The Press Box - Barack Obama and Aliens, How to Cover Stephen A’s Quasi-Campaign, and the AI That Ate Cleveland

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

Bryan and David are here and they start with a story out of Cleveland about a student turning down a job because of their use of AI. They discuss whether there are acceptable ways to use AI in journalism. After that they talk about Barack Obama's podcast interview where he mentions that aliens exist (14:35). Then they discuss some news from CBS. Anderson Cooper leaving CBS News’ ‘60 minutes’ and Stephen Colbert’s late-night show not being able to air an interview with James Talarico (22:32). They also talk about how to cover Stephen A. Smith’s potential presidential campaign (27:07). Lastly they discuss a creative nonfiction story in The Atlantic (40:43) about measles and the death of Robert Duvall (54:27). Also David Shoemaker guesses the Strained Pun Headline of the Week. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerProducers: Bruce Baldwin and Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David? Yes. From the Department of What Pissed Off Journalists this week. God. It's a big department. It is. We got to get Elon Musk down on reducing the size of that department. Go ahead.

There was a column from the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Oh, no. Now also Cleveland.com. And this gentleman, Chris Quinn became the, main character on journalism Twitter, at least for a few hours, he was writing about a hire he was trying to make in his newsroom. And Chris Quinn writes, a college student withdrew from consideration for a reporting role in our newsroom this week

because of how we use artificial intelligence. That's right. Artificial intelligence, one of the gallery of journalistic villains we mentioned alongside names such as Barry Weiss and Will Lewis. Now, how is AI affecting journalism in Cleveland? Well, the plane dealer and its website have expanded local coverage into counties around Cleveland. And here's how Chris Quinn, the editor describes the jobs. Because we want reporters gathering information, these jobs are 100% reporting.

We have an AI rewrite specialist who turns their material into drafts. We fact check everything. editors review it, reporters get final say, humans, not AI, control every step of the process. So you, Johnny Deadline. I'm withholding. I'm not saying a word. Go on. You Johnny Deadline, you go get me a story from Lorraine County, Lake County, Chiaga County.

AI rewrite is going to craft your piece for you. Mm-hmm. What do we make of that? Oh, man. And I actually didn't follow the story. I just want to make that clear. I saw all the tweets about it and just just opted out. So thanks for reeling me back in.

Is the thing that the student, do we know what the student actually took objection to? Was it just like, is it something as simple as like, well, I won't really have my bylines in my packet, you know, if I don't,

if I'm not actually writing the stuff? I think they just wanted to write. from the sounds of it and objected to the idea that AI rewrite was going to do most of the work. Doesn't that sound like a dream though? You get to be a writer, but you don't have to go through the pain of actually writing. Yeah. Like, this is a bad thing. This specific story is making it difficult for me to really like get my ire up.

in part because maybe I'm just old and jaded but I know just sort of how soulless the writing process can be for just like straight news pieces that I'm sure it will come out about two percent different than the AI version if you did it yourself

and once it got through editing and everything you know but yeah I mean and certainly this is a case where it's like it's AI's AI here is not eliminating any jobs. It's actually sort of creating more of a more breadth of coverage. And some would say this is a good use of AI.

But it seems like a weird thing to be proud of. You know, if you're the editor. We're in a very odd stage now. And I think that it's like, listen, I support anybody that's anti-AI in a blanket sense. And certainly for my position as an art director alike, like you just have to be pretty firmly anti-AI like just across the board um one to have any sort of standards at all and and two um because that's what all the artists are like just kind of adamantly that way but i do think especially in writing and in the sort of new sense and and even in art two

you know i think it's a mistake to think that a i is going to just take everybody's jobs and but i think it will change the way that we do work, just like any other big, you know, evolutionary step. And the kind of winners of this era are going to be the people that figure out the way to work with AI in a sort of predictive way that, you know, it's hard to say what the future is going to be like, but in the way that it kind of all settles down. But that said, come on, you got to let your writers write if they want to write. You can give them an option or something. I don't know what the right answer is here. But it's a writing business. It's not just a stringer, business.

It seems weird to throw somebody under the bus who applied for a job at your paper. Oh, yeah. And then decided they didn't want the job because they would be taking reported material and inserting it into an AI tool to write it for them. I mean, it seems like if you want to defend the use of AI in Cleveland, that can be done on its own without... Without like implicating a student. an anonymous student.

I totally take your point because a lot of non-AI newspaper writing sounds like AI. Yeah. And a lot of writing one does as a trainee reporter is basically written by somebody else anyway. Yes. When I was at Slate in my early 20s, an AI tool named Jack Schaefer rewrote a lot of my stories. Yeah. And thank goodness because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. There is that.

You know, there's that weird thing where you read something you wrote a long time ago or even a few years ago and you're like, damn, like it's kind of fun to read because you don't remember any of the process. None. But then you look back at, yeah, there's certainly some early stuff where you're like, do I not remember this because it's been so long or because I'm not the one that wrote it? Definitely the case for some of the early stories there. If we're extending secular grace to Chris Quinn, I would also say that AI bringing us

more news from Giga County. There are less evil uses of AI than that. Yeah. But I also just think what he's talking about is the wrong problem with newspapers here in 2026. So he also wrote a previous column about this that I read. And he said, you know, what's happened in newspapers is the economics have become so dire that they force reporters to sit at their desk

and just pump out stuff. Yeah. Stories may not even be the right word. I remember a couple years ago talking to Nikki Javala. Yeah. The reporter who snapped that now historic shot of Will Lewis on the red carpet at NFL honors. She was working at the Denver Post when that paper was run by Alden.

And she told me she had to file more than 20 stories a day about the Broncos. and like you know somebody would say something at their locker on a Tuesday or Wednesday and she would have to write up that quote as a distinct story yeah so what Quinn is saying is hey let me get you out of that let me let you go talk to people and do the fun stuff of reporting yeah look people in the eye find things get stories I just think that what he's describing as a mistake that newspapers have made over the last 25 years as the business really started to change. Yep.

Which is they saw their economic superstructure falling apart. And their response to that was to turn out even more deathless news stories. Yeah. Everything from that random Broncos player having a, you know, just, you know, thrown out a quote to the low calorie or no calorie write-throughs of national news that people were getting elsewhere. And they were just like, we're just going to do a ton of this. Yeah.

If it gets 10 clicks, that's 10 more than we had. Yeah. And that will keep our traffic up. And meanwhile, what they weren't tending to was the emotional relationship people had with a newspaper. And I don't see how you get that with an AI tool. you're really putting a lot of the strain. You're essentially saying you're going to go get so much news from these outlying counties.

That will make people subscribe to the newspaper. Remember, we're not just read the newspaper. They have to pay you to make this work. We're going to give you an extra day of reporting, he says in this. So you'll be able to come up with an extra story or two. And that will be what gets us over the hump, the news, not how the news is presented. And I just feel that's a mistake at the end of the day. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's impossible to disagree.

You wonder if, like, they decided, it's just a thought experiment. If they had instead of having, like, basically stringers and an AI composition desk, if they just had a reporting desk, like a reporting side and a composition side, all manned by human beings. This is like the old rewrite desk. Yeah. Oh, yes, absolutely. The rewrite desk.

And listen, you and I both know stories of, major, major writers that just phone in their material. I mean, literally phone in, not half-asset, like call up the big boss and just say, here you go. Here are my notes. Please make it a news story. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one wonders if they just split it up into like reporters in a rewrite desk,

basically if it would be, if potential interns would have the same opposition to working the reporter side. I mean, I think one would assume, yes. I mean, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. but that said like you know if it's left up to the the rewrite desk

to it say like yeah we need more manpower why don't we just start using AI and it feels like a different thing but you're right I mean it does I mean it does threaten that connection that you were talking about no I don't know I mean maybe having more stories about more localized stuff

helps strengthen the connection you know there's a way to rationalize all this stuff and really I mean I mean not not to necessarily say AI is evil, but that's a real insidious part of AI is that everybody can find a way to use it just a little bit. You know, everybody, everybody can kind of justify a little bit of their own life because, like, this is a non-problematic way for me to use it. It doesn't mean it's not like an industry disrupting or destroying thing. Way to use it if we're at large, you know.

But yeah, this is a weird story because it's just, it's not, it's not, it's very straightforward and yet not very simple. It is. And again, I just come back to that connection with the product. And, you know, how do you get people to feel strongly about you? Because that's what they have to do if they're going to pay you. Yeah. You know, that's what we have to do with the ringer as well.

But they can click on the podcast or click on the website for free. The local newspaper has a different hurdle and a higher hurdle. They have to get over, which is somebody's got to fork over money to them. And I'm just like, to me, that comes through personality. Now, maybe we are edging out of the writing era of world society. And the way you can give them that personality is through a podcast or a video or something else. But I don't see it coming through just more articles, more articles that are written by an AI tool that's not going to send that are not going to sound good or pleasing. or distinct.

Yeah. And this is, you know, and you and I are just, you and I are not done with writing either. Let's also say that up front. Rewrite desk or no. I mean, think of how many people came to Ohio newspapers. Chuck Closterman. Oh, yeah.

Joe Esther Haas, the great sports writer Tom Callahan. We could go on and on. And you're essentially saying, well, Cleveland's not the place for you. If you want to write, you know, I mean, to me, that's enough of a place to, you know, enough to plant our flag on right there. But this idea, I just again, I don't, I just, the whole, the whole scaling up, man, we're just going to get more, more articles, more articles, here we go. It's like, is that really the answer?

Yeah. More articles written the same way that newspaper articles were written way back in the day when that was the house style of American life. You want to do that? If you and I went to Cleveland, we'd probably say like, the problem isn't how much you're writing. It's the way you're writing it. Yeah, for sure. We rethink that?

Mm-hmm. Shouldn't we be more creative, not less creative? creative? Yep. I don't know. Anyway, congratulations to Chris Quit on becoming the main character on journalism Twitter. Will and Barry appreciated the day off.

I'm sure. Coming up on the press box, David, how Obama and aliens became a window into podcasters and reporters. We've got two stories from the wild and wacky world of CBS News. What's the right way to cover the Stephen A. Smith for

president campaign. Plus, the Atlantic's measles story and when Robert Duval played a newspaper editor. All that much more on the press box. A part of the rigor podcast network. Hello media consumers. It's Brian Curtis. It's David Shoemaker. It's producers

Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin here with you. David, who said Barack Obama was going to stay on the sidelines? He was at the All-Star game talking to Reggie Miller. He was meeting Alan Iverson. He was also talking to talking to podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, who is the host of No Lie. Mm-hmm.

Have you ever consumed No Lie in actual podcast form or just clips on Twitter? Good question. Connor Nevins at the office the other day was saying, you know, you guys should have a regular feature called Who Is This? When a wildly popular podcaster we might not know comes into the news. That's a great idea. One month, it's Jennifer Welch. Yeah. The next month it's Brian, Tyler Cohen.

Mm-hmm. Well, while Obama was doing Cohen's show, he made this shocking announcement. Are aliens real? They're real, but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in, what is it? Area 51. Area 51. There's no underground facility, unless there's this enormous conspiracy, and they hit it from the President of the United States. What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?

Where are the aliens? Where are the aliens? Notice how Cohen just moved on? I saw a lot of people making that critique, which I think is the right critique. No follow up there? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, they're real. So how do you know? And he tweeted out that clip, by the way.

So he was happy with his choice to go down the prepared list of questions. After Obama had confirmed the existence of aliens. Obama then had to clean up his remarks, as they say in politics. He wrote, I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round. What a moment in podcasting. The former president of the United States that look, you know, I could have clarified, but I wanted to stick with the spirit of the speed round. Should we just change the name of the podcast to the spirit of the speed round?

I feel like that sort of sort of gets at the heart of it. Obama continues, since it's got an attention, let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good, there's life out there, but the distances between solar systems

are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low. And I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us, really. Thank you for that clarification. This became another moment to think about the great divide in modern journalism.

I speak, of course, of podcasters versus journalists. Yeah. Max Taney over at Semaphore tweeted, shows the difference in incentives for journalists and creators. A journalist's primary objective in an interview is to make news. A political influence is objective is to keep their audience on board and further their side's agenda. Making news is kind of a bonus.

Okay. I thought it was going to go a different direction. I thought it was going to be like, as long as they get the viral clip, then the actual content doesn't matter as much. So I agree with you and I sort of think that that's the goal of both of these camps. Is it not in 2026?

Like we like to portray ourselves as rough, tough, real journalists doing real interviews and I hope that we are. But we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that the goal is the same, to get a clip that hits on Twitter. Yeah. That's what it is at the end of the day. That's what both sides are doing.

It's clip culture that unites us, David. It's true. I mean, because for the more traditional audience, they still want the perception that news is being broken, right? I got to listen to that clip where this truth comes out. If the other side is a little bit more, you know, a little bit, you know, more insincere, but still like going for the viral moment. You're right. The motivation seems pretty much the same.

The whole clip culture thing is interesting to me, as is the making news part of this. Because there's a lot of ways to make news that aren't particularly important. I remember when I was talking to Jimmy Pitar last year and I'm looking at my list of questions and I think I asked him, are you interested in bidding on the WWE library? Because he had just bought the pay-per-views, the premium live events. And he said, yeah, he was interested. Now, was that news?

I think so. I don't think he'd been asked about that directly, or at least recently directly. Is that particularly important? No. To some people. To some people, to those wrestling officiados out there. But it's the tension, there's all kinds of tensions.

in doing a podcast interview. Yeah. You know, is there something, if this interview is the best interview you've ever heard, is there 90 seconds of it that will live on Twitter that will convince people that it is the best interview and they've got to actually listen to the whole thing? Making news.

Are you making news in a way that's interesting and relevant and important? Are you just asking people to like say something different than you've said before? Yeah. that I can point to and say, oh, exclusive. Jimmy Patero is interested in bidding on wrestling pay-per-views of your. Yeah, you're right. I mean, the difference between like news and it's actually like newsworthy is maybe the distinction there.

I think so. I mean, you're right in terms of just like you want things to go viral. I think the ongoing sort of internal battle. I think both for news organizations and just like podcasters or social media streamers or like whatever is how much to like how much do you give away in the clip. But I think that's part of a bigger conversation about like how to drive traffic. And I think weirdly we've just sort of settled on you give away the good thing in the clip. Yes.

And even if even if that means that like 2% of the people that watched and appreciated it will now go check out or interested enough to check out the entire thing. that's hugely, that's a huge upgrade, as opposed to just teasing the clip, you know, teasing the thing and, sorry, teasing the facts, the breaking news, the crazy moment, and hoping that it'll drive more people to the product. I think just going viral is the, is the first thing. And that means kind of giving it all the way. It does. But everybody seems okay with that. Yeah. It seems like you'd rather have that kind of awareness than not have that awareness. And Pablo Torres talked about this before. People were watching clips of his reported podcasts.

And then, you know, being happy with him or being mad at him, whatever they chose, but not actually listening to the full reported podcast, which crossed T's and dotted eyes in a different way. Speaking of viral clips, can I tell you how much self, can I tell you how much self control it took for me not to point out to the world that the story David Remnick told on Pablo's podcast, I believe it was on Friday about trying to profile LeBron James and LeBron James saying no,

was the same story that he told on my podcast in December. We even made a clip and everything. I decided not to say anything until now. Good for you. Good for you. That's great self-restraint. Two stories from CBS, David. Anderson Cooper is leaving 60 minutes to spend more time with his family It's from Lachlan Carlin. Not more time with his CNN family, just more time with his actual family.

More time with his actual family. It was always funny that he was doing stuff for 60 minutes anyway. Uh-huh. Always kind of caught me by surprise when you get an Anderson Cooper piece. Yeah, that was just a good negotiation by his agent, I'm sure. Just like we're going to carve out primetime news magazine rights from this CNN deal. We know 60 Minutes has been under the thumb of Barry Weiss, the aforementioned.

Wasn't there rumor that she wanted him to host the nightly news, though? Yes, he was on her list, as was Brent Bayer and Tony DeCopold, the name they eventually got to. Dana Perino is apparently on the list is what I'm looking at now. I don't know if that's true. Well, now he's not at CBS News anymore at all. In other CBS News News News, Stephen Colbert says he was told by C. CBS lawyers that he couldn't have Texas Senate candidate James Tala Rico on the show on Monday.

Allegedly because of worries about what the FCC would do if they brought a Democratic candidate for Senate onto the late show. It's still in the primary though, right? Still in the primary. So does the fairness doctrine or whatever, would that require that Jasmine Crockett also gets on the tonight show or that a Republican? I mean, the late show or that a Republican does? And there are two Republicans. No, that's what I'm saying. Is it one of the Republican candidates that gets the spot?

Or does it mean that his opponent, Jasmine Crockett, gets to be on? It's a great question. By the way, James, I know Stephen Colbert was rescued by Trump in terms of ratings, but James Tala Rico being on The Late Show is just kind of funny. Well, yes, it's very funny. And, you know, CBS or the FCC or the Trump administration stepping in to stop James Tala Rico of all fucking people is just sort of incredible. It is, I mean, I don't know. Brian, you're a Texan.

As are you? What are your, at what point do you think it's okay to buy in to a Democrat winning an office, winning office in Texas? Like, is it just going to be, is this every two years for the rest of our lives? It'll be like, maybe this will be the one that flips it, flips part of it blue or, you know, whatever. I asked fellow Texan Joel Anderson the other day if he remembers the year that a Democrat last won statewide office in Texas. Was it the governor's office? No, any, any state what office? I know, but was it governor?

It was one of them, yep. So it would have been, so it would have been like 92? 94. 94, okay. 1994. And this is a state that Alex's entire cabinet. Oh, yeah. This is not just Gov, Senate, like Gov.

It is everybody. 1994. We were in high school. Yeah. And yes, Ann Richards won that year. Anyway. Yeah. that's wild. That's wild. I mean, James

Alarico is a great, I mean, he's, he seems to be very, I mean, he's very good speaker, very good sort of political theologian. And one of, and certainly, and certainly threads the needle for, is this the next fill in the blank that every news organization is looking for, right? I can see why, I mean,

I can see why they'd want, why Colbert would want to have him on. But certainly, I think that, if anything, this is just, I don't know if stricand effect is the right word here, but I think this is a better thing for James Tolariko than getting on the show. I mean, for one thing, the interview's out there, right? It's on YouTube. And because that's not subject to FCC rules and it's, you know, whatever. But like, more people are going to watch it now than would have watched it anyway, many, many more people, you know? And I don't know. I mean, it feels like, like, if this was in wrestling, I would be like, this is fake. Like, this is just a Colbert gimmick

to get more people to watch this interview. Wouldn't it have been amazing if James Talariko hadn't been able to do an interview in this cycle? That would have been something. Yeah, it's true. He said yes to everything. Sure. Sure.

He's really making a national race, you know, and. I'm glad it's on YouTube so we didn't break his Iron Man streak. How to report on Stephen A. Smith for president. Oh, God. We had another boomlet, David, at least a media boomlet in the Stephen A-28 campaign. He was the subject of a piece reported by Robert Costa on CBS Sunday morning. And once again, Smith raised the idea of a Stephen A, Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom faceoff that we've all been hankering for. I will confess to you, I'm giving a strong consideration to being on that debate stage for 2027.

I've got this year coming up, 2026, to think about it, to study, to know the issues, et cetera, because I don't know everything. But I am going to spend this year thinking about that before I make a decision as to what I want to do. Would you call that a reluctant confession? Sounds like a guy who's trying to figure out exactly how to continue the charade a little bit longer. I mean, who knows he might get into it. But, like, how do you drag this out for another year? well, I'm going to spend this whole year

and doing my homework. Doing more interviews about how I'm doing my homework. Yeah, I mean, it's so, it's so depressing. It's so depressing. Like, I respect it as a gimmick. I respect it as a way to get attention. But you have to just, it has the opposite effect when you think about everything that he's,

like how trivializing, how much it trivializes the whole process if he's just not taking it seriously at all. sort of a slap in the face. And I don't know, man, he's just like, he'd be a terrible candidate. He'd be a fucking terrible candidate. I mean, is there anybody?

I think that the, I think that the, regardless of where you land on the political spectrum, I think that the number one criteria for being a Democratic candidate for the White House is that you don't think all the other candidates are, have lost the thread they're so far left. You have to be, you have to be willing to admit that just like, no, I'm more on the right than a lot of these guys, but we're all, we all have

some similar core beliefs. You can't go in there with this like fake, just like right wing troll point of view or it's just like everybody, everybody's got, everybody's become such a socialist, there's no home for real liberals anymore. Like, that's, that's disqualifying. As a piece of service journalism, can we just codify how to report the quote unquote Stephen A for president campaign? So when future Jernos knock at his door and want to do this story, they will... A fake... Yes, it's like a fake candidacy or a pitch.

Yes. How to handle what is almost certainly not a real candidacy. Yeah, it has to be like a PR candidacy or something like that. Like there's something that just implies that it's just for show. Show candidacy. I keep leaving out a syllable. Also, you know, you go to professional the back to the pro wrestling world. They hate to keep doing it.

But Hulk Ogan, Rick Flair, Jerry the King, all are all had show candidacies at some point in their careers. It's worth noting this is fun for people like Robert Costa. Yeah. You cover lawmakers for a living and then you get Stephen A on your show. We can quibble with his characterization of Stephen A as a quote modern day Howard Cosell. Feel free to workshop that with me anytime you want. We'll talk about what Howard Cosell stick forward.

Did that go through the AI rewrite desk or did that come? Maybe that came straight from the AI rewrite desk. Also interesting to be here was if you compare the Sunday morning piece, which is about seven and a half minutes long, to the extended Stephen A interview that Costa did, which they also posted on YouTube, which is about a half hour long. And look at those two things and say which one of these things is more interesting. Yeah. Which one of these things should be the future of CBS news? It ain't the former. Mm-hmm.

I mean, you watch this 30-minute version of the interview and he's talking about his mom. He's getting a little glassy-eyed. He's talking about his respect for Bryant-Gumble and getting into all these things, plus the political stuff. And you're like, that was a really good interview. It was like a good podcast. Yeah. Why didn't we just run that?

Yep. Why do we have to do this language of news magazine that is only good for people who've never heard of Stephen A. Smith. Yeah. How to cover this. So Stephen A. Smith is not totally unlike a J.B. Pritzker or Mark Kelly or Westmore. He understands that he is more valuable so long as he might be running for president.

Sure. What's different is that Stephen A, even more so than a politician, is dependent upon the attention economy. You could argue he understood the attention economy before we even started calling it that. So if he thinks in his heart that there's a 5% chance that he's going to run for president, he has no incentive to tell a reporter that. And to your point, I think you have to ask him, you're good at getting attention.

Isn't this just an effective way for you to get attention? Yeah. Or draw attention to your non-sports properties like that stage show he's been doing with Bill O'Reilly and Chris Cuomo. Mm-hmm. Or his serious XM political show. Yeah. Aren't you just hurting traffic to those things?

Mm-hmm. Are you really running for president? And you almost have- creating content for those things, you know? It's just like if you can spend 45 minutes of your, you know, 10 hours on on the microphone a day talking about this and that eases up the rest of the law. We're talking about how to cover him. I think you have to say, look, he's good at playing the game and this could be part of the game. Yeah.

It's something you should tell the audience. Number two, Democrats historically have not nominated people like Stephen A. Smith. Go on. The party has not been hacked like the Republican Party has post-Trump. Remember, it's not just Trump at the presidential level. Herschel Walker was the party's candidate for Senate from Georgia in a very winnable Senate seat. Kerry Lake has been a nominee for multiple statewide offices near Arizona. Trying to go for another one, I think.

Go on. You look at the 28 field of Democrats. Look at all these highly credentialed people like Gavin Newsom and Josh Shapiro and on and on. I think it's a good question. I ask Stephen A., why would the party nominate you? Yeah. How would you convince Democratic voters who tend to face it? favor normie politicians to do that.

Yeah. Maybe he would argue that Trump has changed the laws of politics that would, in a way that would allow Stephen A to win the nomination or compete seriously for the nomination. I think that's true. I honestly think that he goes back to what I was saying before. I think if you asked him that question, you would say, these are not normy politicians. These are socialists. But I would ask the question.

Oh, for sure. In that interview, in the longer version that didn't air on CBS, he went through, you know, through Gavin Newsom, Shapiro, Westmore, and talked about their weaknesses. It was fascinating. Yeah. It was interesting to just hear him go off on that. But I would ask him that. Like, why would Democrats pick you?

Sure. Finally, Stephen A's talked a lot in this year that he's been talking about running for president about how it would have to be a groundswell of people that wanted him to run. Yes. Here's how he put it to Robert Costa. But when millions of people, if that were to be the case, come to you and they say that they believe that you're the one that can make their lives better in this country, you just can't sit back and ignore that. It doesn't mean I'm going to do it. It doesn't mean I'm going to accept it.

But as my pastor, A.R. Bernard from the Christian Cultural Center in New York said to me, you owe them the respect to think about it. So in the year he's been talking about this, we have gathered some data. It's not fantastic data because most pollsters don't register support for Stephen A. Smith. Yeah. But we do have polls like the McLaughlin poll, which have been measuring his support since the beginning of last year. Stephen A always comes in, 2%, 1%, 1%, 1%, 1%, 2%, 3%, for some reason in October, and then back to 2% this last month in January. So there is no evidence that there is a groundswell of support among Democrats.

He's a lot more famous than a lot of the people running for president are probably going to run for president. He has huge name recognition. And listen, I'll enter into this with an open mind. But like, my presumption is that he is not being 100% on the level when he said millions of People have contacted him and saying that he's the one that could change their lives. I think he was talking about it hypothetical, but go on. It sounded at first like a hypothetical, and then it became, it felt like it became present tense.

Kind of like the Atlantic article we're about to talk about it. But, dude, if there's a million people that have DM'd him earnestly saying, I think you could be the solution to this political morass that we're in. Only in journal on them. Thank you. Then, dude, I would love to interview one of those people

on this show. I would love to, I mean, that is really, that, I mean, I can't even imagine the personality type.

I mean, it's just a Stephen A. Smith super fan. But yeah, that's really, really bizarre work. One note of clarification

on the polls. If you look at the most recent McLaughlin survey, he's not polling that differently than West Moore. Cory Booker, Gretchen Whitmer.

Mm-hmm. Whom we would think of as fairly serious candidates for the presidency in 20. Who's number one right now? Kamala Harris. Oh, well, that's, okay. And there you go. Who's the first, who's the highest,

the highest rated person or the highest odds person that might actually run, you think? Newsom or Buda judge. Okay. No AOC. She had an interesting week. She did her little mini news cycle. A lot of equator talk with AOC. Yeah, I mean, I think you just got to ignore anything like that.

Like it would even like to the extent that it would affect any other candidates just sort of bonkers to see how much time that someone like her will have to spend listening to it. So just move on. But in all the interview was, I thought, really impressive. The idea that any Republican, potential Republican candidate could just sit there and answer questions honestly and openly for that span of time. and even with J.D. Vance, who only knows how to digress and deflect. Like, he doesn't answer any questions. Like, it's, she was really impressive, man. And I think she's doing a really good, someone pointed this out online, but she has a really good media strategy right now, which is, it's the opposite of Stephen A. Smith, which is just to say, like, none of this isn't about me running

for president. I'm not doing big profile pieces. I will always be there for the camera as I'm walking out of chambers and going back to my office, you know, like always have a, have the right answer for everything. But yeah, to speak on platforms like this and not just doing podcast interviews and news features and stuff, I think is a canny move to stay out of the spotlight until things get really urgent, you know, and also she's not going to get the Stephen A. Smith, like, no one's going to insist that anybody runs for president ever again, you know, no one gets to be the white night. But you get to feel a little bit fresher when the time comes. I think that's good. But yeah,

the Stephen A. Smith thing is, I don't know. It's just, it just, it just feels so hollow. Even if it's like, like if it's, if it's a, if it's a, if it's a, if it's a, if it's legitimately thinking about it, it's somehow even more hollow. Like, it just feels, it feels so bad. It's likely even more hollow if it's an actual presidential campaign rather than a bit. Is, is there a history of fake presidential candidacies? We could gin one up. Or fake candidates in general. Like, did Howard Stern only run for mayor or governor? Howard Stern was a fake candidate for a long time.

Was it mayor or governor? I believe it was governor. Yeah. Norman Mailer. Was that a fake candidacy when he was running for mayor in New York? That's a good question. Do we even think about things being fake? I don't know.

I'm glad you brought up AOC's media strategy. I think that was Dave Weigel who tweeted that. That sounds right. Yeah. And it's interesting. Or retweeted it and furthered it or something. Yeah, he was definitely part of it. Because we've come to think of being super available,

meaning I will do your podcast. But she's redefined it in a way of like, I will be on the steps at the Capitol after every vote. Yeah. And I will give you a minute of video, which will then surf all over X and everywhere else. Yeah. And get me seen in that way. Yep. But I will say no to the podcast.

And that's just an interesting hack of our system right now. It's actually pretty old school to come out and meet the cameras. Yep. but it's her way of sort of keeping her in the loop and as you say keeping her a little bit of fresh. You don't feel like you've heard a billion, 45 minute podcast interviews by the time she does whatever she's going to do in 28.

Let's talk about the Atlantic. Elizabeth Brunick, David, published a story called, This is How a Child Dies of Measles. Subhead when your family becomes a data point in an outbreak. It was written in the second person I had to go review what the second person was.

Very, very touchy and temperamental person to be writing it, not for all the wannabe journalists out there. The second person? We're just writers, yeah. You never trust that guy. I'll give you a paragraph here just to give you a sense of it. The birthday party invitation said,

siblings welcome, which means you can bring your 11-month-year-old son while your husband is out of town. You arrive a little disheveled and a little late. You are a five-year-old daughter, into the living room and you make your way to the kitchen wearing your son in a sling. You find a few moms around a table arrayed with plates of fruit, hummus, celery sticks and carrots, no gluten, no nuts, no red 40. These parents care about avoiding pesticides, screen time, and processed foods, and you do too.

The story written in that vein then describes a girl, the five-year-old, and then the 11-month-year-old boy developing a case of the measles. after they hadn't been vaccinated and all the effects that that causes. So you're reading this story, would you agree it is incredibly compelling? Yeah. Extremely, you know,

well written in the sense you just cannot wait to get to the next paragraph and find out what's going to happen in a terrifying way, especially as a parent. And then you get to the end and you find this sentence. This story is based on extensive reporting

in interviews with physicians, including those who have cared directly for patients with measles. So it's not a real story. It's not a specific story that's been dramatized into the second person or anything like that. It's just sort of an accumulation of possible scenarios. It reads like Brunexel, for her own story, if you don't know, if you don't know any better. Oh, she's telling her own story, yeah. But then you find out, oh, no, it's all. been just put together as in a kind of horrifying worst case scenario that speaks to our moment in

public health. Yep. Neiman Labs, Laura Hazard Owen interviewed Brunig and Brunig told her, it is a hypothetical account of a very real phenomenon based on careful reporting. I would place it somewhere on the creative nonfiction spectrum. Brunig also says, my job is to report the truth about the world and I use all kinds of literary and narrative devices to do that. I do it because telling the truth is important in its own right, whether or not anyone finds

it persuasive. I hope there's a sliver of a chance this reaches people who are really weighing these issues and making decisions about their children's health in real time or people who have friends and family weighing whether to vaccinate or people living in communities currently managing outbreaks. So what do you think of this use of a literary device or creative nonfiction? Well, creative nonfiction is probably the right, I mean, it's certainly the right category for it. It's interesting that you said it reads like Bernig's own voice. You know, if you're reading it for the first time, I think that's true. And I think that like second person is most suitable or perhaps singularly suitable for a personal essay for a sort of reflective creative

nonfiction piece, right? It's taking the personal and just tweaking it a little bit to make it universal by addressing the reader as the subject. It's difficult to do in just about every other instance, certainly in real news reporting. I mean, you can't just run the second person. Unless you're Jimmy Cannon, you're Mickey Mantle. Yeah, you're right. No, I guess that's true. I mean, you can get for pieces or whatever.

I mean, for small snippets, it can work. I got to tell you, I read through this, was totally compelled by it, didn't have an issue with it at all, although, you know, I'm reading it from a point of view of like, those thoughts were crossing my mind. Like, what is this actual, is this actually based on one person? Is this based on like a group of people? But it didn't bother me.

I mean, I could have, at no point that I scroll to the beginning or the end to look for an editor's note or to like get any, like I, I sort of immediately understood what I was reading. Even if it was one person's story or multiple, um,

especially as things sort of digress, digress as things sort of get worse and worse. in the last, like a third of the piece, it seems pretty self-evident that there's not a lot of like, I mean, this isn't necessarily like a specific person's story. I thought it was super compelling. Do you think the Atlantic wanted people to know that this was not a real story until they got to the end?

Because again, just look at the headline treatment. This is how a child dies of measles when your family becomes a data point in an outbreak. That sounds like a real piece. That does not sound like creative nonfiction. You can say whatever you want to about this, about this, you know, essay. I don't think there's any question of whether or not it's a real piece. I mean, this is the idea, the idea that the Atlantic is somehow, is somehow like, you know,

signed a code to only publish serious and straightforward nonfiction or something is, you know. I'm not saying that. I'm not ruling out creative nonfiction for anybody. I'm just saying that like when the, when, if you, if you a reader, not a media podcaster, but an actual reader clicked on the story. You saw that headline treatment and you started reading. Could you be expected to know

until you got to the end when they said what they did that this was not a real piece? I don't think so. I think you would have read it the whole way through thinking this was somebody's real story and not a worst case scenario story.

Yeah, I can see that case. I mean, speaking for, if your questions about the Atlantic, I think the Atlantic got exactly what they wanted. I think won this piece. They thought it was great and certainly passed muster for whatever their editorial guidelines are. And then at that point, they were like,

this is going to get more attention than if we are quiet about its veracity or about its reportiveness, then not. I think it's getting exactly the reaction they thought it would get. And it's working for them. Because so many more people have read the piece. If this piece is good. And like I said, I read the hell out of it and I learned a lot from the story. So I'm not saying it's not good.

Is it a lesser alternative to a real story about, someone whose child got the measles, that Brunig would have been able to report out with real details? No. I think in every other instance, I would say yes. No, and let me tell you why. Okay. One, because a real story wouldn't have the ability to list all of the possible negative outcomes,

right? I mean, there's just a sort of bandwidth or, you know, or likelihood, you know, a situation that'll come into play for a real story. But I think more importantly, I think, and not just because of the way it's blown up or been criticized or sort of gone viral, I think making it more abstract gives it more longevity. I certainly think making it more abstract

will get some people to read it that might be turned off by the real version of the story. It being too sad, it being too intimate, it being so I don't want to just like, ick, you know, like whatever. I have enough down stuff in my life. I don't need anything else. I think this really, it really opens up the possibility for it. And certainly, it makes it, it's assuming that everything in there like bears out as fact,

and it's not just like completely disproven, I think it has much longer legs being the way that it is. I think there's an element to every personal story where you say, oh yeah, but that was, that was February 26. You know, like that wasn't, like that's, that's not important anymore. And I think this kind of has more, it has more longevity. But it's a really reasonable question. I'm just trying to imagine a scenario where she gets on the phone with somebody who really went through this. And she's able to convince him to talk, which would be very, very difficult.

And is able to get that, maybe not that level of detail that she got in the story because she gets to imagine it. But is able to get something like that level of detail, especially about their decision making when it comes to vaccination. vaccines. Yeah. Would that have been a more compelling read? And she had just knocked it out of the park, which he's certainly capable of doing. Would that have been more compelling read than a kind of real fictionalized, creative nonfiction, whatever you want to call it? Listen, I think I think that I think the fact is that different people will have different answers to that question. I mean, like I said, when I read it, I didn't know one where, you know, specifically what the context was. And I thought it was fantastic and enthralling and and you know dude you and I had these conversations at like bars

when like James Frey was getting canceled or whatever it's like I don't I don't know that like that like kind of high level like critical thinking or like literature literacy needs to be a criteria that's imposed upon the author or the publisher you know yeah like sometimes sometimes the lie is a good though between saying this is what I did and not saying this is what I did. Yeah, for sure. This is the device I used. This is how I came up with this thing versus just not saying it at all and letting people kind of believe one thing or the other.

Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, by the time he was like out there talking about it, like he was himself the character. Like I'm not, but I'm just saying that like, what are we like, I don't know. I mean, I guess that there's a lot of people. I have not looked at all the responses to this. But there seems to be a whole lot of people who were saying readers could be confused by this. And not a lot of people saying, I was confused by this.

Right? It's kind of like the thing of like being offensive. It's like, no, someone has to raise their hand and say, I took offense. You can't just say this is offensive and punish a person if nobody was actually offended. What would media criticism be if we couldn't imagine a dumb audience that didn't get what you were trying to do? So, you know, I mean, I'm sure there are a million people out there who are like, I didn't realize until I got to the end that this was blah, blah, blah. But then you got to the end and you figured it out. Like, what do you wish you could have the last 20 minutes of your life back? Like, I don't really know what the, listen, I thought I thought it was a really well done piece. And I think that like as long as the Atlantic agreed to publish it, that seems like sort of like our conversation work here is done. You know, like I'm not that concerned about it. I think that I certainly think that, that. that, yeah, I mean, I think that the conversation about it is interesting from like a, from philosophical intellectual point of view. But I mean, let's let's stop like spending our time

feeling bad for the idiot readers out there who might be confused when confronted with the second person, you know, it just seems a little bit reductive. I'm with you that I'm all for more creative nonfiction. There are lots of different ways to skin a cat. Oh, yeah. And I know it's it's one of those things where I think if you're honest about what you do, what what you're doing, there's a lot of room. There's a big play pit. There's a big world out there. I don't know where that would run now other than somebody's own substack because

everybody's so pinched. But, you know, this is the kind of thing we would have done at Grantland, perhaps in different form about a different subject. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I think that there's, I mean, maybe the Atlantic has, is getting bigger and bigger until it's the place for everything. It's the biggest tint of literary establishments out there.

I was going to say edgy creative nonfiction is not perhaps the category I would have, you know, ascribed to the Atlantic, but. No. But you do get big enough. You can take chances. You don't have like Harper is doing that out there anymore, you know? The Atlantic picks up the slack for everybody. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I think in a world where people are, constantly fretting about the approval rating, unbelievable, you know, whatever, the trust rating of journalism. I hope that doesn't dissuade writers and editors from formal experimentation. Because I know that it does.

I know that this kind of thing is what's, there's some people sitting there saying, well, now they're going to realize this story's fake. No one's going to believe us anymore. Or stick to what we know and what we do well, or what the AI does well in the case of the Cleveland Plain. dealer. But I think for all to talk about trust, it's all about relationships. Like you were saying, too, in the Cleveland conversation, it's all about how you personally feel about your personal

news sources and making good, making better pieces is, is just a net positive. Arlington, Texas is his very own, Elizabeth Brunick. Oh, really? She went to Martin. Didn't we get crushed by them in the playoffs. We get crushed by everybody, Ryan. Sick and bears. Oh, no, that's my college alma mater. What was the panther thing? The Panthers, yeah, David. What do we say? You're off the wall of honor now, buddy. Did we have a claw? Was there, was there any kind of chant? Yeah, I remember. It's been a long time. Yeah.

Tributes, David, rolling in for Robert Duval, who died at age 95. Yeah. Saluting all the great movies. And eventually we came around to the movie, the paper. where Robert Duvall plays Bernie White, editor-in-chief of the New York Sun tabloid. I don't know what the right waiting period is after the death of a great actor like Robert Duvall, but perhaps we can now say that the paper was not a good movie.

Too soon. It's a good idea for a movie. Yeah. It's a really good cast. It's not a good movie. It's not a good movie. And I've seen people like Maggie Haberman in the past tweet about the paper.

And I understand, like, if you started working at the New York Post in the 90s, this spoke to you like shattered glass spoke to me. Yeah. I get it. Like every wrestling movie speaks to me, even though they're all going.

Yeah, there you go, right? Well, maybe we leave a few off the list, but you know what I mean. Mm-hmm. But I, like, I had tried to watch that when Finlay and I were doing on a list of, you know, media movies. He posted a piece from it last night,

or yesterday on Twitter. And I was just like, like, I don't know, man. It didn't work for me. I worked with one of the guys who was a co-writer too. And beautiful guy, Steve Kemp. There was one great scene in it, though. This is Glenn closest character, who's the managing editor of The Sun, is asking Robert DeVall's character for a raise. The people we cover, we move in their world, but it is their world. You can't live like that, Alicia. You'll never keep up. Now, if you try to make this job about the money, you'll be nothing but miserable because we don't get the money.

Never have, never will. So what can I say? We never get the money. Might have to put that on the 2026 press box button. Could be our mantra. We'll say more about Jesse Jackson on Thursday because our pal Joel Anderson is writing a piece

about him right now. Oh, yeah. So stay tuned for that on Thursday's episode. But right now, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Tuesday's headline about trash piling up on New York streets was the city that never sweeps. Today's headline comes to us from our friends.

Have you seen how much of a meme that whole thing has become on the right? Oh, my God. I saw John Podoritz, you know, tweeting about it on, I think it was yesterday. First of all, like, John Padour, it's like some number of these people know that they're just being ridiculous, right? Like, this is a very straightforward thing. Like, every time it snows like it did and it stays cold. Like, this is what Manhattan looks like. He's a Democratic mayor.

He doesn't know how to sweep the streets. And what on earth would he have been doing in his very short time in office that would have resulted in this, even if you believed it so earnestly? It just feels very knee-jerk. So dumb. Today's headline comes to us from our friend P. Marty. It's from the New York Review of Books, a piece by Ian Frazier, David, with the following subhead. About 26 billion chickens occupy Earth. but apart from the lucky ones in backyards,

most are condemned to the hellscape that is industrial farming. You thought the measles article was going to be depressing. I want you to think of Robert De Niro movies and Mark Harris novels, as you ponder, what was the New York Review of Books Strain Pun headline?

Mark Harris novels. What are Mark Harris novels? Hmm. Think about baseball. chicken chicken chicken chicken what if I spot you the word bang bang the am I trying to get the

are you trying to give me the book title here what is it I have no idea bang the drum slowly is the novel uh huh in movie so it's about chicken so it's bang the drum bang the drum leg slowly

drum stick yeah oh drumsticks sorry yeah bang the drumstick slowly All right. That's okay. Pretty torture. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Producta magic by Bruce Baldwin and Isaiah Blakely. Thank you, gentlemen. Follow us at the Pressbox spot on Twitter and Blue Sky and at Pressbox Ringer on Instagram.

Got some fun stuff coming up this week, David. I'm going to tape the February issue with our friend Amanda Dobbins on Wednesday. Yeah. That'll be out next week along with a fabulous David Shoemaker cover. No pressure. Yeah, don't assume too much. You got to wait until you see it. Our email address is Pressbox Ringer at gmail.com.

Hit us up with any funny headlines. Overwork, Twitter jokes, or anything else you see. David, next Tuesday, it's going to be you. It's going to be me. It's going to be Joel Anderson with our February editorial meeting, our three-man weave. And of course, there'll be more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.