The Press Box - Have We Lost the Meaning of “On Background”?

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Bryan and David respond to The Verge’s announcement that they're changing their “on background” policy (1:00) before assessing whether or not People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” has any remaining cultural relevance (23:00). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From reviews to rankings, the big picture is all things movies. From in-depth analysis of the latest flick to sit down interviews with some of the biggest movie stars and filmmakers on the planet, Sean Fennessee and Amanda Dobbins have got you covered. Check out The Big Picture on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. What's on your mind today? Well, as you can see, and the people listening to this can certainly not see, which makes this a great bit. But I'm in an empty room with empty bookshelves surrounded by boxes. So hopefully that's enough for the listeners to intuit.

I'm in the middle of a massive moving situation. You really paint a picture, by the way. Imagine off white walls and white trim, built-in bookshelves galore. My mom is moving from North Carolina to New Jersey to be closer to me and my wife and kids. As one does, I'm down here. I'm going to drive up with her tomorrow. So that's exciting stuff. And it's very exciting to have her joining the Princeton, New Jersey family.

But one of the things that we're doing, and I'm helping out, because I'm already located where she's going, is dealing with all these canceling utilities, signing up for new utilities, got to figure out what the cable, the Wi-Fi situation. You know, my mother's age, we have to figure out, well, do you need cable? Do you need a landline? Do you need other? There's all these very basic things, conversations we have to go through. through. There's one bill or one account that did not need

to be closed because it didn't exist and then will not be reopened on the other end. And it kind of surprised me. I'm guessing you could guess because this podcast is what it is. But I found out today as I rolled in and was going down the checklist that my mom is

not an active subscriber to the Charlotte Observer or any newspaper down here and will not be subscribers. to a newspaper in Princeton when she gets there because it's that's uh well I asked her about it. She said it just got too expensive at some point and she gets all the news she needs from her phone and from MSNBC or you know, whatever she's watching. And it's it raises an interesting, well, I mean, obviously this is she's a, she's, you know, one of the people I think that

She's a prime audience for someone that the newspapers should be clawing on to, you know, with everything they have left. You would assume that she would still be a, be, I assume that she was still subscribing. But it does raise a sort of interesting thing that we just sort of gloss over a lot in these conversations, which is just sort of like for the generation above us or all the generations older than us, there's just sort of like a maximum capacity issue, right? where if you're if you it's not just choosing to get things on your phone and choosing the different sources and websites and stuff that you read it's just for a lot of people you know they had 25 minutes dedicated to news every day and if they get that in various other ways then there's really maybe just not the need for the traditional newspaper life what do you think well i've got two reactions to this one newspapers lost half of america and now they've lost cherry shoemaker

Yes, exactly. Just one more bullet in the quivering corpse of newspaperdom. I think your point's exactly right. And my mom doesn't get a newspaper either. And my mom sends me lots of Yahoo links and Daily Beast links and things like that. My mom just kind of is, and our parents are both people who are very with it and very interested in the news and certainly been interested in the news over the last couple years, especially. And they're getting it in different ways. and my mom doesn't have cable either.

So I guess that brings me to my second point, which is really funny, is that you and I, as middle-aged guys, but younger than our parents, have kind of doubled down on print. Yeah. So that's a funny dynamic.

Are we like the vinyl collectors of this generation? Is that what they were? Are we just like really serious about print because there's a certain like retro-hipness about it? Yes. It's like when someone, in our age has a child and names it maud.

You're being even more vintage than your parents. Newspapers are maud. Okay, that's great. Or something like that, right? Or, you know, just a very old-fashioned kind of thing. You're not only trying to relive your parents' generation, you're kind of trying to relive your grandparents' generation. Well, you know, sometimes I like to go out and have a cocktail that actually has, like,

egg whites in it instead of just triple sack or whatever, you know? One right highball, please. Yeah. Sounds delicious. just right now. So it's funny, though, to me, because I always think of, we always think of, when we talk about the show, we think about media that was in the golden age of newspapers or television news. And it's so interesting to me that the people who grew up right smack dab in that age are like, yeah, better now. I don't need this stuff anymore. I will say, though,

that for years, my mom's best friend was her neighbor and her neighbor moved out within the past year. but they had a tradition where every what saturday sunday morning they would bring the weekend edition of the wall street journal or neighbor would bring it would read it and then bring it to my mom where so she was a sort of like she was like the person she had like the her like you know the the wsj.com login from her friend or whatever she was she was she was like the netflix piggybacker of the of the the you know the print generation so anyway she read you know she contributed to a wall street journal weekend subscription, which I guess is more than most of us can say. Yeah, you used to borrow a cup of sugar.

Now somebody brings Jason Gays column over for you. Very nice. It could be better. Coming up on today's show, David and I will talk about the art of going on background. Plus, people's sexiest man alive is still alive. Adam Schaefter is in the news again. And we introduce a brand new bit or attempted bit. All that more on the press box.

A part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with producer Bobby Wagner sitting in for Erica. David, I want to talk to you about going on background. Wow, okay. Let's do it. We will define it if for the non-journalist in the audience going on background as the website, the verge notes, means that when somebody tells you something, you can use the material, but you can't source it to a particular person. Off the record means you can't use the material at all.

On backgrounds means you can use the material, but you can't say exactly who gave you the material. Well, the aforementioned Verge has updated its policies about these things. Nele Patel writes, why did the Verge do that, David? Quoting Patel here, we're doing this because big tech companies in particular have hired a dizzying array of communication staff who routinely pushed the boundaries of acceptable sourcing in an effort to deflect accountability, pass the burden of truth to the media and generally control the narratives around the companies they work for

while being annoying as hell to deal with. Kind of a cry for help that doubles as a new policy. I think you and I had both probably separately heard aspects of this bubbling up over the years, right? It's, you know, far be it for me to diagnose it,

but it did sort of seem like a new generation of of companies monolithic companies in some cases that were in a that sort of came into existence without a beat pre-existing them does that make sense like there was not

like reporters like the companies came first and then the old school it started up came up through blogs and stuff and then the the traditional newspapers and stuff kind of had to cultivate your tech desk or even you know games department, whatever, in different instances. And I don't know if that helped these companies sort of get out ahead of, you know,

journalism and sort of set their own ground rules. But there was some combination of the emergence of this new field and the power that these companies had almost overnight has kind of created this world where, where the journalists covering them kind of have to be part of the machine or get left out in the cold? Am I saying that correctly? Yeah.

And I just, it's kind of a, you kind of said this, but sort of just to highlight it, like companies that are used to, quote, breaking shit. What if we break all the rules of journalism,

too? Yeah. What if we don't, you know, not like, you know, corporations have played by, played by the rules

always over the years, but why don't we be even worse about playing by the rules? rules or create new rules because we're used to creating new stuff. I mean, the examples from this Verge article, and I'm going to read you a few of these, are kind of the highlight here because it's just an amazing window of what tech reporters in particular, but I think all reporters kind of have to deal with now as companies seek to throw this on background net over everything.

Let me read you a few of these, just to make you laugh. Here's one, again, quoting from Patel's article, more than one. big company insists on holding product briefings on background with no attribution, which means no one can properly report what company executives say about their own new products during marketing events. So you've come out with a new product. The executive is giving a briefing about the product, but that must be on background. Because we do not want you to attribute that to the executive.

Whose company just brought out the product? here's another great one. A big tech company PR person emailed us a link to the company's own website on background. What part of that was on background? The email or the contents of the website? Was it like a backdoor page? I have no idea. I don't think either of them is particularly less ridiculous.

I had a question about the company. You emailed me the relevant section of the website so I could answer it, but that is on background. The active emailing, or as you say, perhaps the entire website is on background. This is a great one. A food delivery company insisted on discussing the popularity of chicken wings on background. That's a sensitive subject. The popularity of chicken wings versus pizza, apparently.

This one really spoke to me. Multiple big tech companies insist on having PR staffers quoted as sources familiar with the situation, quote unquote, even though they are paid spokespeople for the most powerful companies in the world. And that really gets to the nub of it here. Because it's not just about observing some rule that's in a book or something like that. It's about not deceiving readers when you print a story. And if I printed a story and said, sources familiar with the situation,

you might think, okay, these are executives, these are people involved in the deal, some outside observer who's making calls and talking to the people, you would not think it's the people who are spinning the readers or attempting to spin the readers. They're certainly familiar with the situation, but they're putting down a particular viewpoint. Right. I mean, it's using these sort of weasel words to portray themselves as the opposite of who they are. Absolutely. Or just, yeah, exactly. It's, you know, all anonymous copy. There's a lot of head nodding, as you know. There's sometimes there's some winking to the person.

This is like a reverse wink. This is a wink that completely misleads the person who's trying to read the story. And that is really weird. Here's another one, David. A big tech company refused to detail a controversial new privacy policy on the record, allowing it to amend details about it in repeated background follow-up briefings for over a week. Let me give you an example of what this is like. You ask me, Brian,

What food are you cooking for your family for dinner here on Monday night? And I say, David, I'm going to have to go on background. I am going to on background tell you that I'm going to cook beef burguignon tonight. And then I call you back an hour later and said, actually, I'm going to take the whole family to a restaurant because I don't have any of the ingredients or knowledge of how to do that. Then I call you back an hour later and say, by the way, that restaurant is closed. Now we're putting Tottito's pizza in the oven. And the idea here is that I don't have any idea how to cook my family dinner tonight. But by putting it on background, I have completely obscured that fact for you.

Because there's nothing on the record. There's nothing attributable to Brian Curtis doesn't have a clue to what he's doing. And it seems like reading these examples, there's these new policies coming out, privacy policies, whatever it is. And they don't have a good answer. So there's like five answers on background. and they're never quite at least publicly held accountable. Right. Because nobody ever says it and puts their name on it.

And it feels like, you know, with the abundance of these, I mean, talking about how this is just the status quo for it. It's not like just that nobody puts their name on it, which is a problem in and of itself. But if the if the industry standard is this sort of like just forced ambiguity, right? And that frankly, you know, like we said, mischaracterizes the, you know, the source and much of what's being said, then nothing makes any sense, right? I mean, there's not, if the default is is on background, right? No one's even having to make the conscious effort of like what's how we want to put these things out there. It's like the status quo is just absolute obfuscation. So it's not even good for the companies, you would think, for the most part, you know.

But, I mean, at least not in every instance. It's just, but you would understand why you would do that as a default, as a default stance, right? I mean, you, there's a, I would say that, you know, for a lot of PR people, you keep, you want to keep your head down as much as possible, right? I mean, no one's going to pat you on the back for doing out a good press, release, but they'll certainly fire you if you put out a bad one. And it's a, you know, if this is acceptable, I mean, if this is accepted by the higher ups, yeah, you want to keep your head down. You want to stay back as much as possible. You do what, but it's, but the,

but the point should be getting information out, right? I mean, that's what like public relations is, managing the flow of information, getting information out there. And what, and what they end up doing is making it so no real information ever sees the light of day. Well, to your point about it, not making sense. I think the PR people, if there's a controversial story or potentially negative story, and the reader reads them and be like, I don't understand this because this is not in English. This is not in a language. I understand. I think they take that as a win.

Sure. And that's why it's incumbent upon reporters to be like, I can't print this. This doesn't make any sense. You know, blankety blank happened according to sources close to the situation who are in fact managing the image of the company. I just can't use that. It doesn't work. That's not, that's not, that's just junk that I'm putting into my copy. And that, that's to me is the whole thing here.

It's being protective of your, of your own work, whether it's, you know, whenever I as a journalist. Yes. And whenever I hear those, you know, where they say so and so is appearing on behalf of blank, you know, like the vitamin water or whatever it is, whether that's on a radio show or in a piece, heaven forbid. I'm always like, look at the junk you just put. in your work. Yeah. And I would say the same thing here. Sources closest, it's just like,

especially when it's those sources close to the situation. Like, you're just junking it up. I want to give you a couple more. We're going through the looking class here. I hope you're ready. I hope you are locked in. A major car company's head of communications told us an April Fool's joke was actually real on background.

The joke was not real. Now, I don't even understand what that means. But what an absolutely mind-bending experience that must have been. Here's another one. A big tech company sent us a statement on the record, on the record, David, with the caveat that it could not be attributed to a specific individual. It's on the record, but it is actually on background. If you say it's on the record but can't be attributed, that's actually not on the record.

What is the point? Is that just, do they even know? what they're asking for? I don't know. I have no idea. And I will say there's a lot of slipperiness with these terms. A lot of people think

off the record actually means on background and vice versa. And the verge, again, this is part of them clarifying their own policies for their own reporters and for the people they deal with. And one of the things here is, is our reporters will always carefully explain

our sourcing practices to you. and strive to protect your confidentiality when appropriate. That's a big thing here, right? Yeah. Just tell us, tell the person you're talking. Now, what exactly is this? I would also just add, also just tell the readers more about how this happened. Because do readers understand the difference between these things?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's an aspect of this that they get at in this verge statement where it seems like some of these companies are actually exploiting the fear. sources fears about confidentiality to their own ends in this, right? I mean, there was one, there was one point where there was a, the verge was reporting based on, you know, some, some, uh, sources that they were keeping confidential. And the company in question said, well, we're not, we're not going to go on the record.

That wouldn't be fair. It's not an even playing field, right? You're protecting their identities. Why can't you protect ours? And there certainly is an aspect, I'm sure, where they're just like, where if they, if this, if the, if the companies can make this into an issue. And that definitely put some fear in the heart of anybody that would be any would-be whistleblower or even just someone who was willing to give some information that they thought was, you know, significant or pertinent. They also have a good point in here where they talk about

how on background or any of these things isn't actually an agreement. This is from the, from the Verge article, an agreement between you and the reporters or editors you speak to at the verge. So this isn't one of those things where, you know, David, I give you an interview and I say, okay, this part was off the record. This part is on background. No, no, no, no, no. You have to agree to this.

Mm-hmm. You know, I have to say like, is it okay if I go off the record here if I say this on background and you have to say yes. Yeah. That's, this is not like the company dictates the terms here and there. And the reporter can be like, no, I don't, I don't agree to go on background because there's nothing here that should be on background. That's ridiculous.

And they mentioned this new practice, which we've seen all the time of people will email you something and put on background or embargoed in the subject line. Yep. And then send it to your email. And you're like, I didn't ask for this. And this is I am absolutely free to divulge the contents of this email. Yeah, I'm not bound by any, just because you say it out loud. Yeah.

subject line is not the... You don't get to call like first dibs on the disclosure practices of whatever the communication is. I've been getting one lately from PR people sometimes and it's like it's something I don't want to do, but they say we would like to give this to you exclusively. And I always kind of catches me a little short because I'm like, it's so weird. Here's something I absolutely don't want to do, but they think they want me to be the only person in the world to do it.

Speaking of mind bending. And he'd say no to that. Yeah, I don't want to jump off the roof of my house, but what if I could be the only person in the neighborhood who jumped off the roof of my house? That's essentially what it is. David, this whole conversation is on background retroactively. Please do not share this on the Ringer podcast network.

Let's do the Overward 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, David, to at the press box pod, where they are always gratefully received. We got a headline from Raw Story about the trial of Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes. Are you ready?

Okay. Elizabeth Holmes allegedly duped Betsy DeVos's family out of $100 million. $100 billion. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write Elizabeth Holmes. Welcome to the Resistance. Thanks to Mitchell Tyler for that. an article from CBS News, David,

why nightmares might be a good thing. The other word Twitter joke to write, did Freddie Kruger write this? Thanks to Drew's AF and Jake Christie. I was going to do this since you're in Charlotte today. Cam Newton came back to the Panthers. We had a whole wave of people doing first look at Cam Newton in a Panthers uniform

and then just posting a picture from a couple of seasons to go. It's a little previous. careers and panthers. Great stuff. Great stuff. And this week's runaway winner, David,

Johnson and Johnson will break itself into two separate companies. Oh, no. There's an overwork Twitter joke to write. The two companies will be called

Johnson and Johnson. Great stuff. Thanks to Mace, Joe Maren, incompetent user, Austin Alter, and just to know

if you made the most obvious joke possible, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. In the notebook dump, David, I would like to spend

several minutes on people's sexiest man alive. Oh, God, let's do it. This feature is still a thing. A new sexiest man alive was named last week. He is Paul Rudd, who had the

tongue-in-cheek response you might expect. Also enjoyed Steve Martin's response on Twitter. Trust me, it's a burden. Pretty good. A couple of responses to people's sexiest man alive. I love the word alive.

So Sean Connery, previous winner of the people's sexiest man alive, was not eligible to win this year. Because he is not alive. Don't you just love that that was included? People's sexiest man alive. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, maybe it's just the sort of, you know,

it makes it seem like a bigger deal, right? It's a little bit more exclamatory. It's sexiest man alive. You can see it's up in lights. But it does feel like, this is sort of the problem within it with something like this. It's sort of a little bit flip becoming in such an institution, right? Yeah.

It's like, it's like, I can't even think of what, like, the blog iteration of this would have been in our, in, you know, when we were coming up. But it's like, it's like if, if, like, the president handed out some sort of like hipster runoff award every year or something. You know, I mean, it's just, it was never, it should not be taken this seriously.

And it's really easy to make fun of because for some reason it's just been around so long that we all just have to take this seriously. Yeah. And the whole idea that some, there was this giant meeting at people and that, you know, somebody gets like the Hall of Fame inductions in the NFL where somebody got to stand up and make the case. Yes. For various people being the sexist man alone.

Yeah. It's like, it's like your old joke about, you know, whatever they would have like the, like Michael Johnson was running in the Olympics and they would say fastest man alive. You'd be like, I don't recall ever being eliminated from this competition, but okay. Do I get to compete? Also, since we're Penn Dance here, I would like you to know that it used to be the sexiest man alive. And they got rid of the the? Yeah, like Harrison Ford, Richard Gear, Brad Pitt, Pierce Brosnan, whoa, 2001.

It was the sexiest man alive. and then 2002, for Ben Affleck, we went to Sexiest Man Alive. Now, does the lineage of the title belt continue back, or did they, was it officially in it? It's like the NWA title. Yeah. There was also one sexiest couple alive, Richard Geer and Cindy Crawford. Sure. It's also fun to look back when they just kind of wanted to throw a boomerang at you, you know?

Sometimes like Sean Connery, 1989. Richard Gear won it twice within a couple of years. Right? They wanted a repeat winner. I love this. The other part about this, David, that struck me is just about everything we know about magazines is broken. Yeah. You know what's not broken?

Any ridiculous award that will get your editor on a network morning show to announce it? Yes, absolutely. So time person of the year, people's sexiest man alive, sports illustrated, sports, or sportsperson of the year, you can absolutely make that work still. Oh, yeah. No, you totally can. You totally can.

I mean, now it's just an institution, like I said. I mean, of course you have to go to whatever morning show. You probably just like, except bids from all the various morning shows to go on there and let them be the first, let them have the exclusive on background of who the sexiest. Oh, there's absolutely an on background conversation. No, it's off the record, right? we want to have you to have the graphic ready of Paul Rudd perhaps even invite Paul Rudd to come on the show with us but you can't tell anybody. Our editor-in-chief will appear in the 9 o'clock hour, but he'll only be there on background.

I also thought if we created a press box journalism award, spent 15 seconds on it like deciding it. Like this year, like, we're going to give it to and just pick somebody randomly who worked for the New York Times. Mm-hmm. How quickly would that award wind up in that writer's author bio? Well, I think it depends on how well we named it for one thing. Press Box Journalist of the Year? Do we need to trick it out any more than that? Press Box Journal. I think Press Box Journalist of the Year would be there almost immediately. Was named the 2021 Press Box Journalist of the Year?

Yes. Even though we... Which is clearly a bit? Yeah, we have a well-named podcast. I think. I think that would actually really, I think people would actually take that seriously. Somebody's looking at the bookstore and is like, I'm not too sure. Oh, Press Box Journalists of the Year 2021. You can't fork over that $32 now. Oh, that's great.

We needed a new bit, David, because we retired the only in journalism words, bit. Oh, yeah. And thanks to all readers, by the way, who keeps sending these in, hoping the bit comes back. The bit is dead. The bit is absolutely dead. But there is a new bit that is alive, David. It's from Mitch Carr, the news anchor down to the great state of Arizona. You remember Mitch Carr because I believe he snuck a press box catchphrase onto the news down there in Arizona. Of course. He proposes a new gag for us, which is what is on steroids this week?

Not literally on steroids. No, no, no. We can call this media piss test. Oh, I love it. What is on steroids this week? And he sent some examples. gentrification on steroids. Liberalism on steroids.

Taylor Swift has made a music video on steroids. At the press spot. It's like baseball in 1998 in the media. So this is our new thing. We're going to do the piss test every week. All right. Yeah. All right.

The bit is dead. Long live the bit. Let's go. And you know, you and I always, we're a little queasy about getting too much into PDs or anything like that. That feels like a very old thing.

it is absolutely okay apparently in journalism though to say that everything else is on steroids oh yeah steroids you don't even have to change it to peds remember when all of sports writing said well you know it's not technically steroids it might be another performance enhancing drug so you better put peds to be safe no no we're still on steroids media piss test new bit here on press box uh david adam schfter is in the news again do you see made any news this year oh oh he has. I'm going to read to you from an article in the New York Post by Ryan Glassbeagle. Adam Schaefter and ESPN are in the crosshairs over Schefter's Tuesday report that

Dalvin Cook and his ex-girlfriend, Sergeant First Class Graceland Trimble are accusing each other of domestic violence. Adam Schaefter's first tweet about the news was to relay Cook's allegations via his agent that he had been the victim of domestic violence and extortion. about two and a half hours after his initial report, Schefter shared an ESPN story that detailed Trimbles allegations. Trimble's attorney, Daniel Craig,

ripped ESPN for the sequence of reporting. ESPN's journalistic malpractice yesterday sends a painfully clear message to billions of girls and women around the world that they should be afraid to come forward because media companies like ESPN are more interested in protecting the powerful celebrities that make them money rather than engaging in honest reporting and competent journalism. Craig said in a statement,

to USA today. What were we saying about insiders again? I mean, man, I have so many ways I can go with this. We did talk, last time we were together, we talked about Schefter's last tweet, last tweet kerfuffle, right?

Yeah, a couple shows ago, I think. I mean, I guess, you know, the people that have made their names, made their riches on Twitter or mortals too, right? So it shouldn't be just like, you know, it's not just news

in and of itself that someone's who does everything on Twitter makes a huge mistake like this on Twitter. But I guess that is to some extent notable. I mean, in some, and I guess it, I mean, in a real just straightforward way, power dynamics and all that aside for one second, just shows the real limitations of this.

this, right? I mean, if you are a, I guess you can't put power aside, but if you are a information broker where speed and exclusivity are more important than anything else, then you can see how one could be manipulated fairly, I don't know if it was easily, but you can see how one could be manipulated, right? Our reporter could be being manipulated by offering them exclusivity and them rushing, wanting to be the first out there, right? but this just seems like you know just I can't imagine I can't imagine you try to put yourselves in the shoes of people who work in your or in your line of work and you know because we all make mistakes whatever I can't imagine getting something this wrong I it's

just it's not it's not a mistake I mean it's it might have been but it's this you can't categorize this one this is a just categorical error of of journalistic ethics but of like human ethics you know i mean this is you it how you could have how you could be alive in 2021 and make and just whiff i mean the best possible reading is that you just like didn't think about what the possible other side of the story was how could you do that you know it's i i don't i don't understand man i completely agree and And I, you're right. It's beyond journalistic error.

You're right. It's the air of, of humanity. I feel like one of the things that happens with insiderdom is everything gets flattened into a nugget. Yeah. All news becomes a nugget. Guy heard his hamstring as a nugget.

Guy getting traded at the Packers is a nugget. And then somehow a story like this, a horrible story that's very complicated and very, you know, requires a lot of thinking and reporting and phone calls, it becomes a nugget. And you're like, it's treated like a nugget, right? And you're like, that's not a nugget. Yeah. This is not something to rush to Twitter to, you know,

to get everybody's attention in NFL world. Mm-hmm. I just don't, yeah, I don't. Well, and that, I mean, and that, and that makes it, like, it's clear that that's what was going on here. and that makes it even more damnable, right? I mean, that you would, that before it got to the point of the, of the tweet, before, before the just horrific error was made,

before any of that, it had already been reduced to a nugget, right? It, like, like either at its conception or at some point along the way, it had already been determined that it fits the parameters of a nugget tweet. And what we saw was the byproduct of that. And that's what makes it just so unsettling. Absolutely. Absolutely. Speaking of bits, David, I got another one I want to run by. You know how we've been doing the headline rule of three on this podcast?

Oh, yeah. I feel like almost every athletic feature is blank, blank and blank. The story of blank. So it's a napkin. I'm just looking at my desk right now. A box of altoyds and a cell phone. How Bill Belichick's Patriots saved their season. That's everything.

It came to us originally from the sports writer Adam Zalanka. Well, a couple of weeks ago, we had a note that Jonathan Liu, great sports writer for the Guardian had referenced his own version of the headline Rule of 3. He called it the tyranny of the X, Y, and Z feature. Oh, that's good. Yeah, and here's his eating

meals together, daytime naps and murder ball. Bickram yoga, Flobert, and reruns of Columbo. Googling himself at 4 a.m., weeping, dressing room laments on the savagery of man, playing Matt Richie at Fullback, where it all went wrong for Steve Bruce

at Newcastle. And Lou writes, this stuff is everywhere and it's reduction of coaching to simple, catchy tropes. It encourages us to see the manager in the same way we view a household cleaning product, a mix of miracle compounds that either works or doesn't. It's not dead. Please submit your headline rules of three. Speaking of bits,

it's time for David Schuemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about Buffalo picking between two very different Democrats from mayor was Buffalo picks its favorite wing. Today's headline, David, comes from the Detroit Free Press. Okay. It was sent to us by our friend Pickle Ball Hero.

I don't know if you've followed by either watching or proxy the absolutely dreadful football game yesterday between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Detroit Lions. By proxy, yes. Detroit Lions have not won a game. The game went into overtime. Everyone got excited and then it ended in a 16-16 tie. driving rainstorm. It was, I watched about 20 minutes of it, 20 minutes of it on Sunday ticket.

And it was, it was something else. It was good Twitter content. All right. So what I'm looking for here is a pun that begins with tide. Tide. What was the Detroit Free Press's strain pun headline? Tide. Crimson Tide, Tide, Tide, Rising Tide, wrong kind of tide.

Tide all tied up. Tide. Tide is the first word of the head. Tide. Tide. What are things tied in? Tied up in knots. Tied up in, tied up in knots. Maybe tight up in a difference. Maybe a different spelling, perhaps. Tied in. Tide in. Not K-N-O-T-S, but N-O-T-S. Tide in knots. Oh my gosh. Tide in knots. he is David Shoemaker on Brian Curtis I wish you could see the look on David's face

right now folks production magic by Bobby Wagner coming this Friday David another movie theme Friday press box yes

a couple weeks ago fantasy and I did a podcast about Wes Anderson's the French dispatch we've been trying to get one of the actors from that movie

onto the pod and we did he is Jeffrey Wright Wow also for green legend Jeffrey Wright Fort Green legend Jeffrey Wright.

We didn't talk about Fort Green. I should have asked to see this. I should have asked him about Fort Green. We did get into the movie working with Wes Anderson being very online, as Jeffrey Wright is on Twitter and also playing Colin Powell, which he was very interesting talking about. Then Shoemaker and I'm back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.