The Press Box - Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Problem, a Goldilocks Story in Pro-Trump Medialand, and the Buyer’s Guide to Sports Illustrated | The Press Box (Ep. 445)

Episode Date: March 27, 2018

The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Mark Zuckerberg’s apology tour (02:00), the news that Sports Illustrated’s parent company intends to sell the venerable magazine (21:20), and a Fox News analyst leaving the network while Breitbart hemorrhages readers (34:45). You can find the official Ringer web store here: http://bit.ly/ringershop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone. The Ringer has new merchandise for sale right now. Go to the Ringer.com slash shop to pre-order your official Ringer merchandise today. David, Stormy Daniels on 60 Minutes drew 22 million viewers Sunday night. What other blockbuster interview could get that kind of audience? Just sorry, to be meta right off the top. I think it's the perfect combination of subject and subject matter, right? Yes. So Donald Trump could go on 60 minutes and wouldn't probably get 22 minutes.

million right immediately. But if it was Donald Trump on the Russian allegation, Russia allegation, Donald Trump fesses up, Donald Trump on Stormy Daniels, that might, that we might get us there, right? I thought you could say Donald Trump's banking, but sure. I mean, you look at the most famous, who are the most famous people in America? I mean, Mark Zuckerberg on CNN did not, I don't know, I could, I tried to Google and find out, definitely didn't get 22 million people watching that. We're going to talk about him later on. I don't know. I mean, Beyonce, announcing something. greatly significant, maybe.

I mean, if my internet research is correct, LeBron James is the decision several years ago, only got 13 million viewers. And again, it's attached to news, right? Yeah. Because you've got to get out of celebrity. That was a really newsy one, though. I mean, that was when you have to be watching then. Totally.

So I think, how about a national bloodletting with Harvey Weinstein? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's great. Wouldn't you watch? I mean, it's horrible. It's a car wreck, but wouldn't you watch if you were going to answer the questions? Are we past O.J.? if I did it too.

They just had an OJ interview. But that was the old one. Yeah, but it was new to us. A sequel, right? And maybe not $22 million, but if Tiger said, I'm going to talk about my divorce, I'm going to talk about the women, I'm going to talk about my dad, this new book, this new book's outright if he goes out there and does this. Could we get to $11 million?

You could get to $11,000. That's the total listening audience of the press box. That's for sure. We are your media analysis, Toosome, on the golf course of life. This is the press box on the Ringer Podcast Network. The Press Box is the media podcast. We are not allowed to accuse someone of being an uninformed NFL fan when they are, in fact, the starting safety of the Tennessee Titans.

That actually happened to Deon Sanders this week. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. If you want some recent media content, please check out Molly McHugh on Cheryl Sandberg and Victor Lukerson's Facebook Cambridge Analytica syllabus. Plus, of course, the continuing adventures of Mark Titus and Tate Frazier on March Madness in all of its forms. Oh, you. But David, I've got three topics for you today.

First, the Facebook story has gone from a closely observed Aaron Sorkin character piece to a full-on Blumhouse horror show. We discussed what happened. Second, Sports Illustrated is for sale. What kind of media entity are prospective buyers going to get? And finally, news from the Trump media, Ralph Peters quits Fox News, and readers everywhere quit Breitbart News. We develop a unified theory of these developments. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But let's start with topic number one.

I call it Good Night and Good Zuck. David, the giant news in tech this week is that we heard the sound of Mark Zuckerberg's voice. Zuckerberg's website is omnipresent, but the man himself is elusive enough that I had probably forgotten that Jesse Eisenberg doesn't run Facebook at this point. But here, let's start with Zuck apologizing on CNN this week after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica may have improperly harvested what a wonderful verb that is, the data of 50 million users. So I think here's where I'd want to start with this. A lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people shrug off breaches of privacy these days, right? How many times we heard the credit cards of a billion people are compromised in this thing? What bothered us this, I would say, is not so much the breach of privacy, but the breach of privacy that may have helped Trump win.

Absolutely true. Right. This is a Trump scandal as much as there's a privacy scandal, don't you think so? Yeah. I mean, that was my big, all-caps note at the top of my notes here, was that, you know, we're okay. with data theft or privacy violations. Some of us actually like data theft.

Until it helps something that we're opposed to, right? I mean, part of it is that... And particularly Trump. Sure. I mean, come on, right? Opposed to the Yankees winning in the World Series title. Whatever. But Trump, like, that's the ultimate. Yeah. I mean, certainly there would be a

public outcry if it turned out that like Facebook user data was going towards, I'm trying to think of something in the same sort of political hemisphere. If Facebook user data was somehow going towards like anti-abortion research or something like that, you know, I mean, and then, you know, a lot of the same people would be outraged. Certainly the outrage would not have reached this same level. I mean, I think you're right. Trump is, it has much more to do with Donald Trump than it does to do with technology.

I think there's a certain baked inness to, you know, how much of our lives. were giving away to Facebook and how, like you said, generally just unoutraged we are about the whole thing. You know, it's funny, it's a total sidebar, but I remember finding out about a company that was doing in-store marketing, and they were, you know, like when you're in the drugstore and sometimes there's a little plastic display on the aisle, I mean, on the, yeah, on the shelf itself that'll have like coupons in it or something like that. Yeah. And there's some companies that actually have, there's like computers in these displays. that are like taking your biometric data.

Like they know that a white man and your general age demographic is spending however many seconds you spend staring at this thing. In a Brooklyn that's had. Yeah, exactly. And when you tell people about this, there's so much more outraged

than they are about Facebook giving their personal data a way to advertisers, despite the fact that Facebook knows you much more intimately. They have potentially criminal stuff on everybody who's walking the earth. And this is,

And the only difference is, you know, this is real life versus, you know, the Internet, right? Yeah. In some sense, you should be more outraged about this new technology of the Internet, you know, that this is the unknown frontier. Right. The thing in Dwaynard is much more real. But the thing, it's just the surprise. It's like sci-fi. Yeah, but it's also just the I didn't know that was happening.

And I've convinced myself that I knew this Facebook gather, data gathering stuff was happening. What we didn't know was that it was helping get Trump elected. Yeah. And the thing is, we don't quite know how much it helped get Trump elected, right? Right. It's fabulous Mother Jones piece by Andy Kroll. And you read this, and it's amazingly told, but you read this thing. And Cambridge Analytica was just kind of like faking like they had all the answers.

Yeah. You know, Ted Cruz's campaign got so fed up with them. And Trump's campaign didn't want anything to do with them. But they were the kind of, you know, their sponsors were the Mercer's, these huge conservative GOP donors. Sure. So nobody felt they could cut ties with them. Yeah. But then when Trump won, of course, they, like everybody else, Manafort, Lewandowski, everybody went around saying,

I see, I did it, you know. We got it done. But it's unclear really how much they even did, which is what the mystery is. And I don't know if we'll ever clear that up. A couple directions I want to go with Facebook here. Can we take a moment to appreciate the Mark Zuckerberg apology tour that took place? Laurie Siegel, who's the CNN reporter, had an amazing interview with him. The one thing is his affect, the way he talks, is not apologetic at all, it turns out.

it looks like he's startled by all these questions that are seemingly the most basic questions I don't know if you could watch that Yeah I did I did yeah She also had just great success Just asking basic things like Do you believe Facebook affected the results of the 2016 election Will you testify before Congress

And everyone he was kind of like Whoa Yeah That was that was kind of horrifying Weird but it did seem though that he was very That he had prepared for all that For this line of questioning right And as awkward as he was

as he might have been in performance, he was prepared. And weirdly, the question that gave him the most pause, at least from my point of view, was when she asked him how, like, being a father had affected his decision-maker, his leadership style. It's like, it's like he had to, like, roll back. You had to, like, find the right button to push to respond to, like, how fatherhood had affected him. Totally. Yeah, it was a very, very interesting interview. There was also that kind of amazing thing where she asked, given the stakes here,

why shouldn't Facebook be regulated, right? And he's like, well, I don't know why, you know, why we shouldn't be, regulated. We actually have the sound of that. Here we go. Let's listen to it. Given the stakes here, why shouldn't Facebook be regulated? I actually am not sure we shouldn't be regulated. And then it's funny because then he says, well, you know, what we need is the right regulation? She comes back with, well, what's the right regulation for you? I mean, like, whoa, he's saying, you know, government, please come, please come get involved with me. Sure. Which is the last thing any of these guys want, right? Of course. This is the point. If you watched Cheryl Sandberg on CNBC,

she was all talking points. We've made a mistake. This is a grave breach of trust. We're doing our best to, you know. Which, I mean, it has to be said. Neither of them believe any of this stuff, right? They are out there for PR purposes. They didn't want to say anything at all.

Cheryl Sandberg was clearly aware that this had been happening and that this breach of, quote unquote, breach of trust was an ongoing part of the Facebook business model. Which is not, I'm not trying to knock her for, knock Facebook for doing this. I mean, this is something that customer, by and large allowed them to do somewhat knowingly for a long period of time. For sure.

And I think that probably, you know, there's, you know, I'm in the, listen, I'm in the Marcus Zuckerberg camp and that I do think some regulation would be helpful. And I have no idea what that regulation is. Zuckerberg got a lot of flack when she said, do you want to, you know, he was asked about speaking before Congress and, you know, a bunch of quickly edited YouTube videos showed him answering basically saying, that's why I'm here giving this interview. He wasn't saying he was giving the interview in lieu of a congressional deposition or whatever. What he was saying was he recognizes his place as a sort of figurehead of the company and that's in his places to come, you know, give interviews on CNN to national media.

And there might be people who we employees who are more suited to be to testifying before Congress. Right. I was the, I always read it as he recognizes this as a state of emergency. Yeah. Where he has to go on television. Sure. And obviously he will. And it's also true that he would avoid going.

before Congress, just for the same PR reasons that he's out there giving this thing. Now, that said, you know, what he and Charles Hamburg are doing is PR, you know, and that's true. And that's why they're out there. Damage control. Yeah. And so nothing they say should be taking particularly seriously. If you're comforted by their responses, then, you know, that's good for you. That's what was so interesting because people almost treated like a politician where what we wanted

was reassurance, you know, in the right tone as much as anything, right? we're working on the problem, we're doing this. As a lot of people pointed out, that they apologize all the time. Yeah. And I've apologized a lot lately. And it's always, we hear you. We're working on this. We have a responsibility to you.

Going forward, do we think hashtag delete Facebook is a big enough thing to affect them? I mean, I have seen, I've talked to some of the tech writers that we have on staff here. And there is a sort of feeling of, I don't know if it's bem, but me. or just sort of shock that this is actually affecting Facebook to the extent that it has. For most of the people who are covering this issue, none of this is new information. None of it is surprising. Cambridge Analytica is a just sort of perfect villain or not villain is not even the right word. Just a perfect metaphor for all for this problem that has been ongoing.

And I think that there's, yeah, I mean, it's surprising that this is getting that this is kind of sticky, a news subject as it is. But as we've talked about a million times before, what the news media is constantly looking for is that hook, right? I mean, what's got, this is, these are stories that people have been trying to write or have been actively writing for the past 10 years. Now they have a way to write about it that the average news consumer can glom onto. Right. And if it's so, I mean, we're all trying to answer the mystery of what happened in the 2016 election. Right. Who interfered? What did they do? How much? much did it matter? And all of a sudden, Facebook

becomes a chapter in that. And in this case, it becomes a really, you know, an even more vivid chapter. Not just, oh, they monkeyed around with ads on Facebook and fake news and all the other kinds of things that we were worried about several months ago, but they took your data. And that helped Trump. It feeds directly into the

ongoing mystery of the day. From the moment that the Cambridge Analytica story broke, there was a very clear, I mean, and many people commented on it, attempt by Facebook to say, this is not a data breach. We're defining the terms. Data breach is the worst thing that could possibly happen to a tech company. There were a lot of rules that were broken.

We have policies in place. This was not a data breach. And that's fine. I mean, and I think in some sense, the discussion over that has helped Facebook by sort of deflecting the central premise. Cambridge Analytica itself is a deflection, you know, a happy accident of a deflection away from the central premise, which is that what Cambridge Analytica did or what, you know, whoever the real villains in the story are, was to hold on to data that they were, or pass data along to. a subcontractor or affiliate

that wasn't supposed to have it and then they kept it beyond the scope of the agreement, whatever. But there's no question that Facebook had deliberately given these people, given someone this data that they were sharing this data widely with their advertisers

and their, you know, and their affiliates. So, you know, in some sense, Facebook is sort of dodging some of the most damning, you know, aspects of the story just by this, just because of Trump's, you know, because Trump is, you know, is in the story.

Yeah, and a lack of, I think, just sophistication about this with most people, right? They basically understand Facebook that is where my baby pictures go. A couple of other notes before we leave this topic. By the way, the baby picture thing is real.

And I think Facebook, you know, I mean, their business model since its inception has been, or since it went wide to grandparents around the world, is to move beyond baby pictures, right? I mean, they're trying to get more and more significant.

But I've heard some people say that the reason why the news feed kind of took over Facebook is because people stopped using it as much for, you know, communicating with your loved ones. Speaking of politics, remember when Mark Zuckerberg was running for president a couple months ago? Yeah. That's not happening anymore, is it?

Yeah. I mean, you opened the segment talking about how you'd, you know, forgotten what his voice sound like or, you know, forgotten who had been for so long, all we were seeing of Mark Zuckerberg were these sort of. Was it rodeos and parades and all the stuff. And that was amazing. Just gauzy photos of him, you know, experiencing America and writing about his journeys. Also, the other thing here is this Kevin Ruse's column in the New York Times. He's one of the guys who interviewed him in the damage control mode, right? And he asked him, you know, why is it free and why don't you, have you ever thought of paying for it?

And, you know, Zucks as well. It's, you know, about getting scale and connecting the whole world together to keep it free. And then Ruse writes in his column and says, it's not clear this is great for society, quote unquote, and talks about, you know, it's not only just the American election. Is it when you have no barrier to entry, right? Right. Then you also have, you know, Facebook, you know, aiding in the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, right? So people, when people are paying you, you're also, the other part of this is when people are paying you're less likely to scavenge all their information for advertisers because you get another income stream, right?

So then the question of, you know, is Facebook always free? Is Facebook free forever? Do we go to $5, $5 a month, Facebook? I think Bill had this conversation about Twitter the other day, but that's obviously hanging in the air here too. Sure. It's unlikely they'll ever do it. And then when you're talking about regulations, I think that there's a very, a very tenue. argument about this, you know, about things like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube even, you know, being

public utilities. And you see that argument being made a lot from the right now. Steve Bannon famously, supposedly made that argument. But I think that the much more concrete way to go about this is we talked about this in the show before. Look at the percentage of ad dollars that are spent every year and how much of those are going through places like Google and Facebook. And then, you know, go from there. Because if they're that much of the American economy, then I think that that's a really good place to start for this sort of, you know, organization. Now, David, it's time for our 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. Yes.

Last Tuesday, according to a Washington Post scoop, Donald Trump ignored the notes. His national security advisors gave him when he congratulated Russia's Vladimir Putin on winning re-election. The specific passage of Trump ignored read in all caps, do not congratulate. after which everyone on Twitter joke that Trump's next briefing should include the phrase, do not resign. Thanks to Scott Lacey for that one. A group award for anyone, excuse me, making fun of CBS's Jim Nance for having to read promos for the 60 Minutes interview with Stormy Daniels. And also jokes about Steve Croft's profile of Janus being the best thing on 60 Minutes on 60 Minutes.

This was Adam Best tweet, 60 Minutes showing the giant hands of Janus while Donald Trump is watching his Hall of Fame trolling. Thanks to Jimmy Trainus column on S.com for that. But to this week's runaway winner, David, runaway and wide-ranging winner, to anyone who filled in this Madlib's Twitter joke, quote, Marvel, colon, Infinity Wars, the most ambitious crossover event in history, me, colon, and then put in the funny. Yeah. So I think Alan I wasn't crossing over Michael Jordan was a big one. Also, pictures of the Clint's of Donald Trump's wedding. Yeah. A picture, I believe Max Street posted this of George W. Bush and Jared from Subway.

Kind of amazing. But as a pop culture child of the 90s and 80s, as I am, did you know about all these actual examples? Microsoft Windows 95 Instructional VHS hosted by Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry. Wow. What? I had no idea. The Alf Matlock crossover. I remember that.

How did that? Episode 8, Season 2 of Matt, Matlock. How did I miss that? Murder she wrote in Magnum P.I. I looked up the episode. This is the IMDB. Jessica Fletcher comes to the assistance of Magnum when he's framed for two murders that occurred during her vacation in Hawaii. I think my favorite, this may have been the actual first crossover that you and I ever experienced, the Hanna-Barbera Laf Olympics. Oh, gosh, yes.

Can we play the intro for the Hannah-Barbera Laf Olympics? Heavens to hilarity! This is it, sports fans, participants even. Television's greatest array of stars. Laugh Olympics presents around the world triple-team competition between the yogi-jouis, the Scooby-toobies, and the really rottens. The players are on the field, in the stadium even. So let's get on with that. Laf Olympics!

Heavens to hilarity! Amazing, right? Oh, my gosh. Cartoons out of K-Fave. That's really crazy, man. The Knicks Beat Writer for the Athletic, Mike Vorkenov also made a joke about some crossover moves.

He saw at the actual basketball game he was attending the other night, just some straight observations about crossover moves. And then he tweeted, oh, I guess I could have done those with Infinity Wars, the most ambitious crossover tweets.

Now I'll never make the overwork Twitter joke of the week reel. So don't worry, Mike. We're going to be watching your Twitter career very closely from here for it. We got you, man. All right, before we talk about Sports Illustrator for sale, David, let's take a quick break. Hey, guys, I'm Mark Titus.

And I'm Dave Frazier. We are the host of One Shining Podcast. It is March. Check your calendars. It's true. March Madness is coming up. We're here to talk about all things college basketball. If you like FBI investigation, if you like teams that are on the bubble and think they belong in, even though they have like 16 losses, come check out one shiny podcast.

If you like Buzz or Beaters, Buzz Williams, being buzz watching basketball, those are all three things you can do and you can listen to. us. We're going to talk about everything that happens in the NCAA tournament. It's going to be great. We're going to be here all month. Please subscribe to One Shining Podcast. Check all of our stuff out. Tate has done some very disgusting things for money in the past. And he is desperate for more to come for more subscribers so he doesn't have to return to his old life. So please, please, please subscribe to our pod. Check us out. We're having a lot of fun this March. You can get us wherever you find your podcast, Apple, Stitch, or SoundCloud. I'm a Google Play guy. Google Play doesn't get enough love when people do this. And Spotify. People are on Spotify now. So go

check it out. We have exciting news for all you ringer heads out there. The ringer has new merchandise with a shiny new storefront that you can check out right now. We have hats, hoodies, and even an exclusive Shea Serrano disrespectful dunk t-shirt. Your friends will be low-key jealous when they see you strutting down the street with an official ringer zip-up hoodie. Previously available only to ringer staffers, we are letting you, our loyal listeners, get first dibs on the goods. Go to the ringer.com slash shop to pre-order your merch now. These are limited run items and will not last long.

once they're gone, they're gone. Again, check out the ringer.com slash shop to pre-order your official ringer merchandise today. You can also find the link to the ringer web store in the podcast description. Our second topic, David, in honor of one of its most famous franchises, where is Sports Illustrated now? Last week, as expected, we learned that Meredith, the company that bought Time, Inc. plans to sell venerable titles.

And by the way, watch out when they start calling your place of business venerable. Jeez. Like Time, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, which, as their website boasts, has been making long form since 1954. I thought we could do this maybe as a buyer's guide for anyone interested in purchasing Sports Illustrated. What's working? What's not working?

Why don't we start with what's working? What do you like about Sports Illustrated in its current form? Am I betraying too much? But does it say that I don't know? I mean, the print edition... Yeah, I don't think we're reading the print edition, right? No. I was going to say when I come across,

cross it. And, you know, the joke is always, you know, your ophthalmologist waiting room or whatever. I like it when you find a weekly magazine, like, folded in half in the back of a seat on a train or an airplane. That's like the great place to come into interact with sports. It feels very old school, especially the folded and half part. Like fit in my back pocket. Yeah, I've made my way through it. Now I'll leave this behind. You know, I was thinking a lot about Peter King's MMQB. Yeah.

I like a lot of the stuff on there. I honestly don't have much of a grasp for how far that is permeated as a brand. It certainly seemed like a much bigger deal at its inception when verticals and personality-driven websites of which we can speak some about some were more in vogue or more of a going concern. but you know I mean I think that what they do well is still largely is the sort of institutional stuff

you know they do they can handle March madness in a very in a sort of way with that echoes the past but it's still very you know it feels very current and you know they still have a they still are a space for

a sort of slightly I don't want to say old fashion because that's like venerable there there a space for a certain kind of sports writing that doesn't exist widely outside of sports illustrated. I think that's right.

And I think you and I probably say that as a compliment. For sure. Yeah, it's sort of like they can still command attention with a big long-form neutron bomb, right? Yeah. Lee Jenkins, Tom Verducci, S.L. Price, Chris Ballard, right? John Worth-heim stuff. Our pal, Charlie Pierce, doing a column, you know, can really, can capture the thing. I think when I was making my list also kind of surprisingly, they've been, you know,

are they the leader on sports B-2 pieces? you know, with the Jerry Richardson piece and the Dallas Maverick stuff? Mm-hmm. You know, have they done, you know, like we pray Larry Nassar's its own category, but other than that, have they done more significant ones than anything else?

It seems like you're sure. I mean, you know, Jerry Richardson's gone, right? Yeah. Mavericks are, you know, in deep, deep trouble as they should be from that. I think, you know, when we look at downsides, you mentioned Peter King, right? I think his column and Richard Deich

where the two must read things every week. that you just about anybody read, right? Dice has gone to the athletic. Peter King, we don't know what's going to happen to him, right? So all of a sudden, you say, where is the must, where is the must, the thing that I just have to come back to? Sure. They both had for a really, really long time.

I don't think that, I mean, I'm not trying to make an argument that S.I. Mishandled MMQB, but you can certainly see a version of, of, you know, an alternate timeline in which MMQB, if handled differently, would be worth more as its own property in 2018, then SI is going to sell for in a couple of months, you know? I remember that it was always a thing. Yeah. Is it going to be MMQB presents SI? You know, you're right.

It's funny that you mention, not funny. I mean, it's obvious. You mentioned Deich going to the athletic. I think one of the real sort of sad aspects of, you know, the second impending sale of Sports Illustrated is the way to which they've actually, they're not, they're a dinosaur in a lot of ways, but they've informed new media to such an extent. I mean, so many of the athletics founding. editors are graduates of, you know,

S.I. University or whatever. Sure. Even there's, you know, there's startups all over the place. Even the way that we're talking about the certain sort of writing, especially the sort of intellectual, progressive stuff, you know, I think a lot of that is

informed the undefeated in their launch. And, you know, some of the best stuff that they've done, obviously, there's a different, there's a, you know, a different point of view to a large extent. But, you know, there's still a currency. I mean, they've obviously, people in the ringer office hold SI to a very high esteem.

Oh, absolutely. And so there is a great currency to it. And that's sort of the most frustrating part of to watching it sort of, watching their whole enterprise sort of crumble apart. Well, I think, you know, we talked about on this pod the other day ESPN being haunted by nostalgia. SI is haunted by nostalgia. Yeah. There are no fault of their own. But by the fact that every sports writer who's, let's say, under 35, over 35, 40 basically grew up reading SI

the Bible and always dreamed of wanting to write for Esai and has this amazing image of SI. Which by the way, if we went back and looked issue to issue, SI was great, but come on. You know, I mean, like, it was, it was, it was, you know, it was a magazine. Right. It had some fantastic stuff in it,

but I think we probably idealize it. Yeah. Way beyond. I remember, you know, 10 years ago going to a bar with our pal Tommy Cracks and us having one of our, you know, particularly drunken talks about sports writing and what we were going to do

and how we're going to conquer the world. Ha ha. You know, but I remember kind of coming out of that thinking, oh, wow, S.I. is not Valhalla anymore. Yeah. It's not, or at least it's not the Valhalla, right? There's other things out in the world.

This is almost certainly like pre-Grantland and all its other stuff. But it's just like, it is no longer the singular thing because the world has changed so much. Yeah. I'd say in the debit side also, I'm a little surprised they haven't minted more young stars.

And I don't mean young, like Jack Dickey and Andrew Sharp Young. I mean, like, we're in this age, I think, where you just turn on the computer and precocious 22-year-olds just sort of fly out of the screen. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not sure that I've seen that there. And I don't know if that's a structural thing or if I'm just missing it or whatever. I think the other thing that's interesting about SI is because of the Rick Riley's and the Gary Smith and Frank DeFords and Kirk Kirkpatrick and everybody else. Yeah.

They get compared to Esquire or GQ or that kind of, you know, long form gods magazine. But really, they have a lot more in common with Time and Newsweek, right? They're weekly news magazines that had a couple of amazing bonus things in the back. And, you know, their Golden Age is a lot of Golden Age Time, you know, which was also really good and full of good writers. And now you look at like what's happening to the news magazines. Time is also for sale. Yeah. This is the problem, right?

The general problem is not that the writing got bad. It's just that that became a very, very hard thing to do. And, of course, at SI, you're doing it. You're running a two-front war. right. We used to make fun of the newspapers. Oh, they lost their way. Well, yeah, they're having to put a newspaper out and compete on the web. Yep. And that's not even though it's biweekly

now, they had that too. So obviously that's been a huge. It's funny. I mean, you can't, biweekly, I think, is the worst possible decision, right? Because you lose the currency, whatever currency you had left of being weekly. But you also aren't spreading it out enough to really, you know,

have a monthly that you could, or a bi-monthly that you could sink your teeth into. Yeah. You can count on one hand the number of legacy magazines that when you hear their name in 2018 you think of the website first and I mean those as success stories right? What is that list

by the like New York magazine? I mean maybe if you're in New York, you think of, you see you saw some of the website New York Magwired maybe. Yep. There's, you know, I mean there's certainly other places that had magazines that predated the internet. I mean, ESPN is one. You know, I mean, there's at least predated the common internet.

I could be wrong about my timelines there, but there's not that many, you know? I mean, there's definitely magazines like they're doing a, you know, Conday Nast Empire is doing a relatively good job of these things, launching web-only magazines. I certainly interact with Vanity Fair as much as I love the magazine more

online than I do in printed form. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's not a very long list, and it's even more difficult. You would think that it would be easier for a weekly to transition to the internet. But the problem is when your business model is getting out a magazine every week. You're fighting with yourself, you know? I mean, there's

like proprietary arguments going on on a daily basis in the office. Like, do we get, I'm talking about 15 years ago. Are we giving this away? You know, like, shouldn't we save this blurb about, you know, George W. Bush for the print edition or whatever? And I think the weekly product is the hardest thing to transition, right? Like the long form thing that took, you know, a month to gestate, the big giant profile and all that stuff. Yeah.

That translates we've seen to the web fairly well. Yeah. But it's the, here's a slightly enriched gamer. Mm-hmm. Right. here's a piece about how Michigan started the season 6 and O and isn't that amazing. Yeah.

Those are hard things because they're very, very much creatures of a weekly magazine. It is. Like you get this, you get SI on Thursday and putting Michigan on the cover, the Michigan is 6 and O and Michigan's back. Like that was a thing. You know, that was like a, that was as much about what was in the article as just announcing, you know, this is officially a thing now.

We all know this, but now this is a big deal. That's very hard to translate to the web. Because that just mostly happens like Saturday, afternoon, Sunday morning, and then you kind of forget about it now, you know? It is. And I said, you know, I was talking about imagining these, what comes to your mind when you hear the names of these a minute ago. I mean, let's be honest, a lot of what SI is dealing with

and what time was dealing with and all those others is the perception of it being of a previous generation. Now, I'm not here to make some broad argument about how, you know, Esquire or Vanity Fair escaped that same fate. But when I think of Sports Illustrated, you know, I think of my dad's copy of. Sports Illustrated. True. You know?

I mean, so were the sporting news, but my dad was actually a sporting news subscriber for the longest time. And even as a child, I looked at that with its gothic, you know, with his gothic marquee or whatever and thought, you know, this is an old man's magazine. Sure. I mean, those, that was, those were its glory days. Yeah. I think, too, it's like, you know, the one thing it does have a common with Escar and Vanity Fair, as you say, is they could get the big people, right? People would do it because it was Sports Illustrator. Yeah.

And, you know, there was a certain cachet in doing it in Sports Illustrator. as opposed to doing it somewhere else, which for much of sports mediadom was either SI or your local sports page. And now that not that they can't get them, but that athletes are kind of ungetable. Yeah. You know, minus Lee Jenkins doing LeBron's thing or Lee getting a big thing or, you know, Tom Verducci going to get Madison and Bumgarner after World Series, that kind of thing. It's the writing then all of a sudden has to be really good. Yeah. Because now you're competing with everybody else who didn't get them and who's just.

just fully going all in to write the great piece. So it's not, you know, the thrill of this is where I'm going to hear from the athletes, is that diminishes a little bit. They still get lots of people. S. L. L. Price and Gruden was fabulous the other day. But it's like, now the writing better be pretty damn good. Yeah. But even that, that great writing is what, that was almost like you snuck that in on the back of the front of the book. You know, and the front of the book has now been totally displaced by blogs and by the internet.

Sure. That was the candy that you brought people to the magazine on. And then a lot of those readers would, you know, find their way to the back to read the great. articles. I mean, that's the, as much as we remember the great, great long form writing, I mean, you would get it because this was your weekly blog that came in the mail. Totally. Totally. And I would know that stuff. By the way, I know from the New York Times piece by Sydney Amber about all the sales over Meredith. Oh, yeah. This is Tom Hardy, who is works from Meredith, says some of the people who have inquired about these titles are, quote, non-traditional, wealthy individuals,

right? And this is if you hear people online and boy, were people crawling over themselves online to say this. You know, I just hope a real, a rich person buys ASI, a person who just loves sports and loves the magazine. It's like in this economy, in this media of time that you and I live in, this is what we're reduced to. I hope nice, richy rich buys our publication and keeps us all in business. This is the LA Times.

This is, this is the Washington Post. This is Sports Illustrated. Like, this is what we're all praying for. It's like sustainable model. Okay, all that's a yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we don't really hold out that much hope for that, right? What we want is Mr. Rich guy to come along and buy it and keep us afloat until we figure all that out, which may actually never happen. Well, ideally, someone who's rich enough that can keep things running and, you know, your bottom line, however much you spend on flying people to the masters will never be big enough to get his attention.

Jeff Bezos by Sports Illustrated and decides he loves that's his favorite magazine. He'll keep it as it is. They'll be fine forever, right? Sure. But, I mean, it's true. the history of the history of journalism of media is, you know, wealthy benefactors subsidizing great writing. Yeah, I mean, there's a better writing too.

Exactly. I mean, but there's been a lot of that. And, you know, it is weird that that's the state of play. I mean, do you want to spin it forward? Do you want to talk about who you think might be these shady, these hazy, these hazy multi-bellied? I didn't come up with a list. Not at all. You know, NBC News did point, you know, mentioned some names of.

potential buyers not, they weren't theorizing, you know, about the Mark Cubans of the world or whoever these rich sports fans are. God, wouldn't that be a glorious mess if he bought it. But previously, you know, people who previously expressed interest include a friend of Trump, David Pecker, chief executive of American media, owner of the National Enquirer, where he said he'd be very interested in a lot of these, a lot of those properties. And Edgar Bronfman Jr., former chief executive of Warner Music, was interested when they were for sale. last time. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's a mug's game to guess what's going to happen. When Meredith bought Sports Illustrated, along with everything else, they were acting like they

were in it for the long haul. That's the way these sorts of acquisitions go, you know, but we knew pretty immediately that they liked, they liked the lifestyle titles, right? Sure. And then SI and time and stuff weren't out there, Baileywick. Yeah, but it is interesting to think that it just, that the SI people are hoping for this rich benefactor. Meanwhile, Meredith is already slashing jobs.

Oh, yeah. Right? They're not waiting for someone to come in and save the day, at least for us. They're going to allegedly get rid of 1,000 employees. All right, David, our final topic today, I call Colonel of Truth. Two contradictory things happened in Trump Media Land last week. For contributor Ralph Peters, Fox News proved to be too Trumpy. And for readers, the website Breitbart isn't Trumpy enough.

Let's start with Peters, a former Army lieutenant colonel, who decided not to renew his deal with Fox last week and then turned on the flamethrower in a memo obtained by BuzzFeed's Tom Namako. Ready for some highlights. I quote, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law

while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I was long proud of the association. Now I am ashamed. He goes on to call Fox a mere propaganda machine for destructive and ethically ruinous administration and says, quote,

as a Russia analyst for many years, it has also appalled me that the host have made their reputations and who justifiably savage president blah blah blah blah blah now advance Putin's agenda by making light of Russian penetration

of our elections and the Trump campaign. What did you make of one of the great fiery exits in cable news history? I feel like there have been more of these, right? Do we have a ranking of the grade Foxwalk? But I think usually people get fired, right? Yeah, that's true.

I think they get fired and then, you know, on the way out the door, go crazy. But this was, he legitimately seems to have left on his own. Yeah. You know, it's a good media hook right now that someone is walking away. Yes. There's a certain part of the population of which you and I are members who think we'll look at a story like this and be like, oh, boy. To me, to me the bright Bart side of the story is, it's easier for me to talk about if we go in from the bright part end.

Okay, let's go in from Bright Bart end. So Breitbart's traffic is down significantly. According to Politico's Jason Schwartz, the site dropped from 15 million Unix in October to 7.8 million in February. That February number is down 49% from 2017. I won't waste anyone's time with jokes about, you know, Russian bots getting their accounts throttled and lowering page use. But for Fox News, for Breitbart in particular, you know, we hear this all every cycle. Partisan outlets suffer when their party is in power. Right?

Sure. This is the normal thing. This is a normal thing. MSNBC's ratings went down during the Obama years compared to where they were with George W. Bush. It's more fun to be in the opposition. Also, Breitbart was buoyed by this perception that they were connected to the White House. They were the official, you know, whatever the new republic was to Bill Clinton.

This is what Breitbart is to Donald Trump. Yeah, and there was an interesting piece, or quote in Schwartz's piece, where this is Kurt Bardella, who's the site's former spokesman. He says before Breitbart was one of the only places to get a window into what the president was thinking. Right. Now Fox News is supplanted Breitbart That's essentially that Fox became Brightbart Yes, so this is exactly what I'm getting at They lost that connection

I mean the first sign was when Bannon Was fired from the White House And then quickly removed from Breitbart After that for saying some things That not everybody at Brightbart And the White House certainly agreed with Right? He was an enemy of Trump But he was the direct connection

Between Brightbart and the White House He's gone, that starts to suffer Like you said, Fox takes over As the sort of POTUS whisperer but it's not just because of his affection for for you know Fox programming for Fox and Friends specifically or because of anything you know Breitbart did take some shots at his policies

I think more than anything it has to do with John Kelly I mean this is the John Kelly effect right he stopped people from handing him printouts of Breitbart articles which people reported over and over again with you know highlighter circled headlines this is what you need to be talking about this is what you need to be tweeting about that doesn't happen anymore But John Kelly can't take away Fox and Friends, right? So that becomes the way that Donald Trump...

So he can stop him from reading, but he can't stop him from watching TV. Is that what you're saying? I think it would be... I think it probably would have been more difficult for him to, you know, black out certain channels on the cable box. That would have been a weird. Maybe he could have done it. Who knows?

Like V-chip technology from the 90s? But I think that you're right that when Fox becomes the, you know, official Trump-approved news source. I'm not, you know, I don't think that there's any, like, I don't mean we need to get into accusations of state. media or anything like that. But when that's Fox's, you know, when that becomes Fox's position, it's Fox and Friends all the way to Hannity.

Then the stuff in between, I think, starts changing to fit that profile. If you're, and I don't think it's malicious or whatever. But, you know, if Donald Trump is tweeting and support of Fox and Friends every morning, you got to think that the other people who are, you know, programming Fox show or running Fox shows are just like, we got to get some of that love. Oh, absolutely. So. I mean, that was one of the striking things about the campaign, right, is Fox being skeptical,

going from being skeptical of Donald Trump to embracing it. And to saying, if you're on here, you support Trump, right? This is the place where Trump is cheered on and defended and all that stuff. And whether or not it's true, the ideological, you know, whatever, whether it's a mouthpiece or not, certainly the perception that they're chasing that sort of approval and the ratings that come with it, I think, is enough for certain contributors to take great offense to, you know?

I mean, I'm sure that a lot of, you know, moderate, liberal, even old-fashioned conservative contributors to Fox, hear it endlessly from their friends and family, that they're a part of this organization and intellectually, if they're consistent, I understand why someone might take objection to it. Well, and that was Peters has a really interesting profile in that sense, right? He's always had his doubts about Trump.

Here he is telling Stuart Varney of Fox business, who's definitely one of my favorite hosts, why he's voting for Hillary. I don't want Moscow's man in the White House. My concern, I know I could be a lot more popular this morning by saying, oh, Trump's the Messiah, I'm going to vote for. This is about the future of our country. It's about our security.

And here's a guy who apologizes for everything Vladimir Putin does, makes crazy remarks about NATO, about Syria, about nukes, about the Mosul offensive, and, oh, by the way, about foreign trade. You want a global recession? You want to see your portfolio really tank? Sure. Just walk away from all our trade deals. Let me come back at you first time.

And here he is stomping on Tucker Carlson, when Carlson suggests that we share foreign policy objectives with Vladimir Putin. Now, you're getting away with this. Because Vladimir Putin has invaded his neighbors, broken the long peace in Europe, he assassinations and journalists, he bombs women and children on purpose in Syria. He is as bad as Hitler. And I'm sorry, you know, if you don't like the Charles Lindberg thing,

I will retract that. But let's just say you sound like someone in the 1938 saying, what's Hitler done to us? And it's funny. I mean, I think part of this is like it also suggests a question, right? You were okay with Fox News pre-Trump, but now it's a propaganda machine of the first order, you know, now. But it's like in his case, it's almost like he is, when you watch these appearances, whether it was with Tucker or whatever else, he would just, when he talked about Russia, he would just be like, I can't believe we're showing any affection for these guys. Yeah.

Policy objection. I just can't believe we're in bed with these guys. Mm-hmm. To whatever degree. Yeah. So it's like he actually has a somewhat. particular gripe here, and that goes to what you're saying. By that I was also thrilled to learn that Peters is the author of a historical mystery novel.

Did you know that? Can I read you the Amazon description? Yes, please do. Quote, grotesque murders multiply as Major Abel Jones pursues a monstrous killer, who may be a well-connected Confederate agent or a ghost from Jones's bloody past in India or both. Oh, my gosh. I thought that was fabulous. Anyway, a wonderful side note to the story is Steve Bannon's European tour.

Now dislodged from Breitbart. He's going around giving all the all-right speeches in Europe to Europe's various outlier parties. This is, and he's looking forward to, this is according to the New York Times, Jason Horowitz, a proliferation of populist websites in the image of Breitbart News, which will spread those ideas across Europe. He's weighing whether to buy Newsweek or the United. Speaking of rich people buying magazines or United Press. I enjoyed Timothy Noah, my old colleague, it's late tweeted, Steve Bannon reaches, they love me in Europe stage of irreversible career decline,

which I love that he's like the Jerry Lewis of the alt-right, right? Hazzle-off of the, yeah. Right, they love me in Europe. That was amazing. Oh, man. I just want to do a whole, by the way, for the future, we should just do a whole segment on Stuart Varney at some point because that was my rabbit hole of the week, was just watching more and more of Varney after the Ralph Peters.

I may have a relative who wakes up every morning and watches to her Varney. And let's just say this relative is not British. Okay. And they are not particularly interested in markets. Money matters, right? And I'm just, I just am amazed. Like, what is the connection? You know, the visceral connection of the Fox host to the audience, Bill O'Reilly, right?

Tough guy from Long Allen. But what is this? Right. What is the, how is Stuart Varney charming people in the audience? I don't know how many people watch Fox business, but I'm amazed at the couple of times I've watched it how he gets it across. Anyway, all right, David. What do you think for the future, though?

I mean, do you think that for Fox, I don't want to get to, I mean, there's no reason to predict too much. But it's interesting because I think there are some on the left that would say that this move, and this is what Ralph Peters' argument would be, is that Fox is probably doing irreparable damage to their own brand, Fox News, by going down this path. All right? You could also make a sort of arch argument that, like,

Like, I'm trying to think of who, like, if the next Republican nominee for president were someone like John Huntsman. You could imagine John Huntsman saying, you know, I'm just not going to, I'll do some perfunctory stuff with Fox, but I'm not going to engage, you know, with that echo chamber. But you could also imagine him saying it's clear that they'll just go with whoever wins. So I'm going to use it. And I think that's true. Yeah. I think they will go with whoever wins. Sure.

It's like, look, in a lot of ways, it's like the Republican Party. And maybe the Democratic Party, too, though, just hasn't been tested in this way. But the Republican Party we've seen, it shapes, you know, has refashioned themselves around whoever the nominee is. I think if you looked at the way Fox covered Mitt Romney, it was less than a full-on embrace, right? Because it wasn't as visceral a connection. Not as good TV. Yeah, not as good TV. And also to their people sitting at home watching it, right?

The 70-somethings, right, whatever. As we learned, Mitt Romney didn't connect with those people in key states anyway in the way Donald Trump did it. So, you know, yeah, I think that, you know, in a way it's like they would be. they would be happy to go there. Huntsman or somebody like that that's so different would be a real test. But yeah, no, you know, different ideologically. But yeah, I kind of want to see that. I mean, this time it was like they really didn't want Trump to be the nominee. Yeah. At the beginning, right? And when it was clear Trump was going to become the nominee, or at least their viewers were indistinguishable from Trump voters, they're all in.

For sure. Yeah. Now, it'll be interesting to see where it goes. I think we'll probably be back here a year from now having these, you know, an exact same conversation. I think we'll be talking more about Fox News. How could they have gone another step? They've gone too far this time. Next week on the press box, more hot takes, more everything about our media universe. See you next week, buddy. See you, man.