'm making things for. And I think the thing that I have felt good about is that I think, hopefully I've developed as a person,

either growth or whittling down the unnecessary or ugly parts, however you want to refer to it. And getting older, it's very hard to tell. You go, well, I'm growing. And you go, I don't know if that's the word. Sometimes, you know, sometimes you're eroded into a better form is what I'm hoping, right? you know and yeah and i know i would love to create a situation where everyone felt comfortable you know like that's that's really what i would like and i don't think we're entirely there yet you know but it's improved it's improved since the jump and i'm i'm happy with that

not not content with it but i'm happier with that you know man well i want to say about that about going to that show and I kind of hung around for a little bit accidentally. Like I was, I'm one of those people. I'm very awkward in public. Like I just kind of like, I don't want anybody to talk to me because I don't want to. Jill's not awkward. I am. I know I am. But I thought one thing about that audience is that everybody was exceptionally kind. You know, it was and is that something that you've noticed? What is it like for you when you meet these folks? Like are you just like, man, this person is a fan of mine, right? Like, They'll pay money to come see me talk.

Right. And you owe them, you know, we've had some good and bad systems for this. But I think if you have that and they pay to see you, you owe them, you know, a little bit of a higher, a little bit of, you know, access. But do it because at, you know, at that level. Like, how many people am I going to say hello to at the show? A hundred. Okay. That's fine.

That's 100. That's manageable. That's easy. There's boundaries you want to set up around that, but especially in like a bigger venue. But they are very kind in a. I think they're interested in, I think they're interested in being that in that space. You know, like, I think that's, that's something that like the combination of that kind of, you know, sport and community and what they mean to each other.

It's something that like we didn't dictate or teach or design. It's just kind of something that's happened, you know. And I think maybe that's encouraged by like organizing. We always have a fundraiser every year, you know, to raise money for charity. And I think that probably helps dictate that. But on the whole, nobody's there to have a bad time, you know? And, you know, I'm, I, the thing I love, like, when we see people who don't look like us, I like that. I'd like more of it.

I love that we have, I love that we have women at our shows. We do always ask how many of them have been brought there by their spouses, dragged there by their spouses. And inevitably, it's a sizable chunk of. If they come back and that's good. I think you want to make them feel like VIPs. Like, thank you for your service. Coming to this thing that you don't understand. And that's good.

And it's cool like in the full cast context because everybody has kind of a different pitch. Everybody has something that they bring to the audience and the audience is there for. For instance, Jason Kirk has an entirely sort of different life as this like, you know, a writer about the ex-evangelical experience. and he'll get these people. And, you know, that's a thing to watch them see him and go, okay, you, you articulated this experience for us. And, you know, we didn't think anybody would ever do it,

but you did. So they have a whole different thing. I'm meandering off point, but like, it's very humbling to see in person. It makes you want to handle it well. You know, and at the same time, you know, you're always like, I'm not going to screw this up. You know, you're like, okay, it's Monday. We, it's Monday.

We did Monday, okay? You know, I get very Nick Saban about those things. I do not have Nick Savants follow through organizational skills. I definitely have the like, well, you got through Monday. You know, would you want to pat on the back, brother? Okay, cool. You know, let's see what you do on Tuesday. I love that.

Well, so I want to refer to. refer back to this profile because I feel, and I was talking about this with Connor, our editor, Connor Nevins, he's work at ESPN. We said, everybody feels like they know you. Like, you have this real talent for being authentic,

and that means that you've really inspired a lot of other writers. And so I want to go back to this profile from the athletic, where it says, Wood Hall has accomplished by being nothing but himself has altered the once established reality of what it means to be a sports writer. I think that's true, but would you

actually think that means? Oh, that'd be speaking for Chris Cam Ranney, but I think maybe this. I think maybe I have no choice but to be myself, you know? I would hope this. I would hope that

maybe if someone read me, they would go, well, don't do that. Like, yeah, don't, you know, that's, you'd hope to be an example by warning. And then maybe if they looked at it, they would go, I think I could say this differently. I do like that.

Like I think maybe as warning sometimes, right? Like if you just completely say something totally bizarre. But I think it would also, I would hope that you would do, because a lot of the stuff I do, I'm just stealing stuff from other genres or I'm stealing stuff from other forms and mixing them in. And I would hope that people would look at that and go, because that's what I did with like Anna Marie Cox, like at Wonkette. Like I would read Wonkette and go, oh man, someone needs to do this with sports. And then I wrote and I was like, well, why didn't do that? But I kind of came up, you know, I kind of came up at least in the neighborhood of someplace

different. It's like, it's a lot like on fear of music by talking heads. There is this, there is this song and I'm going to remember which one it is or look it up. But there's a song where they were like, yeah, we were trying to play James Brown. And it doesn't sound anything like that. It sounds cool. Okay. I think it's paper.

Like it's, and it sounds, it's all, it's, if they're trying to do a James Brown song, it's crap, it's total crap. But it ends up being something kind of cool,

right? Like, like talking heads, we're always trying to play funk. And it came out like nerds playing weird art school, dance music that might kind of sound like funk initially, then sort of got there. That's all I've been.

I'm just trying stuff and trying to sound like people and kind of coming up short, but ending up in this weird platypus territory. So when you started working at like Vox Media and ESPN, and obviously you don't work at those sort of places now, did you find yourself constrained? Did you find that it was nice to have resources and backup? Like, what was it all of those things when you started to link up and work for some of these larger corporations?

Larger corporations were never very limiting because in one, it was a startup where, you know, there really weren't a whole lot of guardrails, which caused problems later on. But they also had the ability to sort of leave you, yeah, a little freer, you know? At a place like ESPN, I greatly enjoyed what I did at ESPN. And yet there are parts where you go,

I don't think I'm very good at that, you know, and I don't know if it's, I think there are people who can do it's like their, their version of talk, right, which is stand and blow. you know you have it's it's it's it's one two three one one two three one one three one one one one three you know like we go I mean even the NBA on TNT you know there's a famous bit where Shaq is mad at Chuck because it goes it goes it goes one two three one not you know one two one one one one right

and that that sort of round the horn kind of not around the horn but round the table you know you have 25 seconds to like talk non-stop. Maybe you'll say something. I don't think I'm good at it. And I don't think, I don't think as a format, it's the only one. You know, and I,

I think that's something that like, maybe the YouTube algorithm has sort of like accidentally cracked in terms of like, okay, long videos. We like people with long watch times. So you get like longer discussions or, you know, in my case, weirder discussions for things. And that may be an accidentally

beneficial side effect of that is that we get more of that. I think it's just hard for a place like ESPN or Fox to do that on their current formats. Because, in part because they're so good at that, you know, like they're really good shows. They're very good at like turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, go, turn, turn, go. But it's not a format that I am particularly great at or, or I think really, I enjoy some of it. I enjoy some of it, but like it can be sort of numbing. I don't know if you've watched like, like if you watch Game Day, game day is still big high quality program.

A lot of really talented professionals working on it. But like any show, I mean, even at NBA on T&T are just like, this, this has gone on either too short or too long and I tuned out halfway through one answer or something, you know? Yeah. So I never found it that limiting. I think it would be if you were like, NFL people, I sort of, I am in awe of what some of them do because it's a big audience and you have to talk to that big audience in ways that they understand.

And that is difficult to do. Like what Mina does is hard. Like that's very, very, very hard. I'm in awe of what they do, but also like I think even if I had that talent, I would chafe at the idea that like I was a client. I was in a client relationship with the NFL. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, that makes sense. It does.

Like, I could be critical of play on the field to an extent, you know, which you get that. By the way, you have that in college, too. Right. Like, and I think that stricture maybe isn't as firm as it used to be because now players are paid, so maybe people feel like they have a bit more license, you know? I like to say that a player is not having a good day. Right. Or just, I don't think they're the answer.

You know, like, respectfully, you know, I don't think Ty Simpson is, is it. You can be based on, based on one game sample, you know, like maybe at another team in another situation, sure. In this one, it does not look like, it doesn't look promising. That's what you would say. I could be proven wrong. But right now, that ain't it, you know. So, like, I think that that it could be limiting, especially the bigger.

audience. Like, I'm always, I think I am, my talent set is so limited that I can't do a big, broad thing, right? Like, I think that would take, there are very few people who are smart enough and talented enough to tailor what they're saying for a broad audience. I think that if you're, you can do that accidentally, right? You can be a Charles Barkley and just be someone that people enjoy listening to. I think we underestimate voice a lot. We underestimate voice and personality in terms of what a draw it is because it's not like Chuck has delivered an insightful comment on the game that they're watching in years. That is a complaint and haters of that program. That's one that people who still enjoy it like me would have to agree with and go, yeah, I'm not there to actually

hear what Chuck's saying about the game. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's just, you know, the relationship between the other guys, the fun that they're willing to have, the randomness, right? Like the sort of random chaos. When Zion Williams pulls up and they go, what you tell me that looks like Chuck and he looks like me and Shaq had a baby. Like, that's what I'm there for. It's not smart, but I'm entertained. Well, so then it leads me to this then.

So what makes college football so different? from all of that. Like, why do you dabble there? I dabble there because it is chaotic. I dabbled there because it's still largely regional. And I think that's still true. Like, we barely have a playoff. This sport is, there's no one really in charge of this sport.

The P&Ls, the spreadsheets are not publicly available, generally speaking. And when they are, a lot of it's fictional, especially now. You know, like, okay, well, so. we'll have a hard salary cap sure sure I absolutely believe that when professional leagues are hiring guys for ghost jobs to get around the salary cap what makes you think that a bunch of HVAC barons in rural mississippi aren't finding eight nine ten different elaborate ways to pay a defensive tackle right the money that he's allotted come on

this don't be a child right be childish but don't be a child with me about this I like it because of that. I like it because of, I like it because honestly, like, and this was one thing that access gave me that I didn't have before is when you meet the players and you hang out around the players and you get to know them, it's a great age. Like I can say the thing about that as a parent, right? It's a great. And you're like, oh, man, 19's a great age. They're fun. Like, they're very fun.

And they're having fun playing the game, generally speaking. And that kind of like new cult on wobbly legs play I really like. I like seeing players develop. Like that's not, I don't think Nick Saban's lying when he says that's why he went back to college. I don't because it's a cool. You know, I think he did it for control too, sure.

But like it is very, there is nothing like in college football watching a player go from from preschool to graduation, so to speak, in the course of like a season or two. Joe Burrow, craziest thing I've ever seen. Oh yeah, I thought he was terrible going into the scene

that final year. I was like, he's not good. No, no, I was like, I guess he's got through too many picks. And like he's,

you know, tries to force balls and I just don't see it. And then he came out and you go, oh my God. You know, he went, he went like God mode in a year, in a year.

So that's like, that's thrilling to me. I love watching that. And people will say, They'll go, oh man, watch college football for the upsets. And that is half true. You watch it because there are steady returns at the top in terms of who's going to be good. And when they do get upset, it is, it's biblical.

It's exaggerated. It's huge. It's cartoonish and it's unexpected. And, you know, I like that. I still think, you know, I am a sucker for theater. And college football is better theater. It is not better football, willing to admit that. It's not.

But I think it's most enjoyable and entertainment. when you have some space. You know, that's one thing that like Bill Belichick at UNC, you know, I don't think really understands at root. There's a couple of things that just, I don't really think he gets at college, if you have players, you know, in the pros, it's like, well, we've got to match up. We think we can pick on this guy.

In college, you could just build around a dude and say, okay, we might make the whole team out of that. guy. Right. National titles have happened because we said, Cam Newton is the greatest college football player ever. We should probably build the whole team out of him. He should touch the ball every play.

Don't ever, you know, if he has to give it up, fine. Travis Hunter, you're like, can he play corner? Can he play a whiteout? Can he play corner and wide out? You know, just that's the kind of stuff that you go. Or now, I love this wrinkle. I love college now even more because We get these guys like Cam Ward,

what's Cam Ward's path? Well, Cam Ward came out of San Antonio's finest, incarnate Word, and then went from Incarnate Word to Pullman, and then geographically went as far as you could go again from Pullman by going to Miami. Yeah, and then was superb at all three stops. I love that sort of barnstorming element of it now.

It'd be cool. There's things that obviously could be improved. It'd be great if they were all, employees love to see that. But like that's why I, you know, I think I function better than I would in other areas. I don't think I could have been a beat writer for other things because I am, because there's just something about the sports, rhythm level pacing culture and like, yes, pageantry that I think is awesome.

Do you think you could have your career again if you started it today? Oh, no, I don't. But that's fine. People will go, oh, that's that. You know, that's no longer possible for someone. You go, well, no, but something else is, there aren't the same sort of channels for discovery, you know? Like if somebody goes, well, I just start a substack,

guys, I had a 20-year head start on that, you know, with audience development and growth or however you want to put it. So, no, I couldn't happen. But, like, I don't know if I should happen again. Yeah. And I don't say that necessarily in the positive or negative. It's just a judgment-free statement. You go, I don't, I don't think that should happen.

happened twice. All right. I'm going to get close to ended here because I've held you longer than I thought, but I'm going to do a quick lightning round, okay? All right. You ready? Yeah. What game or stadium haven't you been to that you desperately want to go to?

Happy Valley. I haven't been to Penn State. Wow. Okay. So I haven't been there. We'd love to go there for a night game. What college football player is your nemesis? By which I mean, the guy who calls.

crushed your favorite team's dreams over and over again. There's one that irritates me the most, and it's Chris Ricks. Chris Ricks. Because that was, there's guys who absolutely put their foot on your neck. Stets and Bennett, you know, like, yeah, it's a great player. Brock Bowers, you know, like Brock Bowers is an incredible player, but they're good. They're really good. I don't think Chris Ricks was that good, but he never lost to Florida.

And that has to burn. That's the trade-off we get for having never lost to Peyton Manning. Payton Manning will never beat Florida, and I have to live with that. And the price that you pay on the back end is Chris Ricks not only beat us, but beat us in like humiliating painful fashion. Oh, man. What a pull. Who's the most interesting person that you ever interviewed?

Most interesting. He's dead. Mike. And I mean that like Mike, like I, like I, I've written about that and like the legacy for Mike is, is somewhat, I think, tarnished by, you know, my disdain for his politics at the end. Like he's a big trumper.

Like, that ain't me. And, you know, I think you're being kind of a dumbass about that. And, you know, as it turns out, Mike, you know, Mike's relationship and power with players was more traditional than one might have, one might have anticipated. And it could be a bully with players at times, you know. You have to tell the whole story. But in terms of, you know,

of understanding why he was a success, if you interviewed him, you got it very quickly because he was super smart. That is not exaggerated. He was a giant brain. He was very, very interested. I don't know if caring is the word. He was perpetually interested in everything.

Sometimes maybe like an insect inspecting something, right? Like he could be that way. But like that was the most interesting interview because I got to do it on a boat. I got to go out on a boat Yeah, I got to go fishing with him and fishing all night, like to the point where if you hung out with Mike, you wanted to go home at the end.

We were tired. And I'm not the person who wants to go home. But at, you know, five in the morning when he's showing you Key West architecture by stomping through people's yards when they're still asleep inside and pointing the things on the houses, you go, Mike, we've got to go. Right. That's trespassing.

Oh, okay. And I want you to describe the following places for me in as few words as possible. Your hometown, Franklin, Tennessee. The bubble. That's the bubble. Everything's fine. I don't know what's wrong with the rest of America. I guess we just do what we do in Franklin.

Gainesville. Gainesville. Wet. It's a moist place. It's very moist. It's not a great college town. Wow. Miami.

Oh, no. I wonder if you're going to wish you had saved this one. Tampa. Okay, come on. Tampa is at least a, Tampa's a dystopia that you can afford. Tampa's where Tampa taught me a lot. I moved there for the last two years of high school, and it was kind of where I gave up on humanity. And that's a good start.

You should, like, you should hit the bottom, and then you should begin to rebuild. So when I lived in the Tampa Bay area, I would tell people to get to my house by turning right at the phone sex line billboard, which was in a pretty nice neighborhood. Was this off 19? It was. Okay, of course. Yeah, it was off 19. My first time in Tampa proper, this is my dad's story.

My dad's down there. He got transferred, so he was working advance party. So he went to Tampa and he went to a Bucks game. and he got his car stolen out of the parking lot of the Bucks game. And he's the rental car. So he had to call and go, okay, here's what my car looks like. So he's back at his extended stay hotel where he's staying until, you know, the rest of us can get down there. And he looks on the news and goes, oh, it's a robbery of a high-fi store, right?

Which is, you know, stereo store. And he goes, oh, yeah. So that car, the car they recovered looks a lot like mine. Oh, man. I get a call from the Tampa PD. and it's like, yeah, so we found your car. Get out of here, man. Found it on the news.

Yeah. Get out of here. Had a dent in the hood like that, like a little tear drop from where they'd slammed, like they'd been running and they'd just slammed it shut on a big pair of like wooden speakers that they stole. Oh, my God. I love it. I love it. Atlanta.

Home. That seems like a good place to end it. Man, Spencer Hall, greatest writer in college football. And channel six, shut down forecast. Any other place that we need to? That's for the moment, two jobs. Two jobs. Yeah, that's enough.

I got two jobs for the moment. Channel six, that's channel dash six.I.O. And hold on, let me get that 100% right. Channel dash six.ghost.io because we are on ghosts. Channel dash six.ghost.io. And the shutdown forecast. Please check him out, Spencer. Thank you.

always, brother. Yeah, my pleasure. One thing, Joel, that came out of that interview for me was when he was talking about other journalism jobs, more conventional journalism jobs, and Spencer said, I couldn't do those jobs. I would be no good at that. Part of that is probably modesty. Let's put that out there.

But also, I think one thing that's really changed from 2005 when he first founds every day should be Saturday to now is that the mainstream media, institutions have done a better job of not forcing people into square holes, round pegs and square holes. Is that the phrase? Yeah. They've done a better job. Again, not a perfect job, but a better job of saying, okay, person, we like you. Let's build a job around your talents.

Let's figure that out. Absolutely. Because I think what I took to mean by way him saying that is that I would die a slow death at my desk. if I had to do that a particular job. But I think the good thing about it, which is also the sad thing about it, is there's just not that many jobs like that in journalism anymore? No. Like if you're going to have a job, like even if you go down and work at a very small market,

you might get to cover city politics right off the bat because it's just not that many people. You might become the lead crime reporter in your town. So there's not the jobs that are, you know, where you get to necessarily have to cover the local peach basket festival like they used to be. So I don't think Spencer would, I think Spencer would be good at anything that he was passionate about. And I think he could find something to be passionate about if he had to do those kind of jobs. One thing I think about him too is you have young writers that come along and that

look at him and be like, man, I want to do that. Yeah. I want to do that. And the thing is, doing that at that level is really, really hard. Yeah. That's like coming along as a podcast saying, hey, I like movies. I like TV. I like crime novels. I'm want to do Chris Ryan's job. Well, good luck, you know, like that's, there's a reason there's a handful of people, you know, that have figured out how to work in those areas. I want to write features like Gary Smith and Rick Riley, man. Me too. Should we get on that today? We should try. We should try to, yeah. I mean, I still still time, right? But yeah, but yeah, like when you do it and you're just like, oh, no, wait, some people's minds and with the way they think of stories and the people,

that they're going to tell it is just so different. Like, Wright Thompson wrote a great piece about Michael Jordan a few years ago with that the piece that went along with the last dance. And so many people have written about Michael Jordan, you think that there's nothing else interesting to him. And then, like, a guy like that can go in there and do it. So, I mean, I don't think that you and I are like, we're not being false modesty, there's not anything false modesty about our talent or whatever, our ability.

but like some people like Spencer make you think like my mind just doesn't work like that which is definitely true in that case there's no false modesty required he's joel anderson i'm brian curtis by kyle crighton coming up tomorrow joel you and i are back at our battle stations with our usual thursday podcast and shoemakers here monday can't wait to share more lukewarm takes about the media with you looking forks everybody