The Press Box - Autopsy for The Messenger, Tom Brady to Fox, 2024 Media Rooting, and Farewell to Anthony Lane With The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin and Puck’s Teddy Schleifer

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

On the Final Edition, Bryan is joined by two guests! First, Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times to discuss the shut down of The Messenger—a story he broke this week (1:32). Then he is joined by Puck’s own Teddy Schleifer and the latest in media, including the latest media apocalypse (17:51), Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift versus certain elements of the Right (29:41), how long Tom Brady will last calling games for Fox next year (40:28), and the current state of the Presidential election and whether or not reporters are rooting for Nikki Haley (47:12).Plus, Bryan has a few surprise questions for Teddy—and an editor's note. Host: Bryan Curtis Guests: Ben Mullin and Teddy Schleifer Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Galaxy lights, Coachella, Lightning Bolt necklaces. Did you catch all the Scandival clues? Last March, one cheating scandal launched a reality TV investigation that generated hundreds of conspiracy theories, thousands of podcast episodes, and millions of dollars in revenue. I'm Jody Walker, host of an American Scandival. Ahead of the Vanderpump Rules premiere, relive the pop culture phenomenon that rocked a reality nation,

starting January 23rd on Ringer Dish. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. Final edition, Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters. Coming up on today's pod, Huck's Teddy Schleifer is going to join us to talk about what tech billionaires think of the media apocalypse,

whether political reporters are rooting for Nikki Haley. Plus, we'll welcome Tom Brady to sports TV and bid a farewell to the New Yorker movie critic Anthony Lane. But first, yesterday we somehow watched yet another piece of media carnage. The website, The Messenger, shut down. And by shutdown, I mean, there's nothing to read on its homepage anymore. This was less than nine months after its founding. 300 journalists are out of work.

Benjamin Mullen of the New York Times has done tons of great reporting on the messenger. He is here today to help us do an autopsy. Ben, welcome to the press box. Hey, Brian, long time listener, first time caller. Thanks for being here. All right. Let's start with your scoop this morning. You reported that the flailing messenger tried to merge with the also flailing Los Angeles Times.

What happened there? So it appears that at the last minute, Patrick Soonshong, the biotechnology billionaire, who has been pouring millions of dollars into the unprecedented. profitable Los Angeles Times realized that he didn't want to add a business that was losing $50 million a year to his business that was losing $40 million a year. And he pulled out at the last minute. What was in this for the LA Times, at least in theory? So the idea was that the messenger, which has this traffic Spengali, who powered a lot of Gawker named Neitz and Zimmerman, that the messenger would direct a ton of traffic to the Los

Angeles Times company. And in return, the messenger would get a cash injection, which would cover its payroll because it was bleeding cash. Step back for just a second for people who didn't follow this story like you and I did over the last couple of months. Messenger was founded last May. What was it trying to be? So the messenger was trying to be basically a big nonpartisan voice in the American media landscape. And it was conceived by this guy, Jimmy, Finkelstein who had done stops at the Hollywood Reporter in the Hill. And the idea was basically as we were coming up on the 2024 election, it was a perfect time to launch a digital media business that would be able to reach Americans, whether

they were on the left or the right. And obviously it didn't turn out that way. I remember when he first talked to you around the launch, he evoked 60 minutes and Vanity Fair as the kind of media of yesterday. He wanted the messenger to channel in some way, which made me scared right from the beginning. And he built the website in a very old-fashioned way, too. Did he not? 300 people in the newsroom.

And where were they going to get their traffic? Yeah, 300 employees. As I mentioned, they'd hired this guy, Needson. And the idea was to kind of run a playbook from the 2010s, where you just get a bunch of journalists. You aggregate a bunch of news. You push it out on social media. and you hope that you can make enough money with enough volume that you can turn a profit. And the reason that model no longer works is because the social media companies and the search engines have gotten wise,

and they're no longer delivering the kind of traffic they used to to news organizations. Everybody made fun of this at the time. Did Finkelstein and company actually believe in that plan, or did they not have a plan? And that's what they found in a manila envelope marked here as a business plan. I mean, it's so interesting. I was looking at my interview with Jimmy just this morning because I met him at the Mark Hotel on New York's Upper East Side. This guy very tall wearing a suit.

I think he's like a septuagenarian. So kind of like an old publishing hand. And he talked in this interesting kind of slow sort of gravelly husky cadence. And I think, I mean, they did have a plan. They told me that they were going to generate more than $100 million in 2024 and that they were going to have crazy, crazy traffic, traffic that would have put them on the level of the New York Times and CNN. So they had a plan.

It just, I think it was sort of ill-conceived. And how much money did they generate in 2024? $3 million. So aim for $100, get three. So they were aiming for $100 million this year. And they generated $3 million last year. So for them to hit their 2024 targets, I mean, it would have been impossible, basically. You mentioned in a piece they showed you a sizzle reel at some point that was previewing what they were doing.

What was in the sizzle reel? Yeah, they had a bunch. It was really, it was actually, I have to admit, like at the time, I was, I was like, oh, you know, this is a great song. I left dire straits. Money for nothing was the song, if people don't know. which is a great metaphor for the messenger money for nothing. But yeah, it just had a bunch of stills and clips and texts, and it was kind of articulating their value proposition.

So they had kind of a rocky launch last May. People couldn't find the site on day one, which is always a problem if you're launching a website. They had an editor quit. You mentioned this, Greg Burnbaum. You say clashed with an audience. editor at the site. So there was already this tension, right, of what are we doing here?

Are we doing quality journalism or are we doing totally audience chasing journalism? Is that the way to put it? Yeah. Greg Burnbaum is this like great, widely respected tabloid editor from I think the New York Daily News, the New York Post. And Neetson was telling him to like, hey, check the spreadsheet before you assign a story. And, you know, Greg, understandably is like, listen, I'm not doing journalism. for your spreadsheet.

You know, like, that's not the way this is supposed to work. And I think basically the problem was that there was a layer of the company that was just a content farm. And the journalists who were actually there to do great work didn't want any part of it. So really strange organism. We did a segment a couple weeks ago on it when you were reporting about them being a bad financial straits, dire straits, as it were. And I took a picture of the homepage at the time.

And here, just let me give you some of the stories they were covering. Ruben Gallego's Senate fundraising in Arizona. Gypsy Rose Blanchard getting a tattoo. Glamorous photos, I'm quoting here, from Epstein's private island taken by alleged trafficking victim. Saquan Barkley wants the Giants to make an early decision about his future. You know what's interesting too is in, so they obviously had a bunch of like stuff that was just aggregated.

And many people who've been laid off, have been talking on social media about how, soul deadening it was to produce those articles. But they also had really experienced journalists, guys like Mark Caputo, who'd been at Politico covering Ron DeSantis. They had Adrian Carasquillo, who'd been a political reporter for BuzzFeed. And they were doing good work.

And they were also, I think, the first outlet, curiously to report that Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift were, like, hanging out. So in this mix of kind of, like, totally random aggregated quickbait, they had a lot of really good stuff, or at least interesting stuff. It's a rule of journalism that no matter how

ill-conceived a publication is by the people that found it, if you put journalists on it, they will manage to do good work within the publication. You and I've seen lots of examples of this. It always happens because journalists are like, well, I'm not going to do a shitty job. I'm going to try to do the best job I possibly can, especially the ones you name.

You were able to get your mitts on a balanced, for the messenger, which showed some of the company spending. What did you find there? So they raised $50 million. They spent, I think, somewhere on the order of $40 million by the end of the year. As I said, they'd only generated $3 million of revenue. So they were already way, way in the red. And I think the craziest thing, the thing that a lot of people pointed out to me was

they were spending something like $8 million annually on lease obligations. They were a startup, a media startup, which is, as you know, an incredibly difficult business. And they had offices in Palm Beach, Washington, D.C., and New York for some reason. $8 million in offices. And this is just their first year. This is just May, where the launch is maybe a little bit before that to December. Yeah, it kind of reminded me of the media launches of yesteryear like Condé Nas portfolio, you know, where you just think you're going to have crazy, crazy advertising revenue.

And so you sort of build up in anticipation of that. But as I was looking at this, I found myself thinking about the media launches of yesteryear. And some of them were quite successful, like one you were a part of with The Daily Beast. And so we shouldn't be too unfair to those launches, you know, that happened in the past. And I was wondering, what were the vibes when you launched The Daily Beast with Tina Brown? Were they similar? Were they different? See, folks, this is what happens when you bring a.

media reporter on the media podcast and start asking you questions, getting data points for future stories. I remember it being semi-glamorous because we're talking about the standards of Tina Brown here, who had launched Talk Magazine with a party at the Statue of Liberty, like literally on the island where they're faring the guests out there. So by the standards of her previous stops, the New Yorker talk and on and on, like we were down and dirty. I'm trying to even remember if there was an opening party.

You know, I remember Barry Diller like coming in and looking at stuff, but I don't remember if there was even like a party with, you know, nice appetizers or something like that. It was definitely, definitely by the standards of the period, we were already edging into, okay, you know, we're not, we're not a glossy magazine of 2000. It's 2008. I want to talk to you about the human story a little bit here because it's,

it's fun for people like you and me to look at this thing and look at the founders and go. God, what were you thinking? But there were 300 people here who lost their jobs. As you were reporting on the messenger over the last couple of months, why did journalists tell you they took jobs there in the first place? You know, it's really interesting. I would say it was a mix.

There were some really good journalists that for various reasons, I think, found it difficult to get employment at mainstream newsrooms, either because of things that had happened at their last job, or maybe because they'd had a different perspective than one that might be welcomed at a mainstream publication. Some of them were just looking to leave their jobs. Like, you know, some of them just, they just wanted to change. They didn't feel comfortable in their own jobs. I talked to somebody today who told me that they'd spent seven years at a publication,

and they just didn't find it fulfilling. They found it really terrible. and then there were a lot of people that were just entry-level journalists looking for their first gig in media. So it was kind of a mix. For the 300 people at that publication, what were the last couple of days and weeks like?

I mean, it was grim. It was so grim that on the final day when Jimmy was in the background trying to do this deal with the Los Angeles Times, they kind of knew that it was their last day, I think because people were starting to get their vacation days paid out in their payroll and their pay stub,

and that's usually not a good sign. And so they started sort of posting really anxiously in the Slack about perhaps this being like the last day for the messenger. But something really beautiful happened where instead of focusing on the negative, they started posting pictures of their pets. And so rather than just purpose, you know, just worrying about how things might go the last day of their job, they ended up just sharing photos of their cats and their dogs and stuff. Oh, geez. And we know from reporting no severance, right, for former employees of the

messenger and no website that you can even go find your clips at and send them to your next employer, potential employer. Yeah, no severance, no health insurance, no archives. And I think for a lot of people, that was, that was the worst thing because a lot of them felt like they did really good work there. And a lot of people I'm talking to are really angry because they think that if, you know, Jimmy had made it as a decision. to shut it down in November, they might have been able to get severance and at least figure out what to do next. You and I covering the media are now putting together data points. And we all have a sentence in every article we write and every podcast we record that say a now grim list that

includes Sports Illustrated and the Washington Post and then we list off everybody that every place that's had layoffs or buyouts. I've seen some people tweet out and say, look, the messenger doesn't really belong on this list because it may have been a victim as much of its founders' vision as it is the market and the other forces that are preying on journalism right now. What do you think about that? I think that's a really good point. And I think that all of the layoffs we're seeing basically have different causes. So, for example, I think you can put the messenger in a bucket that labeled mismanagement.

And I think you can put other layoffs like Sports Illustrated also in that bucket because those layoffs basically ended up happening because the journalists there were just collateral damage from a corporate conflict. And I think kind of the messenger is the same idea. There's another bucket that's a Los Angeles Times and Time magazine that's just billionaires getting tired of subsidizing losses. And then I think another bucket is just, you know, the economy and for whatever reason, companies not being able to generate enough ad revenue. But I would say the thing that sort of ties them all together is changing user trends. People are moving away from consuming traditional media and everyone is responding to that

in a different way. Yeah. And we've seen some publications too. I think they could be in multiple buckets at the same time, right? So it's changing consumer trends plus mismanagement. You don't have to just pick just. one. And the weird part about this media moment is it'd be nice to just point at one villain. You know, it'd be nice to point at Jimmy Finkelstein or somebody around the guy. Oh, he did it.

It's his fault. Sometimes it's not totally that easy. Last question for you, Ben, you cover the media beat for the Times. You covered it at the Wall Street Journal before that. What does it feel like to cover the destruction of your profession? It's really bleak. I remember David Carr one time giving an interview where he talked about wondering whether he was going to type his own name into one of these stories. And I think Bill Keller said something similar where some days he feels like he's walking around with a bloody butcher smock. And it's weird because as a journalist, you know, your raise on debt is to break news that is important to your readers about the media industry. But at the same time, you're oftentimes delivering news that, um, makes you personally sad and that a lot of people you personally know don't want to hear.

So it's a really ambivalent feeling a lot of the time. All right. Benjamin Mullen, keep breaking stories over the New York Times. But remember, we ask the questions around here. Thanks for coming on the press box. All right. Today's guest host is Teddy Schleifer, one of my favorite writers to seek out. He is a reporter slash founding partner at Puck. He calls his beat Silicon Valley billionaires and their impact on the world.

and yet somehow it's even bigger than that. And lately, Teddy has been writing some great juicy stories about those billionaires and their impact on the election. Teddy, welcome to the press box. Thanks for having me. You know, whenever anyone says founding partner, it makes me sound like, you know, I have a law firm named after me,

but, you know, I don't know what word to use anymore. Reporter, writer, journalist. Founding partner makes me sound. like I wear expensive suits. So let's go with that. Even so, in this climate, we will take founding partner. Thank you. At least it's a title.

Speaking of which, you and I are talking here in the middle of a media apocalypse, what have you made in the last two and a half weeks? Oh, my God. I mean, I'm so, I mean, jokes aside, it is weird to be at a place right now that is growing. You know, Puck is obviously doing well. And we were doing well when other publications were kind of, you know, flat and that was great. And, you know, people would get, you know, we would get inbound now. And are inbound back then from people who want, you know, introductions for jobs and all that stuff.

And now I'm just so thankful to, like, have health insurance, right? I know so many people, as I'm sure you do, who like worked at the messenger, who are now out of a gig. And like there's no severance. There's no, no nothing. And, you know, first, first off, I'm just so thankful to not be in that boat because like, there's a part of me that like, you know, yes, it was foreseeable what happened there. And I do think that people in media should be more discerning about job offers. and, you know, if you were offered a job, the messenger, like, you could, you know, I've had some good debates with friends privately about, like, to what extent your reporter I've seen it coming, right?

And if you took a job at the messenger or any publication that is floundered, like, is it your fault? Like, something that I feel like has been debated privately. And, like, look, I mean, I do think that people should have seen coming. And, like, you know, I got reached out from the messenger. Like, like, everybody in media did over a certain amount of time. I can kind of see this coming a mile away. But like the people need jobs and they were paying a good amount of money. And if you have, you know, kids and, you know, mortgages and car payments, like,

I don't begrudge anyone for taking a gig there. And then we have just the, you know, the fact that it's not anyone's fault to get caught in a recession. And if you work at, you know, a publication that had layoffs, you know, like today as we're recording this, you know, it seems like the journal is going to lay people off in D.C. it's not your fault for taking a job with the Wall Street Journal in 2016 or 2018 or 1999. You just sort of assume that like, you know,

these places are going to be fine. I guess the messenger is a different situation maybe because maybe you should have foreseen it. I don't know. What do you think about that? We're sort of talking about two classes of people here. One is a person that has a job and is weighing an offer from the messenger

versus their current job. And then there's, a not small group of people, I suspect, who don't have another gig or didn't have another gig and are saying, the messenger is my journalism job. And that's part of what makes this moment so scary is like, am I going to be in this business? Am I going to have a spot? Yeah. And look, I mean, the messenger was paying absurd salaries. I mean, I know people who had offers from there, like, who are not that senior, you know, three, four hundred thousand dollars, like stuff like that. So to an extent, like, it's not as if people were, you know, just skating by financially and, you know,

but some people do have high expenses in life. And like, you know, that was a gig and this is, this is a free market. And I don't begrudge them for, you know, using that as subsistence to get ahead. And, you know, in this day and age, like, I, look, I work at a publication that is like proudly capitalist, right, and believes that reporters are underpaid across the board. And, you know, that someone making $300,000 or $400,000 as a, you know, Capital J journalist in print is not an absurd notion. But, you know, when you take that to an extreme and you hire 500 of those people or however many people the messenger had, like, no shit it's going to go under.

Like, I mean, reading about the amount of money these places has been on offices, Um, just like, you know, in Palm Beach. Eight million last year. Oh, God. For the messenger. If you have, if you have a, one of those offices was in Palm Beach, right? Um, I feel like if you, if you have a Palm Beach office, that's, that's, that's sort of the tell. Um, so I don't know, I do, I do think going forward look, I mean, reporters, uh,

have, have for a long time and I'm obviously on the younger side here. Reporters for a long time have just sort of assumed that the business takes care of itself, right? There's this Chinese wall between editorial and business. And, you know, you hope that the, um, the, um, um, um, the ad salesman on the floor below you can like do well enough of their job to take care of your salary. And I think that fiction has been obliterated by the last couple of weeks where if you're a reporter, you know, and you're at least in your younger years and sort of coming up in the business, I think you've got to ask hard questions about the business model. And you shouldn't just assume

that like, oh, this is a job where I can like get some scoops and write some features and, you know, live out the next couple years of my life or next couple decades in my life. I would almost ask as many questions about the business model as I would about like, you know, where the bathroom is or what the nine to five looks like. And that's a foreign concept for people who are used to kind of this belief that, you know, the business takes care of itself because it doesn't. When we've talked about this story on the podcast, we usually approach it from a journalist's side point of view.

what do the tech billionaires that you write about think about what's happening to media? I mean, so some of these people, right, like let's let's walk through the places that have had layoffs, right? I mean, Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post, you know, used to be seen as kind of the good billionaire, right? The guy who didn't screw it up. I think it clearly had been a boon to his public reputation ever since he bought in 2013, right? Like when's last time like you read anything negative about Bezos in the Post from 2013 to 2023? But then with, you know, everything that's happened and now we have these layoffs,

like, you know, I do think there's a class of employees at these publications who blame the billionaires, right? You say like, you know, and this is definitely sort of an activist kind of workplace union point of view. But like, you know, you've seen folks say, you know, who compare the amount of people laid off to like Jeff Bezos's net worth, right? You always see that. And you say like, well, can't Jeff Bezos afford, you know, to pay the $90,000 a year for our researcher. And of course he can. And of course, the net worth looks preposterous compared to the salary of the

post reporter's been laid off. So, you know, the, on one level, you have these billionaires who are actively responsible for making decisions. Like, I'm sure Bezos was consulted on the layoffs. Like, I'd be shocked if he was not. And they're on the driver's seat here. Like they could, I mean, if Jeff Bezos wanted to basically lose money on the post, you know, at infinitum, you could hire, you know, the entire messenger stuff right now. I do think that lots of these folks, as the last couple of weeks have reminded us, do not see this as philanthropy. Lots of the tech billionaires who have bought these publications, you know, whether Patrick Sunshung in L.A. or Bezos the Post or even, I don't think the Atlantic. has had layoffs recently, but Lorraine Powell Jobs, who, you know, is the majority owner over there.

We want to think about these things as the charitable enterprises, right? And oftentimes the billionaires that I cover make that mistake in kind of how they frame it too, right? You know, I remember the Lorraine announcement about buying the Atlantic was like, I'm the steward of this, you know, august publication, and I see it as a civic virtue. And, you know, Jeff has talked about the post sometimes as this, you know, a thing he does. It's for democracy and just, you know, honor Jamal Khashoggi and to, you know, be a bull, democracy dies and darkness, blah, blah, blah, but like these are businesses. And, you know, the layoffs are cruel reminders of that, that like the oligarch class that buys these things, you know, they do not want to lose money on

them, not because they can't afford it, but because they believe that these things should be run as independent companies that, you know, don't just kind of linger on the largesse of the rich guy. Like, I mean, have you read the Marty Barron book about Bezos and Trump? That's one of the, one of the big takeaways from that is that I've read some of this. This is not a guy who is like doing this for, for, you know, out of the goodness of his heart. I mean, he believes that like he wants to give a publication a kick in the ass, what you has over the last decade to make it run better. And that sort of is the, you know, teach the man to fish sort of analogy here, right? That like, he's not trying to make this

publication, you know, run on a Bezosian line of credit for forever. Like he wants to fix it like he's fixing, you know, the Amazon Kindle, right? And, you know, I guess he has sort of. I don't know. I wonder what the legacy of him is going to be, you know, 10 years from now, if the post continues to shrink. It's a really good question, right? I mean, you're going to give him credit, certainly for the years that the Washington Post was viable. You'll also put an asterisk in there that this was during the Trump bump and during a period where the Post probably would have done quite well under any circumstances, but he certainly funded at a certain level. But now it's like, I don't know. It kind of depends on what the Post looks like in five years, which we really don't

know the answer to that question. Sure. And so, yeah, you got a tip. You got to take the ups with the downs here. I mean, I mean, the, like, I also find that the kind of the billionaires that find these publications aren't quite used to the facts or belatedly become used to the facts that doing this puts them in the public eye in a way that I don't know if they're, if they're often ready for that. Like, I think about Lorraine, who is a very private figure. and, you know, certainly one of the more sensitive people I cover, with all due respect, to any Emerson collective listeners here.

But, but, like, when she buys the Atlantic, you know, she's, like, in the public eye and there are random, you know, Atlantic employees tweeting about Lorene Powell jobs and or certainly Patrick Sunjong, you know, very private figure. And, like, at least before this, health care, I don't know what you did. Something like that. And, you know, now his daughter is this like, you know, figure of L.A. media controversy. And, like, that's totally legit. Like, these people are public figures when you, I mean, there already are. But when you buy something so public facing like a newspaper, it's not like buying, you know, Palo Alto real estate or a private equity firm or, you know, an expensive piece of art where you could say, oh, well, that's just like, you know, a billionaire play thing. I feel like when these folks buy these publications, they are inserting themselves.

into like the culture war almost into the you know class warfare and you know questions about you know workplace unions and and and everything that you know we discuss here on the podcast like and I don't know if they're ready for like I feel I feel like these people are often believing this is like a private matter that is you know people like be hammering about speaking of the culture war and speaking of the media at least on Fox News all week we have been treated to the story of the right or certain elements on the right versus Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. Occasion, of course, is the Kansas City Chiefs made the Super Bowl. It's not a matter of rooting for the Chiefs or the 49ers in the Super Bowl.

It's a matter of rooting very specifically for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey in American life. What do you make of the Taylor Maga freak out? Can we like try to like, let's use our collective, collective IQ here, like, figure out, like, what exactly is the, like, theory of the case? Like, if we were going to try and be as, like, sympathetic to the far right here as possible, right? It's like, okay, Travis Kelsey is pro-Fizer. Travis Kelsey is obviously dating Taylor Swift. If Chiefs have made the Super Bowl, you can kind of argue that, like, the Pfizer spokesperson made the Super Bowl and that maybe there's going to be a proposal to Super Bowl and then it's very suspiciously timed 10 months before the presidential election you know can kind of put one and one and one and one and one together and maybe you get you know 270 electoral votes and then suddenly like I don't know have you deduced what exactly

anyone here is talking about I love that that was a sympathetic reading because it was just a completely insane reading of the case as well. Can you do a better job here? Like what what do you think is the is the argument as much as you've been able to pick it up on on 4chan? Well, I think we've been if we're going to string things together on the cork board here. I mean, you'd also put Taylor Swift's endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020, right, somewhere on the court board. And also that New York Times story we read the other day about Biden trying to figure out how to channel the power of Taylor and the swifties to help him get reelected, which weirdly included the idea that Biden might go to a Taylor Swift concert.

Free advice, guys. Hadn't heard that part. That might be a little awkward. Yeah, I was in the Times piece. It was an idea thrown out at Biden headquarters. Maybe we'll have him go to the concert. I'm not sure that would quite go off like you think it would. But, you know, I think it just comes down to this idea that you take vaguely,

culturally political elements, like the ones you laid out. And then you say, okay, there must be a pro and con side of this argument no matter what. We must be against Travis Kelsey. We must be against Taylor Swift. We must be against by extension, the NFL, which seems like a very dangerous. Yeah. Right. The most conservative of kind of like major sports leagues, right?

I mean, like, this is like the, you know, the NFL is now, is now, is now, is not, gone woke, right? Which, like, I think ties into like, you know, some of the criticism about like, like, penalty calls, right? Like, you know, they're protecting the quarterbacks too much. And like, you know, they're elevating, you know, I feel like, you know, Black Lives Matter and the league, you know, that embraced that. And, you know, Brady's or, you know, who's sort of one of the more conservative figures has sort of no longer the face of the league. And I have people like Patrick Holmes, who's half black, obviously, which I wonder how that plays into kind of perceptions of the League, but like this idea that Kelsey, who is like not a political figure at all, has he ever

talked about politics? I've, I mean, I'm inundated with Travis Kelsey content in my life from like, I feel like half of my TikTok feed is like his show with, with Jason. I like never heard him talk about politics at all. And of course, the irony is that Taylor Swift for her entire first, what, decades. decade, 15 years of her career, which criticized for not being liberal enough, right? And there was the whole Netflix, I think it was a Netflix documentary about Taylor a few years ago where like she was, you know, really regretful for not doing more. I think it was the 2018 election when she came out

against Marshall Blackburn. Like these are not like the libs that you're that they're looking for here. Like you got to find out her targets. Also, if you go back to 2016, 7, There was there was sort of conservative world anti-NFL angst tied almost entirely to the national anthem protests. Right. It went absolutely nowhere. And I just remember reading, you know, tweets like, I'm done with football forever. It's over. Well, I don't think you were done with football because I look at the number of people to watch football,

or at least maybe you were done, but none of your friends were done with football. also sort of think that's what's going to happen here. Do you feel, I mean, look, we're recording this. We still got like 10 days to go before the Super Bowl. You know, there's plenty of directions that the conspiracy can kind of can travel here. Like, I mean, part of this is like, look, people are just bored. This is like, these are the two weeks in the NFL season, you know, where the Super Bowl's, sorry, the Super Bowl is now nine days away. there's no real like news I feel like about about the game and you know the pro bowl is this

weekend right or whatever they have made it out to be I think it starts today in some form none of us none of us who covers sports totally know what the pro bowl is or when it is now but no it's now it's now a flag football game right which which honestly yeah I have never I've never watched that but um you know uh to make to make a humble brag i in this podcast i'm a i'm a on a flag football team which uh is one now so far um we have our next game on sunday thank you um so uh i i will enjoy watching that if i'm absolutely have to absolutely have to but look i mean the the people are bored people are bored and you know the the media is is loving the you know Kelsey swift thing even though we pretend we hate it we pretend we pretend we

We're obsessed. Everyone is obsessed. These are two telegenic, you know, culturally omnipresent stars. And I'm not buying this idea that like everyone in the media, you know, wants Kelsey and Swift to go away. Like obviously the broadcast networks love it because they show Taylor every five seconds. It's one of these things that I feel like we want to pretend we hate. But, but really our appetite is insatiable. I think there was some pretend hate at the beginning. of this news cycle. And then when it got politicized, then everybody scrambled over to the other side or made sure it was known they were on the other side just because it turned into a left, right thing. Like I saw Colin Coward on his show, I believe it was yesterday doing a long monologue about,

you know, folks, what's wrong with you if you can't appreciate Taylor Swift and Taylor Swift being in a luxury box? And I was like, okay, I agree with you. But also I feel like now we've entered a strange part of this new cycle where it's maybe no,

maybe it's slightly different than it was, you don't know, three months ago. Are you, are you tired of it? I mean, do you want like if you are watching, if you're watching the show, you know, the Super Bowl or any game and Travis Kelsey scores, like I feel like we're now at the point where I will be disappointed. Like my brain has been conditioned, you know, a Pavlovian way to like, I will now see Taylor Swift celebrating in the box. And if I do not, like, the endorphins, which won't fire.

And, like, God forbid they break up next season. Or, you know, there will be, there will be pain if the chiefs do not keep her around. I also loved, like, when, like, now, like, you know, Ray Hunt, right? He doesn't keep the chiefs around, maybe we should say. Sure, yeah. No, I mean, I mean, I love how, like, you know, even in the AFC championship, game, you know, ceremony like, you know, Andy Reid's being asked about this like every five seconds. Like the glow has, the glow has just gone, is now shying on everybody, even people who

are like totally unrelated to Kelsey. So this is a win-win. People should be happier. The best moment from that game was when CBS had to do the Grammys promo, the Grammys being a fading award ceremony of all fading award ceremonies. And then they went with a shot of Taylor in the box and she appeared to say, please go away. watching herself on television. Don't put me in your Grammy's promo. The other enduring image, I mean, I feel like that photo that was that was taken of Kelsey and Taylor

Smoochin on the field is like, what's the famous World War II photo of the guy being, the soldier coming back. Yeah, Times Square. Right, being dipped. Like, there's a little bit of that in that picture, no? Like, I feel like the, the, Taylor's hands are wrapped around Travis's face, not to get too graphic here on this, you know, PG-rated pod.

But like the, the, it's got like a little bit of like, but we'd be looking at this photograph in like 2058 being like, ah, those were the days when, you know, people were happy and jubilant just like, you know, at the end of World War II. Speaking of filling in this news void before the Super Bowl, we had two. car wash is the last couple of days. First, Tom Brady on Tuesday did a bunch of shows and said, I'm going to be calling games on Fox next year. It's not just a rumor. It's real. And then yesterday, Greg Olson, whom Brady is replacing in the number one Fox booth, came out and said, that's cool, but I also want to be a number one announcer again someday. I'm immersed in this story because it's the thing in my part of the world. What do you make of Brady Olson? So I didn't realize that it was until your pot earlier this week that like Brady had not said that explicitly.

Was that just like assumed like that he was definitely. I mean, obviously he had a deal, right? The deal was done ever since his last season of bucks. But it was like there was no. He never said officially that it was going to be next, going to be beginning in September until now. Yeah. And there was just enough doubt out there because he doesn't need to be an announcer. he has nothing to prove he doesn't need money

and I think there was a thinking from people and I certainly entertain the idea that when Fox announced this which was two years ago, it was a great press release for Fox and a great press release for Brady. Fox said, hey, we got this huge star coming sometime in a year or two.

Meanwhile, we'll put this other guy in who turned out to be quite good. And for Brady, it was like, here's where the bidding starts for any business ventures that you would like to pursue with Tom Brady. 37.5 million dollars a year. So that was that was the thinking. So the fact that he is now doing this you know next year. I mean, I guess Fox probably thought like well like Olson's done better than we thought we can keep this guy for forever. You know and we're not in a rush. I wonder if there was, it's almost like

you know, you have you have two great options and you almost hope you don't have to choose. Like You think there's any part of Fox that, like, wanted to give it another year or, or, you know, and kind of ride that, you know, PR glow for forever and like never make a decision. And if Brady wanted to always be like next year, next year, next year, Fox would have been fine with it. Like, you know, any part of Fox, it's almost disappointed. I think it was a great problem for them to have because they developed a guy to fill in who was much cheaper.

And that guy turned out to be great. and pretty much universally beloved. And I think beyond just the fact that he was the guy keeping the seat warm for Tom Brady, like people really do like Greg Olson. It's like he's the, he's the Brock Purdy here, right? He's like, you know, cheap and expendable. And then to extend the analogy, Brady is the, I don't know, Brady is not Tray Lance, but like Brady, Brady is Tom Brady.

Right. Brady's Brady. Brady's Brady. He's Brady. Yeah, or Patrick Mahomes. I mean, that's just sort of what it is. So for Fox, like Olson will go down to the number two NFL team, which still calls a bunch of very prominent games and often calls a playoff game. But yeah, I think in a way, would they have, would it have been interesting for them to just keep putting it off or maybe have Brady not turn up at all?

I think given the way it turned out, they would have fine with that. They also think of Tom Brady as this big brand ambassador for Fox and for the Murdox. Yep. It's not totally clear to me what that's going to happen with that, whether that's just like, hey, I'm at the up fronts. How you doing? Hey, very special advertiser.

Guess who you get to play golf with today? Right. But they certainly consider him to be something bigger than just an announcer. Sort of like, I mean, I guess Nate Burleson or Strayhan, right, people that can kind of like come in through the door of being like

the football star, right? And then do something else. I mean, Brady, like Brady's only, what, he's 45, you know, like in 20 years, is he still calling games at Fox?

Or is he doing, something else. I mean, I mean, obviously, like, you know, the huge question mark, which is still not been answered and is unknowable, is like, is he any good at this? Like, like, you know, he was doing our friend Pat McAfee's show the other day. And like, you know, McAfee was like, you know, asking these inane questions about like, you know, how he's thinking about the game and, you know, and Brady, you know, is flashing his pretty smile and is saying. that he's, you know, he's been studying and, you know, he's talked to everybody. He says something like something absurd, like he's had like 200 conversations with people

who have called games or something like that, which I'm sure he has, but like, you know, he's clearly prepping to do this well and approaching it like film study. But like until he gets in the box and is like sitting there, you know, analyzing the game, we have no idea if this guy is any good. I totally buy the idea that this could be a, a complete bust and that Brady could harm his public reputation, that Brady will be seen as now a $37.5 million waste. Like, is there a draft king's line on this? Like how many years is he is he doing that? Like, I would, I would totally buy the idea that Brady does this for one year and

sucks and is, you know, goes on to greener pastures. I'm not convinced on this at all. It's interesting. I mean, I think the whatever the line we'd put on it, it's very hard to imagine just doing this for more than five years just because of who he is. You know, is he going to be so fascinated by the idea of traveling somewhere every week? Because this is a lot of work. You know, it's, it seems, I think some ex-players are like, oh, this will be fun. I know. It's like, no, it's actually a ton of work, a ton of travel, even if Tom Brady is almost certainly flying private to get to the game and to study up all week and to do all these interviews that you have to do in the pregame context. Don't just will it hold his interest is like a fascinating question to me beyond will Tom Brady be you know good at commentating on football. So you so you would put the line here. If we could dread create her on. You think five years is the over under on this? I think that's interesting. Yeah. That's kind of where I'd be. And maybe maybe we could shrink to like three or four. Uh huh. Um, some three three seems like a good, you know, number to me where you like you start to be like do I want to be an announcer for the rest of my life?

I really feel like, which in the answer with, I really feel like they should create lines for the like this sort of thing. I'm like like, like you can bet on like, you know, what color the, the, the gatorade bath is,

right? Like, or like, what is the, what are the other good Super Bowl lines that are like, like, what is the first, like,

what is the first song? Um, at halftime, I feel like is a, is a betting line. Yeah, length of the national anthem is also one over under how long it lasts. So I'm going to get with Bill and Cous and Sal.

We'll figure out the line on how long is Tom Brady. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. I look forward. I look forward to betting. The Gatorade one is,

so that's just like a total crapshoot, right? I mean, you have no idea what color it is. I know there's like, you know, Gatoradeologists who are probably like deducing, you know, how many shipments of orange have been sent to Vegas. What are the other good ones? Like, I mean, I feel like the first song,

there's always like conspiracy theories about like, you know, does the dancer's best friend, you know, leaking it to, you know, Fandul, um, uh, coin flip,

that should be 50 50, but it's like, you know, people are, right. There's the coin. This is, this is,

this is the more absurd parts of our culture that, of gaming that has, you know, it's gone overboard. A couple of things before you go. Let's talk about the state of the presidential election, which you've been writing a lot about for Puck. And I want to start with a question you threw up me an email that I just loved.

Are reporters rooting for Nikki Haley? Your answer? Look, I think the reality is reporters want a competitive race. And, you know, if Trump has the sewn up, if he doesn't already have it sewn up, we're going to have a, what, a nine-month general election campaign? That is like, you're going to profile, you know, Chris Las Savita 64 times. Like, like, there's an element of, you know, no campaign is going to be like 20. or, you know, I was too young for, for 08, but give us something.

I'm just, I'm not, I'm not saying this is my personal opinion, to be, to be clear, but I'm just sort of, you know, telling you what reporters talk about privately at the bar. And like, yeah, I think people are rooting for Nikki Haley, you know, not, not in ideological sense, but just like you root for news, right? You root for, you know, Haley to Haley to one New Hampshire, right? Could you have justified, you know, doubling down on presidential race coverage? Because now I feel like we're in a situation where the race is less competitive than I think lots of media else thought. And now, like, you know, if you're like the Washington Post political desk or the Wall Street Journal political desk, like you probably have 15 or 20 reporters, right, who are full time covering the race.

And, you know, you need one Nikki Haley embed, one Donald Trump embed. Like the people need to do something and then people are being paid to do something. So you're either going to get like absolutely, you know, esoteric stories about in the weeds details of, you know, of the, you know, Nikki Haley finance directors, daughters, fundraiser and fundraising pitch or, you know, people get reassigned. Is that possible? That like, you know, a reporter who covered the presidential race from January 2023 to February 2024 like goes back. to covering, you know, city government? And I guess that's one possibility. You can just downsize. So I think it goes back to the point we made earlier about media in this time of uncertainty. You were counting on politics and the 2024 election and Trump to drive up your revenue, right?

This was the second Trump pump, which may or may not be happening. There were some early signs that it's actually not happening, or at least to the degree that media orgs want to. So I don't think you can back off the election. You're just going to have to cover something for the next nine months. Nobody's getting reassigned to, you know, go cover air travel for us. Like, no, no, we're going to have to cover politics and hope this works for us as a content space, for lack of a better word, because we don't have another option right now. That's interesting. But you're sort of saying as a business strategy, that that's sort of driving it as opposed to editorial.

I think both, but I think as a business strategy, this was what everybody's banking on. This is part of it. Donald Trump is involved in an election. This is absolutely something we have learned a couple of times as one of the few times where people perk up and read the news now. So I think it's mixed in there, absolutely. Yeah. I think the one, so while I do agree in general that like the Republican presidential race

has been probably less exciting than we thought it would be at the beginning of 23 when thought people thought you might get a real Trump DeSantis first race and you know it could who knows maybe it could be Hillary Obama-esque you know like as possible as possible scenario um while that story has been less interesting than we thought I do feel like the saving grace for media is that the legal situation has been probably more interesting than we thought right and and um to the extent that you know the legal storyline sort of is a political storyline and Trump has made that so like I think you know there will be now tons of stories and say let's let's say Trump wins the nomination or wraps up the nomination in the next couple weeks like I think

with like a media coverage of Trump looks like in March, April, May, June is like all about the courts and about the cases and you know this is well beyond my pay grade as you know campaign finance hack but like you know there's going to be lots of storylines around you know all this stuff and that's going to be that's going to pay the bills I mean that's going to be interesting genuinely right now it's a it's a courtroom you know is Trump testifying like legal cases are structurally you know fascinating I cover the SBF trial this fall it's a lot of fun um so that might be you know the the the moneymaker that you know media needs um you know and maybe that carries through to like the convention right

which is when you're sort of expecting to cover general election coverage and you have sort of these tent poll events right there's sort of the late the midsummer like VP choice right is sort of a set piece in in the play right and then there's the conventions and then there's the later day kickoff and then the first debate and the second debate and the third debate who knows if those debates even happen in a trump end election um but like you have that you have all the stuff like I would say from midsummer to election day that reporters are used to cover What you don't have planned for in your mental architecture of the calendar is like this long period in the spring where you are hoping there's a campaign to cover or something going on in one of the parties, maybe both of the parties. And if Haley, you know, loses this in February of March, like I think that's the fallow period.

That's when like the political reporters need to go on like a three month vacation, like April. May, June, July, unless they can, like, go to law school over the next couple months. One moment I wanted you to help me decode, because you write about this stuff. It was a moment between Josh Hawley, Republican Senator from Missouri, and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, of course. It was a piece of Senate testimony. The title was online child sexual exploitation. Holly was going after Zuck. and then eventually we got this moment.

You didn't take any action, you didn't fire anybody, you haven't compensated a single victim. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. There's families of victims here today. Have you apologized to the victims? Would you like to do so now?

They're here. You're on national television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed by your product? Show them the pictures. Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people? And then Zuck's apology occurred mostly off-mic.

What did you make a message? of that moment, Teddy? I just love like the the execution of like a good trap as just as like someone who you know

finds politics both absurd and and meaningful at the same time. Like I got I got no problem with that for Josh Hawley. I think that's well done.

Like obviously he hates Facebook, hates Mark Zuckerberg. That's well known. He's got him in front in front. And he's playing for cameras there. Like, I wonder how prepped Mark Zuckerberg was for that moment.

Like, does he know that that's a possibility that, like, he would issue that apology? Does he, like, has he practiced? Like, obviously, there are expensive, you know, you know, government relations firms that that prep someone like Mark Zuckerberg for this. I'm sure he had plenty of time to think about it. But, like, did he know that he would stand up and apologize? I thought it was interesting that it was off mic, which, which, you know, You can kind of hear what he's saying a little bit toward the end.

And obviously there were print reporters in the room, but like almost doing it off mic made it sound more contrite. Like he's not telling Josh Hawley. He's telling, you know, these these families that he wishes he had done better, better. Kudos all around, you know. I feel like this was a great piece of theater for Josh Hawley, who, you know, is trying to challenge at least Stefanik for the like, you know, whipping up of coastal elites award of 2024. And kudos to Mark Zuckerberg for kind of recognizing the trap and walking into it and maybe proving it wasn't really a trap because like, you know, Holly wants him to like filibuster, right, and not do it.

I wonder if Holly was surprised that like, yeah, sure, I apologize, sure. There's something very meta, pun, I guess intended about going into a hearing about social media and creating a moment for social media as Holly was clearly doing. there also loved his use of the term national television which is the term i used to hear as a kid i mean we are surely in an era where anything mark Zuckerberg posts online will have a bigger reach than quote unquote national television yeah sure like you know like but that that that that's the element of of of of holly that i find um like almost honest where you're just like you are acknowledging that this is like a totally a pr like bonanza that you have

of orchestrated like the entire point of the hearing was a PR ban. I mean like this wasn't like you know this is not a serious inquiry into anything right as every to be fair as as as as a true of every congressional hearing involving the tech billionaires that I cover but Holly just you know was just playing for the cameras and saying national television rather than like pretending that it was something else he's like no this is this is totally like a bullshit PR thing and like let's just call it what it is so I appreciate it. Another story I saw this week I wanted to talk to you about was Anthony Lane,

longtime movie critic at the New Yorker. Are you a movie review person? I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I feel like I'm too young to go to movies, you know? I went to one in like 2013. I just feel, I mean, I just don't know.

I just watch watch some TikToks and experience pop culture that way. But what do you make of that? let me tell you about the old days teddy i used to get this thing called the new yorker magazine it was actually a magazine which was very mind-blowing now to think about really they had they had two on paper it was on paper very strange yeah well yeah photos but a lot of cutesy drawings too because it was the new yorker uh what was funny is they had two movie critics and sometimes you'd pick up the new yorker and it was anthony lane week and the next time he's pick it up, it would be David Denby week.

And if anybody was rooting for it to be David Denby week, I never met them. Because there was this period in the aughts where Anthony Lane was the funniest, the most erudite, the most British movie critic imaginable. And people like me would read him and the New Yorker and be like, oh my God, I want to learn how to write sentences like that that seemed to be just dancing across the page on tap shoes he was hired by tina brown away from london newspapers in the age before streaming and now we're really going back here he flew from london to new york every few weeks to see movies this actually happened which to me was always like struck me as a very glamorous lifestyle

and then i thought wait i'm going to get on a transatlantic flight to see a movie not on the plane but after i got off the plane right as i say you just like you could you could just do it on the actual you know, a little, little eight by 11 and a half, uh, Delta Airlines. Yeah. I saw my phone, right? Right. Sure. Downloaded something to watch on the plane.

But I'm telling you, Mike, when I was, when I was young and coming up to business, like, he was one of those people where I was like, my God, I want to write like that guy someday. And I had a pal to New Yorker, Michael Agar who one time said, hey, you want to come to this screening in New York. I said, great. And we get there and he and Anthony Lane are there. And I sat next to Anthony Lane and watched bad Santa.

It was a really formative period in my journalistic education. I thought, oh, my God, here is the great man in the flesh. And then I got a little older, and I started reading Anthony Lane's reviews, and I was like, you know what? He writes amazing sentences, and I have no idea what he really thinks about movies. They're almost so beautiful they exist outside the actual task of having ideas about movies and arguing them and, you know, improving on them or knocking them down over a period of time. So anyway, Anthony Lay, moving from the movie beat to cover other things for the New Yorker.

Just wanted to say a quick farewell on behalf of those who were reading movie reviews back in the day. Last one for you, Ted. All right. This is a surprise question. Do you have tips for people that want to interview a tech billionaire? What questions work? What questions don't work? I find that these interviews of these people are actually pretty useless.

I have not really pursued them that hard. Like an on the record, I obviously have lots of relationships, but like an on the record interview with like, like these things are just like word salads about about, you know, their public responsibility and blah, blah, blah. I feel like the poster child or when my point of view on these public interviews changed was there was a period in like 2018, 2019 when Jack Dorsey was kind of doing. ton of interviews about how he takes Twitter so seriously. And it's just like, you would read these transcripts. And you're just like, how much ayahuasca is he, is he doing right now? Like, like, it was just totally indecipherable, like, jargon about, you know, this before chat GPT.

But like, it probably would have been pretty similar. Maybe they had Twitter before the rest of us did. So I'm very interested just as a person who covers wealth in. rich people who are not public facing. There's a lot of people who have a lot of money who have a public profile that you know about. But there's a lot of people who have a lot of money

who you don't know about. And I wonder, when you look at like the Forbes list or the Bloomberg billionaires list, A, lots of those stats are wrong. No judgment on the people that are trying to do it. but like the unless you have you know wealth that is totally derived from public holdings that you know file with the SEC about their ownership structures like I think lots of rich people gain those in both directions um make themselves see richer make themselves see poorer but I'm just

fascinated by wealthy people who have a lot of power who are not in the public eye at all um like when I read um like campaign finance filings like I was doing yesterday day for my job, like you'll encounter someone, you know, like, you know, they gave $5 million to the Santa Super PAC. And of course, you'll just like throw them into Google and you know, who is this guy, right? And it's like some like St. Louis like home builder, right? Who, who, you've never heard of and is, you know, you'll, you'll deduce is worth $10 billion. And that's like, that's more than like some of the people that you have heard of, right? That's more than, that's probably more than Jack Dorsey's worth right now. And, um, and,

Their power isn't as visible, right? Because they're not like necessarily taste makers in kind of the culture or or public-facing people who have this like media profile that can kind of shape their, shape the world that we all live in. But they often have power in other ways, right? Like, you know, for instance, they're donating $5 million to Ronda Santos or maybe they have a private foundation that, you know, has no public scrutiny. Or they have a donor advised fund or a family office or, um, are not sort of public about how they are, you know, exercising their power. And those are the great stories to me.

So like I would love to interview Lowry Page right now, you know, the Google founder who for the last five to 10 years has been basically living under a rock and no one's heard from him at all. And, you know, he's worth a ton of money and still controls a tremendous amount of kind of Google, at least on paper, because of the corporate structure. I'll take that interview. I just don't want to hear from Mark Zuckerberg about how he's really sorry.

All right, Teddy Schleifer, he's going to be writing about those people who don't want to be found over in Puck. Read all his stories, read his stories on the election. Teddy, thank you so much for coming on the press box. You bet. This is fun. All right, that's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic,

as always, by Brian Waters. Our letter from the editor today, I want to put two things on your radar. One is it's Super Bowl week next week. And I'm going to be on Radio Row Thursday in Las Vegas. And we were thinking who would be the person to interview before a Super Bowl that involves both football and Taylor Swift. There's only one answer to that question.

The answer is Nora Preciati, who is the ringer's football expert and the ringers Taylor Swift expert. She's having a moment as we are contractually obligated to say here at the ringer, but of course, Norris always having a moment. We're going to talk to her Thursday, plus we may see some old friends turn up on the show as well. Second thing, let me give an early heads up on something we're going to do later this month. Sean Fennessey is going to guest host this podcast with me.

We're going to do the news of the week like we usually do. But since Sean is here, we've got to talk about movies. And we are going to revisit a great documentary called The War Room. It came out in 1993. if you watch this, make sure you've got the right war room movie, 1993. It's about Bill Clinton's presidential campaign the year before. It has amazing footage of James Carville and George Stephanopoulos and all these people who put that campaign together and became very big rock stars after Clinton was victorious.

If you like the stuff we talk about on this podcast, I guarantee you will like this movie. You can stream it anywhere if you're into physical media criterion has a Blu-ray that's 20 bucks on Amazon. Anyway, check that out. Shoemaker and I will return Monday. More lukewarm takes about the media. Have a fantastic weekend.