The Press Box - Astead Herndon on Campaign 2024, Midwest Diners, Podcasting vs. Writing, and The New York Times.

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Bryan is joined by New York Times reporter and podcaster Astead Herndon from ‘The Run-Up’ to discuss life on the campaign trail. They talk through the transition from print stories to podcasting, dive into the inner workings behind the stories reported for ‘The Run-Up,’ then unpack voters' response to candidates on the trail. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Astead Herndon Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, the host of the podcast, Plain English. We tackle technology, politics, culture, history, everything that's happening in the world and why it matters. New episodes of Plain English drop every Tuesday and Friday on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box's final edition. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. Our guest today is a writer and podcaster whose pieces and insights have been approvingly quoted on this. this podcast a lot. Astead Herndon joined the New York Times as a reporter in 2018 after a stint at the Boston Globe.

He covered the 2020 election. And for this campaign, he started a shoe leather podcast called The Run Up, which has taken him everywhere from evangelical churches in Iowa to the offices of Julian Castro. We welcome him to talk about the state of the race and life on the trail. Instead, welcome to the press box. Thank you for having me. Big fan of the show. I appreciate being here.

Let us start with the run-up. Why switch from covering politics as a print reporter to covering it as a podcast? Yeah, I appreciate that question. I mean, for me, it was really bored out of where I could do the reporting that felt most exciting to me. So, like, I had been on the trail, like, exclusively from 2018 through that midterms and then through the presidential election after. I had, I remember in 2020, looking at my Marriott app and then it was like 29. in the Marriott.

And it was like, it was like a kind of crazy experience, but it was really, for me, like the way to really be out there and to be telling stories I really liked. And at the same time, I was doing kind of daily guest hosting at that time. And so I was having a kind of experience where I was like, oh, I think actually the work that I'm doing in audio feels really nuanced and feels like a real continuation of the work I'm doing in the paper. I would be having these experiences on the road.

And then you have to choose one quote for the story. And when I was having those same interactions for the podcast, you could hear a lot more of the interactions. You could hear a lot more of the journalism. And I felt it being just more suited to the kind of work I was doing. And so the idea was that if I could kind of marry the two into one, what audio gives you in terms like the level of intimacy with listener and the willingness to sit with people who you may not know or disagree with.

And then the kind of original reporting that the paper does, that I feel like it could be really something special. And so that was really what the run-up was born out of, really just me pitching the idea of, like, what if I'm doing the similar types of stories, but what if they're done in a more kind of audio-creative fashion that, in my opinion, lends itself to really building out a kind of different language around politics and really elevating the same type of voices. I was trying to include in the paper. Have you found a specific kind of story works better in audio than it would have in print?

Yeah, the example I use here is like the kind of diner stories that get roasted in print, right? Like we would just show up to some community and ask them about Trump and you're just in some place for a day. And it oftentimes feels really surface level knowledge coming from there. You know, even when I was in the paper, I was kind of a defender of diner stories. So I thought that the real problem was that you're just not getting the new information. I mean, the real problem was that they weren't written in a way that acknowledged what you didn't know and try to extrapolate that one diner to everything else. So I think there was ways to do it.

But really, I find that we get a lot of value out of talking to regular people in audio. Our show, particularly in season one, in the lead up to the midterms, was making sure to include people who weren't voting, people who don't like either party, people who think in ways about politics, that kind of Washington doesn't really reflect. And we hear a lot more of their life story. We're not just saying, hey, how did you become a Trump voter? We're saying, what was the first thing that got you into politics? How was your views changed over the years? And you hear the kind of arcs in people's lives that bring them to that point. And a lot of people really like those episodes that we do that

include those voter voices. And I always think that like, those are the same interactions I was having in those diner stories. It's just the imprackaged a different way. And I think pretty presented with a little more of that audio pointing, I think people are much more willing to sit with that and kind of, and hear it rather than read it. Another example I would give is Mike Lindell, a person we talked to in season two of the run-up. I don't think that that paper profile feels the same.

You have to hear him. You have to, and you have to kind of see the back and forth that leads to what we're getting. And then also, we pair by talking to RNC chairwoman Ronne McDaniel on that episode. Those are things that you can do in audio, that you feel people on a journey in a specific episode or in a specific series like The Run Up, where I don't think you have that same kind of trust of narration and storyteller in a paper story. I'll add one more for you, which was your interview with Julian Castro that I mentioned. Talking to him, there's a lot of Biden's skepticism coming out of him, light skepticism, but about Biden's ambitions and that kind of thing.

And that's part of what you're after there. But if you listen to that in audio and listen to the full interview with the full arc of it. You can also hear this thwarted ambition in Julian Castro's voice because he ran for president against Joe Biden. And there's a little bit of way, that could be me and I could be that more ambitious Democratic president. You see the kind of what he is saying is like the missing piece of what Democrats need now is a version of the presidency he was pitching, right? A version of the presidency Elizabeth Warren was pitching the person he endorsed at the end. They're saying that that's a been. a kind of lost promise of this Biden administration. But again, like to the point about that episode,

so many of the political conversations around 2024 I think are intuitive for people, but are not kind of what the campaigns are talking about, right? You can't get Democrats to talk about his aid, Biden's age openly. You can't get Republicans to really wrestle with Donald Trump's negative impacts on the party openly. But we did get those people to have those more honest moments in the early portions of the race. I think audio allows a kind of extended conversation where you hear all of those different parts of Julian Castro. And I think for those, for when we're pitching people to do interviews, I'm saying, yeah, we're going to be tough, but you're also going to get a rounded out version of yourself that you can't get in the

Q&A in one medium or other or live TV or cable news, right? I think it lives in the nuance. And that's my pitch to people to come on the show. So if you're not just throwing a recorder on the desk and then harvesting a few quotes afterward for a print story, how do you craft an interview so that it works in a longer form on a podcast? That's a great question. I mean, for us, it's really intentional. And I think this is where the Daily really created the model that Times Audio uses.

That was my first kind of introduction with this stuff, was that, you know, there is a kind of strict scripting process for daily interviews where you're really thinking. about how you're unfurling that story. And so the thing that I think that kind of format helps us with that the run-up has kind of taken is it's a little different because we're not working with another reporter, right? There's not a set set story that you're kind of working around, but it allows that level of intention to be the baseline of what we work from. So we have, before we sit down with the castor or sit down with the Mike Lindo, we have written out a whole arc of questions to think about where we start and where we want to land.

Now, I have a pretty good, like, freedom within that. Like, I ask follow-ups, I listen. I try to make sure. But I don't try to, but, you know, I think it's a helpful thing because you're trying to root someone in a reason. And if you think through that, you know, for as much as zigzagging, I might do in an individual thing, I'm going to come back to the arc we thought of because that's the reason why that person's there.

And so, for an example like Mike Lindell, I'm going to go back and forth about the truth or fiction of the last election. But that's not why we're here. We're really here to show his influence on the Republican Party, his influence on things that led to things like the Dominion lawsuit in Fox News. And so making sure I get back on track is really important, too. And so we actually have that scripted out. And then also when I'm doing something via Zoom or not in person,

I quite literally have, you know, editor and producer that are in the document with me who are saying, you know, maybe skip this question, jump here. And so I think as an interviewer, you're trying to do a lot of things at once. I want need to listen, right? I need to listen and be like present and be an active kind of question asker myself. But I'm also following along with others who are making sure we're following the art that we have thought of. And also that, you know, they think about things and follow-ups that I might have missed. You were talking about those quote-unquote regular people that we see in diners or elsewhere in political stories.

do they react differently to you when you're holding podcast equipment versus holding a notebook and a recorder? Yeah, that's, and so one thing I, I think TV equipment's the worst of those options, right? And so I always really liked when I was a print reporter that it was completely, you know, it was just you and them. That there was no kind of, there was nothing that was coming between that. And I remember I had a strategy I used to have at Trump rallies was like, people love performing. there. And so I would always try to get people away from a crowd. So if they're walking to a concession, or if they're going to and from their car, or if they're like milling around kind of by themselves, I would have much more fruitful conversations if I tried to talk to someone in the line

or tried to talk to someone in a place that felt like they were getting a kind of audience. That's even more so, I think, when you bring a kind of television camera around. With audio, I guess it doesn't feel, like the mic doesn't feel that intrusive, I don't think. Like, it is, I guess because of the amount of time that we get with podcast interviews, too, I think it's a little different because in that print interaction, you're talking 10 minutes, right? And in these interactions, we're talking an hour. And so I think there's, even if there's more of an awareness of the microphone when we arrive,

it's easier to let that kind of fade away and to get into a groove because you're, having the more extended conversations. But I remember one time I was supposed to go for the story I was doing in the paper to Northern Arizona. It was this kind of event called Trump Stock. It was kind of white nationalist defest. And I was trying to go specifically to do the story about how there was a segment of Trump voters who, whether he wins or loses, were promising violence.

All right. January 6th, like, pre-January 6th, some of these people end up at the Capitol. But I was really like convinced about this story about like the need to talk. about the prospect of outside of electoral results, there could be something crazy. And so I was going to Northern Arizona to do this story. And I remember the Times FX show, like pitch to come with. It was like, hey, maybe this is something we can work together on.

And I had this moment. I was like, oh, yeah, I don't think I want to do that. Because that camera at a thing like that, I think, changes so much of the dynamic that it made me really nervous about what that reporting experience, how it would shift that reporting experience. So I try to be really conscious about, you know, whether medium and what I'm after are in our meshing. But I think the, I think because we get such extended time periods with people in the podcast form, it allows that to be more replicable. How to conservative voters react when you say you're from the New York Times?

Oh, it depends. I mean, I think it depends on where you are. And it's not just conservative. This is something I always say is like, the people who taught me how to overcome skepticism were when I was working at the Boston Globe doing crime stories and I was going to Dorchester and Roxburgh and like doing these murders that like people were sick of newspapers only showing up when somebody died, right? And so I remember that being my real crash course in skepticism. And like that experience is a really helpful one because I come at it pretty much the same way. If a conservative who is skeptical of a liberal New York Times, if it's someone who sees a black person and kind of assumes a liberalness, or if it's someone who just doesn't know how media works in the kind of different sense, we have some problems on the progressive side too with people being like, I don't want to talk to the Times. My pitch is always a real transparency. Like, if you're someone who believes that your views are not represented in that institution, that's why I'm here is to hear you out, you know? And so that's really my pitch directly. is like, if you think we won't print something or you think we won't play something, try me. You know, tell me the thing that you think is missing from that here. And that's exactly while I'm here, you know.

And I also used to try to make a real, like, transparent understanding of the process. Because I think for a lot of people, that is really unknown. And so some people, I'm like, you know, this is going to appear. And, you know, maybe this time, here's my email. If you want to follow up, like, I try to make it. or with people, I try to let them know, like, because if you're talking to a voter interview, you pretty much know which portion of that you are most interested in

by the time you leave talking to them. So I would always say, hey, this is the portion of what you said that I'm really, that I'm going to use, most likely. And so it's not as if, you know, obviously all of it is on the record or whatever, whatever. But you pretty much know which part you were most interested in. And so I would try to make sure that they felt. felt really like in, not in control of the process, but at least understanding the process. And I always felt that that was a breakdown of skepticism.

The last thing I would say is I don't feel the need to defend media largely, which in these interactions, like, when people have all their media beeps, I'm like, I agree. I'm like, you know, I'm like, nobody, nobody is more mad at media than me. And so I'm like, I'm with you. And, you know, what I want to try to do in here is to be a proof point of the other stuff, you know, as to like make you feel like, you know, for a lot of us, we do care. And we are here because we're trying to tell a story about this or that. But then, you know, for people who have lack of trust, I think that's fully earned.

I think that's fully warranted. I think it's really kind of brave, particularly in this environment, to tell your unvarnished political opinions broadly. And to do that with your personal information, which is what I'm asking people. people to do all the time. I don't take that lightly, you know? And so I try to be like, like, I try to be like, this is what that entails and this is the part we might use. And if it's going to be a kind of broader thing like we do in the podcast, that's why I like that you hear so much about people is that at least it feels really authentic. Talk about the state of the race a little bit. Talking about that political media, you just mentioned, you once said, I believe a hive

mind was exposed in the 2016 election where it became clear that the media did not have the correct pulse on the respective basis of the Democratic and Republican parties. Where do you see a hive mind forming with regard to 2024? Oh, yeah. I mean, well, I would say there's two levels of a kind of, I think if I would say the political insider opinion right now is that Joe Biden is largely fine because, like, Donald Trump will be too toxic a candidate. And I think that that is, there is a lot of evidence to say that that's like a okay place to start if you're understanding just the horse raciness of this. But I think that itself is the problem of the hive mind, is that most people's experience

of an election isn't just centered around who's going to win, but is going to be a year next year that I think is really scary for a lot of people. And we won't really, we'll be in kind of uncharted waters. And so I guess the thing that I really came away with from the second season that we just did, which was really focused on political insiders in the run-up to the election, was just how disconnected their language was from that reality, right? Because the Democratic side of that ledger feels like Donald Trump helps them win and actually puts them in a pretty good position that in the way that they're feeling fairly confident in both what Biden has accomplished and his ability to pitch that come next November.

The Republican side is in a mess, but they, but, you know, they, you know, they don't see a universe without Donald Trump, right? But the kind of questions are so electoral, like, kind of gamey focused. I don't, and what we hear from people is so, like, a sense of shock that these two candidates might be the ones on the ballot next November and a sense of real like disconnectedness from a political system that has produced that. And so I guess for me, the hive mind problem right now is that they're underrating that storyline. And so I don't exactly know what that means, right?

I just think that that's the type of storylines that allows for rules to be broken, right? That's the type of things that happen pre-2016 where it's a thing that we miss, right? We miss the, we miss a base being disconnected from Hillary Clinton, right? You miss the kind of things that Donald Trump can speak to and animate, right? And I guess that that's what I'm saying right now is like even going into the midterms, if you take the traditional rules of politics, inflation and party, like president party in power, you largely will come off with the missed results, right? Or at least missing the theme of the election that was much more about extremism,

abortion, what kind of sense of like a Republicans gone too far and stress of system. And people are kind of making fun of Biden for focusing on that at the time. That's what I like about our show is that it's about that other stuff. And it's not just about the kind of traditional political electoral rules. And so that's what I'm saying is the hive-minded issue thinking about going into 2024 is I think there's still such a reliance on, okay, what these factors means this electoral result is likely. And I just don't think we can make those assumptions considering how people are very clearly interacting with the political system in a different way since 26. You know, like, even the people who

don't like Biden who are comfortable with voting for him, that's another assumption that we like, that's another thing we have to bake into the costs right now is that dissatisfaction doesn't necessarily mean you won't vote or doesn't necessarily mean you won't vote for the people in power. Like all of those things we need to unlearn as hard and fast rules. Just from a historical perspective, we haven't had a presidential rematch in nearly 70 years. Yeah. Much less a presidential rematch with two candidates with very low approval ratings. So I agree with you.

And I think there's a lot of uncertainty and unknowability there. Yeah, I'm just like, I don't know where that lands. And so it's less of knowing what's missing more so than thinking that people are being a little too prescriptive in knowing what's to come. Trump just let the world know he may get indicted for a third time. Yeah. And you're reporting how do voters feel about Trump? Trump's various indictments? You know, it's interesting because we were at indictment number one, and we knew at that time

that there were more to come. And as they have arrived, I think some things have moved how we expected and some haven't. One, like, the Republican assumption that the indictments would hurt his chances for the nomination, at this point, do not look true, right? Like, if they're going to be Donald Trump, they're going to have to beat them in some other way. But the assumption, the latent assumption that we kind of entered this year with, which is that the reality of these legal challenges might inevitably pull supporters from him, that has not panned out.

And I think that's the kind of first thing to say is true. I think in a general election, long-term, you sense, we should say it's really bad for him. Like every single independent swing voter metric, every single does it keep the Democratic-based motivated metric, all of that is the reason why, you know, the Joe Biden, feels confident if there's a if there's a Donald Trump on the other side because that that evidence is that like he is really lowering his ceiling of the type of people who even appealed to him in 20 even he appealed to in 2016 with this type of stuff but all of that is to say um you know I remember we talked to this guy Bob van der platt's one of the Iowa leading in

one of the leading voices in Iowa for the last episode of our podcast this season and he said it he was saying this about Republicans in Iowa and I think it's really true that like for people who didn't, people who were interested in alternatives, it has made them more interested in alternatives. And for the people who liked him, it has made them like him more. And I think that's pretty true for the Republican electorate. And I think it actually lays out in a really funky way because the people who like him remain a plurality,

remain much larger than any other candidate, and remain a kind of high floor that is very hard to see another candidate overcoming. But at the same time, the people who are, looking for alternatives are also very real. He has no ability to get over 50% right now. There is an energy that's searching for Ron DeSantis to put something together, for a Tim Scott to have a moment, for all of this, for another candidate to come out of the wings, right?

And so I'm saying like, it's funny because I think about where we started our reporting at the RNC Winter Meeting at Dana Point, when Ron and McDaniel said the only thing that can stop the Republican Party from winning, be to not be united. Now, that's probably not true. There's probably a lot of things that can stop before me. But let's just take her premise. This is not the version that brings unity. You know, Donald Trump has not united the party around him, nor has another alternative. You not, like, created a coalition separate from him. So that's another piece, I would say, is at minimum,

it is the, it is the version of the primary that leads to Ronald McDaniel's nightmare. Because what she was hoping was either that Donald Trump makes a clear growth that unites the party around him or latently that there is somebody and at that time it was figured to be a dissantis who could do something that subsumes him and neither of those things are happening.

As you spent time in Iowa, which one of the non-Trump alternative candidates was being talked up by voters in a way that may not have percolated up to us just reading national media stories. Yeah, I think it's Tim Scott. You know, I think like if you're thinking Iowa in those evangelicals, you have a kind of like, I think DeSantis has the electoral reason in the first look. But I do think that like you were not seeing because there's so much Trump overlap and because you haven't really seen him like make a move there.

We were hearing people. We were literally at the church. He was at two weeks before. But it wasn't like it was universally on fire for him, right, or anything. And when you talk to the Vanderplast and the kind of evangelical kind of top class of Iowa, they are interested in the Tim Scott. They're interested in a Mike Pence, but they know Mike Pence has a grassroots Republican problem because he's seen as anti-Trump.

So I would say if I'm thinking at the top, I would say they would try to make a Pence-Young thing type happen that they would want to happen. If you're thinking at the bottom, I think someone like Vivek Ramoswamy has made, you know, has gone from 2% to 10% by speaking to that kind of turning pointy audience, you know, which is the key problem for Republicans. They're their kind of elected elite class and their view of how kind of the party should operate remains still much different than their very engaged grassroots class. And that's a big difference between the parties.

If we go to the Republican convention, we go to the Republican winter meeting, there's an active grassroots wing that's pressuring the RNC chair. That's like the foot soldiers of Trumpism, really keeping that pressure on in the apparatus. That doesn't exist on the Democratic side. Even when we're at the DNC meeting, there was one guy from a don't run Joe group, right? There's one guy from a progressive network.

Like the level of engagement is just completely different when we look at the basis right now. Before we go, let me ask you about your career a little bit. Why did you want to get into journalism? Oh, actually smooth to journalism as a major to be a sports journalist. I like thought I wanted to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought I wanted to do like it was, I was at Marquette. So, you know, like basketball.

And like I had read newspapers through like. sports journalism. Like I read the Chicago Tribune because of the sports journalist there. And so it was always for me like the coolest job in the world. And so when I, my sophomore year, when I was like, oh, I don't want to work in politics stuff because I kind of like all jaded and sad. I was like, I'm going to be a sports journalist. And I wasn't pretty good at, I wasn't, I didn't love like that either.

Like I joined the school paper and was like, eh. And then I took a, yeah. off school and I taught kids at City Year. And then when I came back, I kind of merged those things and got an education reporting internship. And the thing I didn't love about sports journalism,

I don't know how you feel about this, is that it ruined, it was a fun outlet for me. And it stopped, and it was like, oh, I don't actually want to work in sports journalism. I just want to watch a lot of sports. It's a real buzzkill. Let me tell you. Yeah. I just like, I just want to talk to my friends about sports. Like, I don't actually want to work.

And so, but the actual entry point was like me trying to do the school paper and do like basketball games and stuff. And so I really like the, I really like the punch up nature of journalism. Like I really love that like the run-up feels like we can tell people a truth about politics that's distinct from what they're getting from parties. I'm like a really like they're hiding something from you type person. And so I think that our, like, reporting really speaks to that. And that's why I love journalism. But it was really, it wasn't like a borne with the pin and pad. Like, I thought, I thought, I don't know exactly what I thought I was going to do.

But I've really, I've only now only worked in newspapers. I was thinking like, I've literally never, like, I worked at Washington, I worked in the Boston, or work here. And like, you know, certainly did another. stuff for like money and stuff in school. But like, you know, it's been, I remember being in journalism school and the like teachers being like, there's no way a path of newspapers works out. Like, there was, that was a huge growth of digital. I remember those, it was like, oh, learn how to do video. That's the only way you're going to be able to do this or that. And I'm like, everyone was

kind of making it up as they went along. So I'm not like blaming those people. But I remember it being like, like the proactive messaging that this is a dead end. that newspapers were not a fine. And it wasn't financially feasible for a lot of time. But we've made it work and it's been really good. You mentioned on a recent pod, your dad was a pastor. Yeah, he still is. How did that inform your reporting career?

I think it's, well, I think journalism's kind of preachy, you know? And I think like it is a, when I think about like being able to feel like you're telling an unvarnished truth of inability to feel like you're holding kind of fairness and justice as top of mind, I think that those are values that like have. having parents who are really in church and my dad who's a pastor really meshed in. But, you know, like, they're also, like, media people. My mom went to Northwestern and majored in media stuff. And so, like, they both not only, I think, the kind of faith values aligned with a job

where you feel like you're kind of on a mission, right? But I think, like, they quite literally are people who, you know, cared about, you know, black press who like haired, you know, who we were very aware of like history of newspaper. I remember my my grandfather used to say, I was just kind of like a granted like not PC phrase. But he used to say like if they don't want black people to know, they put it in the newspaper as like a as like a recognition of where new, where that was where news lived, right? Like, and that's where you can find out where things were happening in your. community and around you, and he would read it every day. And so even growing up, we were very much

a newspaper household. And so I think like the faith stuff really matters. I think like, like, you know, even doing a weekly podcast, I was joking with my friend. I'm like, for as much as I like, you know, made fun of my dad, I'm delivering a weekly politics sermon, basically. But at the same time, I really think it's the newspaper kind of like truthy values that really Apple fell to the tree or however you say that. Yeah, that's good. In the interview with the Times, you referenced the black

church's involvement in the civil rights movement. And you said, I always knew democracy was fraught. So you didn't come into journalism thinking that what's happened over the last few years in this country was unthinkable or impossible. Yeah, like, no way.

I mean, I think that it's interesting because in a lot of ways, I was completely unprepared for national poverty. I came to the times at 25. I was really learning how to do national politics. At the same time, I was learning how to rent a car, right? But in the same way, that age is actually, I think, or ignorance is actually really helpful because I wasn't, like, encumbered by a whole bunch of rules of how I think things had to work

or a whole bunch of norms that, like, I was busy, like, mourning their loss. And so I think in a lot of ways, a lot of the communities that you see really name the fraughtness of the moment early, you know, black folks, young people, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that those are really intuitive to me. And I think it comes from having that kind of early democracy knowledge. You know, like, it's not as if the story of America that was ever told to me was like of this like 1776 democracy. You know, like, it's just not, this is not how I ever understood the thing, right? I always understood it as very recently a commitment to multinational democracy.

And that commitment came through people's death, came through blood, came through like rigid, like organizing and sacrifices. And that it came with a blowback too. And so for me, those things had always been kind of truthful about our political system, is that the inclusion of new voices almost necessitate or seem to necessitate a blowback from others. And so I guess for me, those were all kind of baked in. And so I didn't spend a lot of time like with my jaw on the floor even though you know, even though you're up close

to seeing really wild stuff. I, but I remember a moment specifically. I remember when Charlottesville happened. I was at the Globe and I was at, I was in the Globe's DC Bureau. So I was doing like, you know, very much DC stuff. You're like, in the West Wing,

pool report, like, the press briefing with the secretary, all that. But I remember when, Charlottesville happened feeling like, oh, I'm in the wrong place. Like, I don't want to be in the briefing room. Like, I want to be out there because that's where this is going down. Like, where however we wrestle with what 2016, how 2016 upended politics, it will, that answer will not come from D.C. That answer is going to come elsewhere, right? It comes and it impacts that place later.

And I remember feeling really clearly, oh, I want to be out there. And so when they came to the times, I wasn't just excited about the role because you're going from one place to a bigger newspaper. I was really excited because it got me back to elections. And elections is about everybody.

Elections is about people who don't care about politics, who don't vote, who whatever. And those are the people who I really wanted to live with and live with how they were interacting with this moment. You know, there's a lot of great people who do that good top-down kind of DC reporting. And I read it, you know, but it's not me. I got to ask you about one thing that

was mentioned in your Times hiring announcement. When you were at the Globe, you were once offered a $5,000 bribe. Yeah. What happened there? Yeah, I did this story. This is when I was a general assignment reporter was I was like fresh from school and they would just send you to like an arraignment, like, every day. And, like, I was going to this one arraignment, and it was this guy who was getting, um, who was getting charged with defrauding these old, these older people. And as I'm there, like, like, waiting to write about the charging documents for this arraignment to happen. The guy's dad comes up to me and offers me, asked to see me in the hallway. And I was like, you know, parent quotes is like a good thing for the story. So, like, I go, I, I go, I,

to the hallway. And then the hallway, he offers me $5,000 to, like, leave and not write the story. And of course, like, you know, being, like, I go back, I tell my editor, we then go look up all these people's records, and we end up doing a two-part series on this family, who ends up

being, like, a very scammy family in Boston. And it kicks off this, like, really like, a great kind of investigative thing we did. But it was all because this guy offered me money. Like, I'd probably would have just written the arraignment and gone home if the most alarming thing ever didn't happen,

which is like he was trying to pay me to leave. So it turned into a series and a much bigger story. And so now you have like an attorney general investigation about this nonprofit. Like that probably would have happened if you would have just chilled out at this array. As a sports guy and I believe a soccer fan in particular, I got to ask you, and a would be sports writer we learned today. I got to ask you, what did you make at the time's decision to close their sports section? Yeah, I mean, it's sad in a reader perspective for sure.

Like, as I said, like, sports was not just a thing that was happening in newspapers for me. It was like the reason I cared about newspapers for a long time. And so I think that there has been such a bottom-up erosion of local media, of that type of track and of sports test broadly. And I feel like this is often true at the time. By the time we're making some like big department change, it feels reflective of like, like a broader media loss. And one of the things I really think is unfortunate is with that ecosystem eroding,

I think the Times takes up too much space, frankly, like because we don't have, like when I go to places, it's so rare that they've interacted with a local journalist doing a similar thing. You know, like there's too few places that have the resources and the scope to even do that kind of reporting now.

and even those places are making those tough cause. And I remember, and Lord knows, like, I mean, I remember when the athletics first forum, when they were talking about how they were going to raid, you know, newspapers in the way that I think they now have said they regret. And like, I just hope that the, and I think that the, you know, the bosses are saying it. So we believe them, I guess. Like, I hope that the commitment to doing the types of stories that I love from some, sports that come from the Times remains. And so, like, when I think about, I'm not getting game day stories from the Times, right?

I was getting sports investigations. I was getting big swings at, like, sports culture and, like, kind of ways to understand the, like, narrative of sports. Like, I'm someone who, like, loves Rory Smith in this column on soccer. Those things, I think, are really core parts. And so they say that they hear. that, right? They say that they hear that, but that's not replicable just with the athletic, a place that's fine, like, I'm no beef. But that's not the same thing of what they do there.

And so, you know, I think that what you heard from people who love the Times Sports section like I do is that they want to make sure that that stuff stays in the place. And, you know, from what they're saying, they say that too. So I think for all of us, like, we're going to hope and see. but for me it's just another example of like a media ecosystem that is that pyramid has been eroded and like

all like so many of the decisions that both happened at the times or other places that were now at the top of that pyramid feel like a bottom up impact of something that's much bigger than all of us and has even been true tangible for me in 10 years, right? Like, I don't think the path of, as I would say, I don't think the path

that I take to the times is even replicable for a kid in college. Like, I don't think that newspaper track is the same. And I remember when I was at the Globe being really ignorant about the business of media.

And I remember this older kind of reporter telling me that you have to know. Like, you have to know if your place is going to get shut down. You have to know of these kind of decisions that these folks are making and the kind of corporate nature of it all. And it was really good advice because

I was living in the kind of green naivety of like merit in journalism. And the quicker, I would say as a younger reporter, the quicker you can get out of that, the better. Like, actually understand the fact that, you know, institutions and desks and all of those things are in a kind of rapid change in a rapid environment.

All right. Last question for you. When I look down the New York Times as power ranking of reporters, I see a lot of people who are lifers on the political beat. There are lifers that are going to be lifers. Are you a lifer on the political beat? Oh, I'm not. I would say I'm not a lifer. I would be surprised in 10 years

if I'm like doing the podcast to write about poppins. But I feel like every journalist says that. You know, every journalist loves saying that they're going to leave. I'm someone who like really takes a look after every cycle and really needs a sense of mission,

really needs like a purpose. And so one of the reasons I switched to doing the show and really push for that was I wanted a purpose. I wanted a, I wanted to do something that felt like, you know, unique reporting and that was true to the moment. I think like, I imagine that I'm going to look up the day after the 24 election and try to think about that in the same way. Like, is, is what is what is required the same thing I've been doing or not? And I also want a life, you know, and like political journalism isn't like fully compatible with the life.

And so at some point, I do plan to like reclaim that time. I also would also say that like for the, you know, Pep Guardiola, you know, coach of like, coach of city talks about like how he needed to switch teams to make sure his ideas remain fresh. And I really, I really think about that sometimes. is like, how many cycles of election reporting can you do before you're lost in the sauce? And like, for me, I want to make sure that, like, my work has enough touch points across a lot of different areas that when I'm doing political journalism, it is still informed by that. And so maybe that requires not doing political journalism for a second to maintain that. And I'm totally open to that, too.

So I think that's a long way of saying I don't see myself as a lifer. I wouldn't rule it out. It just has to match, you know, and it has to feel like it's really speaking to a moment. And again, like, I became, I've only done national reporting in Donald Trump's Americas, right, basically. And that has added a clarity of mission to electoral reporting in this way.

Because so many people are coming to this news. So many people are deeply interested. So much of the system needs. detangling and explaining and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, like, that has helped me feel a sense of compatibility with the work. I don't know how that feels in the different, like, with the different people, to be honest. Like, if this was the Biden versus the Santis election, or maybe it will be. So I'm saying if this is a election that's removed from the kind of things we've been building and reporting on since 2016,

maybe I feel differently, but like it feels like a continuing story still. I want you and every other journalist to be happiest, Ed, but having a life might be a lot to ask. I know, I know. I'm like, it might have just come lifetime and I just got to do something else.

But maybe, you know, like, we'll see. I'm working on that myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I say. It could be a lifelong project. New season of the run-up starts this fall. Instead, thanks so much for coming on the press box. Thank you.

I really appreciate it. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic. As always, by Erica Servantes. For our piece of the week this week, I'm going to send you to the substack of one Bob Cravitz. Bob Cravitz was until early June,

a writer at the Athletic. Before that, he wrote for the indie star. He also worked in Denver and San Diego. Bob Cravitz got let go by the athletic in early June. And he uses this piece, which is titled, I'm Back, to talk about his experience working there. Working at the athletic, according to Cravitz, was not a bowl of cherries.

He talks about the fact that he was put on probation after having a quadruple bypass three years ago. I guess my numbers weren't what they liked, he writes, but hell, I was recovering from a life-changing medical event. You would think that might have some impact on their thinking, but no, I had to produce 395 subscriptions in three months or else. That's absurd, unfair, and outrageous, especially given my health situation. Kravitz goes on to talk about how many editors he had, how the goalpost mood,

both in terms of what kind of pieces he should ride, and whether the athletic was covering Indianapolis or the more interested in national coverage, how he had a piece about sports writer Jay Mariotti that never ran, how everything at the website was based on metrics. I encourage you to read it for a bird's eye view of exactly what it's like to work at the athletic. And I'll just point out one irony is that when the athletics started, they were waving sports writers over from newspapers. Newspapers had turned into a pretty unpleasant place to work for lots of sports writers because guess what? They were based on metrics. They were based on churning out maybe dozens of stories a day, which might amount to a quote some football player said in a gaggle.

They were about conversions, exactly what Kravitz is talking about. how many subscribers are you bringing to the paper based on your stories. It was a numbers game. And what the athletic was saying, hey, come over here. Don't worry about writing every day, much less several times a day. We want you to take your time, right? The athletic is going to be a fun place, a nice place, a place where you're no longer locked in by newspaper style and you can actually write. You can actually try things. Well, it's turned out that the athletic was not exactly the arc for sports writers that was promised. And again, I encourage you to read Kravitz's piece for a very interesting look on just what it was like. That's the press box for today.

David Shoemaker and I are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. Hope you'll join us. Have a fantastic weekend.