The Press Box - Goodbye to The Awl, Criticisms of Romo, and Slate’s New Look | The Press Box (Ep. 416)

Episode Date: January 23, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker mourn the end of 'The Awl' (03:00), award the "Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week" (19:30), sift through the Tony Romo backlash (22:00), and discuss Slate.com's extreme makeover (37:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Malin' Jason from Binge Mode. We wanted to tell you about the ringers upcoming Binge Mode rewatchables mashup live event. On Wednesday, January 24th, at Largo at the Coronet, right here in Los Angeles. It'll be me, Jason Concepcion, Mallory Rubin, Che Serrano, and Bill Simmons for a high school football spectacular, covering Friday night lights and varsity blues. So put on your shoulder pads or your whipped cream bikini. Let's go, God damn it! Head to Largo-Dash-L-A.com to purchase your tickets now.

Clear eyes. Clear eyes. Full hearts. Full hearts. Don't snooze. Buy your tickets now for Wednesday, January 24th at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles. Yeah. David, we're going to talk about the life and death of the website, the All.

What was the story and an editor of yours turned down that the All would have commissioned? You know, I can't say that I formally pitched it, but judging by the reaction, when I bring up my desire to write a multi-part series on male Hollywood stars getting hair transplant surgery, I think that that's probably the one that wouldn't have flown here. I like to imagine that might have found a good home on the aisle. You think Corey Seeker would have been just fine with that piece? I think with the right editorial guidance, I really could have made something out of that. What about you? I feel like I don't have a great answer to this question because I've been in starchy boring media for too long that I didn't have the great confessional or great, you know,

weird-ass take on something. I feel I've been conventionalized. In fact, I feel that all the weird stories that I pitch have actually been commissioned, I just didn't turn them in. Oh, that's true. Well, you know, I mean, part of the sadness of the all going away is that for a lot of writers, I mean, maybe the two of us included, you can have a crazy idea. But getting to the point of actually formally pitching it is sort of what's like, you know,

what you're taught not to do. You're steered in every other direction a lot. the way. And hopefully there'll be a place for crazy ideas to flourish in the future. You know where some crazy ideas flourish, David. The podcast known as the press box on the Ringer podcast network. The Pressbox is the media podcast where you're not allowed to use the phrase, the executives at NBC are, quote, breathing a sigh of relief because a big market team made the Super Bowl. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. David coming into you from Hollywood, me from sunny Hobart, Tasmania. How are

are you, David? I'm doing pretty good, man. Los Angeles is nice, as always. Excellent. David, three topics this week for your inspection and delight. First, how should we remember the all, the late-limited all? Second, Tony Romo just completed his first magical season at CBS and deals with a minor backlash. And finally, Slate redesigned itself. Why do we redesign websites anyway? Plus, of course, the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But let's start with number one, David. I call this topic, all shucks. We learned last week that the all and the air pen and the hairpin, excuse me, will stop publishing at the end of this month for the usual depressing financial reasons.

You might know the all for its name, which came from Tom Skokka, its weather reviewer for its motto, which was be less stupid. Or from this mission statement that Corey Seeker, who founded the site along with Alex Balk and David Cho in 2009, once gave to Vanity Fair, quote, we just don't really want any stupid people reading it, which sounds mean, but they have plenty of reading material already. I want to disinvite them. What are you going to remember, David, about the all?

It's sad that it's gone. The all and the hairpin, both, replaces I regularly visit on the internet. And I guess the way that I just phrased that is, to some extent, you know, what I'm going to miss the most. I mean, so much of the way we consume now is through. Twitter and Facebook and just, you know, following links from other places, um, the all in the hairpin were,

you know, two of a quickly shrinking group of, uh, of websites that you would go to, you know, go to the homepage just to, uh, you know,

embrace the voice or the, the litany of voices to kind of, um, you know, it's not necessarily the place you would go to, to, to keep, to catch up on the news or anything like that. But the,

but, but the humor, the tone, the irreverence, and the, you know, as Corey said, the lack of pandering, it's, it's going to be missed. Yeah, you wouldn't, you wouldn't go to the all to find out how Nick Foles led the Eagles to the Super Bowl the next morning. But you're right. I think like of all the reading a few, the reminisces and, you know, laments, that's a single biggest thing that comes out, right?

Is that it's not driven. It wasn't driven by SEO. It wasn't driven by this idea that you could sort of game the internet each and every day and provide to people what they were already looking for. This was that Sam Biddle wrote in New York Magazine's sort of group funeral. He said the all's death sucks for largely the same reasons Gawker's death sucked. There are extremely few places left, maybe none that will provide a home for weird, slightly mean, smart, kooky shit online.

I have a feeling a lot of people are also thinking, where are you supposed to find incredible, strong, hilarious writing with no clear SEO advantage or Facebook appeal? Where will all the young writers and new voices go? It's a good question. The answer is probably nowhere. Yeah, I mean, you know, they're probably writing on their own on blogs

and on Tumblr and Twitter and wherever else. But as far as a sort of clearinghouse for that sort of like very, I mean, just very cerebral sort of humor, it's hard to imagine another place really picking up the slack. I mean, frankly, it's hard to believe they lasted as long as they did with the rate at which, I mean, you mentioned

Kori Seca, Alex Ball, because obviously another one of the, you know, the other big driving force there. But, you know, the list of former editors and, you know, former writers who don't write, you know, weren't writing there much anymore, you know,

it's a murderer's row. And the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the speed at which they were poached to other websites and magazines and and various other spots, like you said, it's kind of surprising that they're able to kind of keep it together as long as they did. You know, you mentioned, you know, other, you know, publishing for SEO and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it does seem like to a certain extent that half the sites that get launched, you know, in this day and age are sort of being, it's almost like a startup. They're being launched for the sake of being sold at some point in the not too distant future.

and, you know, the all, whether or not, you know, they were looking to be sold in the recent past. I mean, that certainly wasn't the editorial mission there. I remember one of the things going back and looking over some of the all stuff was rediscovering this 2010 David Carr column. Oh, yeah. Which has had a great 2010 headline against odds website finds niche. I love that. also this sentence was great the company exists in a string of emails instant messages and phone calls like he's talking about how that all didn't have a physical office which was something kind of to marvel at in 2010

of course now in 2018 this is every media company except there are no phone calls either anymore but you know he he announced in that column or i believe he announced that com the all had made money had turned a slight profit of two hundred thousand dollars and i remember that just just being this really huge moment in internet time because this is right after or we're sort of, you know, crawling out of the recession at that point, right? Media jobs 2008, 2009 were just awful and scarce. And, you know, a lot of publications had gone on a business. It was kind of similar to what happened in the last year now in terms of a huge sort of bloodletting,

a lot of beloved things had gone away. the startups had been things like the Daily Beast, which I think Corey and Alex were, you know, purposely positioning, if not positioning themselves against trying to do the exact opposite. Yeah. And then you had this company that sort of made money and that was this kind of great hopeful thing in the world and in a time when there really wasn't that much hope. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, you know, my memory's blurred by the years. But there was, you know, the all to me is sort of a piece.

piece of that period in time and we were in New York and kind of internet publishing, anybody with a, you know, a stake in the Gawker Empire or, you know, a history in those kind of early Halcyon days of blogging were all those people were putting together blog networks of their own. And, you know, there was just a lot of sameness, you know, it was a slightly different website design, which we'll, you know, be discussing later on on the show, different font choice, writers by different names, but the editorial vision, and at the, you know, at the end, a lot of the voice was very similar. And I mean, it sounds so trite. Anything positive you say about the all, but it was just like an oasis. And especially if you went, went into it with the expectation

of sameness. What was the voice at that period in time? Was it, was it, was it, was it Gawker voice? Remind me, what was the house style of New York internet in that period? To me, it was sort of like Gawker pivoting away from the from the literal single voice to a slightly more sort of spy inflected omniscient voice and you know I mean and certainly a lot of some of the spinoffs were more you know newswiry with a little you know snark thrown in here and there but uh but yeah I mean to to have a site like the all that could be you know at one they could at once do a better job of that of that voice than then then it's you know predecessors but also just to be you know really really literary in its way um i mean it's and to have it all sort of flow together seamlessly

that that that that's you know what what kept me going back yeah when when when when cori announced the site by the way do we need to do the the group disclosure that we were at parties with core and alex in new york in the mid 2000s is that just kind of all of new york's disclosure at this point he sort of had this funny because he talked about too at the beginning they didn't have headlines you know and he talked about how uncomfortable that made people and he said you you'll just have to read the stories and one thing that the lack of headlines does is it slows you down you can't just skim through gawk or whatever website you're reading at that point in history and and pick out the stories you want which was actually kind of an old like new yorkery

affectation you know like when the new yorker didn't have a table of contents so you would just have to read the whole magazine or put bylines at the end of the story. That's sort of what that reminded be of. Yeah. I thought that was really funny. Also, you know, just I think the other thing that's kept through it, all the remembrances this week is being a welcome mat for people in media at a point in history when big publications, maybe all publications, were just not welcoming at all, you know? Mm-hmm. You know, it's just like it was, there's like a really, even if you had some, you know, even if you'd done something or published a number of things.

It was just like this really fearsome process to try to approach any big magazine or website at that point and try to just get in. And I think, you know, when you hear people sort of cold pitching the all and they're like, oh, and they actually ran my story or they didn't run my story, but they were really nice and wanted me to write for them and like the idea that I would have good ideas, even though I didn't have a handful of clips from New York Magazine. and that's another thing that really comes through. And again, like, I think now we're probably living in a slightly different time now

where that's more, you know, sort of more possible that you would just kind of email somebody and find your way in somewhere. But in that point in history, it's there was really, really rare. Yeah, that's totally true. I mean, we were, I mean, just to go back to your, just to go back to your disclaimer before. I mean, Alex Balk and Corey Seeka, too, were, I mean, yeah, I was in the same room as them a lot.

I was, like, scared out of my mind to talk to them because I was just, like, so impressed with both of those voices. You know, I mean, just so, you know, just envious of what they were able to do as writers. For me, particularly, it was, it was balk. And, you know, that they, this is what they chose to do with their time. And, you know, I mean, it was, it's pretty impressive. I mean, obviously, both are, you know, Corey's moved on to the New York Times.

And, I mean, there's bright future. for both of them, but, you know, I love the all. I think that it's, I mean, this is, you know, you don't need to listen to this podcast to hear this, but, you know, if you don't, if people listening to this are not over the moon about the all and in tears about its, about its demise, seek out the various best of the all pieces that have been published since the announcement was made and click on, and click on every link. I mean, it's just like, it's some, some of my favorite things that have been written on the internet and that have been written have been the all i mean you'll hear people talk about

nagroney season which is one of the all-time grades uh what was the um the the macroup the conspiracy of hogs the macribb is arbitage by will staley was really fantastic um nick layman who's one of the one of my favorite writers wrote a bunch of his his uh kind of first drafts for his book rich people things on the all i mean there's just just so much stuff Richard Morgan's account of being a freelancer was another one I read, re-read this week. Our very own Katie Baker's on the state of being a lacrosstitute was also.

I was about to mention that. So great. An amazing reread. Yeah, I mean, just really good. And just, and, you know, the ones that weirdly struck me the most, the all pieces that struck me sort of with the most poignancy were the simplest ones. And part of, you know, there are kind of,

comic examples like Alex Balk's How to Cook a Steak Piece How to Cook a Fucking steak piece, excuse me. I saw Pastorand a couple of times Corey Seek his piece How to Quit Your Job That was just just so sort of pure and simple And and you know

Was exactly what the title says it's gonna be And I don't know It's that that sort of like Like just simplicity and honesty That could exist on the internet is what is It's almost heart-rending to see it go away. No, because you feel like you're being gamed by every site, even good sites right now.

You know, you feel like when you read the all, you feel like they published this because they thought it was a good piece, right? And now, even good websites, you feel like, okay, they publish this because it's a good piece, but then they publish these 15 other things because they were just quick reactions to the news that they felt they had to publish. So even if I like the core of this website, there's a lot of junk on this website. I mean, that's like one of the most, there's a lot of depressing things about the internet, right? Such as it's full of Nazis. You know, that's one depressing thing. But on a much smaller level, there's a depressing thing that, you know, everything sort of falls into the category of here is a quick, you know, semi-funny reaction to something that just happened, right?

Yeah. And you look through all these pieces on that website. And you're like, oh, this is not that. This is just something else. And, of course, we don't remember the quick reactions at all because they're meant to be disposable. But we remember these pieces because they were interesting and conceived in a different way. I'd just point out one other thing, by the way. Jack Schaefer, my old boss, wrote a goodbye to Alt Weekly's in December.

I can't even remember what Alt Weekly was endangered or going into business at that point, maybe the Washington City paper. And he said something that I think can be applied to the All too, which is, when people tend to talk about this stuff like it was this farm team, you know, for the New York Times and New York Magazine and all this stuff. And it's just so kind of insulting to say that, right? Not to say that, you know, all these people went on to great things, which they certainly did. But like the people who are running the all were not trying to be a farm team to the New York Times. They're not like, let's cut up a website where we can develop young talent and then they leave. Yeah, exactly. They just, they wanted to be good on their own terms. And the other part, that Schaefer pointed out, and I think Topscope had doubled out on this, too, which is that, like, sometimes the all was just better than the big media thing, right? Sometimes it was better than the New York Times. Sometimes it was better than New York Magazine. So this idea that, you know, it was a laboratory where you know, get the great journalists of tomorrow is, you know, on the one hand, true, certainly. But on the other hand, that's not what they were doing. They were just doing a good website on its own terms. Yeah, that's totally true. If they were acting like a, you know, like a European soccer farm team or something,

and taking a cut of all the salaries that their writers went on to make, then maybe they all would still be around. But, yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. I think that it's easy to overlook the greatness that they achieved when it's sort of framed in the terms of, as I did myself at the beginning of the segment, you know, in terms of what the writers and editors went on to do. You know, what they did was really impressive. You know, I mean, it occurs to me that I'm sure,

I'm absolutely sure that the attention that the all has gotten since they announced, and they're hairpin too, since they announced that they were shutting down, you know, probably vastly exceeds the attention they got in the weeks prior, the month prior, whatever. That's always true. It's always true, but it feels more authentic in this case than in some other cases. And, you know, I just can't help but wonder if there will be a second life for the all. You know, it seems more, you know, it's,

It feels like a great literary quarterly that couldn't afford paper costs anymore but found another life on the internet. I don't, obviously this is on the internet, so I don't know what the next phase of it's going to be. I was going to say, they're just beam it into our minds or something. I know. The overhead's already about as low as it can go. But, you know, that said, I hold out hope that there will be, if not the all, than another space. like it, you know, in the not too distant future. And I think that we, I think that, you know, online publishers in general should, should, you know, take this as an opportunity to, to be a little bit more intellectually adventurous and the inane things they want to publish. Amen to that. And on that note, let's move to our overworked Twitter joke of the week, David.

This is the AFC Championship edition of Overworked Twitter Joke, because, you know, you. You and I were both watching the games yesterday. And really the early game produced such a bumper crop that there's no need to even really do anything else in the week. This is our first runner up, David, pointed out to us by Omaha Nebraska Sports Radio host Josh Peterson. Wow. Any version of the joke. Finally something good happened to the Patriots and or their fans after they beat the Jags, right? Finally some good happen to Patriots fans.

That's a good one. Always a good one. Second rhetoric was any joke that contained the phrase, how do you even test Gronk for a concussion? You'll remember Gronk getting up woozy. He was later out of the game. That's from Daniel Shoriak. There were lots of, by the way, very dad joke versions of that one.

Like, you know, hey, we asked Gronk what four times eight was and he answered 69. He must be fine. That was another winner in that particular category. but the winner this week, David, overworked Twitter joke, pointed out to us by an account called Into the Time Slip. That's a Philip Dick reference.

Also used by our very own Mallory Rubin, and this is not really AFC title game dependent. It's kind of one of Twitter's great go-toes. If you reacted to the idea of a Patriots Eagles Super Bowl rematch with any version of time as a flat circle, congratulations.

You did it. Good job, guys. You went all the way. Great joke. Great joke. All right, David, before we talk about the Tony Romo backlash, let's pause for a quick break. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. The NFL playoffs are in full swing, and the Ringer NFL show has you covered for all your pro football needs. Sunday night. Get Michael Lombardi and Tate Frasier's rapid reactions on GM Street. On Tuesdays, the ringer NFL show with Robert Mays, Kevin Clark, and regular guest, Danny Kelly, break down all the biggest angles on Wednesday.

GM Street again on Thursdays. Clark, Mays, and Danny are back at a day. again. And on Friday, GM Street's Friday focus gives you all the insight you need for gambling fantasy. And everything else, don't forget about my podcast, too, on Mondays. The BS podcast, Cousin Sal and I playing guest Alliance. More importantly, the Ringer NFL show, subscribe right now on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Topic number two, David, to borrow another overused Twitter joke,

maybe Tony Romo's only good in the regular season. His first year calling games for CBS, Tony Romo, got something close to unanimous positive reviews. It was like Marv Albert and his prime, Chris Collinsworth a few years ago. And yet during Sunday's Pat's Jags game, I felt the beginning of a small backlash. Not a huge backlash, a small backlash. Can I give you a few highlights? Go ahead, man. Go ahead.

Go ahead. New York magazine polemicist and my old co-worker Jonathan Cheight tweeted, AFC Championship is the first NFL game I've watched this year. Is the color guy a fan who won a call this game with Jim Nance Raffle? Boston Morning Drive host Kirk Menehan. I wish Romo talked more. And he should start saying a play is the biggest of the year. Dave Campbell's Texas football writer, David Ubin said Tony Romo's ability to call games while sounding

like a 10-year-old whose birthday party starts in a couple of hours is both his greatest and most grading attribute. What did you make of the minor incipient Romo backlash that we witnessed on Sunday? I am on the record, if not specifically on this podcast, as being

largely tuned out to to play by, to the voices from the... What record are you on? Yeah. What record are you on? Where have you laid this down? In Slack or something?

On my other podcast, on my wrestling podcast, where in a world where, shitting on the announced team is, you know, as much a part of the sport as baby oil. I'm generally tuned out to such things. You know,

I've said to you over beers for certainly that, you know, I'm a fan of the Buck Aikman, you know, duo, if for no other reason, then because they kind of have that right baritone sound of what an announced team's supposed to sound like. And when you're not, when you're not really dissecting what they say,

it's just sort of like the perfect voices to just tune out to, you know? They make it feel like a football game, you know, at least by, you know, at least by the notes that they're singing. And that said, Romo has been, as many people have pointed out, a breath of fresh air this season.

I mean, he's got a voice that's recognizable, that's distinct. And he's certainly got a style and an ability to call play. that was head and shoulders above all of his, you know, in booth competition this year. It didn't surprise me totally that the tides turned on them, if only because more people were paying attention.

And the sort of the volume of Romo praise had reached such a crescendo that I thought, you know, there was only one direction from to go in the public opinion. You know, all that said, literally humming a tune to Tom Brady's, you know, painting of a masterpiece yesterday. was a little bit of an odd look for the best color commentator in the world. Yeah, I think what you say about more people paying attention during the AFC championship game than during some random regular season game as part of it. Here's the other reason I think people were a little chippy yesterday is that like 90%

of America is pissed off that the Patriots won again. And whoever was going to be the soundtrack of that win was going to get hated. Right? I mean, that's the thing about announcing that people who do my job for a living often forget is if you're watching a game and you're invested in the outcome, really your opinion of the announcers is totally based on whether the team you want to win is winning or not. If your team is winning, the announcers sound fucking fantastic. If you're losing, you're just pouncing. You're so mad at your own team that you're just pouncing on everything they say because it's just so grating. and you hate it so much.

So I think, you know, part of this is Patriot's backlash. I was interested in just like he seemed very, he's been enthusiastic all year. He seemed like his enthusiastic was dialed up. Thusiasm, excuse me, was dialed up like 15% yesterday. Yeah. And this is, there's a Twitter account called Sports Media Watch.

It's really good. And he said, I like Romo, but I think that in 10 years time, he'll probably be as disliked as Phil Sims was, his enthusiasm is going to wear on people as the years go on. It was really interesting, that made me think of of John Madden, who is the gold standard by which any color commentator should be judged in football anyway. And, you know, the amazing thing about Madden was his,

you know, he was enthusiastic times one billion, right? What he sort of made that bit work for 20 years. And it wasn't really until the early 2000s that you really saw people start to get tired of him and start to kind of carp about, you know, him getting excited by 300 pound guys running down the field and stuff like that. But that to me is kind of what's interesting about Romo is that he came into this season sort of determined

to be and I assume he is this guy in real life but you know like I'm a kid in a candy store right? I get to call NFL games. This is really fun. The stuff I'm getting to call a Tom Brady comeback. That's going to be remembered for a long

time. And you know, that's what he, that's what he decided to do. And that's the way he decided to go about it. And it's going to be, it's going to be interesting to see in the Twitter era anyway, what the public enthusiasm

for that is, tolerance for that is as we keep going along. If he is, you know, I'm so happy to be here guy rather than, you know, the Chris Collinsworth kind of football professor mold. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's exactly right. I mean, I saw him, I saw Romo compared numerous times yesterday to, to John Madden,

as an insult, despite the fact that most people making that joke would acknowledge that John Madden is the greatest of all time, right? I was going to say, like, that's like comparing a late-night host to Johnny Carson or something. I mean, I can't quite understand how you would be. I mean, was it the sound effects that was the insult? I mean, whether or not it was the intention, I think that the implication was it was, I guess you would say it would be like comparing a late-night host to someone doing an impression of Johnny Carson, you know, doing, like, you know, you know.

Because the things that, you know, the popular imagination remembers about Madden are one, he's the best and two, like a bad impression of John Madden, right? I mean, it's not, it's, or John Madden. Boom! Yeah, John Madden doing a commercial or voicing a video game, not the actual, you know, John Madden calling a game. But I think, you know, I think that the note about Phil Sims, I mean, you can talk about John Gruden, another guy who is, you know, hepped up on enthusiasm through most of his color career. And, you know, you know, and ended up taking a lot of crap for it too. But, you know, it's almost too easy to say that Romo is going to be hated like Phil Sims in 10 years. Of course he will, because it'll be further away from the game. And what has made Romo's first year, is rookie year in the booth, so sort of revelatory, is how tuned in he was to the very specific mechanics

of the game in the year 2017 and being able to predict plays and to know players and their tendencies intimately. You know, Bill, our boss, Bill Simmons, is joked about there should be a, you know, there should be a limit to the number of years that, that these guys can have the job because you get further away from it and you just kind of become,

you know, irritating at worst and just sort of like a non-factor at best. But I think part of what every, you know, part of what made Romo particularly objectionable yesterday was that, you know, as a, as someone who is so close to playing football, he's more tuned into,

you know, being a player, than being a commentator. I'm sure he doesn't have a grasp, you know, the same grasp of the football media world that you or I might. And he was, he was calling Tom Brady as,

I mean, he called him the goat throughout the game. You know, he was, as he was calling the game, he was sitting in relative awe of the greatest quarterback of this generation, making, you know,

some beautiful throws. And I think that's, that stood at odds to the kind of conventional media narrative that Tom Brady is the Darth Vader of the, you know, of the NFL. And we should all be tolerating him, yeah, which is funny because no announcer, of course, would take on that tone, right?

Oh, sure. Trey, man, you know, it's like Chris Collinsworth, when he calls Super Bowl in two weeks, it's not going to be like, you know, well, I know, everybody, I hate this, Tom Brady as much as you do, but hey, we got to give it to him. I mean, he's going to be calling him like he's the go-to. Yeah, it is funny, though. I mean, it's funny. There's this whole kind of weird.

psychology of this because I think people do, viewers do really relate to people when they come off as fans, right? I mean, that's Gus Johnson doing play by play. That's Berman back in happier days, you know, doing the highlights. There is a sort of wavelength that they get on with you. And of course, as you point out, they really liked Tony Romo calling plays. They liked, you know, his kind of catalog of football knowledge is here. But I think they really like the presentation of it because it just sounded you know, Aitman is your classic like he sounds like an ex jock, right? That's,

that's the look. When you say it's a familiar, soothing sound, it's because that's how quarterbacks and other color guys have sounded since we were kids on the air, essentially, right? Collinsworth sounds like a guy who's watched one billion hours of film and wants to tell you everything he knows about it and diagnose it and break it down. And Romo was just kind of in a more, and Collins were slightly nerdier, right, maybe than Tony Romo. And Romo because he is both an actual ex-joc like gatman and also obviously studies a lot like collinsworth is kind of an interesting hybrid of the two um yes i think by the way i've pounded this take into the ground a billion times but i always thought as a cowboys fan as a fort worthite fort worthian that you know he just wasn't

allowed to be himself in dallas because the press just to the press basically wanted him to be Trey Aikman. They wanted to be this rock-jaw dude who won Super Bowls, and he wasn't that guy. And I think one of the cool things we've seen this year is Tony Romo's kind of gotten to be himself. And I think he's gotten to be himself probably in a way that kind of surprised me. You know, broadcasting is really hard. And it's really hard to be your authentic self in that situation. Just ask Joe Buck or any of the guys who've done this.

And I think he's gotten pretty close to the real Tony Romo this year, if not 110% of the real Tony Romo. And I'd hate to see that go away. I'd hate to see people beat out of him, try to beat his personality out of him as they almost succeeded in doing back in Dallas. Yeah, I mean, as we say all this, of course, there's the, you know, necessary shout out to Jim Nance

for making that transition work so seamlessly. And I think that it, I think that to talk about the transition, I mean, it's almost like, you know, like when they try, they put microphones in players' helmets every game, to try to get that like down in the trenches sort of like real time, real athlete take on the game and you know, they're okay for what they're worth.

But Tony Romo in the booth was the closest like actual functional version of that that they had come up with. This guy is so close to playing, you know, to taking snaps as a quarterback and clearly so emotionally invested in the sport that he in the booth was almost like, you know, having a sort of player commentator out there doing both things at once. Yeah. I'm also, I mean, so funny because there was this fantasy in Dallas that if Dak Prescott got hurt, you know, that Tony Warren was going to come out of the booth this

year and play for the Cowboys. Yeah. And, you know, and he almost played professional football this year, right? Mm-hmm. Which is just such a funny. It's just, it's a funny thing because we're so used to guys being even a couple of years remote. You know, this would have been, this would is what it would have been like probably not as good. Um, if Peyton Manning had stepped into the booth right after winning the Super Bowl, this last Super Bowl in Denver, uh, which was a possibility, right? Some people thought he was going to do that and excited not to. But this is what that would have felt like. You know, somebody who was just right there. Yeah. And it is now, you know, sitting up a little bit higher looking over the field and, and it's kind of

excited. I think the thing about Tony that we saw a little bit this year that we'll probably see more in future years is when you're the enthusiastic guy, when you're, you know, Kid to Candy Store like Madden, when you bring the hammer toward a team that does something bad or screws up, your hammer is a lot more lethal because you're such a nice guy, right? And I think I suspect we'll see that come out more in the next couple of years. And when he does it, it'll be pretty devastating. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that to go back to what you were saying earlier, I mean, we were both saying earlier about, you know, whether or not he's going to be loved or hated.

I mean, listen, when we were kids, like everybody's uncle had an announcer. He was like, I'll turn it down when this guy's on. But the idea of like just dumping on national play-by-play or color guys was not the art form that it is today. I mean, I guess what I'm trying to say is everybody will be hated eventually. The only difference is now the cycle is just drawn faster and faster. Yeah, and it's more public. And it's much more public, right? And the, you know, people tweet about it, then websites blog about it and, and, you know, it goes

on and on and on. But the, you know, and I think, like I said at the beginning, what part of, you know, what Tomo, Tomo, excuse me, what Tony Romo. Part of what Tony Romo ran headlong into yesterday was that he was, you know, he was on an island. He was getting, he was getting all the attention of all the football watchers in America and the world. and was getting judged, you know, on his own terms and not compared to anything else.

I mean, to talk about maybe the worst thing that happened to Tony Romo this year was the other guy who was supposed to be a color guy. If Jake Cutler had not gone to the dolphins, if he had actually been in the booth, then Tony Romo would have, you know, a real one-to-one comparison that we could weigh him against and we probably would have appreciated Tony a whole lot more. Yeah, it's like every, Every great quarterback looks even better when there's like a, you know, Brown's quarterback or Bengals quarterback who's a little farther down the list, right?

Yeah, that's a good point. He kind of needed Cutler to turn in a super mediocre year at Fox. And then he would have looked even more amazing than he did. Yeah, that's great. Topic number three, David, extreme makeover slate edition, the venerable website and my old home. By the way, what happened to Ty Pennington? Is he still part of American culture in a way?

I occasionally see him on cabinet commercials on HGTV. That sounds about right. Slate introduced what editor Julia Turner called our most comprehensive visual revamp in more than a decade. They changed the color of the Slate logo. They tweaked their verticals. They pivoted not to video Turner writes, but to words, to stories and podcasts. David, you're the ringers art director in addition to nine other jobs you have here. Tell me what you made of the redesign and the ideas behind it.

this has nothing to do with my art director role. I mean, it might have something to do with it, but probably more than that has to do with just my personal anxieties. But anytime someone trumpets a redesign, it makes me just feel a little bit uneasy for some reason. Like if it's about functionality and if it's about the user experience, then, you know, you can just do it. You don't have to tell everybody you're doing it as it happens.

I mean, obviously there's an element to any of this where, you know, you do this so that people pay attention to it and so you know, people remember to go check out Slate today and you get that little round of mainstream attention about the redesign and that's not a knock on slate. Everybody does that. The Ringer will do that, you know? But I think we just did that.

I think so. But to me, it's an increasingly odd, it's almost like a relic of a previous era when the magazine would, a print magazine would change its font or, you know, change the way they laid out the cover to try to kind of reboot themselves for a new age. When in 2018, you change your font, that's great for people who go into the homepage,

but for everybody else who's reading you through A&P or just, like, you know, various readers, it doesn't make that much difference. It's just a bunch of small sort of meaningless things that add up to, I don't know, just being proud of the amount of time you spent on the redesign. I feel like I'm being overly negative, at it. The site looks great. It looks really great.

There's the turn. There's the pivot. All right. But yeah, I guess I wish I could be like Slate and pivot to words because I'm sort of at a loss for them right now. I would say that back in the magazine era, I always found redesigns to be kind of baffling and self-involved. Because first of all, by the way, is there ever been an editor who didn't say they wanted to quote a really, quote, clean look? I was like that. We We wanted a really clean design. Oh, you didn't want a messy and cluttered design. Oh, okay.

I got you. Thanks for the clarification on that one. But they were really, you know, it was either a new editor who you wanted to put a stamp on the magazine. Yes. Or it was an old editor who, as you say, just wanted a kind of PR reboot because magazines, you just turn the pages, right? There's no, there's very little functionality to magazines. You can make them a little more user-friendly and stuff like that, but there wasn't really a functionality. I mean, to me, so as an old, as an old Slate veteran, I will say that they do, there was a great tradition there of kind of announcing grandly everything that you do at Slate.

That's just one of the things. I do think as old internet, which dates back to 1996, if I'm remembering my history correctly, there's this core of people who probably read that website before they read just about any other professional website. Sure. And it's sort of at some sense, it's like, you know, changing. the menu at Denny's, right? You're going to get people really, there's a certain number of people who go every day who are really angry if you don't tell them

what just happened. I was struck by a couple things too. They kind of tweaked up their verticals and they have a vertical called human interest, which is interesting to me. Which kind of becomes a catch-all for, you know, stories about marriage and work and things like that. It's funny because under the old Michael Kinsley slate,

that wouldn't have been a category at all because Mike wasn't that interested in humans, I think, at the end of the day. You know, he was interested in ideas and writing and all kinds of politics and all kinds of other things. But I don't think humans was a real focus of his. The thing I always hated about web redesigns, and I haven't seen any evidence of this was slate yet because I haven't played around with it all that much is that as a writer, it just winds up inevitably destroying your work. Remember that Grantland redesign we did that just,

just took out all the section breaks. Yeah. So it looked like you just written like thousands and thousands of continuous words with no transition or break or anything like that. I've had pieces on so many websites and they're just like, you know, it's like, oh, we just took out the, we did a redesign. Your pieces are still available, but the second paragraph is missing from all of them. It's like, oh, that's good.

That'll make sense to future. It's always so funny to be that you'd be like, I really want to design something. All it's going to do is destroy. It's going to destroy or alter. Maybe I'm just being a, you know, a navel gazing right of her, but it's going to destroy our alter all the things we've published or many of the things we've published.

Hey, let's do it anyway. Yeah. That's always funny to be about web redesign. You didn't even mention the footnotes for the Grantland redesign, which was a battle into itself. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think that what's a little bit off-putting about the whole enterprise, and we should mention that the Guardian redesigned the website

and I think and the print edition right around the same time that Slate did it is that these letters from the editor that describe and explain the redesign and you're right, the target audience for this is probably, you know, one part national media who might want to cover the redesign, but it's also one part

the core readership who will actually have opinions on this redesign. But these letters from the editor always seemed a little bit alien, right? I mean, you go to these sites because for the most part, they have voices that you're comfortable with, that you're familiar with. If not to the, you know, sort of like heights of the all that we discussed earlier, you know, certainly there's a, there's like a tone of slate that you're comfortable with. And then you read the letter about the redesign. It feels like you're being fed sort of like consultant speak or something like that because it is a sort of alien enterprise, right? I mean, the editors of any of these sites aren't the ones in the HTML making it look different.

you've sort of been, you know, you go in with some ideas to make it cleaner, to make it more modern, and you know, end up sort of, and this isn't a knock on slate, but, you know, I was joking earlier that you can kind of break up the internet era by slate redesign. Every time they go through, every time they go through a big redesign, it's sort of like, you know, the very end of a moment on the internet. But what you see is all of these websites, our own included, sort of converging on this, you know, on this mean. And, you know, every redesign for all the words you take talking about the, all the positive decisions you made, all you're kind of doing is just like moving towards some variation on BuzzFeed, at least in 2018, or on whatever the website is that's perceived to be the most functional and popular.

So what is the mean we're converging to her? It's the same question I asked about the Gawker House style back in 2009. What is the current go-to design? Personally, I hope that we're not there yet because it's, I mean, the answer for the vast majority of the web is for homepages is an overabundance of information that's basically impossible to parse your way through in any sort of coherent way. And also, that's, I mean, in some ways, it's a validation for just straight, straight up blogs like the all.

And then there's the infinite scroll, which is I think that, you know, the calling card of the modern internet. And, you know, the sameness, I mean, the sameness transcends the website itself. I mentioned, you know, AMP earlier. I mean, that's the way that we, that so much of, you know, writing on the internet is consumed

and you read it on your phone, it all sort of looks the same. I mean, certainly the, the functionality of various font choices is more significant on the internet when you're toggling between different tabs than it would have been in a magazine when that magazine is presumably

the only thing in front of your eyes right then at that moment. But yeah, I think that I just feel like, you know, I mean, that's the job of people who are redesigning websites is to look at other websites and try to figure out a way to do it, you know,

slightly better. Yeah, I mean, that's what we're all doing, right? I'm trying to slightly reinvent the wheel. I do like your point about editors' letters as a genre. I thought Julius was, as these go sounded like the Julia Turner, I know, but making journalists not sound like journalists.

That's one of my favorite genres too. Is when you get journalists to not sound like themselves. Usually it's when they win an award. And they say, I'm humbled and honored to win an award, which is like what George W. Bush said when he won the presidency. You know, that's always a kind of funny, kind of a funny voice to jump into. But yeah, you know, I think it's, I think the biggest, I think, I think resets are kind of important, both externally in terms of PR and probably internally too. And a redesign is probably a kind of nice, a nice way to reset yourself, right?

These are our priorities going for it, right? We've redesigned the site to look like this because these are the things we actually carry. about more now than we did a few years ago. Maybe, and I was joking about human interests, but maybe we care about these stories a lot more. So it's a fully formed category next to politics, right? Yeah. Maybe we care about, you know, podcasts in a certain way or even more than we ever did. So we give them more prominent space. And I think it's just sort of way, in a way, it's sort of like a public internal memo, right? Yes. That you're sending to your staff saying, these are the things we're going to care about going forward. Yeah, that's true. And, and,

And to, you know, in the defense of every website that'll ever redesign, it is very, it's a treacherous enterprise, especially compared to old, you know, to a magazine or something like that, because you would redesign it and you would have days to pour over the layout, you know, I mean, most of these redesigns are happening in real time, even if they, you know, if they're working in beta at the office for the two weeks leading up to it, it's still a total, you never know what to expect on the day you launch the new, the new look. And, you know, like we mentioned before, There are going to be people who are very, very upset about the font that you chose that will not care about this font in two weeks. But right now, they're very upset about it. So, you know, you sort of have to weather the storm and, you know, as you embark on this new direction. You only hear from the people who hate it. And on that, happy note, that's the press box for this week. David Shoemaker. I'll talk to you next week about more pressing issues and concerns in the media.

All right. Have fun feeding Tasmanian devils, man. Thanks, buddy. Because there is a very linear way that you can run through it. Is that noise being picked up? I'm sorry. Are you watching a Three Stooges movie in the background? What the fuck is that?

Somebody just started randomly hammering outside my...