The Press Box - Democratic Postmortems, the Media's Non-Predictive Powers, and WaPo Editors Say: ‘Back to Work!’

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the show by discussing the Washington Post email alerting staff that they'll need to return to the office (0:35). Then they discuss the following: The fallout from the Harris-Trump presidential race (11:37) Stephen A. Smith possibly running for president (24:11) Podcasts merging with traditional media (33:42) Sounds you need to hear around the NFL (49:17) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, Only in Journalism, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Bill Simmons. I am thrilled to announce our newest YouTube channel. It's called Ringer Movies. If you're a fan of our movie coverage here at The Ringer, then you're in luck. Because every episode of The Rwatchables and the Big Picture, now on YouTube. Like Bill said, Ringer Movies will feature full episodes of my show, The Big Picture, the Rewatchables, as well as special live episodes, deep dives into movie history, and a bunch of other fun stuff featuring other movie-loving Ringer personalities.

Search Ringer Movies on YouTube and Experience the Joy, Chris Ryan impersonating Wayne Jenkins on camera. Yes. We've got some news from the Washington Post. Oh, exciting. The best embattled newspaper in America. Did you catch Jeff Bezos congratulating Trump on his victory on Twitter? Oh, yeah, I did. Of course. That has to be trolling the staff.

He's trolling the staff, you think? Yeah. Listen to the wording here. Big congratulations. to our 45th and now 47th president on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory, no nation has bigger opportunities.

It's true. It is true. No nation has bigger opportunities to come back from scandal and conviction. Couldn't use that sense for if Kamala Harrison won. It would have a slightly different resonance, but there we go. That was last Wednesday.

Then on Thursday, as all the Washington Post writers were polishing up their, now they tell us stories. Yeah. Post publisher Will Lewis sent out an email that was published and also sent to us by one of our Keebler elves out there in the media. Mm-hmm. Will Lewis saluted the Washington Post staff on their wonderful journalism.

Noted how much of that was done in the closing days of the election in the office. And then said this, it is in this spirit that we will be returning to the office five days a week in the coming months. Yeah. So first of all, congrats to Will Lewis on winning our first ever J. Jonah Jameson

Award for being a cartoon newspaper boss. It is in this spirit. It's just an incredible transition, too. You can just go in any direction after that. What do we make of going back to the office five days a week?

Well, it seems it seems villainous, right? I was having this conversation in other contexts. with my wife the other day. But yeah, I mean, it just, it seems, I mean, listen, we can only speak from like personal anecdote, right? I mean, we have pretty, most of us have pretty blindered views of what the workforce is like, especially when you're working remotely.

But I think I've said this before in the podcast. I mean, prior to the pandemic, it seemed like it was impossible to do podcasting. Like, the podcast is what you specifically, Brian Curtis, would come to work for when you, you were working more or less remotely. Like these are the things that you had to do in person. And then when the pandemic hit,

it became immediately clear to everybody, also through the, you know, leveling up of Zoom and other, other platforms like that, that the podcast is the last thing you need to come in for. Now you go into Gladhand. Now you go in to have meetings to,

you know, make sure you remember what your coworkers look like and stuff. But, but, you know, the, some parts of the job just became so much simpler to do remotely. And I'm sure that's true.

for just about every line of work. There are some things you can do more productively in the comfort of your home or in isolation or whatever else. Obviously, that doesn't apply to every line of work. Journalism is a sort of specific one. You know, there's a lot of aspects of journalism reporting, like, you know, reporting out in the world and writing and everything else

that don't need to necessarily be in an office for. I think everyone can see that. But yeah, but there's still like advantages to being in the newsroom, especially as you're not just for teamwork, but, but, you know, bringing up new writers and,

and learning that, you know, having, letting them, allowing them to learn the parts of the job. There's a lot of kind of conveyed wisdom when journalists love talking about journalism as an institution. And part of the obligation of that is to,

you know, pass down the ability to do the job well, to the next generation to people that are going to do it. We should note that the ringer had a five-day-a-week policy during the pre-pandemic period you speak of. And part of it was based on that. A lot of people, new people, a lot of young people, and even for the old hands like Shoemaker and Curtis,

a newspaper office or journalism office is a fantastic place to do work. Yeah. Because you talk to other journalists. And you and I both know this. We've had this conversation a million times. You're struggling to write something. and you go up to your boss or you go up to somebody else, a fellow writer, and you say,

what I'm trying to say is this. Yeah. And you spit it out and they look at you and they go, why don't you just write what you just told me? It's not every instance isn't in them just saying, you've already written it. But that does happen a lot. I remember sitting in the, we shared an office with, I shared an office with copy chief Craig Gaines. And the number of times where I would just ask him something that seemed like,

like a total non sequitur just sitting at my desk like what's the name of that thing that farm tool that does that he's like cotton gin I'm like yes exactly and then that would that probably saved me 20 minutes of spinning in circles you know um so yeah I mean there's there's I mean my example is much more pedestrian but yeah I mean there's a lot of advantages to being there just to kind of be among you'd be amongst the in the presence of others creativity is inspiring you know and helpful and stuff you know it's there's a there's a lot of advantages to it. Or you can say you look across the guy at the office and they're like, screw him. He's getting a lot of accolades for his work. I want to be better than that guy.

That drives journalists too. We know it's a, we know it's an iron, sharpens iron kind of philosophy as I like to say in the NFL locker room. Why is he getting a lot of attention and praise that I could could reasonably be getting? Plus it's just fun to hang around other journalists. Journalists are a wonderful, annoying species of people. Yeah. For the reason I do my job is because I like, I am interested in what journalists are like. So you get to be around this whole group of them. It's very, very fun. You also understand it from the managerial aspect.

You have a lot better handle on what people are doing all day. Yeah, for sure. If they're sitting at a desk than if they're at home. Yeah, and I think that part is undeniably true. And also what a lot of people take the most exception to. It's like, you don't trust me to do my job. You say, you say, you say, midway through, you know, the office director's cut up season three, episode six, sitting on your

couch. I speak from personal experience here. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of jobs where it's more necessary than others, I guess, but I think just in general, I think that's what, that's what managers and the front office types that you mentioned are going to struggle with. It's like, well, it's kind of hard to get a handle on productivity. If you can't at least say, like, that's, we have a baseline here. So, I mean, I get it. But it's, it's, it would be really tough going back. I can say that with great confidence.

Well, that's the butt here because it's tough going back for very specific reasons. One thing is the pandemic we remember was four years ago. And even as we came out of the pandemic, people began to rearrange their lives. They moved away. They moved farther away from their arms. offices in some cases because it was cheap and reasonable to live, not in a big city specifically. Sure. They made different child care arrangements that were also less expensive than, you know,

finding ways of people to look after your kids when you're supposed to be working in journalism. And so what you're asking them to do is sort of say, okay, all that stuff you did, even if we're giving you several months notice like the post is, we're asking you. you to just change all of that about your life. Yeah. And when I hear, okay, five days a week in the office versus three days a week in the offices was for a number of posties, I think that's a different job you're asking me to do.

So does that different job come with a raise? Yeah, exactly. That's going to cover that child care when I'm going to be in the office. So they can stay at the after school program at school that, also makes up for me having to commute back and forth to work, which I wasn't having to do under this arrangement. That seems like a very valid question because it's a different job. It is really a different job that they're asking them to do.

Yeah, it absolutely is. And a lot of people that have been hired since the, you know, pandemic since the home of signed contracts that specifically said, would we go back to work, you've got to come back to work and everything. I mean, there are a lot of preexisting contracts. That wasn't even a question, right? and probably wasn't written into a lot of deals. And most people, I think, would logically just assume, like, as the job evolves,

the expectations of me evolve and are not going to be clawed back, you know. So, yeah, it's a very, very different calculus. And there's certain ways that technology has made working from home better than the pre-pandemic version of working in the office. I just think of interviews. Like, interviews were phone calls. until 2020, largely phone calls. Now you can be doing an interview for a story,

not even the main interview, but a secondary interview, and you're doing it on Zoom. And you're having an experience that you would have had to drive somewhere or fly somewhere to do under previous rules. Sure. So it's not like you're just saying,

okay, we need to get back to 2019 versus 2024 expectations of a journalist. In some cases, 2024 are better without leaving your house than 2019 was. Yeah. But again, I bet those Jay Jenna Jamison's at the post would be like, did you see how we lost $75 million last year? Yeah.

Do you see our web traffic was cut in half? Yep. Even before Bezos decided to run off 10% of our subscribers. Yeah. With his Kamala Harris endorsement bit. Mm-hmm. Anyway, but I come back to it. Different job you're asking us to do.

Yeah. Absolutely, it is. Mr. Person that runs a post. So now let's talk about how we're going to be compensated for this different job. All right, coming up on the podcast, David, it's now they tell us season in politics. What can we divine from the stories about why Kamala Harris lost? Plus, reporters are bad at predicting stuff. America's softest target, Stephen A for president.

Some final thoughts on the podcast election and sound from around the NFL. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Brian Waters here. I don't know about you, but I spent about 90% of my life since Election Day reading pieces about why Kamala Harris lost. My God. I cannot say the same. That's the same for me.

And I feel terrible for you. You were reading the now they tell us stories about why the Saints fired Dennis Allen instead. Literally the moment that Pennsylvania was called. The thing I was driving in my car to pick up one of my kids and I just switch. There's a one notch different on the radio dial between NPR and the local, the Philly Sports Talk radio station. I just clicked it and that's it for me. Amazing what an opt-out sports radio is at a time like this.

Oh, yeah. Where there's a no politics rule. Mm-hmm. By the way, Philly really distinguishes itself and the, now they tell us stories because I think every local Philadelphia official, like there was a guy in the buildings trade union, there was the local Democratic boss there, they were just lined up to receive telephone calls.

Oh, yeah. To talk about how the Harris campaign had not heated their warnings about what was going to happen. Yeah, not nearly enough heating going on for sure. Here's something you probably have not missed there probably have not encountered then since you've skipped a lot of the now they tell us stories.

Politicians and journalists, and journalists just repeating whatever their theory of politics was even before we knew the results. So you can find Bernie Sanders in these stories saying, we should get away from identity politics and talk about politics more in terms of the working class. You can find Bari Weiss on Fox News talking about wokeness, something that Kamala Harrison before heard Joe Biden explicitly pushed off into the corner.

These people are saying the same statement, stuff they would say no matter what. Absolutely true. So it's not like, it's like they're not even engaging with the data in front of them. Find journalists doing the same stuff just like, here is what I thought. Insert election results in paragraph three. Now let me repeat to you what it is I thought about politics in the first place. Yeah, exactly.

That's pretty hysterical. I've also seen a lot of Democrats and sympathetic media people say Kamala Harris ran a great campaign. Sometimes they upgraded to Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign. And what I think they mean in many cases is Kamala Harris ran a risk averse campaign. Meaning she didn't make mistakes of the kind we would point out on cable news panel shows. Yes. she made a gaff.

She made a gaff free campaign. Yeah, she had a news cycle where we were debating whether she was doing the right thing or the wrong thing by saying something. And if you look back, it seems like running a risk averse campaign is a pretty bad misread of the electorate. Absolutely true. Like should she have had an uncomfortable two-day news cycle about a break she had with the Biden administration in terms of policy? or a ceremonial throwing of Joe Biden under the bus. That might not have been a perfect campaign or a good campaign in media terms, but that might have helped Kamala Harris.

Absolutely. With voters who were pissed off about inflation or Biden or whatever it was or the war in Gaza. So it's just very, very funny to see that thought repeated over and over. Yeah. And again, not to dump all the blame on the head of her campaign. but again, I just find that to be a very funny sentence and choice of words. It is. I mean, in some ways, it's sort of the fun house mirror version of the Trump campaign, right?

It's like Trump just like explodes, I mean, uses the media's expectations or the media's kind of rubric to just shove it back in their face and makes it impossible for them, for anyone to really judge him for who he is. A candidate as a politician, as a human. And Harris did the sort of like polar opposite of it, which is just to check every. single box, but also managed to have like a totally substance-free or mostly substance-free and in the end totally, you know, ineffective campaign. It's like, but I did everything you asked me to do.

It's like, yeah, but you didn't actually do the thing that you were trying to do, right? Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, I guess it's false. Then now they tell us category. Now we have different opinions or now we can roll our eyes. but it just, it's, yeah, it kind of immediately all felt like very empty after all, after all of a sudden done. After a Trump victory, Democratic soul searching inevitably transforms into media soul searching. David, we didn't talk to enough Trump voters. Yeah.

We were on our cable news panels instead of out there with the people in America. learning what the electorate really wanted from a presidential candidate in this election. Our pal, Chris Almeida, text this morning to remind us that Trump had big gains in northern Virginia and Manhattan, which is where those cable panelists live. Yeah. So not sure traveling to Ohio or wherever you want to go in the Midwest would have clued them in any more than just like talking to people at Starbucks. Yeah. It's a good point.

And this is where I insert my hobby horse is where I become Bernie Sanders and Barry Wise. I don't think it's that we reporters are just bad at predicting the outcomes of elections in which Trump is on the ballot. I think it's that we reporters are bad at predicting events, period. Yeah. And I know this because we have the most brilliant NFL and NBA analysts in the world here at the ringer.com. And as far as I know, they are not millionaires because they are cashing gambling tickets every weekend because they knew what was going to happen in all the games. True.

I'll give you some specific examples from the election. Tim Alberta of the Atlantic. The correspondent to Red America. Yeah. Somebody who talks to conservatives and evangelicals and in this election specifically, the Trump campaign wrote two very good articles about it. On election day, Tim Alberta tweeted, My gut, especially over these last two weeks,

keep saying Harris and maybe even Harris by a comfortable margin. Here's another example for you. John Ralston of the Nevada Independent, calling John Ralston the dean of Nevada politics would sell him short. He is the Christopher Walken Galactic Emperor of Nevada politics. He's like, did you see the early votes from Washoe County and Nye County? Let me tell you what those mean. I mean, just this dazzling amount of knowledge.

He looked at the early vote coming in and on November 4th said, Kamala Harris would narrowly win Nevada. Right now, she is losing it by four points. Yeah. Now, in those self-flagellating critiques of what we, the media, need to do, I'm guessing those would say that we need to be more like Tim Alberta and or John Ralston. Mm-hmm. We need to talk to voters.

We need to talk to voters who are different from us. We need to grapple with data and understand demographics. And it turns out you can do all that and still be more wrong than the conservative rando on CNN. Yeah. And that's not me saying the media did a bad job covering 2024. The opposite. I think in many cases they did a fantastic job. Covering it.

But not making predictions. But they don't know. Yeah. We don't know the answer to the question. which is what's going to happen in the election. Sure. Yeah. I mean,

it's not exactly a new thing for journalists to be expected to make big predictions, but it certainly has become more of a going concern in the era of podcasts, in the era of metapolling. You know, those are separate things. But, you know, I think there was a general expectation that when,

like, Jack Germand was pontificating on, What show is he on the Washington Week? Washington week. Yeah. He was leaning, you know, 60 degrees back in the chair saying that he thought Kamala Harris was going to win. Then you were just like, yeah, okay, but that's just the, the thought process of this blowhard here.

Like, I'm no, there's no expectation that he's going to be right. Now there's this weird, nobody trust journalists, but also we like hold them accountable for their opinions on this kind of stuff, you know? And it's a, it's a, it's a weird world to be in, you know? you'd be, you'd probably be better suited just to be like, I don't know who's going to win. Who knows? Who knows? Like, all I can really do is tell you what the polls say and no one really trust those.

But you can't say that. Right. Because that would take away the aura of being a political journalist or a political insider. Mm-hmm. If you and I had an NFL podcast here at The Ringer and it's like, we're going to have some really, really confident numerically sound proclamations about who's going to win this week's games. But we have no idea. We know nothing. Yeah.

This is all going to be wrong. people wouldn't listen to the podcast. Sure. Because it would break the spell. I had somebody one time who was an NFL draft analyst tell me something. I've just, I've always, it's always stuck with me. He's like, people who are good at analyzing the NFL draft bat 300, meaning they're right 30% of the time.

And people who are bad at analyzing the NFL draft are right 20% of the time. So being great versus being bad is the difference of being, being, being, being wrong 70% of the time versus being wrong 80% of the time. Yeah. I think that those numbers tweak slightly apply to all journalism. We're almost better as the cleanup crew

who comes in and writes that now they tell us story. Because then we have the result and we can go in and track back and figure out what happened. What were those moments that the Biden campaign which turned into the Harris campaign was completely doomed?

Yeah. What was the moment that the Trump campaign with Susie Wiles figured something out in Florida that would turn out to be really helpful on Election Day. Yep. Or we can just pretend that we're experts and we know what's going to happen and pick those

one or two tweets or one or two stories we wrote. And so, hey, see, if you'd listen to me, yeah, of course. You would have seen November 5th coming. Yep. I saw the Pod Save America guys post a clip where they're just seen off on Joe Biden. Mm-hmm.

Obviously, they're not wrong. Joe Biden decided to run for re-election in 2022 after the midterms and then waiting really long into 2024 to get out doomed the Democrats in many ways. But I would like to start a new feature here at the ringer called America's softest target. Where when we have a problem because we're a reporter who's really not allowed to be mad. Yeah. Or we want people to return our calls so we can't afford to get that mad. we converge on one thing that will cost us nothing in those departments. So being mad at Joe Biden right now, his political career is over.

His political network is completely toast. He was never going to talk to you anyway. That's true. You'll get no pushback from anybody that's like, ah, Mike Donald and calling, how dare you be mad at Joe Biden? America's softest target. you can't go wrong right now with being mad at Joe Biden. Oh, that's great.

I thought of this because I saw a clip from the Fox pregame show and Jimmy Johnson was just going off on David Tepper, the owner of the Carolina Panthers. And I was like, that's a perfect one. Yep. Because nobody cares, right? You don't want to talk to David Tepper. It's not important to you. It doesn't have, it's just like, okay, let's just, we get a free one there. Absolutely.

No repertorial consequences whatsoever. David, a new face has stepped forward to save the country. Oh, good. Stephen A. Smith was on the view. Oh, geez. He got a question from Sunny Hosten. Sunny Hosten, by the way, might have asked one of the most consequential questions in this entire cycle when she asked Kamala Harris, what's the difference between your administration and Joe Biden's administration?

Mm-hmm. Sunny Hosten was talking to Stephen A. Smith, and she asks, would you run for president yourself? I have said this on many occasions. The answer would be held no because I like my life. I'm living a pretty good life. But I must confess, I do, I wish I could debate some of these guys. I'd love to be on a debate stage going up against these guys with the president's here on the line.

We will arrange that. And not, you know, I'm half joking, but I kind of mean it. I mean, I have no desire to be a congressional figure. or a senator. But if you came to me and you told me I had a legitimate shot to win the presidency of the United States of America, I would definitely consider it. I like that hell no, took it real, real quick you turn there. Usually on first take, hell no means hell no.

You don't then talk yourself into the opposite answer. I like the many, he said he said this on many occasions. What are the mini occasions? It's just like looking at himself in the mirror. Who's asking him this? I think if you're profiling Stephen A. Smith right now, you probably ask the question. Sure.

Because since he's been on a Hannity? Yeah, but don't you think it's the awful announcing tweet that summarizes your story? No matter what you wrote, Stephen A. Mulling presidential bid. Only in journalism, mulling. Whatever I say, I know there's whatever I say here, because I don't mean it seriously is going to sound like I'm trying to further deteriorate our semi-rigged political system.

But it does feel like you should have to put down some sort of deposit on when you when you decide to publicly mull a presidential run right so you're not just just to make sure that you're really it's like it's like it's like when you get to like you know put your credit card down and get charged a dollar for something just to make sure that you like are like operating in good faith and you're not just trying to get something for free uh yeah it did it just it's self-promotion considering mulling president presidential run for the sober as a self-promotion is like one of the most deplorable. things, I think. But who knows? Maybe Stephen A. Smith is being serious.

It's a classic political move, is it not? I don't want to run for president. But if there's a groundswell of support for me to run for president, I will reluctantly throw my hat into the ring. Maybe this is it. Maybe instead of the traditional parties, two-party system, we just go by groundswell. Maybe we should do a, do like a Kickstarter for a company called groundswell, where we just like do a massive national public poll. And then the winner has to run for president. I like it. I like it.

Stephen A. Smith. Welcome. I don't think he would be the winner. I don't think you'd be the winner. I don't think so either. Also, he's not really saying much when he said, if somebody called me and said, you have a good chance of being president of the United States,

I'd be interested. Like, who says no if they get that phone call from somebody? Like, you, sir, have great odds. I don't know. Who's in charge of this commission? This is like Bill Clinton makes the call? Just like, I'm here, represent. the the groundswell commission.

Yeah, sure. That's how everybody gets yanked, gets pulled into these things. Trump said, Trump famously said, in the Rogan interview, Trump said that it was when they, Fox News or somebody did a poll, I think during when Romney was running

about who Republicans would vote for or whatever, and Trump beat everybody. Who knows what the historical validity of that, but he said it was some poll like that that actually made him start. started actually thinking about a career in politics. That was the groundswell. Donald Trump would never have such ideas about himself that he could be the leader of the free world.

You got ground swelled into it, just like everybody else. Final topic for you. Our friend Nick Field pointed this out that after the Democrats lost, we created an enormous book writing opportunity. The opportunity is to write the explanatory what the hell just happened book. Oh, yeah. So the granddaddy of them all is Tom Franks. What's the Matter with Kansas?

Mm-hmm. Which came out in June 2004. Then George W. Bush wins re-election later that year. And all of a sudden, we must turn to this book to understand why we keep losing elections. Sure. We've already got some nominees for this cycles. What's the Matter with Kansas?

Yeah, I was going to say, sometimes it's not necessarily a new book to be written. Sometimes it's an existing book that is pointing out the thing we're all wondering. I think you get more credit if it's existing. Yeah. Because you do almost have those political reporter Su-Seng powers. Polaramos's defectors, which came out in September. It's described as an exploration of how race, identity, and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos.

Turned out to be big on Election Day. Also, Patrick Rafini, who's a GOP pollster, wrote Party of the People last November. described as the future of the Republican Party as they unite working class voters in a multiracial cross-generational populist coalition. Nick Field also asks us, whose 2024 memoir do you want to read? Oh, man, that's a great question. Who's 2024 memoir?

I'll give you some odd. He says, does Joe Biden have another book in him? What does Kamala Harris' post-mortem book tour look like? Does Tim Walls get a deal? I mean, I don't really want to read any of those, unless someone's really coming with the Ball 4 energy here. Like Jim Bouton, Ball 4 energy? Yeah. If someone's, it's like, Tim Walz is just like, oh, fuck it, I'm burning it down.

Like, whatever. Like, that could be interesting. No chance. No, of course not. I don't know. I mean, that's, I don't know there's anybody that I'd be incredibly eager to, some. read their I mean

are you saying assuming that it's all going to be sort of you know anodyne that it's all going to be processed like a process take like I would love to read

I would love I mean I would love to read it would certainly be interesting to read like Elon Musk's memoir of the past six months if you were if you could just get like a you know just open up the circuit board and like find out all the truth

you know like whatever but like it would be Mr. Isaacson, call your office. Yeah. With a new epilogue. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I mean, I just can't imagine any of them would be that particularly interesting. It almost needs, I mean, maybe Biden, although it seems like you kind of know what that would be.

He's got the most questions to answer, I think. Yeah. With the proviso that it would be very processed and really boring. like we want to know what Joe Biden thinks of the George Clooney editorial in the New York Times. We want to know what Joe Biden thinks of Nancy Pelosi. Yep. We want Joe Biden to revisit why he didn't, after the better than expected midterms of 2022, just step aside and hand over the torch.

Yeah. We want Joe Biden to talk about his faculties and his like ability to be. Like there's just a lot of unanswered questions that probably need an official answer, even if it's not the most interesting thing in the world. Yeah. Kamala Harris is interesting because her political career is almost certainly over. So she's, you know,

and you and I both know this. Like what do politicians do in their careers over? They write a book. Yeah. That's partly how you make money and set up whatever it is you're going to do next. So she will certainly write a book. And what she says about her relationship with Joe Biden, her decisions she made during the campaign not to break with Biden,

that's pretty interesting. Yep. But, you know, through the lens of political memoir, probably not so much. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, a final word we promise

about 2024 and podcasts. But first, David, let's 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, always gratefully received. This comes to us from alert listener Mark Mascalino. It's a tweet from November 4th, The day before the votes came in, according to the AP, the butchered remains of a dolphin were found on a New Jersey beach. What?

Feds are investigating. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, RFK Jr. closes out his final day of campaigning. If you're thinking it was funnier when he wasn't controlling the nation's health care system, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump. Final word on the 2024 election podcast.

I'm going to say with some predictive powers that I certainly do not have that the 2028 Democratic primaries are going to go through podcast land. Yeah. We're not going back to borrow a phrase from Kamala Harris to the traditional media. Partly it's the shrinkage of the traditional media. Yeah. partly it's a feeling I got after watching Kamala Harris go on 60 minutes with Bill Whitaker. That was one of those interviews where she didn't make a mistake, quote unquote. Yeah.

But if you watch that package, it was edited in the most old school TV news kind of way. And it made it feel like Harris had talked to 60 minutes for like five minutes. Yeah. I mean, it was so edited and spliced versus a podcast. where somebody would talk for 60 minutes or three hours, I guess, if you go on Rogan? Yeah. And people can actually hear you talk in a human way? Yeah.

There's no better way to humanize than just spend time with somebody, you know? Dave Weigel was on the podcast on Thursday, and he had some good reasons, too, about why podcasts works so well in 2024. Let's see. The traditional political media is not there to make the candidates sound great and advanced their propaganda, right? It is there to make news, which is different. So you have what

in the news business on a podcast with Trump is like a news-free interview. A lot of the things he was saying were just not actually you didn't learn new stuff. You learned interesting stuff, but he didn't say, okay, now I understand how Trump is going to do this, or he responded to this thing in the news. He'll go on newsmax and they'll say the question we're often framed as

the media is being unfair to you about this. What's your answer? Whereas Harris is going on traditional media and the questions are like round seven of can you name a difference between yourself and Joe Biden, or Tim Walls is going on these traditional media, and he's answering what I think in the arc of history are not very interesting questions about whether he was in Hong Kong during Tiananmen Square or after it. The Stammon Square at this point is in Beijing. It's not in Hong Kong. Which part of Asia was the end? That's not how Rightly podcast work.

Right? the podcast were in saying, hey, JD Bans, for the 20th time, can you talk about childless cat ladies? And that really just, the attrition of all that is very helpful to Trump. So you've got a situation, David, where not only do you have something that's a better listen on a podcast, but you get more favorable questions. And one thing Dave noted in our conversation was Donald Trump was crossing over all these lines and all these boundaries. Just look at those anti-trans ads he was running all the time. You could go on a podcast and they would not feel obliged to ask you about that or shame you about that, castigate you about that in the way that a traditional news interview would do.

Yeah. So then he goes to the podcast, winds up evading those questions. The goalposts perhaps move, at least in media terms of what counts as a question you have to ask a politician and not ask a politician. And it's a huge benefit. Yeah. I mean, I think that Dave's right, too. A lot of the questions that you end up getting asked are just totally insignificant to the average voter, you know, and, and, um, policy-wise, anyway. To the average voter.

But to the average voter who's like, I think this guy is funny and a good hang, maybe not. No, no, no. I mean, in a regular, in a traditional news interview, you're asking stuff that, I mean. Oh, you mean the other way. Yeah. like the Tiananmen Square stuff. The questions that seem super necessary from the like the journalistic establishment are just not things that anybody cares about outside of like meming.

You know, I mean, and and I think, you know, they used to always talk about the who'd you rather have a beer with contest, you know? And I, and that kind of got outmoded for a lot of different reasons in the way that we discuss things. But I think this applies, right? I mean, I think that the, the only way you're going to know if you would, whatever the modern equivalent of like to have a beer with someone. is to listen to him talk for two hours.

You know, and just to say, I mean, and honestly, even if you're not, even if you're only talking about the JFK assassination and the UFO documents and like, whatever, like, the farthest reaches of the Trump Rogan interviewer, you are understanding them in a way that you never would get to with a 60 minutes interview or, or, you know, anything else. It's, it's actually, in some ways, just, and I'm not rating Trump's performance on Rogan, although it's worth saying that he seemed like remarkably more human and human. humane in that context than he does in any other place. But without rating his performance there, there's probably just like the mental acuity or

felicity or whatever else just to be able to hold a three-hour conversation is much more meaningful than being able to answer the 10 questions that whoever on 60 minutes asks you when you know that they're coming. And to answer them in coherent sound bites that will, that you know, will get edited appropriately for television. I mean, what's actually more difficult? You know, I mean, like, I'm sure prepping for a debate is hard as hell. But that's not really, that's not a really meaningful indicator of how you're going to,

of your ability to be a president, your ability to be a smart and thoughtful person. I think you can actually gain, you can actually see more of that or, or grasp more of that in a long, wide-ranging, weird conversation with a podcast host, especially podcast hosts with just an enormous. audience, you know, like you're not speaking to a narrow group of people, which is how a lot of those podcast interviews are smaller, those sorts of interviews were treated in the past. There's a prediction I found out via Ben Smith of Semaphore. This is from Samir Chaudry. We host the podcast, Colin and Samir. Chaudry says that network news is going to start to

Pat McAfee some of these podcasts. Now, maybe these aren't the magazine. far right ones, but they will find ways to start putting that on the air. Because they've got a problem, right, which is that their audience is going away. And their audience is old. Same problem ESPN has in a very different way, or in a pretty similar way, I should say. So we're going to see those suddenly become part of the mothership and probably have exactly the same news cycles that Pat McAfee produces every two months. I can't believe he said that on ESPN.

Yeah. it's going to be like that. But I can't believe he said that on CNN or MSNBC. Yeah. But they're going to migrate there. I mean, it's sort of like that. I remember the, remember Jonathan Swan's interview with Trump on with the Axios,

was the Axios TV show? Yes. Was that four years ago did that happen? I'm trying to remember what the exact placement was. I mean, that was a very podcasty presentation, right? It was like a lengthy interview that came from a kind of, it wasn't an ideological point of view,

but it's certainly like a directorial, Like, you know, it was a very deliberate sort of interview on the part of the part of Swan. It was very good and made news for sort of the right reasons at the time. There's certainly other examples. But I agree. I think that that wouldn't shock me at all if that if that sort of move happened. And also, you know, as we've seen with McAfee's is probably despite how much money they're paying them, is a probably pretty good allocation of funds, right?

This ship's already floating. So they already know how to do it. All we got to, all we're doing is putting them on another platform and then marshalling their resources in directions that help us in more traditional ways. So funny. Whenever we have these conversations, it, it always comes back to how powerful the traditional media is. We've seen this in sports.

Athletes, you know, are less likely to talk to reporters because they're like, we don't need you anymore. Your, your newspaper, even your cable sports station is just not that. important to me in terms of getting my message out there, my image out there, whatever it is. I wanted to get me celebrated in front of the masses. Same thing with politics. And it's a part of it that's like hard to face up to because I want candidates answering questions from the Washington Post and from Bill Whitaker and not just from the milk boys.

But when you when you're not as powerful as you once were, it's a very, very hard sell to make. That's what they're grading on, right? They're not like, we love your and respect your institution. They don't care about that. They want the reach. You know, they want it to be helpful to them. Yeah, and what's the bigger picture argument? I mean, I understand it is important that candidates answer serious questions from serious interviewers. But what's the deeper philosophical argument? I mean, you're the Washington Post or the New York Times, like whatever. I mean, obviously New York Times has some big podcast outlets and stuff like that. But if you're talking about the editorial. It's like you're not doing the job anymore. If people aren't getting their news

this way anymore, then where is the evidence that you can do? If people started speaking exclusively German and you were still writing in English, then I don't think any candidates would go there either, right? I mean, it's just like, that's a weird outlet, right? It's a weird allocation of a, of a, of a campaign's time and energy. And, you know, you've got to sort of evolve with the times to some degree. I think everybody's, all these major institutions have the ability to do it. But yeah, I mean, I agree. The candidate should be answering serious questions, but should they be answering those

serious questions with legacy media just to make sure they get that box checked on their campaign calendar? I mean, or should they actually be trying to reach the most people in a perfect world and give the most correct information to the broadest audiences? You know, I mean, it's, there's always going to be that tension. and I think it's incumbent on traditional media to kind of rise to the moment, right? To become undeniable or to again.

You know, it's not, you don't get to, who is it? Was it time? People met, no, Time magazine that was mad. They didn't get a Kamala Harris interview or a Joe Biden interview. And it was just like, what was the last time he saw Time magazine? I'm not talking about a commemorative edition in an airport bookstore. Like, why do you get that? Like, what have you done to make, to continue that?

Just because there's a tradition, you know? I mean, it's like, like, can we just relaunch call yours and insist on presidential interviews whenever we, whenever, like. Saturday evening post. Yeah, exactly. It's crazy. And that's, that's again, you talk about the tension. There wasn't attention before because the best way to get your message out was NBC News, CNN, the newspaper. Yep.

may not be anymore. The Think Peace Championship Belt, David. Yes. Alert listener Ryan Green was tuning into the Trevor Noah podcast after the election. I want you to listen to this comparison from Tressy McMillan Cottom, who was talking to Noah. At the presidential level, you're voting for personality in a way that you aren't in local and state races, which is why I think Trump doesn't translate well into those races. but unfortunately,

presidential politics has become basically a competition of, you know, characters and, you know, wrestling characters, right? There we go. You just cut it off right there, huh? Yeah.

You'll have to listen to the rest of that thought, which does not involve professional wrestling, but it has become a competition of wrestling characters. Yeah. By the way, I meant to mention this in the podcast segment, but are we absolutely sure that the Republican dominance of podcast land will continue beyond Trump.

Do you want to talk to J.D. Vance for three hours about something? Is that going to play the same way? I got a lot of different thoughts on this, and I don't know if this is the time or the place. But you just come up. If he won the nomination, I mean, would that have worked on Rogan and everything else? It is character base.

I mean, Rogan's a very singular. are, there's no shortage of big conservative voices and podcasts, and even mainstream ones, you know, I mean, you could put a lot of, you can call Adam Carolla conservative, you know, like what I like, there's a lot of big, like multi, you know, like million download conservative podcast. Rogan obviously comes from a very specific point of view and has moved to the right over the past several years. And, but I think the broad, the majority of his audience, you know, they didn't get into

the Joe Rogan podcast looking for a right wing podcast. you're looking for other things and the sort of political broadly lowercase P political aspect of it is sort of ancillary but but

yeah I mean I think that podcasts by and large are more liberal sphere now just because it's a relatively new media and I could be totally wrong about that looking at the numbers but I also think that by and large historically

liberal people haven't looked for single purpose outlets for these sorts of things. There's a reason why people were claiming for a liberal Rush Limbaugh for a decade and it took and there never was one, never was the desire for one. I mean, we used to joke at the time. I remember this is 20 years ago. It's just like, yeah, because the liberals are listening to Howard Stern. You know, they're not looking for a political morning show to listen to every day, right? Yeah.

Or John Stewart or even the ones that are listening to the radio. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, no, no, I don't think it's specific. I mean, I think the caller daddy is actually an interesting sort of, you know, corollary, too. It's, it's, there will be, um, other bigger platforms. And, you know, those will change with time. Some of them will become institutions. And the other thing is a lot of people aren't going to want to get involved.

You know, I mean, do you think Pat McAfee is going to be interviewing presidential candidates in four years? Maybe you will. Maybe he'll just say, no, thank you, you know, maybe. Is Aaron Rogers, you mean? President President Rogers Yeah, there you go He's got one every Tuesday

Yeah, so I mean It'll be interesting But I don't think that there's To answer your question No, I don't think it's specifically going to be A conservative sphere And I don't think there's any real I mean

For all All joking aside I don't think there's any You know, a particular guarantee that Joe Rogan is going to be voting for a Republican in four years you know, we're going to be campaigning for one, especially. So who knows?

Who knows? And that's, and I don't mean to single him out, but he's obviously the biggest name here. I mean, I was like, listen, not only can you get Trump as a guest and J.D. Vance, you know, multiple, multiple hours in the podcast, and not only can you get them on your show, but you're also talking about the recrimination hour. I mean, how many people

have said, well, Kamala Harris should have done Joe Rogan is like the first line on the list of ways of the campaign messed up. Should have flown to Austin to do, Robbins. Should have flown to Austin. Boston. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. All right, some NFL sound for you before we go. You and I have talked a lot about sideline interviews. Well, there was a particularly consequential one on Sunday night football last night. Lions and Texans, Lions played a bad first half and out of the

intermission, Melissa Stark was talking to Lions coach Dan Campbell, who was calling on his team to get some turnovers. And while this interview was playing, David, The Lions intercepted a pass from C.J. Stroud. Here's how that sound. You want to see from your defense in the second half. Listen, we have one error here or there. If we cut that out, we'll be fine. And then we've got to have takeaways.

Our defense has to get a couple of takeaways. We're not going to get it all at one chunk here. So just one at a time. We'll do that. We'll play this out until we get two minutes off in the fourth quarter before we turn on. But we'll do it. Okay. He said it.

They have to get takeaways, and they do right out of the gate. The most valuable coaches interview ever airs there. Carlton Davis with the pick. In the history of television, this doesn't ever happen. Ever. The coach is telling the sideline reporter Melissa starts that he needed a takeaway. And during the conversation that happened, that was all. That's the most memorable coaches interview in television history.

Yeah. we actually will remember what Dan Campbell said because it was happening on the screen at the same time. Yeah, it's fantastic. They should orchestrate that stuff more. Just be like, I think we should, well, I guess it would be too obvious. They're like, yeah, what we really need to do in this app is remember we're hook and ladder plays or just something where it's just like so obvious that you just drew it up before you walked over to the sideline reporter. We love this. This is going to become a movement where coaches just try to do that.

over and over again. Absolutely. It's like the anti-Popovich, right? I'm going to make the sideline interview significant again. We love interim coaches in football. That's always a figure of fun. Yeah. Coach get fired. Coach gets fired. In case of the Saints, a guy named Darren Rizzy stepped in. Got a win over the Falcons on Sunday. You can tell Darren Rizzi is not so comfortable with being surrounded by journalists and a post-game setting. Who amongst this is, but go ahead.

Yes, via awful announcing, here's how he addressed the beat riders. This is now my day started. I get down here to the stadium. I get down there to Superdome. I go in the head coach's locker room, which I've never used before. So here I am early in the morning. I go to the bathroom and this is how my day started. I clogged the toilet.

And I'm like, this is going to be a crappy day, pun intended. And so, listen, I'm like, okay, this is not really a great start to the day. Here we go. And so, yeah, I'm not really. feel like a head coach of an NFL team right now. So, uh, that's a good story. I'm going to lead with clogging the toilet in the coaching's

office. Once again, a very memorable postgame interview. Yeah. Other coaches would perhaps opt for cliches telling us how he had a big one. Only in journalism, David. I've been saving some of these. from listener Mike Blyley months long a months long effort

something you would never say in human speech but read all the time in journalism and incredibly useful too right I mean I feel like there's many I would have many opportunities like this has been a months long situation with the trash department to try to get to pick up

this bed frame you know like it's a like it's yeah That's good. A month's a month's long saga. For something that could be so useful, it is something that we really never say. Alert listener, Seiku, who got himself a press box campaign button, sent along this audio from Aaron Rogers. I want you to see if one word stands out from all the cliches Rogers is using in this clip. I mean, every year presents its own challenges. And thankfully, we're not to the day. new ma of this season you know there's still a lot of time left i know exactly what class at pascal high

you learn the word day new ma in oh of course yeah not something we typically say in human speech but congrats to erin rogers for getting it into an interview there i think that was a bet like the like the maccalfee has macket ever used the word day new maw on this podcast no maybe not macket But it's a great one. A couple of weeks ago, I've also been holding this, the Associated Press Stylebook account tweeted this out. We now have an account for the AP, and we also have for the AP style book.

And it was about sports writing, David, this tweet. And the tweet said, a team losing a game is not a disaster. Home runs are homers, not dingers, jacks, or bombs. I saw that, yeah. A player scored 10 points. not 10 unanswered points. If a football team scores two touchdowns

and the opponent doesn't come back, say it never trailed rather than never looked back. In short, avoid hackneyed words and phrases, redundancies and exaggerations. So there's a lot of interesting... Wait, well, you can't say, I don't think dingers is a hackneyed phrase. I think it's a, that's an example of a word that's a weird,

it's a weird one, but it's an effort to, in itself, to avoid the hackneyed phrase, right? I kind of with something new and fresh. and interesting, right? I think in sports writing, and it's amazing if you just read even current sports writing in the athletic or elsewhere, just how much people are reaching for a different word

than the word they've already used. Yeah. So if they used homers in the previous sentence, they will use dingers, just not to say homers again. Sure. We've all been there. Yeah.

Like, what do they call an inning, a frame or a stanza, you know, in the first stanzas like folks. I know. I know I've said this. You can just repeat the word. Yes.

I know I've said this before, but it's one of the great frustrations of writing about professional wrestling is when a wrestler only has one name. Like you can't use John and Sina alternatingly. You just have to use cane or over and over again with the undertaker. You're writing by the undertaker and you're just using the dead man

as if it's his like his given name because you just have to find something to balance the second half of the paragraph, you know? Oh my God. But yeah, no, I understand the frustration. The big red machine won a stirring victory. You don't want to be part of the propaganda machine, but it just makes it so much easier to write.

What was funny about this is a lot of people got pissed off at the AP style books tweets and then they had to tweet again. And their second tweet began, We Heard You. Gosh, I just love any tweet that begins, We Heard You. What is the We heard? How is that? AP copy editors, I don't know.

But we've been listening. Are they answering to the public? You're answering to sports writerdom. Yeah. The only one they walked back was unanswered, which they say does fill a unique role in writing about sports. We're still dingers and Jackson and Bob. I was going to ask about that. It does.

My expectation was somehow it's implicit that it was unanswered in the context or something. But you're right. That's, it's, that's necessary. But listen, the whole point of, of copy. editing is to make things clearer and easier to understand. And if the whole world's saying dingers, Brian. The world's not, David. No, I'm just, it's a hypothetical.

If the whole world were saying dingers instead of home runs, then we would change it. Then, yes, the AP would have to adjust. I mean, we've admitted new stuff to the sports ice gun. Unicorn is a perfectly acceptable thing to say in a sports article now. Yes. In a way, it wouldn't have been 20 years ago. But I'm just telling you, nobody reads gamers.

anymore and even I really don't read gamers anymore, but if you go look through gamers today, you will find stuff that you're like, this is not the 1920s? This is 2024 and we're using weirdo synonyms. Mm-hmm. Because we're tired of writing home run or inning. Yeah.

Very, very strange. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strained hun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about the debate between built-in or freestanding bathtubs was bathsides. now. Today's headline comes to us from alert listener Lucas

Hall. It's from Vox's Today Explained podcast. The pod, David, says we can blame the Democrats for the loss in the 2024 election. At least that's what I'm intuiting, the pod says. I want you to think of

the Democratic mascot. The mascot. As you consider that blame and as you ponder, what was Voxes? strained upon headline. Is it a pin the blame on the donkey or something like that?

You're there. I just need to tweak this up a little bit. Not pin the tail on the donkey, but... Pin the blame, right? That's what I just... We got to rhyme with tail here, oh, pin the fail?

Pin the fail on the donkey. That was quick. There's not that many donkey ones. I assumed you were going to go ass, but yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to think of other donkey stuff and maybe we should just move along. He is David.

I'm Brian Curtis. Producter Magic by Brian Waters. Coming up Thursday, David, our new press box co-host. Joel Anderson is going to be here. Excited to talk to Joel Anderson. Are you going to have him do the puns on Thursday? Do I get Thursdays fully off now? Or is it going to become some sort of pun contest?

I was going to talk. Yeah, where we just set a timer and see who gets it the fastest? No, because he'll do Thursdays, I'll do Mondays. and some listeners are going to let me know how bad I'm doing compared to Joel Anderson in like two months. Oh, I was going to say doing, that's what I was going to say. Do we if we do different puns who's going to be able to gauge how, how, you know, who's are more difficult? I was going to talk to you about this off the air, but since you want to put all our business out here on the cross box. Do it on front street.

I mean, I was just like, I don't know. Joel's an intimidating figure. I don't even know how he's a good he is at puns. I'm just assuming good. He's good. I mean, he's good. I was just going to say, look, I'm going to let you off the hook

from doing the second one of the week because before, you know, we'd have a guest from somewhere in media, and people would want some of that familiar press box feel and smell. So we would bring in David. Good.

So maybe just no puns on Thursdays. You can figure out another little gimmick to do. I think so. I think I created the pun for you. So I think that's like it's a David specific thing. A few times we had guest hosts when you were gone or something, and they would do terribly trying to guess it.

by the way. They think it's easy sitting in their cars listening to the press box. They have no idea. They got no idea. Last announcement is I am completely out of press box campaign buttons. So if you are still writing me, please thank you so much. And the only thing I will say is, in speaking of putting our business out there, what if we all convinced David Shoemaker to make a press box 2025 campaign button? What is the 2025? Why don't we just do press box 2028? Starts. This is grassroots campaigning here. He's going to get people talking.

Don't we have some mayoral and gubernatorial elections out there? We can do 25. That's fine. Yeah. Do a new button every year, just a collector's item? All right. New Jersey's gubernatorial election, 2025. Right there.

Oh. We got Virginia. Do I still have time to campaign for New Jersey's governorship? We got big New York City mayoral election. Press box 2025. How about this? Send in your idea for Pressbox 2025 campaign button. And if David and I like it,

David is inspired by it. We could do like an old-fashioned New York City, like political machine campaign button. Yeah, Brian, Brian's smoking an air cigar on the Zoom car. We'll do it. We'll do it. We'll discuss who's going to win this election.

Yeah, love it. Your Oswald Cobblepot idea is right here. Cobb. Cobb. A cobs. Sorry, we've got to get our references updated here. Shoemaker and I, or shoe, returned Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.