The Press Box - Five Ways to Cover the Death of Queen Elizabeth II

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Bryan and David look back at the week of media coverage in reaction to the passing of Queen Elizabeth II (07:00). Later, Bryan dives into what goes on in the NFL press room on opening weekend, and more (25:00). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone. This is Chris Ryan from The Ringer. As many of you have heard by now, we lost a treasured colleague and friend over the weekend. Jonathan Charks passed away on Saturday. John was 34. He leaves behind a wife and a son, and we are obviously mourning his loss and sending all of our love to his family right now. If you go to the ringer.com slash Jonathan Charks, that's J-O-N-A-T-J-A-R-K-S. You will find a memorial page for John, which has links to his GoFundMe that benefits his family. family, and the amazing writing he did throughout his experience. I encourage you to go there, and if you can, please support the Charks family. Briefly, I will just say that John was among the

first people that we hired to work for the ringer, so he was instrumental in defining the voice and perspective of the site. He has as much to do with what this place is as anyone else. And throughout his experience with cancer, John communicated eloquently about the challenges he was facing, both through his writing and his podcasting. You could never stop John from talking about his passions. It's one of the things I loved about him. Over the last few months, you know, whenever we would talk, whenever I would reach out to see how he was doing, I would try to keep it very John focused. And the next thing I knew we would be talking about James Hardin or Better Call Saul. He really loved this stuff. He loved talking about it, celebrating it, debating it,

illuminating it. We're going to keep putting out our pods and writing while we grieve. But we wanted to let folks know that John was in our hearts and that his family was in our thoughts. Thanks for listening. David? Yes, Brian. I'm coming to you from Texas because you'll remember that I'm in the midst of my Texas double. Two football games in one weekend. The University of Texas versus Alabama in Austin on Saturday. And then the Dallas Cowboys versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday night football in Arlington. Oh yeah. How did that game go? Well, here's the good thing about doing two games in one weekend. Both of your teams can't possibly lose.

You can't go 0 for two. For instance, you couldn't have a heartbreaking one point loss in the first game and then a complete offensive no show in the second game. There would have to be a ray of sunshine in there somewhere. Sure, of course. And let me tell you what else couldn't happen. both games couldn't feature your team starting quarterbacks getting hurt. And as a result, being out multiple weeks, which will surely screw up both team seasons.

That couldn't happen if you went all the way to Texas to see two games. You wouldn't happen twice. Couldn't happen twice. But think about it this way. You went to two games, and yes, they were both heartbreaking games. But it's kind of like you got to go to like 16 games because you know how the next half of the season is going to go for both teams, right? Think of the value of the tickets that you bought. So I'm glad I didn't miss these because any game after these wouldn't have been fun to go to at all.

If you had had this plan for week two, would you even have gone at this point? No, probably not. And Owen got to go see the Cowboys. Owen got to go see the Cowboys. So that was a big event. Yeah. How do you like the majesty of Arlington Stadium, AT&T Stadium? He was, yes, he was very happy with that.

I suggested both the spaceship metaphor and the George Lucas galactic Senate metaphor once you get inside. Oh, yeah. And the other thing, you know, I had worried about, you know how it is with kids. It's kind of a long time to be in there. Three plus hours. And a long way. I mean, it's a very well-considered construction there. But even still, you're still a long way from the bathroom, from food, from anywhere else you might want to skitter off to.

Exactly. Plus, Sunday Night Football, you're powering through a lot of television commercials. Oh, yeah. Well, here's what I didn't reckon with. We're sitting in the upper deck and we're right at eye level with the 160 foot long screen at AT&T Stadium. So this wasn't just Owen's first football game. It was perhaps the most screen time, quote unquote, he's ever had in his life. Three and a half unadulterated hours.

That's fantastic. And it's so big. It's like watching it's like watching it's 70 inch TV in your living room. I mean, it's proportionally, right? Oh, it's amazing. And I had to do the thing where I'd remind him, okay, I just kind of point with my hand. We're here. This big screen is awesome.

It is absolutely essential to watch a replay. But let's try to watch the actual action on the field. Because the whole point of being here is that we're going to watch the live players and get a sense of what football is like when you watch it live, not what a team. TV is like when it's slightly bigger than the one at home. I know. It's a tough decision. I mean,

when you're there with kids, even at a regular arena, once they realize there's a TV screen hanging over their heads, it's kind of hard to get them back to the real thing. It's a TV screen. It has commercials. All the things are used to at home. Look at that.

A little Tom Thumb giveaway. I'm going to tune into that. There's games. Even at like an older basketball arena, the Jumbotron's still telling you, like when to clap your hands, you know, they'll have the weird, like, pixel races throughout the game, you know, it's, it's really entrancing. A lot of stage directions.

That was the other thing I feared. There'd be some moments where I'd have to step in and kind of explain what is happening football-wise. Mm-hmm. But guess what? That really annoying PA announcer would come on and go, it's there down. Oh, that saved me a couple of seconds of explanation right there. Coming up on today's press box,

Queen Elizabeth died last week. We present five ways media organizations paid their respects. And I'll have some more notes from the press box from my big weekend on the road watching football, plus much more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumer, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Jonathan Kermas,

sitting in for Erica here. We had David one of those rare gigantic news stories last week. Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned for seven decades, died Thursday at the age of 96. And I thought I could present to you five ways that various media organizations and Twitter accounts covered the death of Queen Elizabeth.

Okay. Number one. It was a huge day for explain. Because if you think about it, everybody knows who Queen Elizabeth was. But with all due respect to our Ringer teammates, Amanda Dobbins, Julia Litman, there were a lot of us who don't quite understand all the specific titles, the lineage questions, all the kind of stuff we fit under the rubric of the royals.

Yeah. So I don't know about you, but I went shopping for explainers pretty quickly. I found a really useful one from the BBC that was about the newly minted King Charles the third. Tell me if you knew any of this. Charles could have chosen from any of his four names, Charles, Philip, Arthur, George. What? I knew there were some options.

know that there were that many. Continuing for the BBC here, he is not the only one who faces a change of title. Prince William and his wife Catherine are now titled Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge, and the king has conferred on them the title of Prince and Princess of Wales. There's also a new title for Charles's wife, Camilla, who becomes the queen consort. Here's an essential one from the explainers. How does Charles become king? So the BBC says Charles will officially be proclaimed king on Saturday.

That's last Saturday. But then there's something separate called the Assession Council. There is more than that a second visit to the Assession Council where the BBC says he will call God Save the King. And for the first time since 1952, the national anthem will be played with the words God Save the King. then there's the formal coronation, which turns out happens completely separately. Queen Elizabeth's coronation happened more than a year later. This is my absolute favorite one, too. Charles has become head of the Commonwealth, BBC says,

an association of 56 independent countries and 2.4 billion people. For 14 of these countries, including Australia, the Bahamas, New Zealand, the king is the head of state. Again, big day for explainers. Wait, but if he like died today, no, I don't want to wish any misfortune on him, would he have been king? Ooh, I see, that was not covered in the BBC

explainer I read. All right, well, time for another explainer. I believe the answer is yes. But good question there. the second wave media organizations covered the death of Queen Elizabeth David the straight obituary you sent me this tweet from

fellow journalist and fellow Texan Olivia Messer who was asking an interesting question which was who was going to write the New York Times obituary of Queen Elizabeth yeah because as we know

these are not written fresh with a major public figure they've been written years, decades in the past, and they are freshened when the public figure comes up. So the winner, and sometimes the journalist has even passed away between the time of writing the obituary and the obituary's actual publication. So the Times obit of Queen Elizabeth turned out to have been written by Alan Cowell,

who is very much alive but left the New York Times in 2015. Yeah, I mean, someone has got to be writing these obituaries. I forget if we've had this conversation on him before. But generally, especially for a public figure of great significance, they will write it far, far in advance, or at least begin writing it far in advance. And there have been some people who are, you know, behind the curtain pretty famous for doing it.

that over the years. But it is always interesting. It becomes the sort of meta-conversation that is sort of a sidebar to the real conversation, especially when it's, I mean, you know, we don't have to pivot right away, but when Queen Elizabeth dies, there are a lot of people who have direct reactions to it,

but a lot of the conversation is sort of tangential, right? we Americans don't we don't we don't necessarily have a heartfelt reaction to Queen Elizabeth Nying and yet it's a big moment in history that we all sort of acknowledge mm-hmm you mentioned the importance of having at least some of the piece written that economy change is interesting too because in the old days you want to make sure you could have something ready to go for the next edition of the paper the next day's paper in most cases and now a like if you're the New York Times or really any media organization, you have minutes, seconds in which to get your obituary up there.

Because this is competitive, right? There's going to be news alerts about this. There is traffic to be gotten through the coverage of something like a story like this. So you want to get this up as quickly as humanly possible. Isaac Chaudner, the New Yorker, pulled out one sentence from the Times obituary for to Queen Elizabeth, her personal behavior, unlike that of most of her family, was beyond reproach, never tainted by even the remotest hint of scandal. Isaac asked, now how does the obit writer know that?

That her personal behavior was beyond reproach? How many other public figures are ever granted that kind of sentence in the New York Times? we don't we have like a lot of historical fiction and a lot of it written by peter morgan that has kind of implied that the queen's behavior is perhaps a lot more complicated than we might have understood from television and print speaking of well we can go back to only in journalism words i don't know if beyond reproach fits the fits the bill but what is the opposite of beyond reproach? If she is not beyond reproach, she is in battle?

Within reproach? Um, um, um, yeah. I mean, I do think that there's, I know this is exactly the wrong answer for this podcast,

but it does feel like the that there's some, even though we're going to reckon with the, with the history of the crown at a time like this, there is a little, I think probably a little bit of elbow room for I don't know. The sort of like fantasy obituary writing of days past, right?

When it comes to the, so I mean, not even just ahead of state. When it comes to the freaking Queen of England. I'm glad you went there because that is actually my third category of the way the media covered, Queen Elizabeth's death. The critical piece about Queen Elizabeth's legacy. And you're right, there perhaps was some fantasy obit writing. but what's interesting about a public figure that's as big as she was is if you're really big, you get a really, really big send-off in the press. But the gap between the fantasy obit and the reckoning with your legacy is really, really short

if it exists at all. Here's a piece in foreign policy, one of many, many. Queen Elizabeth II wasn't innocent of her empire's sins. Subhead, the late Queen incarnated and ably helped sell her nation in its system while never criticizing or apologizing for its past. Lots of pieces, lots of tweets like that. And there's this whole category of public figure. Every American president is in it. Every, you know, head of state probably ever is in it.

Where, again, I think the fantasy period of it exists at all is instantaneous. And it's over. And by the way, I'm in favor of that with somebody like Queen Elizabeth. There is no need to observe the two hours, one hour, 24 hours, what it is. Let's bring on the pieces about her legacy. Let's bring it on right away so that we get everything at one time. Yeah, it's true. We should. I mean, that's, that's, that's expectation of where we are, but especially for someone as high a profile as the queen. You know, we're not, the newspapers aren't waiting for tomorrow. I'm waiting for the, you know, the press time, like you said. But I think it's fair that they would have it already and ready to go, right?

So, yeah, it's good. I think that the really interesting thing is about the obit is that so how many people were reading along as soon as, like, the New York Times obit dropped, right? That people were almost like live tweeting the obituary and we were all reading it together, which I think goes to the sort of, I don't know, I don't know if it's a more interesting point, but what really kind of captivated me is that, sure, listen, there was a lot of, there are a lot of pop cultural reasons why people are interested, right? The Crown was a TV show that got a lot of attention.

Obviously, conversations about who takes over the throne or a going concern on Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon and everything, so people are sort of interested in the chess game of it all. But, you know, I think it's fair to say that the crown kind of matters less than ever, right? I mean, that the new king of England is less significant in world history than it ever has been. And yet, like we always say, man, we're a culture in desperate search of a monoculture. And despite the fact that this is the sort of thing that most people would shrug their shoulders off sort of in vague concept, when it happened, everybody just,

just sort of looked and said, now that's a thing that everybody can talk about together. And everybody jumped on the, jumped aboard. That is so true. That feeling was all over Twitter on Thursday. That this is a moment that everybody is going to have something to say about.

Everybody is going to participate in. And the fact that it wasn't, say, an American president where you could draw the line and there's this side and there's this side, going at it about the president's legacy. It was somebody who was in England and had this, as you say, this kind of second life as a cultural figure

in a streaming series. Absolutely. Monoculture moment for sure. The fourth way, David, media organizations covered the Queen's death, publishing pieces of content with titles like the time the Queen did that thing in America.

I point you to a piece in the Houston Chronicle called the late Queen Elizabeth the 2nd once made a historic visit to Houston in 1991. There were similar pieces about her visits to Baltimore, Austin, Tampa,

Dallas. I actually remember the Dallas one. I have a memory. Not have actually seen the queen, but of watching local news with my mom. And of course there was a segment about it. But I remember they also did a kind of service journalism segment about what to do if you should run into the queen. Speaking of explainers, like, do you bow?

Do you curtsey? Do you take the queen's hand? Sort of like an explainer, like the unnecessary explainer, right? No one was presuming that you were going to run into the queen in line for like the Whataburger bathroom. It's just like. Yeah. The queen was not going to be a safe way. getting groceries.

But there was this whole pretense made of Americans won't know what to do, specifically, nor Texans won't know what to do if they should run into the queen. So here are some helpful reminders that might get them through that encounter. All right, number five, David, I filed this under the rubric of the strange tribute.

There was a lot of stuff on Twitter. people have ever watched the old movie The Naked Gun features part of the plot where actual Reggie Jackson is threatening the life of Queen Elizabeth the second, of course, fictional Queen Elizabeth the second.

We got a tweet from Reggie that said, now all we all know I was innocent. Amen, RIP Queen E. Thank you, Reggie. For that. We also got the odd moment of silence where every organization, every entity in the world seemingly had to stop and pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth,

people pointed to this one from Shrek's Adventure, which is something that's called an interactive fairy tale experience in London. Shrek's Adventure joins London joins millions of mourners around the UK and the world in paying tribute to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. United in our loss, we give thanks for an extraordinary service to this country, the Commonwealth and the wider world. Thank you, Shrek's adventure for letting us know where your sentiments lie. We had the moment of silence before the Thursday night NFL opener between the Rams and the bills. I understand how these things are calculated.

If there's any question, you just do the moment of silence. Yeah. You'll just be respectful and do the moment of silence because you're just, you just be respectful and do the moment of silence because you'll never be faulted for doing a moment of silence. But I thought it was interesting that we were kicking off the NFL season with a moment of silence for Queen Elizabeth the second. Did you see that they had a moment of silence for Queen Elizabeth before the UFC card on Saturday night and the crowd booed and started chanting USA? I'm not... Oh my goodness. Maybe the UFC could have skipped a moment of silence. Maybe so. Maybe so. We can't confirm this is what

happened, but our friend Robert from high school reported in that he was in the Waterburger drive-thru on Thursday. I'm not making this up. Oh, my God. And the Waterburger American flag was at Half Staff. And we don't know for sure that Waterberger was paying tribute

a-la Shrek's adventure. It could have been any number of things, but yeah. But, but it could have been. Coming up, David, some notes from the press boxer of my football adventures in Texas, but first let us 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. Today's winner comes from R. Mockler, as you can imagine, there were quite a number of people elbowing their way to the front of the line to try to make the big joke about the royal succession, whatever, whatever, whatever take they had on last week's events. I think this was the one that put it together the best. Quoting here, I guess this puts Charles in charge of our days and our knights. K-N-I-G-H-T-S. Love it.

If you joined a Royal Monarch to a semi-beloved old television show, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David. I wanted to literally do a notebook dump. I am holding my notebook from my football adventures this week, particularly the ones in Austin when Texas was playing Alabama. You knew this was a big college football game because both college football pregame shows were in Austin.

Right. College game day was there from ESPN. Even though ESPN wasn't televising the game, Fox's Big Noon kickoff was also there. Fox was televised in the game. And of course, those shows thrive on having lots of crazy students holding up signs and being in the background. That's the reason they go to campuses. Sure.

Capture some of that atmosphere. And the funniest thing I saw was on my way to the Big Noon Kickoff said was people holding signs that said big noon kickoff and were shaking. like an arrow so that someone who wanted to be in the background could follow the sign to the set. I thought you meant they were trying to get on TV with those signs. I see. Oh, so they were just actually like directional signs to get to the big noon kickoff set. Yeah.

You know, like you're driving down a six lane road in the suburbs and there's somebody spinning an arrow and it points at the car dealership or it points at the places to get your taxes done. Yeah. That was the same setup to go to the college football pregame show. Well, that makes sense because if there's competing shows, you wouldn't want to show up with an inside joke sign at the wrong pregame show. You know, it'd be like showing up to a party overdressed or something. You know, I mean, it's at Halloween non-costume party and a costume,

and a costume. That would be really awkward. There's a lot of status symbols in college football. Probably the two biggest are, did Game Day come to my college football game? And did big noon kickoff come to my college football game in that order? But I saw another one in Austin, which was a truck with some familiar faces on it from the Barstool Sports Empire. It was the pardon my cheese steak truck. I'm not familiar with that. I'm sure that's very popular.

It's a new one for me. Probably missed it somewhere in my media studies. But that seemed to be a thing. Funniest sign I saw at the Big Noon Kickoff set, God Save the Queen crossed out and Quinn was written in. Quinn yours is the aforementioned starting Texas quarterback before he got into. Very quality sign there. You're aware that Urban Meyer is back as part of the cast of Big Nood Kickoff. Yeah, I'm aware.

He was on the show. He went to the Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Jackson. Jaguars. It was bad. Now he's back on the show. Well, I happened to be standing near the set when Roger Clemens pitched in college for the Longhorns came up, because he was doing some guest picks there, or a little interview, came up and gave Urban Meyer a big hug on the set. So an embattled former MLB pitcher was sharing a tender moment with an embattled former college and pro football coach. And I didn't snap the picture.

I was so mad that I didn't snap the picture. I got Roger afterwards. But I thought, oh my gosh, I was standing right in front of me. And I was just some journalist I am. I was so floored that I could not get the moment that the two of those people met. That was wild. They didn't study iPhone photography and your journalism program in school. The other big thing about Roger Clements was, so he got,

He goes on to the set of the pregame show. And let me tell you, dude, Alabama was favored by more than 20 points in this game. I don't think I have ever gone a week of Texas football or really any other team in college football without being able to find one person who was picking Texas to win. I mean, I'm on the message boards. I'm going deep into threads. I could not find anybody being like, hey, I'm doing it. Texas 24, Alabama, 20. I couldn't find one person.

Even Roger Clemens, let's face it, has absolutely nothing to lose by going on television and being a huge homer. He gets on there and he says, I want the game to be close at halftime. That's all Roger Clemens could manage. Even he wasn't willing to

play the crowd and pick Texas to win the game. I thought that that was unbelief. Wow. And then finally, David, I got to be Johnny Deadline in the press box, which I never get to be, sitting there amongst big name college football writers. Let me tell you, there was a bunch of big name college football writers. You and I are rarely pressed into service, especially in an actual press box trying to write a deadline piece of journalism. And let me tell you, I never respect the people who do that a lot or as their whole job sitting there after every game during a baseball season, college football season, pounding out stories like that more than when I actually have to do it. Because it feels like such meatball surgery.

Every little noise around you suddenly becomes like someone is banging symbols behind you. Yeah. In the Texas press box, there were seemingly two landlines near or behind a couple of us. And they just kept ringing while everybody's writing their stories at full volume. Now, one, it's a landline, which is just kind of funny in this day and age. And two, who is calling? Do we still have a proper sports desk at a newspaper that's calling the correspondent in the press box? asking for their story, asking for their lead.

That's not happening on Slack. I just was sitting there in this phone, and nobody, and of course, nobody, whoever the phone calls for, that person was not there or the person was not answering the phone. Yeah, it's like something out of a horror movie where there's just one, one public phone, one phone move that's ringing in the distance. You have to race two to find your captured wife or whatever.

Yeah, it's terrible. Kind of like a terrible dream. But it would ring like seven times and then the mythical sports desk copy editor, whoever it was, would give up. And then like 10 seconds later, they'd start calling again. You also are put in the position of hating all your fellow sports writers because everybody's finishing at different times. Everybody has different responsibilities.

Oh, yeah. You know, I could have been there just doing other stuff, not worried about writing something. and I would have been regarded as like, look at that Joker. Right. What's he, what's he doing here? Not doing any work. Just kibitzing with the writers, bothering the announcers. But since I was sitting there actually trying to write something,

people are coming by and they're bumping in your chair because of like a real narrow little aisleway behind. And you're just giving the chair stare. Like here you are carrying your bag out of here, Mr. Fast Rider. And you can't even do this without bumping. my chair. Unbelievable. I'm in all of people who do that and do it well.

Did you ever have to sit in a wrestling press box and write a story on deadline? I sat in a wrestling press box and tried to write in real time. I don't know that I never had to like file immediately afterwards. I did. No, I'm not very successful because I'll get, I don't know, I have to kind of do one of the other, you know, it's really, I start missing the, what's going. on in real life if I get when I get too, you know, worried about what I'm writing. I'm not, I'm not like an extemporaneous writer like that.

So now imagine being a beatwriter, and that's your job, writing and worrying about what's happening in real life at the same time. Is anybody doing just like dictation, just, just voice to text at this point? I feel like that's what I would do. Like into a phone, into this landline that kept ringing? No. I was thinking more like an iPhone, but... From Austin.

Alabama, number one Alabama beats Texas. Did you imagine if you just got sent out to do a gamer? And without it, without any, without discussing it beforehand, you just called up Connor and Evans on the phone. You're like, all right, start typing. Here I go. Carter's like, who is this? Yeah.

I'm always, I always, you know, I had the fantasy sometimes about, like, what would it be like to just be dropped onto a beat for a week? you can have a little prep you can come up with some story ideas but you have to go out there and do it and you can't do Brian and David's fantasy version of the beat if there's a twisted ankle you got to go

cover the twisted ankle and figure out the news about the twisted ankle and then do whatever it is you want to do yeah it's hard it's really hard and I wasn't even hustling down to Nick Sabin and Steve Sarkeesian's press conferences, which are being played on the loudspeaker there. Very, very funny.

And always gives me more respect for the great people doing sports writing on deadline. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Tuesday's headline about an overrated Mexican restaurant in Dallas was Masa of Nunn. Listeners, Noah Pransky and Ari Gas both suggested the head. Headline should have been Massa Menos, Masa Menos, which is really funny. Took a little high school Spanish.

Today's headline, David, comes from listener James Denison. It's from ESPN, ESPN's fantasy arm to be specific. It is referring to the very first NFL game of the season between the Rams and Bills, specifically how bad the Rams offensive players. were. I think that's all you get. What was ESPN strained pun headline? Bad Rams offense. It's not going to be LA. Ram. Didn't get much on the board. Right? Those fantasy players. Blank. Mm-hmm. We're in there. skill

blank receivers blank checkdowns blank um yards why don't we think of Thomas Harris novels would that help you out

silence of the Rams silence of the Rams almost surely has been used a bunch in the last three decades but I liked it he is David Shoemaker I'm Brian Curtis Production Magic by Jonathan Kermah.

Before we go, David, should we say a little word about our friend, Jonathan Charks? Yeah, of course, we should. Got some sad news this weekend, and I'll read the tweet from his Twitter account here. Hey, all, Melissa here, John passed away yesterday after spending the day surrounded by family and friends. He's in heaven now, probably asking God philosophical questions and hooping it up. Service is Friday at 11 a.m. Where do we start with our pal, Jonathan Charks? you know what it's a time like this when everybody who knows him starts talking to him as a person

you know without hopefully not sounding too cliche his humanity was was really significant to understanding him to knowing him there's a lot of people who write about sports for a living a lot of people worry about sports with a ringer when you run into him you see him in the office or whatever you immediately start talking about the team or whatever and we mean charx had a lot of teams in common as you did too. But I always end up talking to him about something else, about his wife or about his kid or about just like what's going on in Dallas or whatever. It's really tough to lose a friend and a coworker in general.

And someone who's as a writer, as a creator, just meant so much. I was talking to Sean Fennessee. I don't even know how long ago it was about how meaningful a contributor he is to the ringer and how sort of quintessential his voice is for everything that we do, you know, and it was not in a retrospective sort of conversation. It was totally just like unplanned and laudatory. But yeah, I mean, so he's just such a rare, rare breed, just such an incredible, inspiring person and such an incredible writer and thinker to.

I totally know what you mean about his manner and winding up talking. about him with things that were not the thing you expected to talk to him about. So many people in our profession and God, I love him. You talk to them and subject A and then also subject B and subject C is what I am doing for a living and the great thing I just did and how I have achieved in this little media game we play. And if it's not the topic of discussion, it is the subtext of whatever it is you're talking about. he was not like that he was he was the opposite of that

I mean in in person right go look at his Twitter account remember the way he used to tweet his pieces where he would obviously hit the little tweet button on the actual story page it would just come out with the headline and say via ringer

yeah rather than doing that send up that we all do I I spent the last six months reporting and thinking and writing about X and Y. It's a small thing, but that is really what he was like. Yeah, he's sort of impervious to, like, your expectations. And there's the expectation of the world in so many ways.

I mean, he would, like, he's a big dude, would walk into the room with such confidence, you know, just, like, born into him, it felt like. I remember one time I just ran into him. I guess I knew he was in L.A. I don't remember if I was living there or visiting there after I left, but I ran into him and his wife, I think then fiancé at the time,

at a coffee shop sort of, the way to the office. And that was her first visit to L.A., if I remember correctly. I could be wrong. But they were doing the tourist thing, you know, since he had to be there for work. They were touring around. And I don't know, man, there's something about Charks where I just assumed that, like, he'd spent three years in L.A. back in the day, just, like, working on the movies.

You know, it's just, it's just like old soul to him, you know? And I just assumed that he would have all the answers. And I started talking about what they were doing. And, I mean, there's not much of a story here, but I was just like, oh yeah, trucks is kind of young and kind of like, this is his first time really doing this. And like,

it's just not, he's, I don't know, there's just such like a, there's just such a, such as like a old, like a world, worldliness and an intelligence,

everything's built into his voice. I don't know how to describe it, but he was, he's incredible dude, man. Totally. I mean, it feels like there's often a tradeoff in this profession where

to be a really good, let's say, basketball writer, you have to be so monomony maniacal about basketball writing, that the rest of the world kind of fades away, that you don't feel like, you know, there's a bigness to the person there at all because they're devoting their life to being really good at this little thing. And with him, that never felt like that tradeoff ever happened. You know, I felt there was so much more to him what you're talking about, like whether it was

his faith and his family and his church and everything else, in addition to being a great basketball writer. It did not feel like he was making that choice that so many of us make or think we have to make. I remember the first time I met a master of he was moving to L.A. because I didn't know what everybody's plans were, whatever his expectations from their bosses were. And he was just like, no. Like, just the most, like, sort of just straightforward, like, not even offended, but, like, I don't know. It was just like, it was, I don't know. It was perfect. Say a word, too, about his wife, Melissa who was writing all these updates on the Caring Bridge website. I can't imagine writing the things that she wrote.

I especially can't imagine writing the last couple that she wrote, which must have been incredibly hard to do about somebody you love. But man, what a window into him. And what a way, you know, what she did was just so incredible because it gave us all who were not there. this window into what his life was like and what their life was like, what their family's life was like. Well, I hope it helped her in her journey, but it really was a gift to everybody else, everybody that knew charks, everybody that didn't, we'll read along. Yeah, what she did was just incredible, incredible. And what she'll continue to do is incredible too. We're thinking about

Melissa, we're thinking about their son Jackson, we're thinking about Jonathan's friends in and out of the business and everybody who loved him. David and I are back Monday.