The Press Box - Charles Barkley to LIV Golf? Plus, a Face-Off at the LA Times

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Bryan and David talk through the recent news that Charles Barkley could possibly leave TNT to join LIV Golf. They discuss the impact it could potentially have on the tour, weigh in on this type of conversation being had out loud by media figures, and speculate on whether or not this deal could be made (5:35). Later, they dive into the recent dispute involving former Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Pringle after he published a new book discussing the influence editors had on his work at the Times (25:59). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke 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

I'm Derek Thompson, the host of the podcast, Plain English. We tackle technology, politics, culture, history, everything that's happening in the world, and why it matters. New episodes of Plain English drop every Tuesday and Friday on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, what's on your mind today? Well, I decided to talk about something uplifting. I'm being sarcastic. Did you hear about everybody at Mel getting laid off this week? I saw a tweet about that, yes.

So Mel is obviously an online magazine. They publish some really good stuff. A lot of writers I like are employed or work for Mel, right for Mel. They were shut down, I believe, less than a year and a half ago, rose from the ashes, restarted, now they're shut down again. Not what you want to see. Anybody, you know, in our business losing jobs in the day and age is cause for sadness and potentially alarm.

But the, not but, the actual experience of the shutting down, the shuttering made a little bit of news because it seems like everybody's, like online credentials at Mel were revoked during the Zoom meeting in which they were all laid off, which booted them all from the Zoom meeting

in which they were being laid off. And I don't know. Presumably there's some update to this that I'm not aware of, but what? I'm just trying to wrap my head around what could possibly be the motive for that level of sort of disrespect

during the farewell. I can imagine if you were like firing somebody from a job as like a sales rep and you didn't want them to take their client list with them. But why are you kicking somebody off email in the publishing? in the world of writing, in the world of journalism.

Edla is like the moment that it's happening. Is it, I just can't even wrap my head around what you're protecting against. It does feel like a very ham-handed version of the scene we see in the movies where somebody loses their job and then they are escorted with a cardboard box out of the office. Except in this sense, they were trying to time it dramatically. Like, they would hear the news that they know, longer had a job or had a gig at Mel. But then somehow this prevented them.

And this is the equivalent of like you were supposed to be in a meeting in the conference room to lose your job, but somehow your card key had been deactivated on the way to the meeting. Yeah. So you could not actually be told. Never mind that coldness of being treated that way. Where it's like, oh, I can't even get stuff out of my work email that I might need. Yeah.

Like I said, it'd be one thing. if there was a continued operation of some sort. If like the whatever, like the one holdover, the corporate side holdover wanted to directly communicate with all the freelance writers and say, I hope our relationship's still good so we can continue forward. We just fired all the stat.

But that's clearly not what's happening here. I don't know. It just seems very, very bizarre. Especially, even if there's remote, even if there's like some justification for it in their minds, like, you know that the world is going to be hearing about this on Twitter. Like, what on earth would you be thinking?

From everybody. Yeah. From everybody who has absolutely nothing to lose now for telling the world what kind of employers you were right at the last moment, this horrible moment of losing their job. Right. I mean, to be humane in those instances is in some instance is a matter of law, right? I mean, there's some level of obligation to your employees. But like, baseline humanity isn't that difficult, right?

I mean, it just seems, well, I guess it's proven to be an obstacle for employers in the situation over and over again. I just failed to understand what on earth the purpose could be for treating someone like that. So you and I, by hosting a media podcast in 2022, are faded to talk about layoffs and firings and crappy treatment by superiors in this broken industry we work in. Should we set this as the new low bar? Yeah, this might be it. I mean, I feel like we're inevitably forgetting something, but yes, I mean, this is... So this is the bar now. When we talk, when we have another one of these discussions about employees,

journalist employees, and the way they're treated on the way out the door, this is going to be the bar. Well, a friend of the show Scott Tobias tweeted when it happened, that someone should compose a ranked list of the most graceless, classless, craven ways that digital media companies have laid off employees saying that this is Mel is going to be on the list there somewhere. You got meld right at the top of the list. Coming up on today's podcast, David,

live golf has a new target. It's not a golfer. It's Charles Barkley. We will look into a spat between a reporter and former editors at the LA Times, all that and much more on the press box, a part of the ringer. Podcast Network.

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Servantis here. David, we've talked about Live Golf on this podcast, which has used money from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia to pull some of the best golfers and some of the guys who used to be the best golfers away from the PGA. Live is now targeting TV announcers. They got golf announcer David Farity away from NBC. That story was broken in New York Post last week. Now they might be on the verge of landing a much, much bigger broadcasting fish. Charles Barkley.

Charles Berkeley, as you know, is not a golf announcer. But he's a golfer and he's funny on TV. So the thinking seems to be, well, if we can get him to be a broadcaster on Live golf events, that will make our broadcast more entertaining. And that might actually get us on TV because, reminder, live does not currently have a television contract. So any coverage you will see that will be on YouTube or Facebook Live or something like that. What do you make of Charles Barkley possibly going to live golf?

Well, I think the fact that we're having a conversation about it kind of shows the plausibility of the plan, right? I mean, we're talking about Charles Berkeley because Charles Berkeley is a figure that we would pay attention to when he's doing a thing, particularly a new thing. Charles Barkley you know covering golf hosting you know being the play by play or color commentator on a golf broadcast

is certainly as appealing as like watching Tom Brady play golf right I mean it seems like there's the allure is pretty self-evident you say Tom Brady I bet if we looked at the bottom third to bottom half

of the live lineup this week at Trump Bedminster in New Jersey. I bet hearing Charles Barkley talk on TV might be more entertaining than watching a lot of them play golf. Sure. Actual professional golfers.

Mm-hmm. I mean, not to take anything away from the golfers who signed up for live as players. I mean, obviously they're not, you know, the absolute peak of PGA, PGA competition. But, yeah, I mean, I think that, frankly, one of the things that a competitive golf

whatever federation organization has going for it is that golfers are by and large not household names in the way that the stars of other professional sports are, you know, with a few obvious exceptions. But if you were, you know, if you were creating a golf company, if you're, you know, if you're creating a place, a thing like live, again, setting aside the sort of moral issues with the backing and everything else. To get the biggest names attached, you could kind of trick the average viewer into thinking they're watching

an incredible golf broadcast. It doesn't actually matter whether or not you have the best two or five or ten golfers in the world, right? If you have Charles Barkley and people are paying attention, then what's the difference? Or what if you could trick them into thinking

they're not watching a golf broadcast at all? Well, that might be more insignificant, yeah. Because if you went and got Jim Nance, I think Jim Nance would never, ever, ever, ever go to live. But if they went and got somebody like Jim Nance, you'd be trying to give Live Golf credibility as a golf tour. For all the questions about the quality of play, the three-day tournaments, all that state would be like,

here's a guy you associate with major golf offense. So this gives us golf credibility. Charles Barkley seems like it's more an idea to give them credibility as a TV show. Full stop. Yeah. A sports TV show. where a guy is saying entertaining things. And it's about golf, maybe,

or maybe he's just freestyling on there about whatever he wants to talk about. I kind of see that being how it goes if this happens. Rather than Charles Berkeley giving you lots of golf analysis. Barkley had dinner last week with Greg Norman, who was heading up to live tour. Here he is explaining his thinking about a possible jump to live on the Dan Patrick show.

Listen, and I'm not going to get on here and say, it's not about the money. Of course, it's about the money. I think a bunch of the live guys, they're so terrified to say, it's about the money. It's alright. Everybody's taking a job for money.

But they're so afraid that, first of all, people are going to talk bad about you anyway, a certain percentage, but most people I talk to my close confidant, they're like, no, man, you've got to sit down with them, listen what they're offering. And before you, I know you love TNT. But, you know, they're giving guys $200 million, $150 million, $125 million, $125 million, $125 million. I'd be stupid not to listen to that conversation.

So really interesting kind of shaming going on there. Because as Barclay points out, because of the nature of the live golf tour, where the money comes from, the exercise and sports washing that is happening with this tour, a lot of people have had a lot of merry fun making fun of the golfers who get in front of the cameras. and can't just say, I'm doing this because there's a whole lot of money at stake. I am crossing this moral boundary because I want the money. They say stuff like, oh, I want to grow the game. I think this is wonderful for the sport. We've heard all the hilarious excuses that don't involve the word money,

whereas Charles Barkley is coming out and actually shaming them saying, no, no, no, I am going to consider this offer I might get from Live because of the money. Yeah. I am the one who is going to come out and say this, unlike you golfers who get up there in front of the press and are too worried to say this. There's just a weird double bank shot happening there about the morality of this whole thing

and about the explanation that you would offer for entertaining an offer like this. Yeah, I mean, there's an incredible amount of value in that, I think, for them too, right? because the money is, the money argument is just reality. I think that, I don't know. I mean, I think that there's, I think that having Charles Barkley be willing to say it out loud, I think probably helps the case.

On Patrick's show, Barclay gave Liv a Thursday deadline to make him an offer. Dan Patrick was sort of trying to guess how much Charles Barkley makes from inside the NBA on Turner and then from his annual sponsorships. Patrick put a number of about $20 million, which Barclay sort of not an agreement, said that was a little less, it was a little more than that. So figured Charles Barclay makes 20-ish million total

for TV and sponsorships. So a Live offer, which may put some of those sponsorships in danger and maybe even put TV in danger, more on that in a second, would have to be a lot. Barclay told Patrick, though, it has not been easy waiting for live,

to blow him away with an offer. Here's what he said about that. How would you sum up this past week with the rumors about you joining the live tour? It's been very stressful. Not going to lie to you. It's been a lot of, it's been tough. I'm not going to lie because, man, it's hard.

Sitting back hearing everybody, because I don't know anything, to be honest with you. I met with Greg. He asked me, was I interested? I said, of course I'm here. I wouldn't have dinner with you if I wasn't interested. And I'm waiting for them to make me an offer, I guess.

But that's all I know so far. But it's been very stressful on me. Maybe not the most stressful thing in the world, David, waiting to see if this organization makes you a gigantic offer. Increases the already gigantic pay you get from Turner doing several television commercials. Let's just put things in perspective a little bit. Can I tell you one thing? find really weird about this story?

Yeah, tell me. There's a lot of it that just remains unknown here. One is Will Barkley go to live? That is itself a big story. The second part, though, is, will Barclay go to live? And therefore, that means he can no longer keep doing inside the NBA, which is a huge show in our world. He's the biggest single part of that show.

It was animated by Dan Patrick a couple of days ago that maybe he couldn't, because Barkley clearly thinks maybe he can't do both. But we don't know that yet. That has not been put on the table yet. Barkley told the New York Post in a perfect scenario, I would love to do both. I don't know how Turner's sponsors are going to feel about it. I know there is going to be some blowback. So we're sort of investing this story with meaning in two different ways.

One is that Barkley would go to live and that creates the same kind of moral questions that it has with every golfer that's gone to that tournament. but two, that that would just change television in some way. But it's unclear if it really will at all. Because that's the interesting thing about Barclay, right? He may be the single, one of the most cancel-proof people in public life. Would you agree with that statement? Yeah. He said a million things.

And Turner stood by him and put him back on the air the next day. Yeah, I mean, there's also just the contractual question. I mean, if you're Charles Berkeley and as you said, the value of Berkeley is not necessarily in his specific dedicated knowledge of a sport and more than the personality thing. Well, certainly he could have contracts with two different organizations setting aside all the aforementioned issues, cancelization and whatnot. But one would assume that you have some measure of control over Charles Barkley's commentary presence in general if you have them under contract for one thing, right? It's not exactly. It's not it's not like I have a carve out to do a media podcast from my Turner deal, right? I mean, this is just me doing another thing and potentially watering down the Charles Berkeley brand, you know, potentially taking viewers who need their weekly Charles Barkley fix away from Insighton.

of the NBA. But this is the thing about Barclays. He's seemingly available for anything in addition to his work on Turner. Sure. He was on multiple hockey shows this year, including, I believe, the ESPN, H.L. Pregame show during the playoffs. Like, oh, let's get Charles Barclay. I joked on Twitter what time that Charles Barkley is available for the premiere of any sports talk show. If you have a first show, including the Manning cast most recently, we've got Charles Barkley here. Doesn't matter if it's on another network. Doesn't matter if it's on one of Turner's competitors. Charles Barkley is

joining us. Well, he's not getting paid for that stuff presumably. Maybe he is. No, maybe. But you know what I mean? Yeah. Lending his fame and everything else. I will say this about the issue of him going to live golf. We talked about the idea of sports washing before. Essentially, the Saudi government

saying, our human rights record is bad. Our agents murdered the Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi, but hey, here's a golf tournament. Enjoy this golf tournament with some of the biggest names in the game. Barclay feels like a weird

attempt at a second level of that, whereas there's all this queasiness, right, about, ooh, should I watch this? How should I feel about watching this? Okay, we're going to put a funny announcer on television to make jokes about it. And that's almost

the second level of it, right? So then if you were queasy, still queasy about it, even after seeing a lot of your favorite golfers defect, oh, well, this guy's going to distract you, right? This turns into this comedy show. And you forget a little more about the questions underlying

the whole thing. Yeah, I think that's right. You know, Charles Barclay, like many other people, but I think above anyone else, is the sort of announcer that you feel like you know, right? I mean, it's about the personality. Like, we've talked about podcasting in the past. It's about

despite his celebrity and his income and everything else, you feel like you know the guy. And talk about queasiness, I mean, when you talk about feeling queasy about watching some broadcasts like that, part of what's implicit is like, man, I don't, like, I don't know anybody that's watching this. I don't, I, you kind of

need a friend or someone to go first to, to, to allow you, and I'm not talking specifically about this, but anything to give you the go ahead that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, it's okay to watch it. And give you permission. Yeah. It's a permission structure, I think they call it. And if your good friend Charles Barkley is out there enjoying the show, then I think that allows a lot of people to sort of break from the whatever, the moral argumentation going on on their own heads.

That's clearly what Liv Golf is counting on by courting Charles Barkley. There's one more part of the story that I find very interesting. It is a media personality, in this case Barclay, wondering aloud about his future. Have we talked about this phenomenon in the show before? No, we may have. Go on, though. Every so often you see someone at a career crossroads, which usually just means their contract is running out. And you get these headlines. Here's some recent ones, David.

Rich Eisen, the original face of NFL network, is poised to hit free agency. ESPN's Cheney Agamika is poised to hit free agency. Now we have Charles Barkley giving interview after interview. Look, I might have this giant offer from Liv. I might have to leave inside the NBA, a show I help create and turn into this absolute behemoth in the world of sports television. Not to mention, David, Charles Barkley saying, almost once a year that he is thinking about retiring from television. You know, I've often said, I only want to work till I'm 60.

So I think this will be my last contracted inside the NBA. Yep. Every single year that gets aggregate. Oh my gosh, Charles Barkley could leave. It's like, yeah, I heard that. He says that every single year. But what's funny about wondering a lot about your future is, there's a real thin line between going out there and, you know, giving,

interviews to reporters, giving honest answers to reporters, and actually just negotiating in public with the various companies that want you. Yeah, and this could be obviously either of those things. Because when you talk about this stuff, to work up the drama a little bit, you increase, you know, maybe a little bit of the company's desire to come get you. Hey, I got a big decision to make. You know, I honestly don't know where I am right now. I mean, Shirley Turner is, you know, his head meetings as soon as they heard that,

was like, what can we do for Charles Barkley? This is an interesting one, though, because presumably Liv can offer him more money than T&T could possibly offer him. It's not about like getting T&T up to market value or something, right? Sure. But could they say, hey, you know what? Charles, a lot of stuff's happened in the world of announcing over the last couple months. We're paying you 10-ish million according to the New York Post to do Turner.

Tom Brady and those guys really changed the scale. What if we tear up those last two years into contract and give you $18 million? Yeah. I'd not be live money, but as a gesture of goodwill to say we really want you to come back here and not do golf. Yeah, that makes sense. there are things that can be done. But again, I always love, I'm just wondering a lot about my future. Troy Aigman was an absolute master at this when he was thinking about jumping from Fox to Amazon and as it turned out ESPN.

Yep. I'm just giving honest answers out here. Okay. But those honest answers should be seen as being part of the context of a negotiation. Thinking about what I'm doing. One last note, I found this in Andrew Marchand's column in the New York Post. Marshan writes, before taking the meeting with Greg Norman, Barclay consulted with Michael Wilbon, Mark Cuban, Amad Rashad, and Bryant and Greg Gumble. These are guys that have mentored me throughout my career, Barclay said, I got all their opinions on it and they saw no problem with me taking this meeting and I'm glad they did.

what do you think Ahmad Rashad's advice to Charles Barkley was like when he asked him about taking a meeting with Liv? Oh, well, I don't have an Amad Rashad's shot impression, although it feels like I spent so much time with him over the years I must somewhere deep down. I don't know. I don't know. I actually can't quite wrap my head around what anybody's advice would be. I'd kind of like to ask all these people what they think about working for a live is taking the meeting is one thing

you can take a meeting and turn something down well yeah and I'm sure part of a lot of the advice was that just like hey why not take the take the meeting right is that's what they have to say yeah and then we can talk about it some more but in terms of like what you would what to actually do I mean I think that there's a lot of people

who would just say take the money you know. It's easier when you can say I need to take care of my family or whatever but I think a lot of people would just straightforwardly say take the money. You know, why not?

If you really want to talk about basketball, start a podcast. Do it for free. You know, whatever. I'm sure Liv would figure out some platform for you. But I'm sure there's some people who would be opposed to doing it at all, you know?

Inside the NBA is what helped make you this level of Star. It's the best place for you. You're making plenty of money, or especially if you get a raise to be making plenty of money. No reason to rock the boat,

et cetera. I'm sure there's a lot of people. I'm sure some of those people we talked to had moral concerns about sports washing the situation. I want to talk to you about an editor versus reporter

face off at the LA Times, David. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media at Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Senior nominees to at the press box pod where they are always

gratefully received. Today's joke, David, comes from valued listeners Terry McDonald and WHS, excuse me. It involves Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. You remember Holly giving the closed-fist salute to the January

6th protesters that was captured in that famous photo. On Thursday, the January 6th committee revealed footage of Holly sprinting away during the sacking of the capital. Sprinting away. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, he flew

the coup. He flew the coup. We would have also accepted he's running. Shout out Dave Weigel. If you had some funny jokes about Josh Holly, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right. In the notebook,

David, on the matter of writer versus editor or editors. There is a new book out. It's called Bad City. Paral and Power in the City of Angels. I might have just done one city in the head and subhead, not gone back to the word city, but that's a small note. Paul Pringle is the author of Bad City.

He's also a reporter at the Los Angeles Times. Back in 2017, he and four other reporters published a blockbuster story about the dean of USC's medical school. Dr. Carmen Puliafito, who, quote, kept company with a circle of criminals and drug users who said he used methamphetamine and other drugs with them. That's from the story they published in the paper. They also reported that, quote, a 21-year-old woman had overdosed in his presence in a Pasadena hotel room. This is the dean of the medical school.

Led to a series of stories. Pringle and two authors won a Pulitzer, but there is a dispute arising from that new book because Pringle charges that his L.A. Times editors got in the way of those stories. According to the L.A. Times' own review, the newspaper's top two editors, Pringle writes, repeatedly cut defang and in one case moved to spite the stories, Pringle is working on to bring to light. So there's the story of the reporting, and then there's a story of intrigue inside the paper. I should note that none of these editors work at the L.A. Times anymore. Pringle's book got good reviews in the New York Times and in the LA Times, but then one of those editors that he named in his book got on medium and wrote a post about his allegations.

The other's name is Matthew Doig. He called the allegations utter bullshit. And he said he could show that they were utter bullshit because he still had all the story drafts, including drafts with his handwritten comments on them. from the reporting of this story back in 2017. Wow. And all the emails, which many of which he posted and said, look,

they say we tried to defang the story. Here's me writing, we need to hit this harder. By the way, classic editor speak. We need to hit this harder up top. This sentence needs to be tougher, showing,

pointing out things that he asked the reporters to go look for more information on. so now we're in this weird kind of there was a good story at pointer dot org about this i believe they're probably going to hear many more stories that tried to untangle what the editors did and what the reporter did and how those stories it came to be um but there's a couple of interesting things here one is it gets back to an idea you and i've talked about before are books fact checked in this kind of way certainly depends on the book. Some books are, by and large, they're not.

I mean, I don't know if there's been a sea change in book publishing. I don't believe that there has. But usually there is a copy editing process, a fairly thorough copy editing process, but not fact-checking in the way that, you know, a magazine like the New Yorker is fact-checked. generally that onus is on the author if they want it to provide something that is factual it's contractually the author's obligation although it's generally the publishers guarantee that they will defend them legally if if anything in the book that leads to a lawsuit the indemnity stuff I mean it's it's all sort of tangled up I mean I think it's mostly I think it boils down to the fact that

to fact-check something like you would, a magazine, like, you know, a high-level magazine article would just be, if not prohibitively expensive. I mean, significant a cost enough that it would affect the publication of every book. And so most publishers don't do that unless it's, you know, a really specific instance. Here's a related question. So if this guy's at the L.A. Times and he has a tough investigative piece that it makes some serious accusations, there's an editor there. In fact, as we learned from this whole back and forth,

a layer series of editors who are saying, do we really have this? Is this right? What does this person say about this? Can I amend my statement? The publishers that I've worked at, while they didn't have dedicated fact-checking departments, or certainly fact-checking that went on,

but they didn't have dedicated departments. They did submit books like this for legal read on a regular basis, which is not at all the same as fact-checking. but it does are we going to get sued but it does accomplish some of the same results which is to say that on a in a book such as this which is impugning the integrity of living persons on a big scale obviously I mean a big platform yeah the lawyer would write back and say is there can we instead of like you see the notes in the in the in the piece from the editor that you were talking about before is like can we make this can be more authoritative about

this, can we get more sourcing on this, whatever. The legal read, for all intents and purposes, goes the opposite direction. Can we say this more vaguely so as not to specifically be liable for the accusation? Is there a way that we can put this

that falls within the realm of conventional wisdom or whatever? And so, yeah, so some of that, I mean, so there is a measure of protection that they see to, but you're right. I mean, it's not certainly not the same thing

if it was published by paper. And by the way, sometimes that's the argument. I mean, that's the in-house argument, too. Well, it's already been fact-checked by the newspaper that published this stuff the first time around. He's just kind of rewriting it. So that's what's interesting to me about this.

Because I know from living with you you and having been your friend for years and years that if a publisher wants a book based on something a series of articles that have already appeared like this, they're going to want some element in addition to what already appeared in the newspaper. Like there are more, there are further things to be on earth tier, further revelations,

or in this case a parallel story like not only here is what happened at USC, but here's what happened inside the newspaper as I was publishing the story. So that stuff to me is like, it hasn't, by definition, hasn't gone through the rigorous newspaper vetting process because it's new to the book.

Yeah. And I think that, well, I mean, obviously the motivation of every publisher kind of varies, but the, you know, sort of tried and true conventional wisdom is, yeah, you need something that makes it new, makes it exciting.

I mean, obviously there's some copyright issues, too, or a lot of the times that you cannot publish verbatim what was published in another spot. And even in the instances you have, find a way to flesh it out, right? Like a New York, like a, like, whatever, the Lost City of Z. It could be like a historical piece in the New Yorker and then you add the travel element for the book or something like that, you know.

But when you think about even that example, it's just like, well, the travel element's really hard to fact check, right? I mean, even if for the New Yorker, that'd be hard to fact check. So certainly there are, yeah, I mean, it's a very, it's a very complicated issue. And you're right. Whatever you add, whatever you change is not protected, you know, by whatever fact-checking has gone on before. I guess what's interest me is like, is there a Michael Keaton and Spotlight character at books? A lot of books are investigations, you know, into complicated, difficult subjects.

So does the book editors work like that? They're like, let's go get this story. Okay, you have it here, but this part's fuzzy. We need to send you out to do more reporting on this. or you need to get me a last name of this person. You need, you know, you need to put names and dates in this section because I don't believe you totally, as a reporter, understand what's going on. Does that person exist at publishing houses?

Well, there's definitely instances of that, for sure, for sure. I mean, good editors will, you know, see the holes and ask that they be fixed. And then obviously, there's even bigger versions of that where, you know, someone turns in a manuscript and you're just like, this is not there, you know, this is not done. You can go back to the drawing board and here's my advice for starting over where we can tear up the contract or whatever. I mean, these things happen all the time. That said, for better or worse, book publishing up and down the org chart is an advocacy job.

You know, it's different. It's actually, it's evolved into something different than, you know, what exists in the journalism world or whatever. I mean, it's, you know, an agent, agents obviously have more power now than they ever have in the past, but an agent helps the writers sort of develop a pitch for a book. And then the pitch goes to a bunch of editors who bid for it, who spend their employers money to earn the rights to say, this is my acquisition. And then it's their job to promote the book in-house through the process and upon its publication to make the case for it, to the sales reps, to the marketing staff, to the publicity staff, to build the hype for their own book. If you go in and you say, hey, I was really excited about acquiring this, there's some real shoddy reporting that we're trying to fix. But don't worry, I'm going to hammer it out.

No, all you're doing is you're directly affecting the sales, no matter when the book eventually comes out. And by virtue of that, you're affecting your own reputation, right? Whether or not there's, you know, if a book's full of lies and book A is full of lies and book A and book B is true, but you can sell a million copies of book A and never get caught, that's what everybody is encouraged. Well, not directly encouraged, but there's a motivation for that because you're the editor who published a million selling book.

One of the interesting elements here is that there were two reviews of this book in the New York Times and the LA Times, both very favorable. And they, again, they mentioned some of the denials in the case of the New York Times, the denial of the accusations by the editors

at the LA Times. But the critique that was in the book went into the book review. The book review repeats the critiques leveled in the book. So if there's a whole, hole in the fact-checking chain here, starts at the level of publishing the book, then it gets into a newspaper, which does fancy itself as fact-checked. And as we see, the story is at least

much more complicated than it was, you know, than it, or perhaps, let's say, there is more to say, there's more to write, there are more people to quote and drafts to look at and documents to handle before you publish whatever you're going to publish. I just thought that was really interesting. Yeah, it definitely is. And obviously, I'm being overly, you know, harsh on book publishing. It's a world that I love. But yeah, this story in particular is very nuanced. And I think everybody should track down these pieces and read about it. I think we need to remind press box listeners, David, of something you and I hold dear on this podcast, or at least I hold dear, which is the two-step journalism job announcement principle.

seen a lot of people recently changing jobs in this industry. And again, happy days, right? You're going from one job, which actually exists, to another job, which actually exists. That's great. But I still do not understand why we have, I'm David Shoemaker. I'm leaving my job at the Charlotte Observer. I love my colleagues. I'm grateful for my 10 years here. I'll have more to announce soon. lag time of hours or days. And then you're like, now I am, I can, I am ready to announce that I have taken a new job at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I can't wait to start my new job. And every time I see one of these, I think, why was this not one tweet that got me from point A to point B?

Why did we need to announce you were leaving a job and tease that there would be news? Well, sometimes you can't do it. Sometimes, like, legally or whatever, the job's not official until sign on the dotted line. Or you've, you know, maybe your announcement that you're leaving comes out because other people are taking your job during your two weeks notice period or whatever. And you want to get... Somebody else took your job. What happened to you? There's reasons, but you're right.

It does seem... It is, there is, in terms of the public announcement on the part of the person with the new job. Yeah, it's a little hype building process. but I mean, we're turning ourselves into woge bombs is what we're doing. Yeah. I will have something to report. No, no, just tell me right now. Well, but they're, okay, devil's advocate.

There is an argument for, it's one thing to say, if it's just about you, then yes, you're right. But if you want to take the time to thank your old colleagues at, you know, the Atlanta Journal Constitution or whatever, and to do a little, little, you know, serious. of tweets about the great people that you've worked with and name them all and the writers that you've worked with and the pieces that you're most proud of, then let that stand on its own before you go on to the second half, which is just like, you know, enjoy my new boxing podcast on the ringer. You know, I mean, like, you can give the respect to the old employer by, by, you know, leaving the second half separate for a while. But you're just talking about threaded tweets that we could do right at the same time. There's usually like this drum roll,

that last several days, sometimes a week. I got to tell you, this is my own view of the situation. Very few of us, if we were just disappeared from our jobs in journalism for a week or two, nobody would notice. Nobody, nobody would notice. Let's not flatter ourselves. No, very, very few people would notice. I'm sorry.

Sorry, I can't tell. I can't say anything. I'm sorry. I just got to keep it. Got to keep it going. Yeah. This isn't like Peter King, football season where there would actually be people

like writing letters to the editor or something. People would notice. Woge during Wojbomb season. One more before we get to the headline here and involves headlines David. This comes from listener Don Steele. Jordan Peel's Nope opened this last weekend.

Very excited to see Nope. It led the box office with a strong but not overly strong number one finish there in the standings. So the AV club's headline was moviegoers say yep to Jordan Peel's nope at the box office. Kind of an inevitable headline. Oh, yeah, and beautiful. Also got to me to thinking that their Leonard Malton, do you know this story?

Leonard Malton wrote the shortest review in the history of movies. Go on. I had remembered this as David Thompson, but apparently it's Leonard Malton. He was reviewing in one of his books a movie from 1948, a musical called Isn't It Romantic? and his review was no. No. Time for David Chewaker guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah.

Last Wednesday's headline about Cam Smith winning the Open Championship was number one with a mullet. Today's headline comes from Elijah Wolfson and Andy Barr. It's from the New Yorker. It's a piece that talks about the surge in super yacht buying, David. This is due to wait for it. Income Inequality. more billionaires there are, the more super yachts

you sell. That's all you get. What was the New Yorkers strained pun headline? Super yachts. All right. The more billionaires there are, the more yachts. All right. Money for

more money, more is yacht in this thing? Yots in this thing. Yacht. That is absolutely in this thing. Yacht, yacht, yacht. It's new, their new class distinctions, even among the super rich. Dividing people into two groups.

The halves and the have yachts, all right. The halves and the have yachts. That's great. It's great. You know what I did when I read that story on the, when I read that headline on the New Yorkers, I immediately did my favorite thing, which is scroll down to the end of the piece to find out what the headline was in the print edition of the New Yorker, which is always much drier than the funny web headline, The Floating World.

Oh my gosh. The Floating World. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. On Wednesday, I'm going to go over David to Bristol, Connecticut, home of ESPN and interview Laura Rutland Wow. NFL live and SEC Nation about her career,

Shoemaker and I'm back Monday with more Luke Warb takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.