The Press Box - Covering Larry Nassar, Interviewing Jason Isbell, and the Future of FiveThirtyEight | The Press Box (Ep. 419)

Episode Date: January 30, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker examine why it took so long for the media to cover the Larry Nassar case (03:00), Jason Isbell's war on fake news (18:00), and the odds that Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight gets sold (34:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons, and the Ringer NFL show has you covered for all your pro football needs. Sunday night, get Michael Lombardi and Tate Fraser's rapid reactions on GM Street. On Tuesdays, the Ringer NFL show with Robert Mays, Kevin Clark, and regular guest, Danny, break down all the biggest angles on Wednesday. GM Street again on Thursdays, Clark, Mays, and Danny are back at it again. And on Friday. GM Street's Friday focus gives you all the insight you need for gambling and everything else. Don't forget about my podcast, too, on Mondays.

The BS podcast, Cousin Sal and I playing Guests Alliance. More importantly, the Ringer NFL show, subscribe right now on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. David, we're going to talk about Jason Isbell's criticism of the media today. But here's my question. Have you ever been called out by a celebrity? Many years ago, a Twitter account purporting to be Jake the Snake Roberts took exception to the fact that I had him bleary-eyed and eating a hamburger at a signing one time,

said that he had never eaten a hamburger. Jake to Snake Roberts was indeed eating the hamburger, so I just was confident in my reporting. In true wrestling tradition, it was somebody in a mask purporting to be Jake Roberts, but not actually Jake Roberts. What about you? Has that ever happened to you?

Yeah, not publicly, but I got an email one time from Richard Simmons after I wrote about him at Grantland. And it was, somewhat disappointed, I believe, in the story that I produced. But what I remember was just how many periods there were between each sentence. There was sort of like a mega ellipsis between every sentence and the email, which for some reason stands out to me. But I think by Altay Fave was when we were in high school and I wrote a piece about

how the seniors on the baseball team had let everyone down by sucking that year and the mom of one of the players confronted me in the student parking lot. Oh my gosh. I totally forgot that you were doing that sort of hard-hitting journalism so long ago. Absolutely. Brian Curtis is never afraid to piss off moms. That's the lesson from there. This is the Press Box on the Ringer podcast network. The Press Box is the media podcast where you're not allowed to use the phrase,

I can write faster than anyone who can write better, and I can write better than anyone who can write faster. We are Brian Curtis and David, David, I've got three topics for you today. All right. First, why did it take so long for the press to get interested in the case? of USA gymnastics team doctor and convicted child molester Larry Nassar. We'll also talk about singer-songwriter Jason Isbell's War on Fake News, or in this case,

sloppily written many profiles. And finally, what are the odds that Nate Silver's 538 is going to be sold? I mean, really, David, what are the odds that Nate Silver's 538 is going to be sold? Also, this week we have a new segment, which I'd like to call the lives of highly paid sports writers. But first, let's start with Larry Nassar. David, we'll call this to cover a predator. I met Larry Nassar when I was somewhere around the age of five years old.

My parents had become close friends with Larry and his wife, Stephanie. It was during this time, I estimate I was approximately six years old, that Larry Nassar began to sexually abuse me. Larry, you do realize now that we, this group of women, you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time, are now a force, and you are nothing. I have never wanted to hate some of my life, but my hate towards you was uncontrollable. Larry Nassar, I hate you.

In April 2016, a reporter from the Indianapolis star named Marissa Kwiatkowski, I hope I pronounce that right, flew to Georgia to examine records about abuse at USA Gymnastics. The piece she and two other reporters filed caused a gymnast named Rachel Hinn-Hollander to file suit against Larry Nasser and talked to the star on the record. A hundred more victims came forward. Nassar, as we know this week, went to prison. And the attorneys who sent him there would thank the star. And yet, it took the big national sports media a while to really get interested in this story. David, why did it take so long? Ooh, just throwing the tough questions at me.

Yeah. It's really interesting. I mean, especially even, you know, from where I literally sit in the ringer newsroom, it never felt like it reached sort of the appropriate level of volume. I mean, now looking at the story, looking back, it didn't seem like it, you know, it took a long time for everyone to sort of wrap their heads around it. And I think that there's some sort of meta defense or explanation to the whole thing,

which is that there was a certain element of disbelief, even as the story started coming out, that, you know, tragedy or villainy on the scale is so improbable that people have a hard time really coming to grips with it. I think that, you know, there's also an interesting sort of, just media narrative about it, which is that it was, like you said, the Indianapolis star were the first to cover it. And then at that point, you know, I think that there was a newsroom question. Like, who's covering this? Is this your features writer? Well, not if they didn't get the

story, you know. Is it your gymnastics or Olympics writer? Well, I mean, they're probably on furlough until the Olympics pick up. And then you can blog about the existence of the story, but that's not the same thing as covering it. And I think that the, you know, the bigger issue for, for most mainstream media outlets or related issue is that there wasn't. wasn't a lot of present tense there. You know, there was nothing happening to cover until, except for the Indy Star writing about it, until recently when the charges were filed and more recently when the trial began. I don't know.

It's a lot to try to wrap your head around. And it's, you know, it doesn't reflect well on, you know, the media at large for sure. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think your point's really good about it being gymnastics and that being something that doesn't have really much of a dedicated press corps 365 days a year. You know, so it's not, it's not only this difficult to cover scandal and court case, but it's not something that involves the NFL and one of the, you know, basketball or football.

One of the things we saw this last week was that outside the lines dropped this giant investigative piece about it, right? and because it involved Michigan State football and basketball players, all of a sudden that got a ton of attention. Taking it out of gymnastics and putting it in that. Katie Waldman wrote an interesting piece for Slate, I thought about this where she talked about how, you know, the names of the gymnasts associated with the story,

all of whom we should know were pretty amazing and pretty brave to come forward and talk about this stuff, weren't really the super huge names in Olympic gymnastics, Yeah. That wouldn't happen for another year until this last October when you have like Michaela Moroni and Allie Reismann and people like that coming forward. So in a way, you know, it's it's so much easier, again, it shouldn't be, but it is for newsrooms to get interested in stories that have really big names attached to them.

So I think that's probably part of it too. Yeah. I mean, I think you make, I think, you know, that's, those are all really valid points. I think that, you know, the outside the line segment was, was, you know, a really significant and, but telling on multiple levels, because you're right, the fact that it was about football and basketball, the fact that it was about Michigan State University and the NCAA that made it relevant in a way. I mean, that people, you know, it shouldn't be subtext of this conversation that the public

by and large or journalism, you know, whoever it is don't care about gymnastics or they don't care about women's sports or they don't care about the issue of sexual assault, you know, know, I mean, the way that they care about, you know, scandal on a football team. And certainly, like, you know, the totality of the revelations at this point have made that more, have made it newsier in a really crass sense. And I think, you know, the level of celebrity of the gymnasts who were assaulted, I think, is a very cogent point, too. You know, it took a while, it took a while for, I mentioned, you know, for the story to sort of get into the present tense. but also to sort of, like, even tragedy needs a news hook.

And, you know, that's not, like I said, that won't necessarily reflect really well. But in this case, I think it was pretty clear. Yeah, in the minds of editors it does anyway. Joan Ryan, who's a decorated sports writer who wrote this book way back in 1995 called Little Girls in Pretty Boxes. She had a piece this week in NBC, which I thought was interesting. She talks about how she always gets this kind of obligatory email whenever there's a gymnastics scandal because she's the go-to person to talk to about this.

And, you know, she talks about what she calls systemic child abuse, her phrase in elite gymnastics. And that this is just like this whole idea, she puts it, that a gymnast is going to be part of her coach's reality. And she sort of denies her own reality, which is what we heard a lot of the women talking about with Larry Nassar, right? This guy is doing this. So and I'm in the hands of this person and it's it's almost an honor to be treated by this person. So this, even if I feel this is wrong, this must be right in some way. And then there was a piece by also enslaved by Rebecca Schumann who said that she as a young gymnast, worked with three coaches who were arrested for child sexual assault, not, not of her, but of other people.

And you just think like, I think part of this too is that maybe we as reporters, and more broadly as a public, think that there is something just kind of innately corrupt about gymnastics and about elite gymnastics. And it's possible that even when the Nassar story began to sort of bubble up on the margins of, you know, again, the mainstream kind of sports writing world that we were maybe too quick to dismiss it because they thought,

oh, it's just another scandal, right? It's just another corrupt official and didn't give it the attention that it deserved. Yeah. I mean, I think that the, you know, it kind of cut, that cuts both ways. There's the assumption of corruption. I mean, then there's a couple of weird, you know, there are a couple of weird, you know, sidebars to the story where corruption is alluded to and maybe a more concrete way.

I mean, there's the weird Betsy DeVos angle of the story that she was meeting with Michigan State right before she rolled back to Title IX regulations. There was the Deadspin had the piece about how this totally separate aspect of it, how Fox Sports had covered the Nassar story like zero. Yeah. One of the most interesting things about that is it was, as an addendum to the piece, there was an update that a reader pointed out that Fox had $150 million deal for Michigan State's multimedia rights, whether or not that has any bearing on it, you know, that's a sort of level of corruption that is distinct from what you're talking about.

You know, and I think my instinct is not to assume the worst, but the best way to look at it. that. Going back to what we were saying before, almost the best way to look at that is that Fox, in a very deliberate way, decided that no one would be interested in this story. And that's almost more damning. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think it is. And I come back to, I wrote about this a little bit when the Weinstein thing after it had

exploded and you saw stories of sexual abuse and assault sort of become a genre within the Hollywood media. I think in a way, it's a lot easier. There's this moment, right, where that happened in Hollywood. Now it's happening in sports where abuse and assault reporting on these things, getting testimony from people who've been affected by it, becomes a distinct category of journalism, right? Yeah. And once that happens, all of a sudden, editors, writers, publications who may not have been interested in this stuff are interested in it because in their minds, they're now filling a box, right? Here's something we have to report on. Here's

a category that's important to us. Here's something, frankly, we don't want to get beaten on by other competing news outlets, right? I mean, I remember this is a way dumber version of this, but I remember this happening with PEDs and steroids and baseball. You know, the story was in the wind, right? And editors didn't want to be sued and they didn't know what they could get in the newspaper. But all of a sudden, a couple of big stories broke and PDs became like a category of sports writing. And if you weren't writing about them and weren't breaking stories on that beat, you were being left behind. And so I think, you know, just it's a long way of saying that what happened to Hollywood is now sort of happening in sports, right? This is a category within sports

that we're interested in, that editors are interested in. And, you know, now maybe when a story like this bubbles up, it'll be easier to get our minds around. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's funny, too, there was a piece by The New York Times as Daniel Victor, who wrote about the Indy Star reporters getting sort of a rightful, taking a rightful victory lap after, after Nasser was sentenced to prison. And he said, you know, he talked about how it was a big deal kind of for the star to buy a plane ticket early on in this investigation, right? And send a reporter down to Georgia to get these records.

Yeah. You know, I mean, we don't realize that, you know, we don't think about the fact, too, that, you know, there is something in these cash strap days that we live into signing off on something like that. Like, I got to go to Georgia and get this stuff and it may be a completely dry hole, right? It may not work. There may be nothing here. But, you know, so that is, and again, I think probably everything in journalism right now, that's also the background noise, right? Where's the money? Where's the money to hire people to do it? Where is the money to tolerate, you know, reporting on this if it's not yielding scoop after scoop and bloggable story, you know, seven days a week, right? Yeah.

that it allows to, that's allowed to percolate like that. Well, and going back to the very beginning, if the rest of the media, a landscape doesn't glom on to the story immediately and trumpet it as a major break, then it just sort of seeps into the wallpaper a little bit. And when the story really starts happening, it feels a little bit like a story that's already been told.

Right. It's a failure of aggregation, right? As much as it is a failure. It's really true. As much as we joke about people on Twitter sort of trumpeting stories as being important or you know, writers or other writers from the same periodical padding, padding the institution on the back, you know, to say, look at this great thing that we did. I mean, in some sense, that's just as important as the reporting in 2018.

Oh, absolutely. And if Lafar ball had, you know, said anything about anything that would have been aggregated immediately, we wouldn't have had the time delay. David, in this spot, we normally do our overworked Twitter joke of the week. And there were some fine nominees this week. There really were. But I saw a tweet from sports writer Mike Flore. a.k.a. at Pro Football Talk.

Oh, no. Complaining about taking a.m. flight to the Super Bowl. And I'd like to just say something, David, if I may, in a new segment called The Lives of Highly Paid Sports Writers. May I have the floor for a minute? Please go right ahead, man. David, journalists make asses themselves on Twitter in a lot of ways. I think we can agree on that. But arguably, the biggest way is the airline tweet.

Thanks, at Delta, for screwing up my interview, blah, blah, blah, blah. but what happens if the airline tweet and the humble brag tweet go to the island of Dr. Moreau and are combined into this evil mutant offspring in which a sports writer complains about taking a 5 a.m. flight to the Super Bowl. I don't want to do the Steve Bannon faux populace thing here. Do we know how many sportswriters have been laid off in the last year? Do you know how many un or underemployed sportswriters would kill to cover any Super Bowl? would strap themselves to the fuselage of the Spirit Airlines plane to go to Minneapolis at any time of day or night.

So, you know, and I obviously, I love to make fun of those tweets from the press box that are totally useless, right, that say, my office for the afternoon. But you know what? At least that's genuine enthusiasm, right? Don't complain about flying to the Super Bowl. I know you work hard. I know you've earned your spot on Radio Row, but don't tweak that stuff. Jiminy Christmas, stop it.

Stop tweeting complaints about going to the Super Bowl. That's all I got to say. Woo! Do I have a spot in WWE after that promo? I was doing a really poor impression of a wrestling crowd after that promo. That was fantastic. I hope you're holding up a sign with my name on it. All right, David, we're going to talk about Jason Isbell.

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Jason Isbell, in the 20 or so minutes of free time he gets between country music awards shows, had some thoughts about journalism he wanted to share this week. He was talking about a form of article called The Write Through, which for you non-professionals means, instead of running a basic Q&A, you turn it into a prose story about what a famous person had for lunch and which uses only their most explosive quotes. I kid, but not really. Anyway, here's what Isbell had to say, quote, in interview pieces, please, caps, resist the urge to avoid the Q&A format.

When you clumsily weave quotes into the piece without showing specific questions, it eliminates context from the answers, creating the illusion that your subject is offering the information without prompts. So I've got my text, David. What does Jason Isbell mean by this? I think it's pretty clear what he means, despite the vaguely double negative of the beginning at the top of the tweet. He's not the first celebrity to kind of sound the,

alarm bell of, you know, go Q&A only to avoid being taken out of context. It seems like he's addressing writers here. It probably be more effective to specifically address other musicians. I guess are we, just to take a step back, have we officially confirmed that this is about the Sturgle Simpson quote in the New York Times, or is that just, is that just a sub tweet, you know, a sub tweet aspect of this whole thing? I think that's a secondary, because I sort of looked up pieces that Jason Isbell had participated in

around the time of this quote. They were totally benign, but we're talking about like basically pre-concert pieces in the Albany Times Union and Pittsburgh Post Gazette that came out like 24 hours of the tweet. So I think he maybe has just read one too many stories about him. And that's what he's referring to. But please go ahead.

You know, it's funny because when I saw this tweet last week, whatever, the first thing that popped in my head was the famous, novelist and, you know, many other things, Dave Eggers, who also famously had a Q&A only policy for a long time, or at least that was the story that I heard. And at a quick Google, it seems to back that up. It's, it's a, I guess what's interesting to me about this off the top is that there's a sort of,

it's sort of like, you know, it's not exactly a first world problem, but it's, you know, if you get to the point where you're, you're able to stipulate Q&As only as a celebrity, you're at a very, you're at a very lucky position, right? Yes. To get that, it's sort of like the quitting Twitter conversation

we had a month ago. I mean, it's like to be able, to have the luxury of being able to, to make, to set these ground rules, set to you in a league separate from everybody else you're trying to give advice to. You know, right, if you click on the tweet,

or if I click on the tweet, I know these things are weighted, the first response that I see is from Grady Smith, who's a great country music writer and writer of many other things. And he says, you know, it's odd. Editors always seem to want the write through. It's just an old school prestige piece thing.

And I think that that's, you know, that's right on. I mean, it's, Q&As are, Q&As are particular form. You know, it's great. You know, the Playboy, you know, Playboy interviews are great. You know, Paris review interviews are great, although those things are probably much more heavily edited than anyone, you know,

you know, anyone reading it would realize. And so subject to the same sort of fears, you know, that Jason Isbell is, you know, going through here. A great Q&A is heavily edited. I mean, it should just be stated as such. No, yes. Absolutely. But, you know, the old-fashioned, you know, the feature right through is a separate thing. And, you know, if you're reading the paper in Albany or you're reading, you know, a magazine or whatever else, it's a different reading experience.

and I'm sure in the minds of many editors, rightly or wrongly, it's a much more, you know, it's a much more pleasurable reading experience if executed correctly. And, you know, I understand it's trepidation, but it's, you know, it, it's not a, it's not a choice that most musicians for sure get to make for themselves.

Or writers, for that matter. No, or anybody. I mean, it's, and it's not, by the way, it's not just a prestige thing to have a write through. Ideally, what the journalist is doing when they, you know, write through a, through an interview like that is to explain to the readership who may not know who this person is or may not care all that much, all that, you know, who they are, right?

And what they're about and all that stuff. And, you know, illuminate them in some way, right? Do we think every reader of the Albany Times Union is like, oh, Jason Isbell can't wait to hear what his take on things? Or is there perhaps a segment of the readership that's like, well, I've heard this name, but I don't really know who this is, right? I want a writer to explain to me why this guy's important and why he's interesting and why, you know, within the world of music and country music specifically, he's sort of, you know, different, right? I mean, I just think that's, that's part of it, right?

It's not, it's not just, you know, journalists just patting themselves on the back. It's like there's a function to that. Yeah. Also, it's really an amazing month for journalism lectures. We had Rick Carlisle, Steve Kerr, and Pope Francis, I think is my. current list about it. But I would go back to what we said about Carlisle the other week, which is that whenever you get one of these, the first thing I always think about is that it's it's the person, you know, think about the person who's complaining. Think about their

idea of what good journalism is, right? Yeah. Think about what is Bill's idea. What does he want out of journalism? Does he want something that would potentially be really negative about him, but true and thoughtful? No. He doesn't want that, right? He wants something that's going to help him sell records and allow him to get his message out, whatever it is, without any interference. Sure. So his idea of good journalism is actually bad journalism. And to me, whenever you get one of these lectures, even when it's, and by the way, there are a lot of writers, a lot of writers showing up in the mentions of these things, like, you know, agreeing with the person.

I'm like, really? Do you want, you want to do that? You want to do Q&As for the rest of your career? Because that kind of shocks me. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you. It's not incumbent upon Jason Isbell to respect journalism as an art form or anything even remotely close to that. It does sort of strike me as odd that a poet on his level, and I'm saying this is a huge fan of Jason Isbel. And I don't use the poet in some sort of dismissive way or even just like, you know, I'm not trying to art this up at all.

He's an incredibly astute writer. and it's sort of hilarious to me that in saying what he said, he's ignoring the fact that when you're doing a Q&A, the most interesting thing might be what the subject is doing with their hands as they answer the question, right? The thing that's happening just off camera is the substance of most of his music. And it would be interesting for him to respect that that might be what's happening

in some of these interviews. Now, listen, of the interviews that he sits for, I'm guessing they're not all high art or even aspiring to be such. And so I understand that point of view. And also, I mean, but I think that clearly this sort of point of view is affected by, you know, when you feel like you're specifically wrong. Then I mentioned the Sturgle Simpson situation earlier, which I thought that this was directly in reference to him.

I'm kind of glad to know that it's not. But Sturgle Simpson a couple weeks ago was quoted in the New York Times magazine in a piece about Luke Bryan and it turned out that the quote that Sturgle gave to the New York Times actually came from his an email saying he didn't want to comment. Right. And, you know, that's the sort of, you know, that's the sort of thing that you can imagine maybe it makes more sense that a musician would take offense to that style of journalism, that error in editing, whatever it was.

Although Simpson got on his Twitter account, which he rarely uses and posted the original email and it sort of it sort of put the whole thing to bet i mean it seemed like he was he was very able to you know rebut whatever charges were implicitly leveled upon him for not listening to luke brian or whatever uh yeah just by just to explain that by the way what happened is luke brian is a is a an example of bro country is that is that fair to say and sturgel simpson is a critic of bro country i'm not setting that up correctly so the writer of this piece will stevenson sends an email to simpson wanting a quote and Simpson response, I don't know Luke.

I don't think about Luke. And honestly, I never heard a single note of his music. So I'm afraid I am unable to supply you with quotes. You and your editor are seeking for me to fill out your narrative, right? Right. What he runs in the Times is the first part of that. I don't know Luke.

I don't think about Luke. And honestly, I never heard a single note of his music. It's funny to me with this. Is it a little on the edge, slightly cheap to run the first half of that quote? I guess maybe. But, you know, here's the other thing.

Sturgle Simpson didn't have to write a flowery response back to the writer of this piece, right? You can just say, no comment or I'm not giving you quotes to fill out your narrative. If you want to write about me, you know, come back and see me, right? Yeah. When you start to, if you start to say, you know, to a reporter, you and your publication, you, you know, you are a giant, I think the subject is a giant jackass, but I have nothing to say about him. I mean, you know, that's on the record, buddy, right? that counts. And that's a thought. And again, I'm not saying it was used perfectly here. But I'm not, I'm not even terribly sympathetic to this case.

Well, I just think, I don't disagree with you, but I just think in the, in the Sergio Simpson case, you know, the intention of his email was clear. The reason why he's, it seemed to me, the reason why he was as flower, you know, flowery as as he was to sort of, you know, sort of pitch a different story to the writer. And, you know, I think, I think his big complaint is that, is that, you know, Sergio Simpson has set himself opposed to the country music industry and specifically not, as he's specifically not set himself opposed to any specific artist. And so to present it in the piece as if it's a direct response to Luke Bryan's interest in having coffee with Sturgle Simpson, which is the way that it reads is disingenuous.

But I think just from a functional point of view, This feels a little bit like a savior powder moment. I'm not sure that we're including this quote, whether or not it's justified, is more impactful than just saying that Sturgle Simpson declined to comment, you know? Well, it's right. These are called secondaries in the world of magazine writing. Right. Your secondary interviews and these become the ornaments on the Christmas tree, right?

A famous person, I'm writing about a famous person and another famous person added their voice to the piece, right? So that's where, that's why you want them. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I mean, I think that obviously this is a totally different genre than the, then, you know, I think what we're talking about with Jason Isbell before. You know, I think that a lot of, the sort of Q&A press tour thing that you do when you're,

when you're taking a, making a literal tour around the country is a different thing. Although it all, it all does sort of, you know, cast an interesting light on the, I mean, probably won't get too deep into this, but on the way. that sort of the quote unquote mainstream media struggles with country music. Yes. I mean, for all of the controversy,

you know, around the Times and, you know, I mean, it wasn't that much controversy all told, but the controversy around Sturgill Simpson in the Times, I mean, the New York Times has certainly written about Sturgle Simpson more that's written about Luke Bryant in the past two years, you know? And that's part of that is just that, you know, the sort of people that

write for them and write for us at the ringer, you know, we're more interested in different, in a certain kind of music, you know, the more kind of Sturgle-Semsony, Jason Isbelly sort of music. But the whole thing is just a little bit of, I think it's, the fact that you have to cover a phenomenon

as big as Luke Bryan as the sort of journey into the belly of the beast piece is a whole different conversation. but it's very interesting to me. And sort of like the Trump voter so far as in a way, you know, exactly. Maybe kind of maybe kind of a sister genre. I will say to the larger point here, I think we're in danger of having too many

Q&As in the world, actually, in the world of journalism. I think the podcasting boom, which you and I are exponents of at this very moment, has led to, if anything, more Q&As. Yeah. Especially the kind of press tour thing. that you're talking about when somebody has a new product out, they'll go on to a podcast and talk about it, right? But now go and so, and everybody, you know, you see on the Twitter, I got so and so on my

podcast. It's incredible little old me. I never imagined it. And then now do an experiment. Go back to that celebrity and ask if you can write a profile of them in print and watch them saying no, right? Because the podcast is something where they don't control the interview questions, but they certainly, the power goes back to them, right?

They control what they say. The shape of the product maybe is the best way to put it. You're handing them when you do a Q&A, whether it's in podcast or written form, you're handing them an enormous amount of power. And, you know, as somebody who doesn't like to do that, and in fact, I've said, I don't want to really interview people on this podcast for that very reason. I just find that, I don't know, dangerous as a right word, but I find that a little annoying. and I think that I, you know, I want to select what the person said. I want to interpret it. I want to push back on.

I want to arrange it in my own order. And, you know, yeah, it would be, if you're a celebrity, it'd be nice if everything was just a kind of straight Q&A that was really interested in your work. And maybe through your curveball or two, but, but other than that, you know, you shook hands and kind of, you know, almost did a product together, right, with the journalist, you know, kind of a collaboration. But that's not the world I want to live in. And so I guess I get my dander up a little bit when I hear stuff like this.

Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a fraught subject. I mean, that's without a doubt. I mean, there's no, I mean, I've interviewed people on my other podcast many times, and it's not my favorite thing to do either. It's, it's tough, you know, I mean, it's really tough to have an interview go well. I mean, it's over to feel good about it at the end, regardless. And then, you know, you're talking about the Q&A thing, podcasts are often, you know, transcribed into Q&A formats.

But like I mentioned before, the straight Q&As that are literal transcripts are very rarely as good as they, you know, I mean, as they could be. Right. It's really tough. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, the people who are the people who are the most interesting guests in audio or like it reads the worst on transcript, you know, it reads the worst in print. and there's there's not a lot you can really do about that. But I agree, you know, I mean, it's certainly a, it's certainly a, it's almost inherently a celebration when you have, when you're interviewing somebody on a podcast, you know, I mean, it's not, if we had, if Steven Spielberg walked in the studio right now to talk about the

post, I guarantee the words like, what the hell were you thinking would not come out of either of our mouths, you know? Very true. We would, we would do our best to, you know, find some very, interesting questions and get and try to dig deep on some subjects that other people hadn't touched on. But it's, you know, at the end of the day, it's still a Q&A. And I understand the, I understand the attractiveness of that for the subject. But it's a different thing.

All right, David, let's move on to our third topic. I call this data dump. Over at the big lead, Ryan Glass-Begel broke the news that 538, Nate Silver's data microsite is up for sale. And that by the time Donald Trump is facing. Kamala Harris in 2020 for the fate of the country, Nate and his team will likely have a different corporate parent or some kind of different corporate life distinct from their current home at ESPN. A source close to the process told Glass-Begel that possible destinations included the Atlantic,

which employs every brainy journalist in America except for Nate Silver, I think, at this point. Or maybe something like ABC News. What's your take on the possible move of 538? Well, I can't say I'm too surprised, right? I mean, no. It's a sort of heartbreaking news story, but again, not too surprising. I mean, listen, this is probably more of a personal story than anybody listening to this cares to know about. But before Grantland shut down, you know, I thought that the existence of 538 was what made it the safe, you know, what was part of our safety net, you know, just the fact that they were that they were cultivating other separate sites and obviously pointing at Grantland as the template for the things that they could do.

So, you know, as soon as Grantland ended, I guess they kind of, we kind of started the clock on 538. I mean, they had an election looming. And I'm sure that, I'm sure that, you know, Walt Disney was interested in saying what kind of traffic they would do. But in, you know, in the current space where ESPN's just trying to, trying to save money left and right, it certainly didn't seem like, I mean, it doesn't come as too much of a surprise. No. So that's, so I think that's one takeaway here. it's the further contraction of ESPN, right? Buying 538 is their ultimate sort of expansionary period,

Grantland, 538. We can do anything, right? We can't just, we're not just doing Adam Schaefter news breaks. We're just going to do, we're going to do all kinds of stuff. We're going to do burritos, right? We're going to do Hollywood. We're going to let Nate and his team do politics. And that period is obviously over.

I remember, by the way, Nate, speaking of specific memories, Nate's contract year in 2010. Yeah. I think it was the first time he was actually shopping 538 around when he went up signing with the times. And he really was, it is, it's really hard to overstate how big he was. And, you know, as journalistic free agents go, just how sought after he was. I was at the Daily Beast at the time and we took him out to lunch, which is like, you know, like the equivalent of the Sacramento Kings offering LeBron a contract, I think, at that time, you know, like, we'll give you

Max, come sign with us, but he actually went to the times. But I think also what's interesting about it is that back in 2012 or after 2012, when he goes to ESPN, you know, he's still a pretty unique thing in the world, right? He is, he's the guy. He's like the one guy who knows he and his team. And I don't want to take credit away from any of them who knows like the results of national elections. Yeah. But or can predict them with some with some accuracy. But then, you know, the.

upshot comes along, right? And you have all these poor man's 538s sort of come along. And in this world that we live in, he's one of many people who do that. You know, that said, he is still the, you know, if 2016 was any indication, he's the best of them. And he is the most thoughtful of them. But it is weirdly a more crowded field than it was, you know, for eight years ago. Well, I mean, and crowded and crowded by their own output. I mean, you can, I don't, I don't, I'm not saying, I love reading 538 and love reading most of their content. But they certainly have a sort of maximalist view of, I mean, starting from where 538 was before it landed at ESPN, they went in a lot of different directions and published a lot of

different things. And, you know, I think it's a fair question as to whether or not their, you know, some of their sports pieces or more pop culture pieces could have gotten more, would have gotten more attention if they had sort of, you know, curated a little bit differently instead of just being a general interest website that's based in probability and statistics, you know. But I think that also that also speaks to the sort of stewardship or lack thereof of ESPN and without going, you know, too much into Grantland history. I think it's, it's, I think that you can see, you know, not just with legacy institutions like ESPN's the magazine, but also,

now with the undefeated, you can kind of see ESPN learning from some of the mistakes it's made in the past. And the fact that they weren't able to integrate 538 sports stuff into the mothership to the degree that they've done some of the bigger stories from the undefeated, I think, you know, it says a lot. As to where it's going to go, I mean, do you personally have a theory about where 538 goes next? No, I don't. Not because I can't imagine in it, because I can imagine it at so many different places. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think that the ABC, I mean, it sort of feels like a little bit like, you know,

the K-File jumping from BuzzFeed to CNN or something. You could imagine a big legacy institution bringing them on, you know, for the next election. You could imagine you could imagine 538 moving every four years, you know? Yeah. He's sort of like a political consultant, you know? It's like, who's going to. all right, you know, which campaign am I going to hitch on this time? Which media organization needs my needs me this time around?

That's not even like a loaded statement. You know, I mean, that's a kind of rational thing for them to do and for media, you know, various media companies to pony up the money to do it. The other thing I'd say is this is like, you know, one more official end. We've had like five official ends of this, but one more official end of ESPN attempting really any sort of political commentary, right? Or being in the political space at all? and Nate is like the opposite of a bomb thrower, or at least he styles himself as the opposite of a bomb thrower. And, you know, to me, politics was always a little bit of a weird fit there. It shouldn't be, but the powers that be clearly thought it was.

And, you know, this is yet another endpoint in that. Excuse me. I think one thing that's interesting, too, when I think of where they could go, was I love a lot of people there. Claire Malone, Kyle Wagner, Harry Anton, all those. There's so many, a lot of very cool people there is that you could on the one hand take the 538 we have now and deposit it, you know, more or less intact somewhere else. But you could also imagine, you know, Nate taking on somebody, you know, a partner or somebody works for him who, you know, has probably a little bit more of an old school magazine sensibility. Yeah. And is like, here are some kind of magazine ideas.

that we want to pair with the 538 DNA. And, you know, we're just going to do all kinds of things. I mean, they certainly have experimented in lots of different sites looking at the site section heads. Now there's science and health and economics and culture. But somebody who would just generate even more ideas and would kind of propel them in that direction. So they become a little bit even more magazineish than they already are without losing, you know, the numbers and the DNA that Nates implanted. I think that'd be kind of cool, too. Yeah.

No, I certainly think there's a lot of, I mean, there's a couple of different directions that they could go. I think that, you know, it shouldn't be, with all of the various, like, you know, eulogies that we've given for periodicals as recently as last week, that, you know, it shouldn't go without just straight up saying that, like, they've published a ton of great stuff since they got to ESPN. And it's a testament to their editorial vision and also to, you know, ESPN, at least ESPN, at least ESPN. Bonds Pocketbook that they were able to do it. It will be, you know, I mean, I think that what maybe as much as, you know, Bill Simmons was Grantland, Bill Simmons is so much a part of the ringer, obviously. But, you know, the idea, I think in a lot of ways, 538's even more of a, if not a, personality driven than like a, it's driven by, you know, the mind of Nate Silver.

and so, you know, it would be interesting. I think a lot of it's going to come down to where his interests lie, you know, if he's interested in rebooting, if he's interested in, you know, just continuing in the direction they're going or, you know, we talked about website redesign last week and deeply interesting topic, but, you know, that's a conversation they're going to be having. And it's an exhausting one if you don't want to have it. So, you know, I think he's got a lot of, there's a lot of decisions,

there's a lot of decisions left to make. I'm hopeful about their future because they do really great stuff. And it'll just be interesting to see what shape it takes. I may have ran about this before, but I love when people call the site like this or ours a vanity site. That's always great to me. Nate Silver or Bill Simmons or whoever, their vanity was such that they gave lots of good paying jobs to lots of talented people.

Oh, right. So the opposite of vanity, right? But I love that that's the shorthand for these things. I'd say the other thing I really respect, and you talk about, this is, again, this is not an obit for 538. But one of the things I respect is just how much Nate went back through the stuff he missed about Trump. I thought his accountability about his own predictions during the GOP primaries. And then after Trump was elected going through and looking at how the media and other institutions sort of missed the Trump phenomenon or misunderstood the Trump phenomenon. I thought that was really good.

And I thought that was like required reading, you know, in the press criticism, press, you know, thinking about oneself kind of space. And, you know, he didn't necessarily have to do that. There are a lot of people that would have been really defensive and weird or just kind of disappeared and gone off to the next thing. But I thought that was, I thought, I thought that was really interesting. And again, we're in this weird thing, right, where everybody from Maggie Haberman to whomever just gets grilled no matter what they write.

Yeah. Because, you know, the stakes of Trump. Trump are so high, but I thought he did a really, really, really good job with that stuff. Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways, it's being known as a journalist, being well known as a journalist is a blessing and a curse because it's, you know, obviously being well known is, it's more of a blessing, but Nate Silver's notoriety is, you know, easily, it's easily summed up whether you're a proponent or a detractor if it is, you know, and that affects, I'm sure that trickles down to everything on the site.

That said, you know, that there's no doubt, like you were saying, that they are much smarter and more circumspect in an admirable way than I think their detractors would give them credit for. But you're right. The vanity site thing, I mean, I don't know if you have anything else to say on the subject, but it's endlessly hilarious to me. Like, like, 538 that you would look at that and think there's, you know, an inherent vanity.

And, I mean, it's like, you know, was TBS a vanity network by Ted Turner? You know, like, was, like, I don't know. It's, it's very, it's very, very strange. Well, yeah, and I sort of go back and forth that I right, because I remember one time Woge, I think, when, when, when he was still at Yahoo was, was pushing back on it. And, and Woj, W-O-J was in the URL, you know? So it's like, I almost think you need to reclaim the name, right? If vanity site means I go up and round up a bunch of people, uh, who are really good and

different than me in various ways and give them jobs, you know, then hell, maybe a vanity sites are cool things. They give people jobs in the industry, then oh well, yeah. So I'm, I'm of mixed, of mixed feelings about that. It's not a vanity site. It's a, it's a magazine. The only difference is in the modern era you don't need an institution behind you. It's a meritocracy. If you can round up all these good writers, you have a website. Or the editor is also a writer, right? Much might be the shortest possible way to define vanity site. Absolutely true. All right, David, that's the press. box for this week. We'll be back with more hot takes next week. See you later, David. See you, man. Brian Curtis is never afraid to piss off moms.

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