The Press Box - How Does Bob Woodward Do It? Plus: Politico and “Off the Record.”

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

David Shoemaker is a married man! After discussing the nuptials, Bryan and David touch on ‘Peril,’ the latest Bob Woodward book, co-authored by Robert Costa (6:00). Then they dive into Politico’s "OFF THE RECORD" debacle (25:30) and charging a fee to be on podcasts (34:22). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker  Associate Producer: Lani Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs for the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. David, you got married this weekend.

I did. I did. I did. I just feel to be a married man. It feels fantastic. People listening to this can't see me grinning year to ear. But yeah, you know, it was a, we had an effect.

fantastic time. You know, this thing started out is basically just like an excuse to throw a big family party post-COVID and then COVID came back. But, you know, we threw a careful party nonetheless, all outdoors and distanced and everything else. But it was absolutely just the most amazing weekend. I mean, just the most amazing day. But, you know, it started early and kept going. It was fantastic, man. Brian, you were there. I'm grateful for your presence for your speech. Oh, my goodness. which we will be playing in full at the end of this episode. And that's not true. And it's crazy because everybody knows, I mean, everybody knows me.

And I think I said it last time on the show. And I was that this was, I mean, I've been sort of functionally married for a long time. Right. Yes. Two kids. We have a house. We have, you know, a very married life, as you beautifully pointed out in your speech. But, you know, just like with everything that comes with marriage and fatherhood,

you're never quite prepared for the sort of magic of the moment, right? and just like how like sort of overwhelmingly wonderful these things can be so it was just an amazing time you were caught up in it i was caught up man i was i was certainly caught up shut a few tears in front of lots of people but you know what that's what you want to tell the folks in home how many times how many times i broke down i would say seven maybe it with within the one speech yeah i mean if you count each each beautiful break has its own thing yeah it was sort of just for me it was it started at a certain point in the service and just sort of, you know, was in the back of my throat for the rest of the night. But it was, you know, you could probably count them out. It might be

more than seven. Yeah, it was, it was gorgeous. It was, uh, it was incredibly touching. I think, I think my official count would be like seven tear ups and maybe two hard cries during the speech, right? Like, I just need a moment before I can continue here. Yeah. But it was great. We'll also be releasing that, folks, as a bonus pod later in the week. Yeah, that's fantastic. that's a great idea. My favorite part and this, I don't know, I think I mentioned this to you before you spoke, but I think both in the preparation for it,

when they sort of put the order of speeches together, both when it came to you and when it came to me, there is this constant refrain from my wife and anybody else involved. She's like, well, they'll be fine. They're public speakers. I don't know what point in our podcasting career, we've gone from just like two dudes

with like, you know, a recording device to professional public speakers. speakers, but I guess we're there, at least as far as everybody else is concerned. And these people heard the press box? Certainly not. Certainly not. Before it gets edited, at least. A couple other notes.

First of all, the church you guys picked was a great, beautiful old Baptist church. I thought that was really, really cool, really intimate place. The good reverend, Dr. Schumacher, Dr. Stephen Schumacher did a fabulous job marrying you guys. That was so, so cool. Now, he is a professional. public speaker. So, you know, he should have done a good job. Yeah, he was, he was, he was absolutely at ease. Dom looked beautiful. Oh, my God. So amazing to see her and see her reaction and how happy she was. We did get a couple of tweets about this, one of which I wanted to read. This is from, because I put a

picture up on the press box, Twitter feed of the two of us at the after party. This was from listener Ben Al Schuller reacted this way, called it a photo of Michael Stipe and Woge. about to eat an entire pizza dipped in chocolate. Not totally inaccurate. Yeah. Well, we did a fact check, Ben. And it turns out two Pinocchio's, that was a Nutella pizza from the dessert buffet. That was not a pizza dipped in chocolate.

But the bit about David and I looking like Michael Stipe and Woj, fact check true. That checks out. I've gotten every bald man. I mean, I've had a shaved head since for a very, very long time. And over the years, I've gotten compared to every man with a shaved head, probably in existence. Michael Stipe is fine. Michael Stipe's a, Michael Stipe's an attractive fellow, I think. So I'll go with that.

You were the happiest bald man on the face of the planet on Saturday night. And I was so happy to see it. What a day. We will remember that for a long time. Coming up on today's show, David. it's Bob Woodward Week in America. He's got a new book with Robert Costa called Peril. What's it like to be interviewed for one of these Woodward Blockbuster books?

We explain, plus should a Washington Post writer's statement to Politico be off the record if she sent it via email and declared it so? And should you pay a sports writer to come on your podcast? David and I will be the judge of that. I'll add more on the press box, a part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Hello Media Consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer here along with producer Lonnie Ronaldo. It's a big week in publishing, David. Bob Woodward is releasing a news cycle.

I mean, I'm sorry, a new book. A new book. It's very easy to get him confused when it comes to Bob Woodward. The new book written with his Washington Post teammate Robert Costa is peril. Peril. no subtitle. Remember the press box rule of publishing. The surest sign you're a big deal in book world is if your nonfiction books don't come with subtitles.

Right. You don't have to explain. Just one word. That's it. Enticements necessary. No, I mean, there will be, you know, supplementary copy available online for anyone that needs it. But as long as you got a couple, you know, president's faces on there and Bob Woodward's name, Robert Cost had a boot.

I think you kind of get the point across. You get the point across. Now, I have been reading Peril in between wedding speeches all weekend and on the plane back here to L.A. I got a couple notes for you about the book itself. But first, I'd like to tell you a little bit about the Woodward method of interviewing. Oh, please. I was fortunate enough to speak with someone who participated in one of the interviews for Peril,

who had some notes about the whole experience. First of all, the interview was at Bob Woodward's house in George. Georgetown in Washington, D.C., where dinner was served, just on the one hand, a very far cry from cub reporter Woodward knocking on people's doors in all the president's men. Yeah. But you can absolutely see the pull of that, right? For sure. And making powerful people feel at ease.

Is it a townhouse? Is that what we officially call all of the nice residences in D.C. townhouses? I believe that's correct. All right. Because they're brownstones in New York, but it's a different thing, slightly different thing. But townhouse is sort of also, I'm sure there's a bunch of high rises. I'm not high rises. I'm sure there's new builds in D.C.

But it seems like once you get the townhouse, you've kind of hit the aspirational peak in Washington world, right? You're not like. Sure. It's not like New York where it's like there is a, you know, 15,000 foot penthouse being constructed at any given moment that you might move into someday. Like, it's the townhouse is the goal. That's the gold standard. And if you're somebody like, Woodward, come over to my place. No one's going to overhear us here.

We'll serve some wine. and, you know, everybody will be comfortable. So, as I said, dinner was served, and the participant said there was a lot of just, you know, casual shooting the shit over the salad course. But then when a subject came up that Woodward wanted to ask about for the book itself, Woodward said something like, you know, that's something I wanted to ask you about. Would you mind if I take out a recorder?

None of this is for attribution, of course. I'd just been doing it this way for years. Now, I found that really funny because every journalist, including me, has a faux apologetic way of asking the subject if it's okay to turn on a recorder. Yeah. I do that several times a week. I'm sorry, would you just mind if I go and record this for my notes or so I can transcribe it later? You're just something you kind of reflectively say, this is Bob Woodward. We're over at Bob Woodward's house.

Yes, it's okay if you record me. person who wrote all the president's men. I'm going to be okay with your decision to do that. I just thought that was really funny. Also notable, both Woodward and Costa, who was also at the interview, had their own recorders. So we are double recording here. We're not just doing one transcript.

We are double recording. All right. That makes me very interested about the process, but I guess we can kind of circle back around of that later. I think that's interesting. there was something notable about the way Woodward and Costa asked questions. Woodward was the guy who wheedles the anecdote out of you. Oh, tell me more about that.

And what's going on with that? Tell me, tell me about what you were feeling kind of thing, right? He's pulling the anecdote out of you. Costa, on the other hand, is the guy who was nailing everything down about the anecdote. He was the details guy. Right. When did this happen? Was this before or after this event?

Now, where exactly was this? It was almost like Costa was Matthew McConaughey and True Detective with the big board behind him, you know, with all the stuff about the Yellow King. Like, he just had everything in his mind about events and dates just perfectly laid out. So he's trying to like place it in a giant timeline of other reporting. And in facts, he already knows. And that was the difference between the approaches of the city. So it was the, it was the infamous good.

Good cop, meticulous cop routine. Exactly. Good cop. Wait, what's the date of that cop? Yeah. Yes, that was very much the dynamic. Also, we mentioned this last week. It's just funny to think of Robert Costas a complimentary piece here because he is such a big deal at the Washington Post.

Yeah. On his own. He was the moderator of Washington Week for a while. It's almost like when Carmelo Anthony plays on the dream team. Right. He's still mellow. you just see him in a different context. Do you think that he's next to LeBron or next to whomever?

Do you think that Costa is going to come out of this with a different reputation? It's like Olympics mellow. We'll just say it'll be like Peril Costa. And now whenever he writes, whenever he writes a single byline story, people are going to just be complaining. Like, I wish we could get back to,

I wish we could get back to Peril Costa. That was really is, that was really the apex. He never, never played good defense after that. I don't understand why. I don't think he needed the career reboot. Like Mellow D.

I don't think we were in ConCost ever win the Big One territory. I was interested in whether after a juicy nugget was dispensed, if Woodward and Costa kind of gave each other like a little look, you know, a half look over like, hmm. I brought up. Did you hear that? Apparently that did not happen because they were actually professional journalists. Yeah.

I did also have one Woodwardian detail about what was served for dessert. Oh, okay. Yeah, because if you're Woodward, right, you got a Nutella pizza. It was not a Nutella pizza or a chocolate pizza. or a chocolate pizza for that matter. It was rhubarb pie. Oh. Rubarb pie.

Like a whole foods rubarb pie? Like is there a kiddie? I assume you could purchase a rhubarb pie at some fine Washington area grocer. So I can't prove that either way, but I'm guessing Bob Woodward is not hurriedly like ripping off the plastic. I'm going to really guess this was an absolutely fresh made rhubarb pie. Okay. That's all I got before we talk about the book itself. But I thought that was fascinating as a small window, as they say, into the reporting process.

Yeah. But they did a million of these interviews. But one would assume that they all had a pretty similar organizational scheme. Yeah. I think so. I think Bob Woodward's got a down pat at this point. I think so, too. I think so, too.

It'd be interesting to hear what their sort of, you know, locker room session was before the first one. Or maybe their locker room. session after the first one, sort of get the game plan, get the game plan, you know, smoothed out. But that's, that's really interesting. And we didn't need to know this about Bob Woodford, but just as a sign of journalistic power that you go to Bob Woodward, it's pretty amazing. Sure. Yeah, you go to Bob Woodward, but you go to Bob Woodward's townhouse for dinner and rhubarb pie. I mean, that's, how do you say no to that?

and I'm sure that's been the case for a really long time now. But that's just, I think I told you once that, like, the ultimate sign of journalistic power I ever saw is when Michael Lewis profiled Obama for Vanity Fair. And all the pictures in the magazine were of Obama with Michael Lewis. Oh, yeah. I remember that. It's great, great. Like, it was like, okay, well, we have Obama, the president of the United States. But the photos need to feature the author because the author is such a big deal.

This is right. This may not be that just amazing, but it is right up there. You go to Bob Woodward for the interviews. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, with the Obama thing, I mean, so your take is 100% right. There might be, you know, a tinge if you're the magazine of saying, well, this is a way to make sure it looks like it's clear that we got a photo exclusive as well as a written exclusive, right? These aren't just stock photos of Obama in the Oval Office or in his office or wherever else.

You're placed with the author in the moment. I don't really know what the corollary is with Woodward, but yeah, I'm sure there's some of that in there, too. A couple notes about the book itself that I think you'll find entertaining. It's as much about Biden or almost as much about Biden as it is about Trump. You and I have talked about how do you get around this idea of Trump book after Trump book after Trump book? Well, one way is to make them almost, not quite, but almost alternating chapters. A Biden chapter or Trump chapter. A Biden chapter or a Trump chapter.

I thought that was really interesting. There is the Woodward thing, which anybody who's read any of his books now has come to know where it's like, oh, wow, Mark Millie, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is not quoted directly, like told Bob Woodward and Bob Costa, but we are narrating tons of events from Mark Millie's particular day here. So the source of this is either him or people who very intimately know him. it's like that with AG Bill Barr. It's like that with Mike Pence kind of surprisingly. But just watching that sort of journalistic style. Not for attribution. But if you read it, you're like, well, you know, it's, we get the point here.

Or let's say you can make some inferences. So yeah, it's either somebody with intimate knowledge of or, I guess, access to Mark Millie's iPhone or the man himself. Yeah, it's a very small pool of people. One thing that was notable about Woodward and Costas prose, and this has again been pretty notable about Woodward for a long time, is it's just seen, seen, seen. There's none of the usual connective journalistic tissue where you sort of go back and explain like some context about Donald Trump or some context about, let's say, why the vice president of the United States presides over the counting of electoral votes. Like, you know, normally you would do, normally authors go scene, scene, boom, section break, plant your foot and say, you know, the founding fathers would have hardly recognized

what Mike Pence was expected to do on January 6th. Right. And then have a long kind of discursive section and then go back to the scene, partly because they don't have as much material as Woodward does and also partly because that helps sort of center the reader on what the hell is going on and give them a bit of history and everything like that. Yeah. There is none of that in Bob Woodward's books. It is just powerful person doing this, powerful person doing this, powerful person doing this. Right. It's an accumulation of data. I guess the inclusion or exclusion of information probably helps shape the narrative to some extent,

but it's not, there's no flourish to it. Yeah. It's just it reads like, commercial fiction. And in fact, it is, in a way, commercial nonfiction at a high level. Like you're reading a paperback airport novel. Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense. That's the feel of it.

Like a thing happened and then another thing happened and then another thing happened. You're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Again, with none of that kind of just stopping and pausing and letting the reader kind of be like, okay, now I'm learning something about the Constitution or whatever it is. It's really interesting. I will say, though, that the set piece about the events of January 6th of this year and the sacking of the U.S. Capitol, which is about halfway through the book, is pretty incredible. In fact, it's incredible full stop. A lot of it is about Mike Pence and what he was doing on that day and his whole sort of, you know, all the days before where he's trying to talk to Trump and Trump is trying to get him basically to help him steal the election. That whole. of the book is incredible. And it really rewards the Woodward method of, this is what a powerful person was doing,

and this is what a powerful person was doing, and this is what a powerful person was doing. Because you want to know what all these people were doing. Of course. On January 6th. It's awesome. And, you know, again, Woodward's not going to be somebody who's going to be talking about

the proud boys or something like that. He's going to be going right to the people who are running the government. Right. It is a new cycle. As I said, David, they're going to be on the late show tomorrow. Wow. Already on the interview circuit.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of them. I also, a whole bunch of interviews. I also wanted to give you a few tastes of the Bob Woodward literary style. Oh, please. Because in addition to not just having connective tissue, Bob Woodward is not and has never been interested in doing long descriptions of people. Uh-huh. You know, certain authors would stop and be like, I'm just going to have a whole paragraph here about when Mitch McConnell looks like.

Right. Or what it sounds like to be in Mitch McConnell's present. How does he talk? What does his office look like? What does he do when people walk through the door? Just a little literary flourish. Yeah. Bob Woodward is totally disinterested in that.

But he is sometimes compelled to include like three or four words about the way someone looks. So Paul Ryan, for instance. Former Speaker of the House. Yeah. Very prominent figure that everybody knows. Listen to the way he has described when he first appears in the book. Ryan, comma, a tall, dark-haired midwesterner, comma. Now, is it really going to help us to understand something about Paul Ryan to tell us that he is a dark-haired midwesterner?

Well, okay, no, absolutely not. Except, well, you can keep going, but this is based on very little information. It being almost entirely like dialogue-driven scenes of the things happening and descriptions like tall, dark-haired, Midwestern, or makes it sound like we're reading a movie script instead of a nonfiction book. It really does read that way a lot of the time. It doesn't, even though this is, I don't know if this is going to be a movie or not, but it is written with that sense. Like a shooting script as much as, you know, a conventional non-fiction book. when you only have like one or two adjective to describe every person, though, sometimes those adjectives are kind of funny or kind of set and kind of seemingly just a little pointed.

I want you to listen to the description of Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State when he first appears in the book. Pompeo, comma, heavy and gregarious, comma, with little tolerance for liberals, comma. We need to have a contest where we just like come up with each other's woodword adjectives. Oh, that's fantastic. Let's do it. Well, let's do it for next week. Let's have, let's have readers write in what their one sentence or like five word description of each of us is. Okay.

And I think it should be like two or three adjectives. That's all you get. All right. And no metaphors. You can't say David looks like Michael. type. That doesn't work, right? That's not the Woodward method. You just have to go very, very basic, but choose your adjectives carefully. Coming up, David, we need to adjudicate the case of Politico versus Jennifer Rubin on what off the record means. Plus, we will ask, should you

pay guests for coming on your podcast? But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same Times. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Get a load of this New York Times tweet, David, quote, as terrible as it is that one in 500 Americans have died of COVID, it's still much easier to have gone through the pandemic without having a close friend or family member die of it than it would be if the toll were one in 50, says Ross doubt it. Wait, what? I know. The tweet is saying, hey, it's a lot.

It's terrible that one in 500 Americans have died of COVID, but imagine if it was one in 50 Americans. That would be worse. Imagine if it was all of the Americans. There'd there be no one left to be sad. So, you know, goes both ways. It says Rosdow. A lot of people made fun of that tweet, but it was an overwork Twitter joke to write at 611. Kevin Durant dominates the NBA.

But what if he were 60 feet 11 inches tall? He would be nearly unstoppable, says our panel of experts. Thanks to Lee for pointing us toward that tweet. That's great. And finally, David, this is not really our beat, but were you following the Nikki Minaj COVID story? I was. I'm not sure that's not entirely, that might be partially our beat. So let's take a second with it.

So she tweeted that a friend of her cousins, by the way, just an amazing set up already. Yeah. A friend of her cousins who lives in. Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad specifically, had received the COVID vaccine, but had some side effects. Quoting Nikki Minaj here, his testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married. Now the girl called off the wedding. We should note here that authorities in Trinidad said that the claim was false, but this is what she said.

Now, there were a lot of tweets comparing Nikki Minaj's cousin's friend and the Patriots in the deflategate scandal. Okay. But it was a superior overword Twitter joke to write between the Met Gala and Nikki Minaj, it sure has been a week for overly inflated balls. Oh, my God. Imagine how terrible it would have been

of two of her cousins' friends in Trinidad had that experience. Thanks to HIPAA, Understander. If you made me speak very carefully during that last joke, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke. of the week. All right, now time for the notebook, dump, David. And listener, Victoria Haseed has pointed us to a very interesting story.

At the end of last week, we had a classic reporter Twitter dispute involving Politico and Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. This is one of those where every reporter, you know, winds up weighing in at some point. We even got Maggie Haberman over the weekend to weigh in. when journalists get pissed at each other, David, I believe there's only one place we can take the case. I introduce you to a new feature, Journalism Small Claims Court. Now that music brings back so many memories.

It does. It's fantastic. It's fantastic music. I can see Rusty the bailiff sitting here on the Zoom call with us right now. All right, David, the plaintiff in our first case. Is Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, or at least people that support Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin.

Rubin was the subject of a Politico story last Thursday that charted her journey from conservative Barack Obama critic to never Trump her to finally what Politico calls the Biden administration's favorite columnist. Oh my God. Whose columns are constantly cited around and by people that work in the White House. The defendants in this case, David, political writers Alex Thompson and Nick needs we deck. Oops, let me do that again. Nick needs we a deck. The defendants in this case, David, Politico writers Alex Thompson and Nick needs we a deck, who asked Rubin to comment on their

puckish bit of media criticism. As they write, Rubin responded in an email with the subject line off the record. Since we never agreed to conduct such an off-the-record conversation, we are publishing it, meaning Ruben's email below in full. So you see what happened here. Ruben sends them an email, says, this is off the record. And they say, oh, we never agreed to an off the record arrangement here. So we get to print your full email in our piece. Okay.

Who was right in the matter of Politico v. Rubin? Can I, I'm going to answer your question with the question. Is it not, is it not conventional, especially in, you know, in Washington to have somebody go on and off the record at a moment's notice by just saying this is off the record? Sure it is. So what's the difference in email of someone that's just like in the mid, what if she had written back on the record and then had a paragraph where she was like, and this is off the record? but would that not, would you not be held to that standard? I think the difference they're talking about is when you are with a person and they say, hey, hey, off the record, and kind of give you a look.

And then you are giving them a little nod or a verbal assurance that, yes, it is off the record, which means you have accepted the deal. Okay. Whereas if you just say, literally email someone and say, off the record, bam, they haven't agreed to any arrangement or even giving you a little head-on. So it doesn't count. Okay. I'm still a little bit uneasy about this.

What's your take? Well, I think they are right on the merits, meaning the Politico reporters. Because all of these things, and again, they're no hard and fast rules for any of these things, right? These are agreements between reporters and their subjects. That's all they are. They could conceivably be broken at any time. You do not go to the people's court if you break an off the record agreement with somebody. They may never talk to you again. You may get a bad name, but these are not hard and fast rules. And the thing is, is they do rely on you, to some extent, on you making an agreement.

Right. And if you, it's funny, I get these all the time from brands. They'll send an email and say, hey, Colin Coward has a new shampoo debuting on Thursday at 230. And there's a whole description says, by the way, this release is embargoed until then. And I always want to be like, I did not agree to an embargo for Colin Coward shampoo. No. And if I wanted to just tweet this out right.

now I could. And I never do because then I would actually be advertising the product. And I don't want to do that. Yeah. Well, and that kind of embargo would lead me to believe that Colin Goward Shampo is really bad. And they're just trying to keep that information away from the public until the release day. They're not screening for critics. So those are always weird to me, too, because I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get rid of an embargo. What are you talking about? You just send it out. And that's obviously a low-level version of it. I think the thing that happened here doesn't happen very much because mostly reporters get messages, let's say text or, you know, a DM or whatever it is, labeled off the record by people they know and have relationships with.

And they are counting on those people to be sources for them. So they are happy to honor a, by the way, this is off the record message. Right. And not and say, hey, hey, hey, we never agreed on this because that person is somebody that they may, need to go back to that they may need you to win the trust of. Well, I don't mean to be pedantic, but it's less the way you describe it. That's not really honoring the off the record agreement because implicitly they wouldn't honor it otherwise. It's not honoring. There's no, there's no agreement to honor, right? It's just they're doing it as a favor.

You're creating, you're creating an agreement. Right. Or you're post-dating, you are post-dating, they're predating the agreement that they are invoking. Yes, you're absolutely right. You're doing them a favor. Yeah. Essentially. Why not? just tweeting out whatever it is. Like I think, you know, you could imagine a Politico reporter or any reporter in Washington got a note from somebody in Biden world that says, hey, off the record, but there's a good story for you here about these conservative Democrats who are holding up Biden's legislation. And you'd be like, oh, there is a good story there. And you wouldn't just go tweet that out. There'd be ramifications for tweeting that out. So I think this is one of those things where

the rules are absolutely in the Politico guys' favorite. The the rules, however informal they are. But the practical application matters almost totally about who is doing this. Yeah. In the real world, most of the time. And so, are you going to make a judgment on this case? Do you want me to like bang a gavel or something? Yeah, well, you, this is, we have a new feature on the show.

I think we should have a formal, you know, a rubric for how this thing ends. So you want us to judge David and Judge Bryant? fine for the defendants? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it does seem very weird still to me that you would, I think it's less, maybe this is, I'm just getting really into the weeds here. I think it bothers me less that they don't feel compelled

to abide by a non-existent stipulation, but more that you just sort of like out somebody in an article. Like, if you're not, if you don't believe you're bound by the off the record subject line, then why not include it in context as if it was on the record, as opposed to set pulling it out and saying, like putting it on front street, right? Just being like, this lady doesn't know how on the record works.

So I'm just going to write her whole email. I was going to print her whole email in this thing. I mean, doesn't that seem a little bit like too far in the other direction? Yeah, maybe it's anticipating that she would then cry foul. if you just put it in the article. Well, that would be correct. And then you have to defend it at that point. So you're just kind of pre-defending yourself against charges that you had done something wrong.

Look, I never agreed to anything. And I'm just going to, so I'm going to go spell that out. I don't know if it's germane to this discussion to the guilty, not guilty part of this discussion, but the email that Jennifer Rubin sent to them is completely just is a email that just bashes Politico for the most part. It begins like this, how utterly predictable that Politico would run the zillionth hit piece on a prominent woman, especially one candidate in her critiques of Politico's hysterical clickbait style of coverage. Okay. So it almost reads like a statement to Politico.

Right. This is not something that's necessarily, you know, really addressing many of the claims in the article. That's just funny to me. All right, not guilty. By the way, Joe Perticoan tweets this as a journal turned flack. Another thing I would add is that off the record, no comment is just about the worst thing you can say. What if you go to somebody and say, hey, do you have a comment?

They say, off the record, I have no comment. What do you do with that? I think you're still free to say they had no comment. It's a statement of fact. Yeah, I think that's okay. That'll be for a future edition of Journalism Small Claims Court. But we got one more case for today, David. The case of Dan Clark and paying for podcasts.

Oh, yes. The plaintiffs, in this case, every living person on sports Twitter, they ratioed a baseball analyst named Dan Clark who revealed that he charges people $50 to $100 to appear on their podcasts. The defendant, Dan Clark himself, who tweeted this, he says, I guess my question is, do people just expect shit for free nowadays? Why should I invest two plus hours of my time and not be remunerated for it? It goes on to say that I spent at least an hour prepping for a podcast, followed by a 25 to 30 minute discussion.

I also promote the appearance, both pre and post recording, to help grow their following. They're meaning the person who has the podcast. So how do we feel about somebody asking for $100 or $50 or any fee to appear on someone else's podcast? Well, I mean, you can't blame somebody for trying. No, suppose not. Certainly in the modern media world, there have been innumerable cases where someone has offered self-promotion in a sort of backhanded way, right, as an excuse for not paying them in an instance where someone would normally get paid. This does feel a little bit extreme. I mean, just because I guess I don't, I don't thoroughly disagree with it on the merits.

it's, although this isn't like a new media thing where you're trying out a new technology. I mean, this is just going on a radio show, right? This is something that sports writers have been doing for ages. I might take exception to the notion that he, you know, preps for any significant length of time before going on a podcast, but I've never listened to him on a podcast. So who am I to say? Well, let's take him at his word that he's spending a lot of time, not just on the podcast, but getting ready for the podcast. I can kind of feel both sides of this. I mean, it seems really pretentious and presumptuous and it seems like it seems like

just antithetical to the entire construct of this thing. And yet if someone wants to say no unless you give me 50 bucks, I mean, it doesn't, I don't think they're breaking any laws. No. I mean, I sort of thought of it this way. If you're a writer

who's doing well for yourself and you're charging someone who has a podcast who is just starting out and trying to make their way in the world, Yeah. That seems bad. Well, sure. And the co-promotional aspect of it, I just, you know, I tweet it out. I try to build their audiences. I mean, you should do that for people that you feel strongly about that you would do that for sort of anyway. I mean, that's obviously the ideal situation here. I go on a podcast that I enjoy or I, you know, like the hosts and, you know, want to do something for them, right? You shouldn't necessarily need remuneration for such a thing. Yeah, I do come back too to your point about the whole idea of, you know, many times in recent history, we've said, look, websites have asked somebody to write for free or ask them to write for an absurdly small fee.

And the reason those websites gave was, hey, this will be great for you. Yeah. You're getting a lot of promotion out of this. You get this will be great for your career and then somebody else will pay you. Right. Well, we, and we've, I think a lot of us have decided that that's bad. So we say, well, you need to come on the podcast and not compensate you for your time. Like, is that, is that different? I mean, on the one hand, if it's just a 10 minute hit about something you already wrote, I guess, I guess so. But it just, I don't, I don't know that I see a whole lot of, if we're just doing it by through that moral lens. And again, let's let's assume in this case, it's a podcaster who's making money and has ads and, you know, is, is, is, you know, is. having a, you know, is getting paid to podcast. Is there something totally wrong with that? Again, I don't, I wouldn't ask for it myself, but, you know, if we're talking about this whole

thing, I also think, and listeners can correct me if I'm wrong, in Britain and Australian places like that, I believe they do often pay writers to appear on sports radio shows or to come do television hits in a way they don't in America. I believe that's the case. Just to be really, again, really specific about this, we're talking about someone doing a one-time hit, right? I mean, like, I think that we can all sort of logically and morally agree that if someone's on, you know, the first Monday of every month on your podcast, then it is reasonable

to negotiate some sort of fee for that. But yeah, I mean, I think if someone's, and I mean, it doesn't seem crazy that someone get paid to come on, you know, radio. I think that there's a lot of media of various forms going back decades. It's sort of cried poverty in such instances, and it's all been, and that's not, you know, always true. I think especially in the modern sort of media landscape where everybody's, where there's so many people who are sort of, you know, hustling to even some of the most famous ones,

there is a certain sort of logic to it. But I'm not sure if anybody's winning the moral argument that way. No, no. I only cited the British Australian standard, or at least what I thought is the British Australian standard, because you know how when the court is trying to decide something about the Constitution and they run into a wall, they go to British common law? That's what I thought I'd do here. Yeah, we're going back to the old marquee of Queensberry rules to see how these sorts of

things were judged back in the day. Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that's, that's, that's, that's legitimate. I feel we're etching toward a verdict here, which is nobody in under no circumstances or very few circumstances, are we recommending that anyone ever do this? Yes. Try to extract money to appear on a podcast and certainly not a podcast of somebody that doesn't have any money. And certainly not, and certainly not the press box, a podcast. Oh, we can't. Oh, we can't pay journal. It's a media podcast, David. You can't pay your subjects. That's just that that doesn't work in a media podcast. That's true. But that we can carve out a small part of the ruling that says, hey, if you want to ask, okay? Yeah. Okay. Are we happy with that?

I think so. I mean, I just don't. I'm kind of surprising myself where we're coming down here with us. I didn't think we were going to come here. It seemed, I don't know. I just like I'm I'm finding it hard to muster out the outrage. If one of our friends did that, I think we would be like, really, dude? Like, that's a strange thing. I mean,

but at the same time, I don't know. And, I mean, I was anticipating there being a more underhanded, like a post-billing situation. Just like, you go on the podcast and then you send them a bill for $100 bucks and you spend the next six months complaining on Twitter

that they never paid you. Like, that's, I think I would have, you know, certainly would take objection to that, but I don't know. I mean,

no one has to, no one, I mean, if you called someone, if you called a source for a story, and they were like, I don't pick up the phone for less than $100, you would either,

I mean, presumably not pay them, you would probably just be like, well, okay, gone to the next source. You wouldn't be like, you wouldn't say,

no, listen, let me, let me explain to you how journalism works and try to win, and try to win the argument. And it's, they're not, they don't have to abide by the same sort of rules and integrity that you do. You just, you just move on.

And I think practically speaking, that's what happens here. Oh, I don't want to pay a fee to have this baseball analyst on my podcast there. I'm going to just call a different baseball analyst. And world moves along. I don't remember Judge Wapner giving nuanced rulings like this, by the way. It was either fine for the plaintiff or fine for the defendant. I feel like Judge Wobner would say, would, would, I mean, would, would, uh, rule for the defendant. in this matter, and then they probably decide not to run it on the show.

The villain one. Great tweet from listener Ryan. There's a tacit agreement in podcasting. If you come on my podcast, I will never ask you to listen to it. Now, that's a ruling I can get behind. I love that. The worst thing you can do would be to ask people to listen to your podcast. Oh, yeah.

We've got an only in journalism word of the day, David, and it's topical. It comes from Matt Cople. It's obtained when used to mean getting your hands on a document or embargoed book. Insider obtained an early copy of peril, which is set to be released next week to quote the sentence. Yeah. I don't know if that's only in journalism. I just think that's more of a sort of moral deflection, right? No. If you were a journalist reporting on the Woodward book, you call your ad and be like, hey, I got the Woodward book. you would not call your editor and say in human speech, I have obtained the Woodward book. No.

Unless you are like a villain in a movie or something like that. You know, I have obtained. I have obtained the document. I feel like there's like a subtle, like an implicit passive voice to the usage of it obtained, right? It's like it's you, you're trying to,

you're trying to achieve a different effect, right? It's not like calling your editor. It's like if you knew that one of your coworkers had the book and you were just happened to be talking to a journalist from another outlet. How would you explain it? Maybe you wouldn't say obtained, but you wouldn't say,

hey, Brian Curtis got the book. Yeah, maybe not. By the way, the Woodward book was for sale at Labyrinth books in Princeton,

New Jersey, fantastic bookstore on Saturday. So it was extremely obtainable. Found the whole obtaining thing funny. You remember how that was, remember that giant controversy when,

like, Michiko Kakatani would, like, get her hands-on embargoed books through some. Wasn't it her? We get it from some source at a bookstore that was underhanded or whatever.

She had a friend in a stock room somewhere, and that became a minor controversy for a while. I don't. Bookstores all the time throughout embargoed books. I mean, you have to, if boxes arrive in the store, you're depending on a whole lot of people to just follow the rules that are printed in small letters on a box to keep that kind of embargo up. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I was always the reporters I know have friends at bookstores who sometimes help them out. I think it's with the critics, especially the big critics, they're often trying to get the publishing house to let them review it early. Sure. And trying to get the publishing house to send it to them. We should have Dwight Garner back on the show. He could probably tell us all about that. We also got a listener whose Twitter handle is E-R-T-I-L-M, who sends the greatest only in journalism headline I've ever seen, David. Just count the dings here.

Tammy Faye Baker's daughter breaks silence in a rare interview on her mom's embattled legacy. That's pretty good. Break silence, rare interview, and in battle. Yeah, that's the trifect. That was from the Today Show's website. By the way, rare interview is another classic. It's journalists speak for not an exclusive, but come on, give me some credit for scoring this interview. Not to be confused with rare window, which is also a journalistic term.

It offers a rare window on the previously secret world of such and such. Saver David Shoemaker guesses the strain pun headline. Yeah. Friday's headline about a replica of Winnie the Pooh's house that you can rent was Bear B&B. Oh my gosh. We showed the pictures of the Bear B&B to a large swath of people at the wedding this weekend. It's quite a quite a winning. quite a winning idea.

And the reaction was positive? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know who was going out of their way to find, to stay there, but it's really cool. Maybe if there was a whole village of Pooh character homes or just general like children's book homes. And, you know, maybe you could get that. I looked at it. I was like, man, that would be so awesome to stay there.

When I was like showing it to my kids and my wife's, it'd be so awesome to stay there. And then there was like a pause. And I was like, I wonder what the Wi-Fi is like there. I don't want to spoil anything, David, but when you start opening the wedding presents for me, you might find a two-week stay in the hundred-acre wood. That will be accepted. You got honey pots for the whole family.

This is going to be incredible. Today's headline comes from Alex. It's from the Portland Maine Press Herald. All right. You may not have heard, David, that the beautiful city of Portland, Maine is losing its B&M baked bean factory. which the paper calls a fixture on the city's skyline since 1913. I don't know that you need much more than that. What was the Portland Press Herald's Strain Pun headline?

Wait, they're losing? Say it again? They are losing the B&M Baked Bean factory. Okay. So long, goodbye. Goodbye. baked beans beans and Franks, beans and

beans and it's over, David. The bean factory's reign is over. End of an era. And is good. And of course, beans is going to be in it. Oh, it's being a

long strange journey or say it's a bean. That's funny, but no, no. We use the word beans. use a word end. Oh my gosh. This must be so obvious. Everybody listening. You just need a little connective tissue. Bean. Bean. Beans. Beans to. Oh, beans to an end. That's good. That's good. Beans to an end. Wow. Great job. Portland Press Herald. For real. Amazing. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Lonnie Rinaldo. Sit again for Erica Servantes.

We are back Friday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. Thank you.