The Press Box - Did Reporters Blow It With Biden? Plus, POTUS Breaks His Silence and a Report From the NFL Broadcast Boot Camp.

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Hello media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the show with talk of a rare breaking of silence: President Joe Biden’s interview on ABC (0:40). Then, they discuss the "Now They Tell Us" headline from the New York Post (13:50) and talk through whether or not the press blew it when it comes to reporting on Joe Biden (17:58). Later, in the Notebook Dump, Bryan talks about visiting the NFL Broadcast Bootcamp for current and former players, and shares some sound as they discuss being a rookie at something again (29:55) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week 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

Hello, my name is Dave Gonzalez, and I haven't read any of the books in George R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm Joanna Robinson and I've read every book in Georgia R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. And I'm Neil Miller and I have also read those very heavy books. Years ago, we hosted a Game of Thrones podcast called The Storm Spoilers, and we're thrilled to head back to Westrose to cover the second season of House of the Dragon on the Trial by Content. We'll be using our book knowledge to dive deep into each episode and answer your lingering questions. So send us a raven every week to Trial by Content at Gene. email.com.

Follow and subscribe to trial by content on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast to join us on Thursdays where these two will explain to me which Targaryen is right. David? Yes. We had a rare and genuine breaking of silence on Friday. Love it. Joe Biden sat down with George Stephanopoulos for an interview.

It aired as a 25-minute primetime special on ABC with the title one-on-one with President Biden, which made me smile. George Stephanopoulos assured us right at the top, there will be no cuts, no edits. We haven't touched this interview at all, which might explain why the sound, at least when I was watching it, was terrible. It sounded like we had a guest on the press box and we were interviewing them on Zoom. Like, do you, can you just record yourself with their phone? This whole thing sounds a little choppy.

Our listener, Nick Field also noted that George Stephanopoulos, for most of the interview, was doing the concerned news anchor slouch. Isn't that George Stephanoblus is like only, I guess he does the reverse slouch. He leans back sometimes too, but yeah. This seemed to be the concerned slouch on steroids. Where he knew he had a. huge interview that could change the fate of the republic and didn't want to look like he was too eager to ask the questions, even if he clearly was eager to ask the questions.

Before we get to the substance of POTUS's breaking of silence, I wondered, as I watched that interview, why in the world did this take eight days to do? Yeah. The debate was Thursday. The interview was conducted and aired on the following Friday. And someday when you and I read the book that's written about this election, it's going to be a book. It's going to be a book.

I want to read about those panic days of silence in Biden world. Yeah. After the election. Because that to me feels like, one, we don't really know much about them even now. Mm-hmm. But that may be where Joe Biden lost the nomination. not just with the bad performance, so that was clearly the key of it,

but retreating to Delaware, not reaching out to his congressional allies for days, which is still confusing. Yeah. And not just saying, hey, why don't we do an interview right now? Yes.

Because you know, any news anchor in America gets on a plane and it's like, sounds great. Yeah. I agree. I mean, the delay,

in some ways worries me more than just about anything else because it feels like it doesn't feel like it shows it exhibits some significant measure of indecision on the part of the campaign

and I think at least symbolically what the Biden campaign needs to show is that it is proactive that is decisive, that is that you can imagine that its decisions are the product of one man acting decisively and not your mind wanders into the territory of how many layers of AIDS and family members do we need to get through to make a decision about when this interview is going to happen and all the days that it would take

to get that decision made. Family members that include Hunter Biden. We learned. in all the stories about what team Biden was doing after the debate sure that was a curious detail i think it was on some somebody's got to win ringer podcast uh par excellence that it was suggested that bringing hunter biden into it into the narrative as the you know the the leading voice of dad you got to stay in was was supposed to convey that the person who has the most to lose still thought that there was it was significant you know it was it was deeply important that joe biden stay in the race regardless if that was the objective, I think introducing him into the equation at all has just sort of muddied the waters even further. Had Tim Miller on the podcast last week, Tim Miller, who works to the bulwark now and was a comms guy for Jeff Bush back in 2016, also worked for other candidates.

And I said to him, I said, you know, put on your comms guy hat for me. Wouldn't you be telling your candidate? You got to go out and do an interview right now. There's no time to wait. You got to get in front of it. And there's nothing to lose. That's the thing. I mean,

you'd almost just want to flood that. We'll go ahead. Finish your thing. Well, you say that. But his comment was, yes, I would tell them that if I thought they were up to it.

Yeah. And if I didn't think they were up to it, then I wouldn't tell them to go out and do an interview. I understand that logic. And I even understand there is a, you know, the hypothetical logic that one could put together behind waiting a week before this interview took place behind showing

I guess you could you could argue that showing some sort of steadiness and resolve if we're only speaking kind of metaphorically about interview scheduling could be construed from that as well but I think what they

couldn't have factored in or if they did they did at their own peril is the degree to which the media was going to run with the story that the story is going to be told with or without your involvement and the degree to which the campaign, the Biden campaign seems to be running off the rails.

Now maybe it was the right choice. Maybe history reflects, you know, will prove me wrong. But I think that this campaign is derailed to such a point, especially in the days after the debate, there's this conversation about Biden, not just the reaction to debate, but the coverage of Biden's capability to govern in the week that followed,

I think that it was going so badly that it was almost like you've got nothing to lose, just go out there and give interview after interview. I mean, do it on your own. terms to some extent, but just flood the zone with Biden being cognizant, being coherent. Like, that's the best possible thing. One interview with George Stephanopoulos is not going to change the narrative. Let's not leave out the radio interviews they did do during the course of the week. Yeah. Where it turns out they gave questions to the interviewer. Because that'll get everybody to stop asking about whether you're up to the challenge.

when the campaign provides questions to the person questioning the president. Come on with that stuff. On the Stephanopoulos interview, David, it was a really interesting 25 minutes. Biden came out at the beginning and said, I just had a bad night. I don't know why, which is one way to answer the question, though I'm not sure a terribly satisfying way for his critics. he had a lot of answers that just drove people to distraction. Stephanopoulos asked a number of times whether he'd be willing to take a cognitive or neurological test.

Biden dodged those questions over and over again. Stephanopoulos tried to bring up the idea that Biden is clearly behind Trump in this race. Biden kept saying, no, no, no, no, no. It called the race a toss-up at one point, disputed polling data. and then at the end he had this answer about what would happen what would have to happen to convince him to get out of the race

and he said if the Lord Almighty came down and said Joe get out of the race which was really a classic Uncle Joe answer charming perhaps in different contexts but I don't think

that was going to really do it for all those panicky Democrats no were like, give me a sign that you're the guy who can win in November. I really don't. He also said at the end, you know, I think Stephanopoulos asked like, what if you lose to Trump? And he comes in and undoes everything that you're so proud of, all those accomplishments that Biden was reeling off during the interview. And Biden said, I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and did the goodest or as good a job as I know I can do.

that's what this is about. To which you could hear resistance Twitter being like, no, no, no. This isn't about giving your all. No, not even on Biden's own terms. This isn't like a Grantland Rice cone. This is about winning the election. Yeah. That's all Democrats care about is winning the election.

Yeah. There's no, there's no moral victory here. I thought Stephanopoulos was really good, very persistent, very good at asking tough questions over and over again in a way that didn't dominate the interview that let Biden answer the questions or not answer the questions. Michael Grinbaum and The Times had a great line. He said, it's easy to imagine the mop-haired Mr. Stephanopoulos in the role of an adult son guiding an elderly parent toward a conclusion that may be difficult and deeply pain. to accept. Yeah. If he had in the fact

that Stephanopoulos was himself in democratic politics in the Clinton White House and that Biden clearly regarded him that way, right? He was charming him at times. I'm not criticizing you, George, he said. Clearly he was talking to him,

not just as a news anchor, but somebody who would understand some of the issues at stake. Yeah. That was a really interesting dynamic. throughout that entire 25 minutes. It's also a tweet, David, from Julie Sirken of NBC News that came across my wires. She was talking to an anonymous Democrat who had watched the Stephanopoulos Biden interview.

And Serkin tweeted this, One House Democrat on President Biden's interview tonight, quote, it made me sad, completely out of touch with reality and insulated from truth. I'll be breaking my silence soon. So after Biden broke his silence, we had a House Democrat breaking their silence to tell us they would be breaking their silence further soon. Yes.

Follow the bouncing ball there, and I think you will get to a big scoop, I guess, coming up at some point. All right, David, coming up on our little podcast, the now they tell us story isn't just for the NBA, anymore. It's about the president. How a story jumped from sports to politics. Plus, did the media blow it on reporting about Joe Biden? And some actual sports news. I went to the NFL's broadcast boot camp, and I've got audio to prove it. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the

Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Schumaker and producer Brian Waters here. David, every so often you do a bit that becomes real life. Yes. And you heard me yammering over the years about the now they tell us story.

Oh, yeah. A staple of NBA writing. Lakers lose in the first round of the playoffs. And every Lakers reporter you know pushes publish on this story about what went wrong with the team over the course of the year?

Well, yeah. All these little scoops that they've squirled away for weeks or maybe even months in preparation for this moment. Yes. And now it's not just, we've talked about it so many times in the show, but it's not just the sort of label you throw in a story. Now it's a pro sports institution with wall-to-wall coverage from, you know, out like the athletic. They just have their writers like every single NBA team. got a now they tell us, right? I mean, they push publish the moment they were eliminated,

even with like, TKs still dancing around the text. You know, I mean, it was, it was, it is, it's everywhere you look. Clay Thompson, leaving Golden State for the Mavericks, got at least two now they tell us stories. Yeah. Last week. So Wednesday morning, I wake up, and I had to text you immediately. Oh, yeah.

Because I saw the front page of the New York Post that was about Joe Biden. Biden and all the reporting that's come out. And the headline was, now they tell us. The New York Post, I had to text you. I even texted Bill and I said, my ship has come in. I've been yammering about this for eight years. Here it is the political edition. Now, my snotty take on all those NBA stories was, wait a second.

Shouldn't we have known this days or weeks ago? ago. Yeah. Shouldn't you, the beat writer, have shared this stuff with us as soon as you knew it? Mm-hmm. Were you just waiting for this big bang of a piece that you could publish or were you afraid of losing access? I just don't think it's a fair take on some of these.

Sure. But what's probably more common is a big, shocking thing happens, like Biden's debate performance. And people who didn't talk before are suddenly more likely. to talk to you. Uh-huh. Because now there's more data out in the universe. People know more things.

Sure. Everybody saw the debate. So now this famously tight-lipped Biden universe is willing to share some more details. Or you could say reporters have a roadmap. This is the story. Now let's go find someone to help us tell this story. Yeah. I think that's right. I think in the sports world, I'm trying to draw parallel in real time.

you can also make a traffic-based argument, right? That, like, you know, if you're a fan of the Dallas Mavericks, all you want to read is Rara Mavericks pieces until the moment they're eliminated in which, at which point you're just like, tell me everything, right? That's when you're willing to start giving, lashing yourself on the back as a fan. I'm sure there's a corollary here too.

And part of it is the people that are willing to talk. And I'm not saying that reporters are in politics are necessarily out there for traffic, although they are interested in breaking the big story. I do think that there is a much more, that, you know, and we'll talk about this more, we've talked about it already, but the degree to which this is sort of a fair

game area of reportage that, in that, it's not, it's not just looking for traffic numbers, but it's, but in terms of searching for the scoop, I think it became much more of a going concern, obviously. Mm-hmm. Whatever

sort of roadblocks there might have been, either within the reporter's soul or between the reporter and the editor. All of a sudden we're gone. This is the story. And can you imagine the pressure in newsrooms in Politico at the New York Times, the Washington Post to unearth details? Yeah. To call people the White House, to call people in Congress, to call European leaders.

They featured in a lot of these stories. To call anybody who's had any kind of contact with Joe Biden over the last couple of months that could serve you up some details and help flesh out the story. And a lot of what we've heard in these sort of post-mortems is that the White House was actively pushing back

on a lot of the reporting about Biden's age, kind of, you know, like shaming the reporters for going down that path and complaining to the editors and, you know, all the tried and true

you know, journalism or anti-journalism tactics. And at this point, you know, post-debat, someone could say, listen, we're going to run with this story with or without your comment. Not just the White House, but the Biden supporter is sort of in a broader sense. And they would have to understand that you meant business. Yeah. I mean, we've got this hour and a half debate on television that is our data set here.

Yeah. So if you want, whatever you want to tell us about what Joe Biden was like, we watch television for an hour and a half. Yeah. And that's part of it, right? just having a different data point that you can take to people that don't want you to run

something. Being like, I know this. So now what are you going to do? You brought us to our next question, which is, did the press blow it when it came to reporting on Joe Biden? Because, David, we know that reporters are nothing, if not navel gazing and self-flagellating.

Well, at least navel gazing. The self-flagellation comes in dribs and traps. Brian Stelter has a really good article about this in Vox, which I thought covered the waterfront really nicely. It makes a few very key points. One is there's no need to say the media wasn't covering this, which is always BS.

But as he points out, a June Gallup poll had 67% of voters saying that Biden was too old to be president. That was long before Joe Biden and Donald Trump debated. 67%. So that included some measure of Biden voters. What he says is that the stories should have been tougher. The volume should have been louder. Yeah. So then the interesting questions are, why weren't they? You hit on a couple of them.

There's team Biden pushing back fiercely on these stories. One reporter tells Stelter every time you write a, about Biden's age, they gaslight you and tell you that you'll be responsible for the downfall of the American Republic. Stelter notes that reporter is exaggerating just a touch.

But that's one of the things they were facing. There's the impact of Twitter, which also told you every time you raise this question that you were responsible for the downfall of the American Republic? An anonymous New York Times

journalist told this to semaphore. what I'm saying is Twitter at all allowed media blindness to form, or at least a bizarre sense of legitimacy in belief over knowledge. I don't think this is the case, or I don't believe it became in the age of Twitter, you're wrong. This is false. This is a conspiracy. By the way, that anonymous New York Times journalist who's talking to Semaphore needs to just file that as a column

to the New York Times because I would read that. I think there was also a fear among journalists of both siding things again. For sure. I mean, how many times have we seen that New York Times front page from October 2016 tweeted out with Hillary's emails? Yeah. You're doing it again. One guy is dangerous and ridiculous. And you're trying to balance the scales.

So here you are going on and on about Biden's age. Again, I think reporters are immune to a lot of that stuff from Twitter, but they're not totally immune. No, there's a lot of coverage in Stellers piece and beyond about what you hear from readers, right? I mean, I think in this day and age, I think the editorial department is probably more in touch with their reader reactions than in times previous. Yeah, because that's the readers are who they need, right? Yeah. This is not like, you know, old newspapers needed advertisers. Well, and it's not just the people who are willing to, you know, pay for a stamp.

You know, you can get a broad swath of people's opinions just based on social media. The last factor I would throw under the bag here is this is just a really tough story. You know, what we're talking about with Joe Biden is not a medical diagnosis, at least as far as we know at this moment on Monday morning. He's old. so you're looking for people who can describe to you what that's like, what he's like. You're pairing that with your own observations of Biden on the stump before the debate or in interactions where you see him as a reporter. Know also, by the way, that you're not talking to him very much because we know that team Biden has not put him out there. So a lot of what you're seeing is in a press conference setting or him answering a few questions from reporters while he's,

leaving the White House. And you're trying to come up with something. Yeah. You're trying to decide if what you're hearing and seeing with your own eyes is news. Or maybe how newsworthy it is. Yeah. That's not easy, right? No, it's not.

I mean, I'll just speak from a tiny iota of personal experience. I mean, you say it's not like a medical diagnosis. I mean, people who have had experience with family members sundowning, I mean, which what all this sounds a lot like to me could could I mean I'm sure can sympathize me say like it's hard to get it's hard to get in front of a doctor who will diagnose the thing that they all acknowledge is happening right I mean it's not there's not it's not it's not a diagnosis it's a it's it's you know a concept there's no treatment for this there's no you know there's certainly no cure and so it's just a little bit of a you know you got to do what you got to do

also not for nothing most of these doctors appointments are during the day and if we're and as are a lot of the interviews that we're going to be that we've seen conducted and as opposed to the debate, a lot of the media availability that Biden will give. And it's, you know, a difficult thing to even realize, to even believe is happening when you're not watching it with your own eyes. Totally right. Totally right. And aging is just, you know, beyond even the doctors and diagnoses and things like that. Like we've all had experience with aging relatives where you seem to me like so-and-so was great today. So and so was awesome. And then so and so was less great today. What does that add up to?

What does that mean? I thought Olivia Nutsi had a really good story in New York Magazine about this, about grappling as a reporter with what you're seeing with your own eyes. She went to the correspondence dinner in April and had her reporter, had her picture taken with Biden, as many reporters do. By the way, what a strange and weird tradition that is. she writes up close the president does not look quite plausible it's not that he's old we all know what old looks like Bernie Sanders is old Mitch McConnell is old most of the ruling class is old

the president was something stranger something not of this earth whether you agree with that description or not she's trying to do there is just put into words a reporter seeing something with their own eyes yeah I'm trying to capture it trying to understand to understand the newsworthiness of it. It's a really, really fascinating and really hard question. I do think if we gave true serum to all the reporters and editors who are defending their work, and we've seen on Twitter a couple of notes from the top of the mess ahead coming down, like, I'm so proud of what this newspaper's accomplished over the last few weeks.

You guys have done great work. You have nothing to apologize for. They all wish they'd gotten this story or gotten closer to them. the story. Yep. Wall Street Journal got pretty close. They all wish they'd gotten even closer. These are,

these are, you know, people that are not settling for, hey, we did a, we did a damn good job. That's not what they want here. I,

David, I think have talked to you about the old sports writer Jimmy Cannon from time to time. Yeah. Jimmy Cannon had this column gimmick he would employ. Where he'd begin a column by saying, you're Mickey Mantle.

And then he would dive into Mickey Mantle's head. Yeah. Or you're Roger Maris. You're Don Larson. So let's try that out here. You're a White House correspondent. In 2021, David, you got the biggest job

in your part of the industry. Covering the White House. The most competitive beat, right? Daily combat with the best political journalists. Yeah. Top of the world, Ma. And then Biden's White House turns out to be way less newsy than Trump's White House. Yep. Turns out to be way less leaky than Donald Trump's White House. Much less, yeah. Forget leaks even. Biden gives fewer interviews and news conferences than his predecessors. Also, the public doesn't want to read about the Biden White House as

much. Yeah. Alex Thompson of Axios had his Biden book contract withdrawn by Simon and Schuster. So you're a White House correspondent. And suddenly, after three plus years, there is a giant political story on your beat. And you feel like you got Stonewalled or gas lit by team Biden for all those years. Yeah.

You might have been actively misled. Think about how you're pursuing your work right now. think about how you feel as you are writing stories right now. Yeah. All those feelings of pride, ambition, careerism, maybe some hurt feelings about being misled. All those stewing around in your brain, it's fascinating. It is. I mean, it's not just hurt feelings.

I know you didn't mean to diminish it. But, I mean, this is like, I'm sure this is righteous anger, you know, coming from some of these reporters, right? I mean, and justifiably so, to feel like you were put off this story for so long, deliberately. I mean, you don't throw around the term gaslighting in this context.

I wouldn't think, you know, too injudiciously. I'll tell you what, it's going to be, I guarantee that we're not, writers are not going to hear a lot of, a lot of, uh, any hesitants from the editors on the politics desk. between now and November.

There's not going to be a lot of like, yeah, maybe we shouldn't go that far. I think that everybody is ready for full. I don't want to say guns blazing again, but this is going to be, you know, this is full contact coverage from this point forward. Oh, yeah, don't you think so? Yeah.

And it's just, again, there's nothing, there's nothing that spurs that on, like reporters either feeling they missed part of the story or they were diverted away from the story? Yeah, feeling misled, yeah. Uh-huh. There's nothing to get everybody in the saddle ready to go. Like that.

All right, David, coming up. NFL players spent a few days of this offseason getting ready for their next lucrative career in television. And I was there. A report from the NFL's broadcast boot camp. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious, that all of media, Twitter,

made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Some news from NBA free agency, David. Paul George left the Clippers for the 76ers. And he did it a little over a month before the Clippers brand new arena opens. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write,

Paul George just wasn't that into it. because it's the Intuit dome that the Clippers will be playing it. Thanks very much to Dan Sander. If you think Paul George realized that less is morey, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. David nodding gravely these Twitter jokes here.

We can do better people. All right. In the non-Biden portion of the podcast, I want to talk to you, David, about the NFL's broadcast boot camp. Yeah. This is not a Mari-Povitch segment where misbehaving kids are led away by a man dressed as a drill sergeant. Although I would watch the journalism version of that.

That would be great. We definitely do. Maybe some of those Biden reporters need a little more seasoning. What was his name? It wasn't Sergeant Bilko. It had an O at the end. Sergeant Bilko, please, at the press box pot, if you know the name of the Mari-Povitch drill sergeant. Maybe David will look that up in the meantime.

David, this is the NFL's annual event where the league brings in players who have an interest in broadcasting. NFL invited me to come out and bring my podcast microphone. So I went on Thursday, April 11th to the NFL's headquarter media headquarters, NFL network headquarters in Englewood, which is over there next to SOFI. And I walk into this conference room. And I want you to picture this. all these football players in offseason casual wear are sitting around a long conference table.

And they're listening to NBC's Fred Gidelli and others talk about how to call a football game. And I take a seat in the corner and I look around and I'm like, oh my God, that's Andy Dalton sitting at this table. That's Chase Daniel, Logan Ryan, former Patriots DB. And the man sitting closest to me was, wait for it, Manti-Tayo. Oh, wow. Who is also exploring potential opportunities in media. All these players are listening to Fred Gidelli. They're taking notes either in notebooks or on their iPad.

And the first thing that hit me was, oh, my God, for the first time in a really long time, all of these guys are a rookie again. Yeah. With a whole new playbook, right? This isn't like Andy Dalton gets to the Bengals. Okay, you know, what plays do we run here? This is like I am learning an entirely new sport. Yeah.

From the ground up. I had a chance to ask Andy Dalton about what that was like. It's been a while since I've been a rookie. So I think it's good. Like I said, the anxiousness that you feel, the nervousness that you feel going into some of these things and to be able to work through and see how you get. more comfortable as the more you've done it. That's the thing like calling the game. It started off

not very good for my first couple of minutes, but as it went on, I kind of got into a little bit of a groove and I wouldn't say I felt good about it, but it definitely got a lot better. So there are two disciplines, David, taught to players at broadcast boot camp.

There's the studio show, and then there's calling a game. Do you have to pick a major at boot camp? or everybody gets, everybody gets both, both,

uh, both, uh, both, uh, both, both, uh,

and when you call a game, you do the television version, and you also do the radio version of calling a game. They take 10 minutes of a game that's already happened. And you sit there with a play by play man. Noah Eagle was there. NBC's Paul Burmeister were there. They were all there.

And they were going to lead you through. And you weren't supposed to study the game that you were calling. You could look at the rosters because of course, that's what a color analyst would do. Right. But you were supposed to come in there fresh using what you had learned in these classroom sessions. Now, it turns out, dude, that studio shows,

I'm sure there is an art to it, but I looked at a lot of the guys there. I was like, you could give this guy like 10 more minutes of coaching and they could just do a studio show right now. Sure. Brandon Graham of the Eagles was there, the defensive end. I was like, Brandon Graham could be on television right now. knows a ton about football is entertaining.

Here we go. Calling a game and just managing the architecture of that pursuit is incredibly hard. Yeah. And it was funny looking at these guys, right? I'm usually looking at people who've been in the business for 10, 20 years. These people had been in the business for literally 10 minutes. So it was an opportunity to see just exactly what he has. hard about broadcasting.

One thing was rookie broadcasters, David, tend to use the same word over and over again. That was a great play. And then two plays later, that was also a great play. Yeah, yeah, of course. That was incredible.

Mm-hmm. The other problem is jargon. They use the jargon they learned on the football field on the broadcast. Yeah. Here's Logan Ryan explaining why that is such an issue. Because we got to talk quickly on the field. So we use certain terms instead of explaining what a T-step is, what a bang post is, right?

A bang post is a four-step slant. It's deeper than a regular slant, right? Not as deep as a deep post. It's a bang. So that one word says a lot to someone on the field. The fan doesn't know that word. They haven't been on the field with us. So you got to make sure that you, especially on radio, that you describe.

how many steps that slant was or whatever, right? So that's definitely filtering a lot of that out or just making sure I can use it, just explain it afterwards. It's really funny because it's almost like you're changing from one language to another. Yeah. You know, it translated it all in real time. Yeah, as football players, if we did anything but used jargon,

the wide receiver would be running behind the defensive back and we'd be screwed. Yeah, of course. But on television, it's different. And one thing they were instructed to do in all these classroom sessions is use a comma. So he ran a bang post comma. And then you tell the television audience what that means. Yeah, that makes sense.

It's also an energy question of broadcasting. NBC's Paul Bermeister, who was calling games with some of the rookie analysts, told me about that. I was just talking to one of the guys who was really, really good at it. But he wasn't his energy. He was getting drowned out by the crowd. And by me and the fact that he had good points, they weren't resonating because his energy wasn't quite right. And I said to him, if right now think about volume zero to 10 and think about it in terms of your actual volume and your energy, both of them right now are on a five. Don't get it up to a

nine. That won't work. But if you could get it up to a six and a half or a seven, all the good points you're making will connect more with the viewers because your energy will match the crowd and you've been partner too. So all these NFL players, David, have not been training for this. Yeah. We've had like a day to learn the ropes of announcing.

And I asked Burmeister, what can you detect about their ability to do that job to be a television commentator from this small sample size? You watch these guys

who've never done significant broadcasting work, who've called, 10 minutes of football. Can you look at one of them and say, that guy's going to be good at this job and that guy's not going to be good at this job? I would give you an 80% yes. And the 20%, I'm just guessing off top of my head. The part I don't know is you don't know how much they're going to fall in love or want to do the prep that I talked about if you're in the NFL from Monday through Saturday, if you're college, obviously the days are different. So without knowing

how they will embrace all the work that goes in during the week, there are certain things. you can see that are just like basic interaction and social competence parts that come out more than the football. So I'm sitting there and I'll think, man, this guy's got a really nice ease. The words come to mind, come out of the mouth. He's not annoying. Whoever's watching from the couch isn't going to want to turn the channel because he's talking too much or too loudly in a fake way. So before any of the football stuff comes to my mind when I think about that question, I recognize more. what kind of communicator that person is. And if they really like the game and enjoy the work of it,

the people that make an impression here these two days by being just really confident, calm communicators are the ones that stand out. No, I think he describes the process really well. It describes that, I mean, this is exactly the few times I've done anything talking head, narration, any kind of especially live commentary. These are the things that absolutely terrify me.

I can relisten to this and give myself minor nightmares before I do it again. But this is, I think that's absolutely perfect. The turning the volume up, that's advice I give other people that I'm really bad following. But just the ease. The ease is, it's so, it's so hard to get out of your own head, to get out of your own way and just like, you know, be comfortable doing it. You know, part of it's just how comfortable. were you in, you know, a suit on a tall stool with like a camera with a light shining at your face?

Can you actually find any measure of comfort there? I think, you know, everybody's different. Makes me appreciate Tony Romo who we, you know, spent so much time criticizing. Like, think of Tony Tomeo coming into the booth straight off the football field. Yeah. And being good. Being really good at broadcasting, whatever you want to say about it. Like that, that, that's pretty incredible. I was talking to a few of the guys about their interest in this. A lot of them said, you know, they wanted to stay close to the game. Logan Ryan mentioned to me that like, you know, he's basically done all his work for his entire professional career within the confines of a team. And one thing you miss when you retire is having a team around you.

Broadcasting and John Madden and others have said this over the years is a team. Yeah. Everybody's doing a job. Some are really big jobs. Some are really small jobs. but everybody has to do their job to make it work. And if you're calling games, that team is traveling around the country, kind of like a sports team.

Salaries are also, of course, I'm sure, in some of these guys' minds since they've been creeping up a little bit. For sure. Fred Godelli said at one point, hey, you know, if you learn all this stuff, we'll pay you like a backup quarterback. At which point Chase Daniel turned to Andy Dalton and said, that's not very good.

That was kind of funny. one more bite for me. This comes from Brandon Graham of the Eagles. Brandon Graham helped the Eagles win the Super Bowl in 2018. He had that big strip sack of Tom Brady on the Pat's Final Drive. And I asked him, I said, when you're an announcer, are you going to insist on being described as Super Bowl champion Brandon Graham? Hey, you know what?

I wouldn't mind that at all because every time I hear guys talking, it's always the guys that say, well, he ain't won a championship. He ain't this and that. So, I mean, I would love for people to always say Super Bowl champion because, I mean, it ain't easy to get, man. And some of the greats that didn't touch it, they, a lot of people, you know, always say, well, he can't be this if he never won. So I'm kind of happy that I ain't got to be the goat, but I'm happy that I won one at least. Think of how long Charles Berkeley has been taunted on television for not having a ring. You will never be taunted.

Uh-uh. No, and you know, people would probably, I'll have a little more credibility than him, you know, just because I won a championship. And, you know, making that play against Brady definitely helps because if I didn't play in that game, then people definitely would be like, oh, you just was a part of it. You might have seen it, but you didn't play in that game. But I'm happy that I played and actually made a play. Yeah, it's a good question. Is there a statute of limitations on, like, how significant your contribution has to be, to be? You can to be, not just to be considered a champion.

That's one thing, but to be announced as a champion. You know, I mean, it's like, like Steve Kerr, separate from his coaching career, is just as an ex-player calling a game, which, you would say NBA champion Steve Kerr, right? Despite his sort of marginal contribution, all things considered. I mean, it's a very important role. But, like, yeah, I mean, so that's like halfway down the bench. what you're saying you're saying Steve Kerr the bull or Steve Kerr the bull the bull yeah because I was going to say like his contribution got less marginal right

with the no no no more more absolutely let him show off all the rings that man as coach I think you have it I'm just trying to think of like guys I know who have like been behind the desk that were like that were champions but not in the top for most important players on the team if you're like made a Super Bowl but didn't win a Super Bowl or But football, it's even more, football it's even more, because he brings up there at the end. Some guys who made the Super Bowl, won the Super Bowl, didn't make a play. Maybe didn't even get on the field. Yes.

I'm sure there's a lot of gradations here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure somebody's got this figured out. I'm sure someone sitting at Fox Sports is just like, no, you know, we made that we, we came to this agreement 15 years ago with a great council. You can't call someone a Super Bowl winner unless they made a significant play. Oh, totally. And you know, you see the problem.

It's like the Hall of Fame or Troy. Yeah. The Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw. And then we got Super Bowl champion Brandon Graham. And if like David Shoemaker lost in the Super Bowl is it Super Bowl quarterback David Shoemaker? Yeah. Like you played but lost to Patrick Mahomes that get you somewhere into the jargonaut of television. I'm not quite sure. Anyway, that's my report from the NFL's broadcast boot camp. That was awesome. Thank you for doing that. all right david before we go some only in journalism we know Biden's campaign is embattled

but but according to listener joseph white it's also imperiled who periled that's a really good one imperiled is worse than then embattled i would think so i think that's a notch higher or lower that's the next step uh it's imperiled listener douglas ben notes because Democrats won a new standard bearer. Really a classic journalism word that you never hear in real life. And according to listener Mike Soto, Biden's ABC interview did little to assuage the concerns of Democrats. You never hear anybody use the word assuage in real life, but you see it in every other news story that's being written about, Joe Biden. All right, it's time for a feature that assuages all of our concerns.

It's time for David's Shoemaker guesses the strain pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about the 20th anniversary of the Wayans Brothers movie White Chicks was Beyond the Pale. Today's headline, David, comes from valued listener, Elder. It's from the Hardwood Knox NBA podcast. Clay Thompson. Clay Thompson has left the Warriors,

for the Mavericks. I want you to think of Blink 182, as you ponder, what was Hardwood Knox strained-pun headline? Blink 182? What's my name again? All the small things? God, where's Rob Hardvillo when you need him? it ain't so

Clay it ain't so okay so we got to keep going though Clay it ain't so I will not go Clay it ain't so Dre will not go this this one kind of goes on a bit Clay it ain't so

Dre will not go is it to go further turn the light turn the light ears off and I mean you can do the last part here Clay it ain't so Dre will not go turn the light ears off carry me not carry but

dude I have no idea the remaining superstar of the Golden State Warriors oh curry carry me home there we go clay it ain't so Dre will not go turn the light years off curry me home kind of unguessable but one of the great

strange pun buffets I have ever encountered on this feature that is amazing He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Projective Magic. By Brian Waters.

A couple of things to put on your radar here. The Democratic Convention in Chicago in August, potentially very interesting. There will be some kind of press box event in or around that if you're interested. DM me at the pressbox pod or email me, Brian. dot Curtis at the ringer.com. Brian with a why, as I like to call myself, dot Curtis. We have a July press box guest host sketch. David.

Yes. Mention Tim Miller was on last week. If you want a really good 30 minutes about all the issues at stake with Biden right now, I'd recommend you listening to that. Coming up this Thursday, July 11th, you're not going to want to miss this one. A stead herndon of the New York Times is returning to this podcast. Yes. He hosts the run-up.

He's been talking about the concerns about Biden's age and ability to win. A lot longer than a lot of people have. I cannot wait to talk to him about that and many other things. He was mentioned one of the stories. Was it Seltress piece? Yes. Mentioned him and Ezra Klein. I do think that there is an interesting, very narrow sliver of the story here about how podcasters,

given the digressive nature of the form, seem to have covered the Biden's age story a little bit better than their print journalism cohorts. Because, you know, there's not. editorial hand. There's not the sort of word count constructs. I don't know. That's a very, that kind of struck me as an interesting piece of it. All right. So give me a moment here as I'm writing down the first question for a Sted Herndon on Thursday, because I think you're absolutely right. I will totally ask him that. That's July 11th, July 18th, GOP convention in Milwaukee. We will have some notes on that, plus God willing, another edition of Tales from the Campaign Trail. And then finally Thursday, July 25th, the day before the summer Olympics begin, a guy who has interviewed just about every member of the U.S. men's basketball team, Logan Murdoch, is going to make his return to this podcast.

Yeah. He's interviewed Steph. He's interviewed KD. He knows how to work a locker room. Cannot wait to talk to Logan again. Shoemaker, you and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. But wait, one quick thing before we go.

Actually, two quick notes before we go. One, now you can't say God will it. without referencing the Lord Almighty coming down and telling you they change your podcast schedule. And two, I did find the drill sergeant in question. It wasn't Mari Povich.

It was Sally Jesse Raphael. And it was Sergeant Julu that I was referring to or thinking of when you asked me that question. Sergeant Julu from Sally Jesei Raphael. Apparently there were a lot of drill sergeants in those days. Very hard to get Google to tell me who I was looking for here. It was a boom time for drill sergeants. All right, Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.