The Press Box - Big Senate Races, the TB12 Primary, and a First Look at Ben Smith’s Semafor

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

In preparation for the midterm elections, Bryan and David check in on three of the biggest Senate races around the country, starting with Pennsylvania’s race between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, Ohio’s race between Tim Ryan and JD Vance, and Georgia’s race between Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker (7:46), before then addressing the embattled former prime minister Liz Truss (30:28). Later, they dive into the new media site Semafor that provides readers with “redefined news,” and attempt to decipher who the site is for (36:02). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mac Jones is ripped. Matt Patricia's calling plays. The Celtics are title favorites. And The Ringer has a new Boston show. I'm Brian Barrett, host of Off the Pike, the show covering all things Boston sports. I'll have shows multiple times a week covering your favorite teams and with your favorite ringer and local guests.

Plus, maybe Bill will stop by to rant about the socks. Follow off the pike with me, Brian Barrett, now on Spotify. Two weeks from Election Day, there's a lot of political news out there. Hmm. But there are also some shows. shadow primaries going on. Oh.

For example, Sean McCreech had a good New York magazine story about the Donald Trump versus Florida Governor Ron DeSantis battle going on behind the scenes at Fox News. Yep. But the most interesting example of this phenomenon is the TB12 primary. Oh, wait, TB12 like Tom Brady? Like Tom Brady. Go on. This was announced today in, of all places,

the New York Times, which featured the immortal and not quite New York Timesy headline, Tom Brady and Ron DeSantis are said to be on texting terms. Let me read you a little bit of the story from Reed Epstein here. Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl champion, has for years been the subject of public affection from former President Donald J. Trump. But according to Tim Michaels, the Republican nominee for Wisconsin governor, Mr. Brady is now on texting terms with another Republican. Seen has a White House contender, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.

Mr. DeSantis attended, and here is where the story gets very, very funny, a Green Bay Packers football game last month and spent part of the game texting with Mr. Brady, according to Mr. Michaels. We're sitting there, you know, we're watching the game and all of a sudden I look over and he's texting and he says, how do you spell Lambo? Mr. Michaels continued, I say, who are you texting with? He, Mrs. DeSantis says,

I'm texting with Tom Brady. Okay. I know this really isn't the point of the story, but a couple of things. One, in that, I don't know if this counts as the lead. It's the second sentence, but is doing a whole lot of work up at the top of this story. Tom Brady has for years been the subject to public affection

from former President Trump, but the Republican nominee for Wisconsin government, But Tim Michael is the Republican I mean for Wisconsin governor. But according to him, Mr. Brady is now on texting terms with Ron DeSantis. What is the but? Isn't this an and work there as well? Can that not just be the start of a new sense? I don't think they're mutually exclusive concepts.

And also, texting terms, what the hell does this mean? Like, I guess intuitively we know what this means. But, like, I'm on texting terms with my dentist. Like, you know, I'm on texting terms with my child's date. care. They text me and they're just like, hey, there's no, there's no nature walk today because it's raining. Like that doesn't mean I have some intimate relationship with them. But, and just to take it one step for, I mean, just one more point. I don't know the full context of their text message when DeSantis was at Lambeau Field, but I don't know, if you're texting somebody, if you got

somebody's phone number and you're hitting them up because you're at a place that you has some relevance to them. Maybe that's somebody that you're close with, maybe your unquote, texting terms. Off the bat, it sounds a little bit thirsty. You know, it's like, I'm looking for an excuse to hit up this girl I have a crush on and I'm in a restaurant that she used to work at, right? Like, you're just saying you have the opening. That doesn't mean you guys are in like a texting relationship or anything. It just means that you found an opportunity to use this phone number in your phone that you've been dying to use. Now, with all that said, Don't we think what this story is really about is that Donald Trump will be furious that Tom Brady is in a texting relationship of whatever nature with Ron DeSantis?

Well, maybe that's the point. Maybe DeSantis doesn't even have it. And he's just trying to get the word out there that he does just to infuriate Donald Trump. But yes, Donald Trump will be mad. And I think that that's, you're right. That's the subtext. It's weird that that's not the story. Hey, a thing happened.

The sort of thing that the former president will be irate about, even though it doesn't really matter to any other human being. It seems really unlikely that Tom Brady is going to weigh in one way or the other on the 2024 Republican primary for president. He did have the Make America Great Again hat in his locker. But then Jaselle Bunchin said that she and Brady did not vote for Trump. Yeah. That later, she put that out there. But do we think Tom Brady is going to become that 40-something divorce, say, who starts

getting into politics? You know, I saw this interesting YouTube video the other day. Yeah, I started listening to Rogan just for his MMA takes, and then the next thing you know, yeah, I think that's totally feasible. Giselle Bunchin doesn't speak for him anymore.

That might have been what was holding him back from getting into politics. Who knows? It doesn't make it. It's just this whole story is so crazy because you're right, that part is interesting, that Trump getting mad part is interesting.

The least interesting part of the whole story is that Ron DeSantis has Tom Brady's phone number, Right? I mean, it's like that part of it is like not interesting or compelling or particularly novel at all. I guess if it were like Tom Brady is giving Ronda Santa's campaign advice, that would be interesting, right? I mean, if there was something else to it, yeah, but texting, texting terms. Texting terms is a podcast that's never going to fly. This story has a fantastic kicker also involving Tim Michaels, Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin. he said when he was giving these remarks,

these, by the way, were over, these remarks were given at a public event that the New York Times obtained the remarks about Tim Michael. I was going to say, wait, this is, so this is a, he didn't just, how did they get this news? So Tim Michaels said this at a campaign event,

the New York Times was not invited to, but according to Reed Epstein, the Times got audio of the event. So it's audio acquired of an event. where a different gubernatorial candidate said that another gubernatorial candidate is on texting terms with Tom Brady. What? How many degrees of separation is this? But wait, but wait. Tim Michaels, who is running for governor of Wisconsin, said this as the kicker to his speech.

I'm hoping that when I'm governor of Wisconsin, I can text Aaron Rogers. Tim, you may want to check the Packers record. before you say anything you'll come to later regret. I like commander, excuse me one more time, Erica, three to one. I like quarterbacks who don't lose to the commanders, okay? Coming up on ye old press box, with Republicans and Democrats trying to get control of the U.S. Senate, let's check in on three of the biggest races.

Plus, we revisit the embattling of former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss and a very memorable tabloid stunt. And finally, former New York, Times media columnist Ben Smith has a new publication called Semaphore. Who's it for? We tell you. All that more on the press box, a part of the Ringer, podcast network. Media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Schumaker, and producer Erica Servantes here. You know, David, sometimes you look up and a major event in American life is happening sooner than you think. No, not the World Series. I mean the midterm elections. Yeah.

which are just two weeks from Tuesday. Republicans are favored to take back the U.S. House, according to 538. But the Senate is interesting. We know how important the Senate is if Biden is going to get anything done or any judge confirmed over the next two years. Democrats, according to 538, are slightly favored to hold the Senate. Though as Politico's Stephen Shepard has noted, polls have trended Republican for about a week now.

So let's check in on three big races. Number one, Pennsylvania, a state that is literally near and also very dear to your heart. Is it fair to say you kind of married into Pennsylvania? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it moved over here too. I mean, central New Jersey, but we're, you know, real close to the state line and spend a lot of time over there. Yeah, I am if I am not allowed to say that I, you know, I'm unaware that the, that the, that the midterms are coming up because I have seen, continue to see my fair share of. handmade woodhune giant Oz yard art on a very regular basis.

I like a good woodhune campaign sign. Yeah. Yeah, it seems to be the sort of, like, there were a lot of people that had Trump signs up well, well, well, past any hope of, you know, a recount or anything like that. There was an act of defiance for a while, but those sorts of folks, we're not going after the governor have now seemed to just dedicated all their all their artistic talents towards the letters O and Z. The Senate race there in Pennsylvania, which is rated as toss-up by 538, features Mehmed Oz TV

doctor, Republican versus Democrat John Federman, who is the state's lieutenant governor. They have their first and only debate on Tuesday. Federman, as we know, had a stroke back in May. He has said, I'm fully capable of serving, said he has no. cognitive damage and released a doctor's note saying the same thing last week. What his doctor did say is that Federman has, quote, symptoms of an auditory processing disorder. Meaning he can hear speech, but it's fine, it's hard, excuse me, for him to process it. So Federman has done press interviews and will do his one and only debate with Oz on Tuesday with closed captioning.

So he can read the questions and read Oz's comments and then respond to them. how do you think that is going to play within the confines of a television debate, and in this case, the only debate that these two candidates are going to have? How is the closed captioning aspect going to do it? Yeah. Well, he gave the interview to NBC News. Who was it? Was it Dasha Burns that did the interview where he had the closed captioning there?

And it didn't even occur to me at the time. Perhaps it should have. but if that was a sort of introduction to the closed captioning set up in some sense because there was a lot of blowback at the time Chris Matthews at there acting like an asshole as always on MSNBC

a lot of people had a lot of opinions about that at the time but if it was to sort of soften the surprise of seeing that in the debate I think that was a candy move that's politics I guess I think it'll be I think it'll, I think it'll matter in so much as it will take up a lot of the oxygen.

But I do think that it sort of, it puts, so isn't it so weird to call him Dr. Oz? Like, don't you, like, if he's elected, will he become Senator Oz? Yeah. When he leave the, will he leave his doctorhood behind or is that just? Senator, Dr. Oz? I don't know. It's still so hard to believe anyway, but go ahead. Also, you can't say Oz.

That just doesn't, it's just too confounding. It puts Dr. Oz in an interesting position where he can't just like harp on it the whole time. You know, he can't even make a snide remark about it? I mean, it just seems like totally off limits. But also, I mean, some of this is conjecture, but I'm guessing a lot of his most ardent supporters would expect him to point it out, would expect him to say something about it, you know, because that's what they're probably all doing, you know, privately. And what the Oz campaign and Republicans have been doing publicly? Oh, yeah. I mean, the Republican National Committee, this is according to Washington Post,

last week shared a montage of Federman's verbal stumbles with the caption, Does it sound like Federman is fit for office? One of Dr. Oz's own tweets, John Federman won't answer questions from voters. He won't debate more than once and he won't be honest about his health. So if they expect him to say something or make it an issue when the two men are standing there side by side on stage is because he's been making it an issue constantly. It's true.

And the campaign true. Yeah. And I mean, listen, there could be a book or an entire documentary about just the ad campaigns waged in the state over this contest. I mean, Oz's campaign has been, has been, Dr. Oz's campaign, Dr. Oz's campaign has released some of the most just bizarre video content that any, that American politics has ever seen. And so, you know, I mean, everything from like Monty Python style. weird animatronics to that notorious grocery shopping video.

But yeah, right, he set himself up for this. I mean, he's been, it really feels like that campaign has been grasping at straws for the entirety of the campaign. And you'll see this in a lot of the conversations that we're going to have today. And as we start talking more and more about these races, is there's this, you know, it's this question of authenticity, you know, and I'm not sure how much authenticity really matters

in politics. A lot of people have a lot of very strong opinions on it. I do feel like inauthenticity matters a whole lot in politics. And I'm not sure, and I'm not sure if that's an entirely different thing, but there is a distinction for me. And I think that in a time where the political sides are just so separate and where, you know, and people are just so unlikely to be sway, Likely voters are so unlikely to be swayed by anything a candidate says, let alone a candidate. It does sort of like slightly obscure the fact that someone like Dr. Oz wouldn't have made it past the starting gate in another era, right? I mean, you come in and people are like, hey, you don't live here really.

And that's the end of the campaign, right? And so there, but just so the sort of presumption that he's that he is a viable candidate, I think he's carried him a lot, but I think the reality of the situation, as you can see, by the way, his campaign acts over and over again when left up to their own devices, is just that they're just scratching and clawing to stay relevant. And even though political realities are keeping them afloat. You mentioned Dr. Oz's ads. The flip side of that, and Rebecca Tracer talked about this on the podcast the other day, was the ad campaign that the Federman campaign had over the summer when he was still recovering and was not able to go out on the trail.

they start cutting these very meamy, very funny in a lot of cases, Twitter videos, including one that has Dr. Oz and Dr. Nick Rivera from the Simpsons side by side making very similar sounding claims. That was an interesting because, you know, we always see this with politicians, right? They always have a tweet that uses the lingo of Twitter. This is, aha, yes. I remember the Hillary Clinton version of this. will own you on Twitter, delete your account.

But what Federman seemed to do was actually use those kind of tweets and little videos in a fairly effective way. And that sort of, you know, was a, that was actually a period for their really successful period for their campaign. Sure. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that stuff. And I do think that, you know, one would expect, or I think there are people who expected that sort of, you know, fight. to use a really overused phrase from the Federman campaign from the beginning. He seems he's a different sort of candidate. Maybe he's using some more forward thinking or more kind of modern, relevant political campaign techniques.

But I agree. I mean, I certainly wasn't limiting the novelty of all this ad war to just one side. The back and forth in the ads in this whole campaign have been just sort of wild. Speaking of authenticity or inauthenticity, let's talk. about Ohio where Tim Ryan, Democratic congressman is facing off with Hillbilly elegy author J.D. Vance. He's also a venture capitalist. This was not something that Washington Democrats thought was going to be much of a race. Ohio has trended away from Democrats since Obama won it twice. Trump won the state by eight points in 2020. Senate race is still

marked as likely Republican on 538. But Ryan has made it really interesting. and Ryan has made it interesting by sort of out-regular personing J.D. Vance. This was a paragraph from Matt Flegenheimer's piece in the New York Times about the clothes that Tim Ryan wears on the campaign trail. An Ohio State hoodie on Game Day. A T-shirt from Dropkick Murphy's, the Union-minded Celtic punk band for a recent speech at the AFL-CIO gathering. where he took the stage to Metallica's Inter-Sandman, untied white Nike's for a canvas kickoff in the Capitol, laced tastefully days later for a condolence visit to the Toledo Union Hall. So I'm still wearing the white Nikes for the condolence visit,

but I have decided to lace them up this time. And if you look at that article, the picture above that paragraph does even more work. For me, I mean, I don't know if this applies to everything. everybody, but he's wearing, if memory serves, a white button-down shirt, black tie, untie, I mean, loose, right? It's not tied-tight. And then a fatigued style jacket with a gray hoodie on underneath it over the button-down,

which that to me is the real measure of authenticity, right? Because I'm not, I'm only being half-joking here in that, like, we all, like, everybody can find a shirt and tie for a certain occasion. right? But where the rubber meets the road is what do you have to wear over that when it's a little bit cold, right? Maybe you have a blazer, but does the blazer fit under your coat? You're like your fall coat. If not, then maybe you're just going fall coat and hoodie over the button down shirt. That is authenticity. Is it kind of amazing that a candidate is out regular peopling? And of course, I use that phrase in huge air quotes, the author of Hillbilly Elegie? Well, I mean, I don't

really, I'm not exactly sure what the national consensus is on J.D. Vance, but to me, he's always been sort of full of shit. So I'm not, I mean, the whole thing, it's all been sort of a put on. The fact that he's here running for this seat is not shocking. But you see in all these races that, I mean, listen, politics is, I mean, people are getting the, when parties are identifying candidates, especially for big time important seats like these, there's a very central casting element to the whole thing, right? And you try to find, you find the person that sort of checks the boxes that fit, they can play the role. But I think what we're saying, I mean, honestly, across the board, Dr. Oz, I mean, and the ones that we're talking about today,

these races like Dr. Oz and J.D. Vans and it's just, they're not, like, there's such an inauthenticity to them, right? Like, it's they are, like, they check the boxes, but in such in the most just sort of like unserious like I don't know if it's more self-aware or less self-aware but the most like unserious sort of way you know I honestly don't is there anybody everybody knows that jd vans like flip-flopped on his opinion of Donald trump I'm going to use flip-flop very just like flippantly there no pun intended but like is there anybody that thinks that jd vans left up his own devices would like any member of the trump family like does anybody really think that he's come around on his friendship and his like opinion

of them as human beings? No way. Do any Republican voters think that? I don't think so. I mean, I honestly can't believe that anybody would think that deep would think about it. They want to vote for him because he's part of the team, you know, he's going through the motions and everything. But I don't know. I mean, and I

think that I think that on the other side, I mean, listen, you could say a lot about Tim Ryan, please read that New York Times article. I think it's really insightful. There's been a lot of good stuff written about him. He's a very likable guy. He's a very, like, average guy. And one of the things that he's buckling against in his campaign is the perception that he, too, was come out of central casting, right?

It's like when Kramer auditioned for Kramer on the, with the Seinfeld, when the Seinfeld TV show became a plot point in Seinfeld, when he's just like, oh, you're perfect for this. And Tim Ryan's like, no, I am this guy. Like, I'm not playing the role. But, and, and listen, I mean, he's had some, he's had some issues maybe from being too much. that yeah in his career and and who knows i mean he's it's not shocking to me that he's in the lead won't be shocking to me if he loses because i think at the end of the day i think there's a real question of how much the candidates can really possibly matter um but he is running ahead of trump's poll numbers some of that might be predictable based on the fact that you know trump didn't win and

but it is a midterm election and you would think that the republicans would have a would have you know, an edge and even with less people turning out to vote. It's hard. I mean, sure, I'm sure I have lots of bias and whatever, but like, it's hard for me to look at these two candidates and not to see like one of them is just a much, just a much better choice in a vacuum. And the fact that Ryan's, I mean, you know, running away from being a Democrat a little bit, just trying to be more of a centrist or whatever, I don't think that's particularly shocking. I don't think it's particularly newsworthy, but I do. I do think it'll be interesting to see if there's any way to tell him the post-mortons,

like, to which degree that really helped this campaign. One more for you, Georgia. Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is running against NFL and University of Georgia, legendary running back Herschel Walker. Yeah. Walker has also risen in recent polls per Stephen Shepard, despite the Daily B story that alleged he paid for a form. girlfriend to have an abortion.

One of the very strange features of this race, and there are many strange features of this race, is Herschel Walker claiming to have been a law enforcement officer. This is according to the New York Times, he told soldiers at Joint Base Lewis McCord in Washington state that he was a federal Bureau of Investigation agent, which was false. He has also repeatedly said in campaign stump speeches that he worked as a member of law enforcement, but he did not. Walker was debating Raphael Warnock the other night, and they had this exchange.

One thing I have not done, I've never pretended to be a police officer, and I've never threatened a shootout with the police. And now I have to respond to that. We are moving on, gentlemen. I have to respond to that. And you know what? So funny, I am with men,

Police officers. So what you can't see there is Herschel Walker reaching into his sports coat and producing a police badge or something that looks like a police badge. Turns out that is an honorary sheriff's badge from Johnson County, Georgia. Herschel Walker also has a similarish badge from Cobb County, Georgia. home of one legendary member of law enforcement that you and I both know and love, the big boss man. Yeah. So the moderator at this debate said, no, no, no, you can't do that, whether props are not allowed at the debate. To which Walker responded, it's not a prop.

This is real. This is a real honorary sheriff's badge. What would it have had to qualify as a prop to Herschel Walker's mind? Like if it had like squirted water when you looked at it closely Would that have made it a prop?

I know that that was we just got to this weird part. He's like no no this is not a prop This is the real honorary thing. But of course it's not real in any real sense. It's an honorary. This is like maybe slightly more

legitimate than you know the airplane wings our kids get when they fly on airplanes, right? That doesn't make them a pilot. But as far as, you know, when we're talking to our kids, we can tell them their pilots now. That's fun. That's fine.

Yeah, the New York Times notes that Cobb County also gave Dominique Wilkins similar status. He is a special deputy. Mm-hmm. So Dominique Wilkins could at the next NBA old-timers event, I guess, pull the sheriff's badge out of his coat pocket. as long as we're doing honorary things you know what i went to if i were a political candidate i'd get up on the stump and be like you know my my opponent says he is going to stand up to big business in atlanta well i happen to have the keys to the city of itlanta right here this will open

every lock in town that's fantastic and i will stand up to them in a way he cannot because i can actually access these buildings um i will say this I mentioned this to you off the air. We talked a lot in the last presidential election about how the right wing had just had memed and whatever else about Joe Biden's mental capacity to such a degree that he basically just like, all he had to do

was just like form a couple coherent sentences in the debates and he looked like a winner because they had just lowered the bar so much. Herschel Walker was not impressive by any metric except the one he'd set for himself. He was a lot more like the fact that he was was like actually answering questions that were posed him was made him impressive as not the right word but like passable in a way that I frankly wasn't quite expecting.

It's hard to know. His candidacy is just so weird. I mean, he's also a central casting candidate. I mean, he's obviously famous in his own right and accomplished as an athlete and everything else. But it might be the sort of casting that ends up working because he's got absolutely nothing going for him but his name, you know, I mean, he's not, I mean, I, you know, I don't think we should be too, too shocked that, that moral hypocrisy hasn't had more blowback than it seems to have had.

You know, I think Trump sort of like ended that conversation once and for all, but, you know, I think what's more surprising is Herschel Walker's going in front of cameras to defend some of this stuff and doing it and failing at it, you know, like, it almost seems like he'd be better off ignoring it. I mean, the fact that he's putting himself out there and just looking like a dunce over and over again. The badge thing, in some ways, was the perfect distillation of his whole campaign, but it's not, you know,

and the fact that he's gone back to the well on it so many times. Like, every time he's activated, like, no, no, this is real. And they're like, well, no, here's why it's not real. And he's like, yes, but it's real. You know, it's just like, I don't know if that defiance is attractive to certain voters

or if it's just sort of, you know, the votes are already cast in a certain way. I don't know. But it all does seem sort of, it does seem like they're sort of, it seems a little, I mean, especially in Georgia, it just seems a little bit just like a, like an artifice of a campaign, almost on both sides, because I'm not quite sure what the, what pieces are moving at this point, you know? Like, I'm not saying, I'm not arguing the campaign should end, but I'm not exactly sure what's like, what's affecting the polls. There was a move from the Walker campaign after that debate the other night that they were going to

make copies of the honorary badge and pass it out to everybody at a campaign rally. So we're going to make pretend copies of an honorary badge and then give it to all of our supporters. So you will have your Herschel Walker badge. Is it not stolen valor if the valor was gifted to you? If the valor is swag, is it no longer stolen? Yeah. I'm claiming to be an FBI agent. I don't believe he has the honorary FBI badge. Wait, he was an FBI agent too. Yeah. According to the very times.

It does seem, I'm not, I know that you can go buy toy badges, but it does seem like, I don't know, the police department might not be too stoked about someone just like making plastic replicas of their badges and handing them out by the hundreds to every, everybody in town. Seems like you get kind of confusing. You get kind of confusing. This is the place for the mandatory plug for our live show on election night. November 8th, David and I are going to do an hour plus on every race that is going down, or at least every one that we can get a sense of during that hour.

Three states that just mentioned, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, join us, watch our Twitter accounts that night. We'll give you a heads up when we are going to go live. One more for you, David, from the world of politics. This is from the UK. Liz Truss became Prime Minister of the UK on September 6th, and she was instantly embattled. Everybody was tweeting headlines at us, embattled Prime Minister Liz Truss, because it was the moment she became. There was a tax cut plan, plunging markets, etc.

Well, Liz Truss went from embattled PM to former PM in just 45 days. She resigned last week. 45 days in office. This was the occasion for one of the most successful tabloid stunts of all time. The editors at the Daily Star in the UK, that is a tabloid, needless to say in the UK, one of them apparently read a piece in the economist that had some metaphor comparing the longevity of a prime minister to the longevity of a head of lettuce. Lettuce you buy from the supermarket.

Right. So the Daily Star editor said, aha, this is it. This is the stunt. They sent a reporter to buy a head of lettuce, which costs 60p, according to the Guardian's account. They put the head of lettuce in an employee's home. They set up a video live stream so readers could check in and see if the lettuce was outlasting the administration of Liz Truss.

Did funny things like put funny lights above it, dressed it up like a Mr. Potato Head. etc. Amazing. All the while putting headlines on the front of the Daily Star to the effect of how long can wet lettuce Liz Romaine? Well, she didn't remain long. Her government collapsed before the head of lettuce went bad.

Wow. This is from The Guardian. Asked whether the tabloid had engaged in any underhand tactics to prolong the vegetable's life. A deputy editor denied engaging in doping. And one more beast. to this story. Did you see the book Harper Collins, UK, is about to publish about Liz Truss? Oh, yeah. The title is out of the blue, the inside story of Liz Truss and her astonishing rise to power

on the book catalogs for December. Yeah, it's too bad. So what happens now? Does that book get pulped? Does that book get rewritten and released in like six months as a book about the disaster that was the trust. You asking for the publishing industry angle here? Yeah. I mean they can, if the book has been printed, and I'm not sure if the book would have actually been printed by now, but if the book is, maybe the book is on the press,

maybe they haven't bound it yet. You could theoretically like change the title page, like change the title of the book, you know, fairly easily rebind, you know, throw those things together and have the same contents inside. you could even just change the cover, but I don't think anybody would do that without trying to change the inside too. I mean, I just don't know what the market is.

I don't know what the market would have been for that book anyway. It seems a little bit like a placeholdery book that you just sort of put out and see what the reaction is. So yeah, yeah. My guess is it would be something along the lines of, oh, well, they don't even do hard covers

in the UK that much. I mean, you could just, you could take a paperback or a hardcover and chop off the cover, take out the title page, republish it as a paperback. That's pretty standard stuff or publishes a new paperback and use the same paper. I guess he would do something like that. But I'm not sure what the market's going to be. It'd probably be easier. It might end up being even more cost effective just to pulp the whole lot and make this

a sort of, you know, change the, again, change the title, maybe add an introduction and make this a print-on-demand sort of situation. I like when they have a paper bag and they say new afterward from the author. We need the new afterward right now. Yeah. There's an important update to this story which is not the prime minister anymore.

Coming up at 30 seconds, did Ben Smith's new publication semifor reinvent the news article? Plus, David guesses a headline about the changes in cable news. But first let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Speaking of Liz Truss, David, do you think her one syllable last name inspired any puns last week? Oh, God, yes. Here are some of my favorites. The British government has a distinct lack of trust.

Trust falls. Yeah. Trust falls. Somebody tweeted that at us and there was an objection from some UK listeners that said, you know, the trust fall is not really part of a corporate retreat here in the UK. It's a more of an American headline about. What about like camp? Like I did that when I was a kid.

Yeah. But do we know that the UK has a trust fall? I don't know. This is my favorite via sportscaster and podcaster Kenny Maine. Trust the process. Trust the process. If Liz Truss's administration reminded you of that video of Ben Simmons shooting an airball, congrats.

You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, Dave, in the notebook dump, we don't get a chance to look at new publications all that often. But we got one last week. Semaphore, the brainchild of former New York Times media columnist Ben Smith and his partner on the venture Justin Smith launched. It has newsletters. Semaphore has scoops. like Smith's interview with former New York Times opinion editor James Bennett. What Smith says is Bennett's first on the record interview about his firing at the Times.

They even had a little piece from Max Taney, media reporter, talking about who will replace Ben Smith at the New York Times. Oh, I like that. I like that little inside, inside baseball. They promised the bylines would be as big as the headlines. That's true. Speaking of headlines, there are pun-heaval. headlines in semaphore, one of which I might ask you to guess in just a minute. We had some merry fun with Ben Smith's quote that the publication was aimed for this audience,

quote, there are 200 million people who are college educated who read in English. Well, I will say there is a very nice international bent to their stories. Checking the website out Sunday night. There's Ben Smith's column on Fox News lawsuits. And then there's a story about the BBC World Services Africa coverage. about Xi Jinping. It was about India and the media in India in an age where a lot of websites start up and go, let's take a popular thing and give you lots of stories about a thing that's already popular. It's nice to see a publication say, here's something we think is important that

you should understand more. And let's write about that rather than working the other way. I had a question for you as an art director. Yeah. What do you think of the design of semifor. Huh. It's a little bit busy, sort of deliberately old fashioned. Mm-hmm.

Not terrible. It seems it's kind of oddly, like my first reaction was not wholly positive, but you kind of stay there for a minute and I sort of like intuitively know what I'm looking at, which is more than I can say for some news sites these days. It does feel like it's conjuring up websites we visited in the late 90s on a dial-up connection a little bit. But I will say we've seen a lot of websites launch and they spend a whole lot of money on designing this very glossy looking website, which seems like not a great use of money in the era we're in.

Yeah. So if it's a choice between that and this, I would put this. You say website, I mean, specifically what you mean is homepage, right? Because what everybody is basically publishing for is, you know, your homepage is Twitter. Your homepage is Facebook. Your homepage is whatever other platforms that are, that's circulating your stuff. So in some sense, your homepage just has to, your homepage exists less and lesser people that, you know, have a bookmark and go to Sima4 every day. But people who follow the link to Sima4 and then like click the home button at the top.

and see what else there is for them there. But you're right. I mean, it's not, I think sort of being practical is more important than being flashy. I think that at least that's the decision that was made. And yeah, I think it kind of works. I'm much more interested here, I'm sure like most readers in the content

that I am in the design. The design works enough. Semaphore's editors did make one bold declaration. We're redesigning the atomic, unit of written news, the article. Right. So what that means in practicality is you click on Ben Smith's column about Fox News, lawsuit and the voting machines, and it's divided into parts.

One part is labeled the scoop or news, and that's the news of the piece. Then there's another part that says Ben's view or the view of whoever wrote the article. Right. And that's the opinion part of the article. Then there's a third section called Room for Disagreement. Basically, they have taken the time honored to be sure paragraph in journalism and made it into an event. Room for disagreement. We could be wrong here.

You know, this is keep in mind, we're telling you X, but keep in mind that Y exists as an idea out there. Yeah. Some of the articles also have a section called View from somewhere else, which is kind of an outside-the-box idea, outside-the-box opinion about the same issue. What do you think of dividing articles up and labeling their constituent parts like that? I'd be really interested to know

what the feedback they got was. I mean, I saw that first tweet where they said they were redesigning the atom of whatever it was, the way that we consumed news, and it all seemed very silly, very unnecessarily reductive in everything else. But the responses to the one tweet I saw,

I think were largely positive. And if that's the case, then I guess, you know, that's really what matters. Because I don't really mind it in practice that much. You know, there's, it's, and a lot of the news stories, it's just sort of basically drawing a marker line between like, you know, the lead or the opening few paragraphs and then the part where it just doubles back and tells you the backstory, you know, that's sort of the case, that's present in every article.

Also, the articles are all seen much shorter than just about anything else out there. And I don't think that's really, as long as all the information's there or an appropriate amount of information is there, I don't think that's a negative in any sort of way. Yeah, I mean, it feels a little bit overwrought and silly in concept. But like I said, in practice, I'm not like, I don't hate it when I'm looking at the page. So I guess that's really where they're, you know, that's really what matters. What do you think? I'm with you there. It read a lot better than I was expecting it to.

I was imagining this axiose like hellscape. Everything's divided these little sentences and little sections that remind me of me doing my first graders homework with her. Now give your opinion of this. Yeah. Now tell me another detail about this. Exactly. But the semaphore articles actually read pretty well. It was interesting how you could just sort of break down.

I mean, I don't know if you ever do that when you're writing a draft of a column, but sometimes I'll just write nut graph of it and then write it, just like organize it in my mind. And there was something kind of interesting about seeing those stage directions. Yeah. In the explanation of it,

they have this whole bit about how readers can't trust what are facts and what are a reporter's opinion and get a little suspicious that they're reading something and they don't know which is which. Yeah.

So maybe they like to have those things. separated out. That really feels to me like CNN chasing those nonpartisan news consumers they keep talking about. Where I'm like, there are people that say that. I believe that. I know people like that. Will people seek out CNN or semifor or some news outlet and read it because it's presented like that over all the alternatives we have in this world? I don't necessarily believe. that's the case? No, I could definitely hear some people in my family that are just like, you know what I like about fill in the blank site is that they really make it clear when they're giving you an opinion. I mean, it is, it does, I totally agree with you. And yet, and I don't

know who's going to the site, but I could definitely see the, I can definitely understand the allure of that as unnecessary as it might be. I do think this also all kind of goes back to the design. It's the sort of, you know, parchmenty color. Everything's in everything, everything, on the page, I mean, all the ink or whatever is in black, except for hyperlinks in blue. And even on the homepage where there's 100 different things going on, everything's in black. And I think that there is maybe something to this sort of design

when you have so many moving parts that it makes it a little bit more digestible. You know, that just a sort of very, very, very basic design makes you care less about the room for disagreement header popping up two-thirds the way through the article. You know what I mean? It's just all sort of flows together. But yeah, it's one of these weird things. Like I would hope there wouldn't be a need for this to sort of be, you know, part of the way that we digest news. But as like a placebo to get good news out into the world, I guess I can't, I can't get to up in arms about it.

No, I don't think any harm can come out of it, certainly. I just think as someone who came up through the New Republic opinion journalism, slate opinion journalism world, I always like that kind of journalism. Service journalism. No, not service journalism, just opinion journalism. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. That is reported and well considered and happy to say something that maybe readers don't expect you to say or not towing an ideological line necessarily. And when I look at semaphore's roster, Ben Smith, Dave Weigle, Max Taney, Benjie Sarlin, who I used to work with at The Daily Beast.

I'm like, I trust these people to make those distinctions. Every time you read an article, there's a certain level of trust there. if it's an opinion article, it's that the person has thought this through and come to the, in some of this conclusion. If it's a news article, you're also trusting them.

Because even if it's a 100% just the fax ma'am news article, you're trusting that they went out and got the facts. Or picked the right facts or presented them in a way that's not misleading. Yeah. So at some point, I'm like,

I trust these people to come up with something without having to label it for me. And I think, you know, Ben Smith wrote a column for the New York Times that was part opinion, part reporting. Yeah. It's really good. We talked about it all the time on this podcast. So it's just funny to see them going back to this thing to labeling it like this. And like I said, Ben's from a newspaper.

New York Times labels these things very clearly. Yeah. There's anything columny. It's a column. Mm-hmm. And everything else is a news article. And they're saying we need to go a step further than that and saying that even the analysis that's baked into a newspaper style article

needs to be called out as analysis as our view. And again, I don't think there's anything harmful about that necessarily. But I'm also thinking, like, is there really a public that is going to come to semaphore for that rather than great stories, good scoops, you know, interesting analysis, which I have no doubt they're going to produce? Yeah, I do think that there's a, that there is going, again, going back to the design, I do think that there is, I mean, an issue that we see pop up in other ways and other, both on TV and in print, where you sort of, you know, if, if you follow a link from Twitter and go to Semaphore and you find a news article, whatever site, you find a news article, and then you see related stories in the sidebar and you find yourself an opinion piece and it only says opinion at the top under the byline, then all of a sudden you're like halfway through and you're like, what the hell am I reading? This isn't news. This is somebody's opinion. And maybe. maybe identifying that throughout the course of the piece has some relevance in the way that we consume news nowadays. I don't know. But when you talk about the audience, it is worth, I mean, it would be interesting to know to what degree Ben Smith and the people around him felt that

it was important in launching a new site to redesign the atom of news and how much that was like the pitch to investors and how much of that is a pitch to potential readers, right? And just to change the perception of what you're doing. But I do think, that whole pitch sounds a lot like a thing that you say when you're planning a website, that then you have to sort of actualize and realize whether or not you realize it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. It still has to be an important part of the, of the, you know, the look and feel and push of the launch. Dude, if we're launching a website and we have two options. One is going to, one option is

David and Brian are going to write really good articles like David and Brian attempt to write all the time and turn good sentences and have, you know, interesting things to say about the various beats they cover. And option number two is we are reinventing the opinion essay. Yeah. We're going to pick number two because that's going to get us a lot more attention than number one. Yeah. So some of it is when you start a new publication, you just gravitate toward things. We reinvented the atom of the podcast when we launched this thing. Nobody we did, the ringer wouldn't let us say it out loud. So now no one knows. It should have been part of the PR push.

I remember when the Daily Beast was launching, and Benji Sarla, now if Semaphore can correct me any details that are wrong here. But we had something called the Beast Board, which was a group of celebrities, I believe, actually including people like President Clinton. And they would tell you in little tiny, mini blurbs what it is they were consuming. So President Clinton would say, I'm reading this amazing mystery novel. by so-and-so, you should read it. James Patterson, go ahead. James Patterson, probably. And then somebody else would say,

I just, I just cooked an Ina garden recipe. It was incredible, whatever it was. And it was going to be, you would get this curated selection of recommendation. And we were like, no log rolling. Absolutely no log rolling. Well, of course, it just immediately turned into log rolling. My good friend has written a book and it's amazing.

Yeah. And it either got canceled or just minimal. out of existence. But that was one of those things where I just remember that was like such a big part of the site. Oh, yeah. Eventually you're like, hey, what works? Oh, this doesn't work? Let us try something else.

Yeah. Also, this is taking way more, it takes way more, you know, work hours than whatever the replacement level version of that would be that, you know, you actually have control over. So yeah, this thing just evolve away pretty quickly. Got an email from a media friend asking, what's the deal with? all these media companies adopting anachronistic names. Semaphore, telegram, airmail, signal. It's a good question. To some extent, they're still comprehensible.

Like, you know, the target audience here, all the college-educated people, the Ben Smith reference, or presumably know what a telegram is, and what airmail is, They probably have to Google semaphore to figure out what it is. But these are all things that are still known quantities, at least in semi-distant memory, and that you can sort of own now, right?

We'll never have to think about, no, a semaphore is never going to come up in conversation again. A telegram might never come up in conversation again outside of the reference to the media entity. And so then you get to sort of like own a word that someone that, you know, history has already done the PR legwork for you on. Would you like to create a publication called Fax Machine with me? No, I just want to do micro-fiche. That's it. Microfiche.com. Microfish.

Investors, you can reach me at David at microfeach.org. We are reinventing the atomic unit of journalism at microfeesh. But yeah, I think that it's, I don't know. I think that's probably it, right? It also evokes some sort of, I mean, listen, everything in journalism is sort of retro, deliberately retro, intrinsically retro. And that's part of the beauty and what we do. I think that sort of, you know, evoking that is not necessarily a bad thing.

But, you know, at the end of the day, these are all a bunch of names that are up on a dry erase board when you're sitting together with your co-founders or investors or whatever else. And, I mean, certainly name, these sorts of names. names that you mention evoke a sort of warm nostalgia to us. It probably ends up getting more votes than whatever the more urgent options are and divisive options, you know? Speaking of something charmingly nostalgic, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strain pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about a winery and a time of global warming was the wrath of grapes. Today's headline comes from semaphore, David, the aforementioned

publication. Max Taney did a piece, an interview with Don Lemon the other day. I remember that CNN has moved Don Lemon from prime time to the morning show. I think that's all you need. What was semaphore's strain pun headline? Lemon. Oh, I was going to go with Lemon, but is it Dawn? Like it's the A.W. in like up with the dawn or up at dawn crack of dawn dawn dawn dawn and day break yeah now it's dawn lemon oh okay just dawn lemon oh now it's dawn that oh that's actually the headline now it's dawn lemon all right now it's don lemon he is david shoemaker i'm brian curtis production magic by erika cervantes again join us election night tuesday november 8th check twitter will be online will be

live for an hour, reinventing the atomic unit of election night podcast. You thought keeping 1600, David, had invented everything. No, no. There is reinvention to be had. Plus, I'll be back Thursday or Friday, and David and I are back

Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.