The Press Box - How Not to Moderate a Debate. Plus: Hollywood’s Starless Profiles and the Death of a Lousy Sportswriter.

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Bryan and David discuss takeaways from the first GOP political debate, from the moderator’s performance to Ron DeSantis’s approach to Chris Christie’s role in the race (8:56). Later, they touch on the news that the Texas Tribune has made layoffs, then review the death of the magazine profile and identify more only-in-journalism words (32:48). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone. This is Craig Horlebeck from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Join me, Danny Hifetz, and Danny Kelly, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you win your draft, win your league, and most importantly, avoid that last place punishment. Follow the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify. David? Yes. So if you follow me on Twitter, you know that I often pay my respects to departed sports writers. Oh, yeah, of course. Somebody passes away in Beaverton, Oregon, and I put a little tweet up that's a lot. his service or her service to the community. Mm-hmm. All those years spent toiling in press boxes. Yeah.

Well, today I have another sports writing death to announce. Okay. But this was not someone who was a benign influence in the world of letters. No, David, this is someone who wanted to take your job and my job. This is someone who was an asshole. It was the AI bot that was generated. generating high school gamers in newspapers around the country. Oh, yeah?

Okay, I was kind of worried about where we were going with this. This AI bot has been put to rest? It's been temporarily paused, according to a report in Axios. I don't know if you saw this tweet last week. This got a lot of people, including myself, going. It was from Steve Cavendish, who found a gamer or something, like a gamer in the Columbus dispatch. And I need to give you a few sentences of this

so you can just appreciate how an AI generated sports article sounds. This is about a high school football game. Here we go. The Westerville North Warriors defeated the Westerville Central Warhawks 2112 in an Ohio

high school football game on Friday. And we were doing okay that for a second. I don't know that you would need to note this was an Ohio high school football game in the middle of the story, but we continue. Okay. Westerville North Edged Westerville Central. We're still doing the full names here. 2112, score again, in a close encounter of the athletic kind.

Oh, that's kind of purple. Go on. At Westerville North High on August 18th in Ohio football action. That's the second paragraph. Okay. And the only thing it did was actually provide the site of the game. Mm-hmm. And then just regurgitated everything that it had told us before.

This was powered by score stream according to the newspaper. And if you do a simple Google search, you will see articles like this appearing all over the country. Many of them at Gannett-owned newspapers. And what's funny is that sports writing C-3PO knows one joke. And it is a close encounter of the athletic kind. Which it repeated over and over again in newspapers in different states. So a lot of us made fun of this on Twitter. Was this just found out?

It was found out. It was discovered? It was uncovered. This instance was discovered, yes. And now Tyler Becannon of Axios says that it's being put to rest. This is so funny to me, in addition to the. absolute soulless crappiness of the pros. It goes back to the discussion you and I had about AI journalism a couple weeks ago, which is,

what is the point of this? Yeah. I don't think that. What you just read certainly is not the point of it. But you're a newspaper and you're behind a paywall. Yeah. And at this late date, you're trying to get people to pay for your newspaper. Mm-hmm.

So you chum the water with AI-generated high school articles. Sure. You know, like in the golden age of newspapers, preps reporting, high school reporting was like retail politics. Mm-hmm. You are going to put somebody's kid's name in the newspaper. Mm-hmm. And that will make them want to subscribe to the newspaper. Sure.

is basically that simple. There weren't a lot of readers for a high school sports brief. But as soon as people know that, oh, my gosh, my kid could be in there or my kid's friends could be in there. That was gold. So now just imagine that you are an Ohio high school parent and you stumble across that.

By the way, the entire article does not contain a single name. is it is it is it is it really is it like is it does it actually reflect what happens in the games or is it just like a mad lib okay so well both is the answer it does have a few lead changes as we get this whole whole thing only runs six or seven paragraphs has a couple of lead changes and then it gets to this final 1940s sounding paragraph the warriors chalked up this decision in spite of the Warhawk's spirited fourth quarter performance. I think what happens is there's an app that stats are entered into, and these apps can spit out something like a gamer. Okay. And that's what we're reading here. So the app knows when points were scored, knows who won.

So you take the, it's a, the box score becomes a, the story. becomes the game. But it's like the list of the Star Wars movies that Geo Media was running the other day. It's like, who's in because of this? Yeah. I mean, it gives you stuff to put on the Columbus Dispatch website. Understand that.

Yeah. I don't understand why was it shuttered. Because people made fun of it and was like, this is inhuman and awful and makes your paper look stupid. Did they not know it made the paper look stupid prior to people pointing it out? This is a robot with one joke.

If it was a literal robot, this is like a sitcom from our childhood. If it was a literal robot sitting in the news or while I'm thinking more of like a weird science. That's not what it was. What was the one with the robot, Johnny Nine or whatever? Sure. Short circuit? Yeah, short circuit style robot

like a robot that was sitting in 50s sci-fi robot that was sitting in the newsroom you know with like typing typing out

typing out stories or just you know a printer that's connected to its back is spitting out text and it only had one joke that would have been

so obvious unpublishable it would have never gotten off the ground but because it's quote unquote AI some idiot decided to give it a chance

I think that's pretty much what happened what if you were the 1950s style robots editor in the newsroom would you look at this and say this is a good start

classic editor's line let's just flesh this out a little bit more and maybe we'll keep this joke on the shelf this time. Does the robot know how to respond to edits in Google Docs? Or is it just one and done? Yeah, well, sadly, the robot's asking to host a podcast. Give them, robot would be a great podcast.

You only need one joke. This podcast has one joke sometimes. Sometimes we have none. Yeah. Speaking of which, coming up on today's pod, the presidential debate moderating system is broken. And it's broken on purpose. Rachel Maddow tries to give Trump's mugshot the gravity it deserves,

plus layoffs hit the nonprofit Texas Tribune. Now how do we pay for news? How Eugene Levy survived a writer's strike and a magazine profile without Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Erica Cervantes here. David, I would love to flashback to.

to Wednesday night's Republican debate. Oh, good. I got some media takes that are still on the table here. Okay. Now, you had eight candidates on stage. Mm-hmm. This was the first chance normal, well-adjusted Americans had to look at them and hear them. Now, what would you have guessed the first question from Fox News moderator's Brett

Bear and Martha McCallum was going to be about? Oh, man. I don't know, Brian, tell me. You might have guessed abortion. Yeah. You might have guessed the economy, inflation. You might have guessed Ukraine. Mm-hmm.

Some interesting differences there within the Republican nominees. No, David. The first question was about Oliver Anthony's viral song, Richmond, North of Richmond. I am not making this up. They played a clip of the song. Then the Fox News camera panned over the faces of the candidates as they were listening to it, like the Foxer NBC cameras do with the

quarterback and coach that are playing in the Super Bowl during the national anthem. Thankfully, Ron DeSantis did not pull a Nick Siriani and start crying during Richmond North of Richmond. All of that led to moderator Martha McCallum asking this question. So, Governor DeSantis, why is this song striking such a nerve? in this country right now. What do you think it means? That was the first question of the debate.

I would like to apologize to every sideline reporter I've ever made fun of on Twitter. Because that may be the worst question I've ever heard asked of a famous person on live television. And unlike the sideline reporter, David, they had time to plan this. Yeah. They sat there and thought, you know what would be good? Oh, no. This was high five. over the pre-debat war room.

And they gave an interview to Politico afterwards, and they were saying, well, we were hoping the candidates' answers would be a little more personal on this. What? We've talked about some of the candidates being stuck inside the Fox News online bubble. But in this case, the moderators were stuck inside the bubble. And then Oliver Anthony came out after the debate and said, actually I wrote the song about the people on stage. Not Joe Biden necessarily.

So please take that song, my song out of your mouth, Brett Bear and Martha McCallum. Wouldn't that been great if Ronda Sanchez was like, well, if you really look at the way that the video was shot, it was as an intimate arresting camera angle that made you immediately wonder who this man was and what he had to say. something that I've been talking to my campaign staff about it. I mean, it's just so silly.

What a strange thing. They also tried the hand-raise debate question. I love that. One was for climate change. Here's how that one went. Do you believe in human behavior is causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do. Look, we're not school children.

Let's have the debate. I mean, I'm happy to take it to start. Alexander, so do you want to raise that you? I don't think that's the way to do. So let me just say that. So Ron DeSantis arrived with the classic candidates. I'm not going to engage with your question playbook. And what was funny is Fox had actually come up with something smart,

which is they had a college student who was in a young conservative's organization on screen asking the question. Saying, hey, people of my age group, poll after poll shows are really interested in climate change. like our number one issue. What are you going to do about climate change? Yeah. But then when Ron DeSantis was like,

we're not raising our hands, we're not school children, and they just abandoned the concede of the question entirely. Yeah. They weren't prepped for that potential response. Kind of seems like the most obvious way that question would be avoided, right?

Anyway, let's get back to Richmond north of Richmond. If you're going to commit, I'm not sure I love the raise the hand question, even if I guess it is a way to get eight people on the record at the same time. But you've got to commit to the bit, right, if you're going to ask them to raise their hands. Like, no, no, okay. Thanks, Ron. Thank you, Governor. Now can we all, now can we do the hand raise?

How many of you think man-made climate change is real? Try to second raise your hand question two. Would the candidates support Trump as the nominee if he got convicted before? the election. And this was actually the most amazing moment of the night. Because Vivek Ramoswamy, who's standing right in the middle,

raises his hand immediately. I will support Trump if he is convicted before the election. A couple of other candidates raise their hands. And then you see Desantis, who's standing right in the middle of the stage, look to his left, see that other hands

have been raised, and then he raises his own hand. Just kind of like taking the temperature of the room. My God. Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson did not raise his hand. Chris Christie, weirdly enough, did.

Because, of course, he's been saying all the time, Trump, no, we can't do this anymore. Trump corrupt. Trump no good. And then when they went to him, it turns out he had just, he claimed, been wagging his finger in the air.

So it was a hand-raising exercise, and I put my arm up, but then no, no, I was just wagging my finger, no, which seemed to be a ploy for them to call on Chris Christie, who he could deliver his anti-Trump talking points. That's what Desantis should have done to buy time instead of looking around. DeSantis, I mean, we've been on this for a while, just wait until people take a look at,

to get a look at this guy. Oh, my God. He seemed like, they seem like a robot from an 80s sitcom comedy movie, who's just learning how to be human in front of the camera. What was your favorite moment when he was asked about the U.S. military and the Mexican cartels and he said, you're darn right? Or when he was asked about Mike Pence's actions in terms of certifying the election and he says, I've got no beef. Oh, it's close. I think you're darn right just because it sounded so inauthent, an authentic coming here. I mean, it all seemed inauthent, but that was the last thing.

I would expect to actually come out of his mouth. That or, you know, a smile. Didn't it feel like two different programs had been fed into the computer? Yeah. And his CPU was just like balancing which one should I go with this time in my attempt to sound human? Another funny part about the moderation of this debate was Donald Trump, of course, did not participate in the debate. No. Pointedly said, I will have nothing to do with your Fox News debate.

but then Donald Trump's spinmeisters were allowed in the spin room after the proceedings were over. And as I read, they got around the obvious interest in Fox News keeping them out of the spin room by just getting invited on any sort of political show and then not leaving. So we didn't want these people in there. But oh, I got invited to do a hit and then I just kind of hung around. And then after the debate, I'm sitting there ready to answer questions and declare. my dad, the winner of the debate, even though he didn't show up. Yeah. That's actually really, really savvy.

If the debate moderation seemed a little strange, David, semaphores Dave Weigel has a piece explaining why. This was all part of the Republican National Committee, which runs the GOP debates. This was all part of their plan. And he says it goes back to 2012, this is Weigel writing, when moderators asked Newt Gingrich about his failed marriages, Ron Paul about whether an uninsured comatose man deserved to die,

and CNN's Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney while he was debating President Obama. Never again, Republicans said. So they didn't want to debate where moderators were asking those kind of nosy questions that could make the candidates look bad. And as Wigel writes, it was replaced by a more candidate-friendly format that has to compete with free online media. and if you watch this debate, there were a few times where

various candidates got tangled up, but mostly for the first hour, candidates were just looking into the camera, answering pretty bland questions and explaining themselves. And the R&C strategy worked. All eight candidates' favorability ratings went up after the debate. Doug Bergum, who came out with the AI chatbot

style joke of, hey, they said, break a leg. And I was playing basketball before the debate, and I kind of did. He got a 27 point bump in his favorability rate. That was the only memorable thing he said all night. Oh, man. I have a little sympathy for the moderators just because I think, I don't know how you do a debate with eight people on the stage,

not to mention the gonzo pro-Trump crowd. Yeah. But you heard the defensiveness when they would ask about Trump, and the candidates would get mad. Yeah. And you're just like, I don't know. The former Republican president tried to steal the election. He did it with the blessing of a huge part of the party apparatus.

He's still running for president. He is facing charges this week about what happened in 2020. Do you need to be defensive about asking about that? I don't know. Finally, Brett Baer just turned to DeSantis and said, by the way, he's leading you by 30 or 40 points. So, you know, seems like a valid question. Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems like a valid thing for a candidate to get, you know, dedicate some time to differentiating himself from the guy's way up or trying to say something, trying to justify his own candidacy, but no. Next debate is September 27th on Fox Business.

I'm sure they'll have a better handle on things. I was interested in what the pundits missed during the debate. I don't know if you watched any of the postgame shows because like CNN had a post game show and NBC had a post game show. even though they didn't show the debate. And the roundtables were kind of saying Ramoswamy won. Nikki Haley had a good night. Mike Pence,

despite having no discernible path to the nomination had a pretty good night. A name I did not hear in those discussions was Ron DeSantis. Yeah. Who, as you say, came in very pre-packaged to have almost no interactions with anybody aside from that.

I have no beef with you, Mike Pence moment. Then kind of surprisingly, the Washington Post Ipsos 538 poll had DeSantis winning the debate, 2926 over Ramoswami. CNN Focus Group, which came on a little after their roundtable, had DeSantis doing very well,

second only to Ramoswamy. These are poll-based results? One was a focus group, one was a poll. Yeah. So what do we think? Is that just Republican voters like Ron DeSantis? Yes.

And the fact that he didn't make any mistakes and didn't necessarily look bad, then they're saying, okay, he's the winner or one of the winners? of the night? I just, I think he, that would have been the result no matter what. Yeah, I think he's pretty, he's situated as he, as he is situated in the polls, which is to say, if you're not going to go after Trump, that's, I guess that's the, that's the, that's what you're looking for, right? You're looking, you want the Trump voters who won't be voting for you anyway to say, yeah, you're my second favorite.

That's the problem, right? Mm-hmm. Because then you're still waiting for whatever act of God or act of a prosecutor takes Trump out of the race and vaults you from number two to number one. Yeah. So you did well for the night, you sort of won, or maybe even won the night, but the election didn't change at all. No, not at all.

Can we spend a moment talking about Chris Christie debate content machine? Yes. There was this thought that he might go after DeSantis? Mm-hmm. Because after all, he went after Marco Roe. Rubio once upon a time. Another Florida Republican. Turns out he had a different

target in mind. It was Vivek Ramoswami. I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like chat GPT standing up here. And the last person in one of these debates, Brett, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here

was Barack Obama, and I'm a friend. we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing a stage tonight. Give me a hug just like you did the Obama. The same time of amateur. And you'll help elect me just like you did the Obama too. Give me that bad. The same type of amateur.

So Chris Christie's not going to win the GOP nomination. But he has a role in the pageant that is the GOP nomination race. Which is to be the stir it up guy at the debate. Yeah. To try to take out lesser candidates like

he did Marco Rubio once upon a time. Uh-huh. We called Joe Biden the Kobe stopper. Is he the Ramoswamy and other people stopper? Ramoswami stopper? I don't know, man. I mean, I think he does have a discernible role, which in that he's the only real opposition candidate, right?

He's the only anti-Trump candidate. We throw, don't throw A'sin Hutchinson in there too. Oh, no, you're right. Sorry. he's the, I guess, the most notable anti-Trump candidate. But yeah, he'll continue to wage war on other candidates as it, you know, I mean, listen, in any debate, if Trump's not there,

or if you're not going to go after Trump, you have to go over some proxy person. And DeSantis would have been, I mean, it was a logical target, but Ramoswamy sort of stepped up in the days leading up the debate, clown himself in any number of ways and was an easy target for everybody up there to be able to kind of you know you can say hey I like this guy but look you can't you can't do this kind of stuff you can't say this kind of stuff

you can't be this sort of amateur as he just said and you know you leave yourself open to it I'm sure Ramos Swami for his part was like thanks for saying my name you know thanks for point thanks for thanks for giving me your attention but that's what I was really interested in were they worried about Ramoswami's poll numbers which had been really pretty good second in many polls behind Trump or are they just mad at the way Ramoswami was talking about career politicians and talking about the kind of stuff they've done. I think it was a simpler calculation which is just like he's we can afford to to go after him without a ton of blowback. although his numbers aren't, you know, incredibly significant in the big scheme of things. But it is, I think, a pretty significant block. Like, it is a sort of younger Trump-style voter, or maybe very online voter is a better way to put it.

That is a little bit more up for grabs, you know? And if, and I don't know if any of these other candidates are really positioned to steal that vote. But if the, if the, if the goal is to sort of be. the last candidate standing besides Trump. I mean, I guess it's a pretty discernible block you can go after. I don't really, you got to do more than just, obviously, than insult the man to get those voters. But, you know, it's worth a shot.

Other big political story of the week was Donald Trump being indicted for a fourth time down in Georgia. And this was interesting as a news story because it was the first of Trump's, arrest to produce a mugshot. There were some fake mugshots going around Thursday afternoon. Oh, where they are. The tell was that the tie was wrong. And then we got the real mugshot,

which was an interesting moment for news anchors because this was almost like a reveal on a reality show 10 years ago. Bus driver moved that bus. People just want to see the mugshot of Donald Trump. But a news anchor must maintain the gravity of the moment while they lead viewers to the bus, yes.

While moving that bus, exactly. So I want to listen, want you to listen to how Rachel Maddow over on MSNBC handled such a moment. The Fulton County Sheriff had promised that former President Trump would be treated like anybody else, that he would get a Fulton County mugshot like everyone else. Well, just now, in the last few moments, the sheriff has released that mugshot from former President Trump. And so I'm saying we should slow down here just for a second because this is serious stuff for the nation, for who we are as a country. We have never before had a mugshot of a United States president, current, or former.

But now we do. Here it is. Criminal defendant and former President Donald J. Trump presumed innocent until proven guilty. In accordance with the rule of law for his sake and for ours, whatever you think of the photo, this is not something to take lately. That was not bad, all things considered. I just found it very funny how she was trying to, she was giving that moment all the gravity she possibly could. Like Donald Trump being charged with various crimes is a serious moment,

is not a moment to gloss over. Yes. Here is the picture of Donald Trump looking angry, really into the camera is perhaps somewhat requires somewhat less gravity. Yeah. But you heard the sort of halting voice. I'm not going to make fun of this. I'm not going to just give this to you right away.

I want to put this in some context. What did you think about the mugshot? Do you think Trump, was that, did he plan for, I mean, was that, was that the facial expression that he and his team had worked on? I read something, and I don't have a source for you here, that Trump, likes to scowl in public. He doesn't like to do smile, do smiles in public.

Remember Tom DeLay way back in the day was like, I'm going to get my mugshot taken, I'm going to have a huge smile on my face. Yeah. That's going to be my active defiance. Yeah, a lot of you, I think Giannis did that, but a lot of politicians go that route.

But Trump went defiant face. I'm tough. I'm stronger than the Fulton County DA. Yeah. It was an interesting play. And of course, he was back on Twitter, which was kind of news selling or giving away. I couldn't quite tell Donald Trump mugshot merch minutes after the picture surfaced. Welcome back to Twitter, President Trump. Coming up in 30 seconds, finally a viable plan to pay for local reporting. Wait, what? That's broken too. But first, let's do the over. Work Twitter joke of the week, David, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Runners up this week. Anyone comparing Donald Trump's self-reported height and weight of six foot three, 215 pounds to NFL players who actually wear that much, thanks to all who contributed there. You just said wear that much instead of weigh that much. we'll just we'll just roll along

also runner up the bingo card presentation of all the mugshots of the Trump Associates who were also booked it was an overworked Twitter joke to compare it to the opening credits of the Brady Bunch or to Hollywood squares Did you see the Batman Rokes Gallery? Oh, another good one A lot of Photoshop work down on there. It was fantastic.

Thanks to Scott Tobias for this one, for that one. But this week's Runaway winner, David, involves the death of Price's right host Bob Barker. He was 99 years old, and it was an overward Twitter joke to write. Bob Barker made it as close as he could get to a dollar

without going over. Thanks to Chris Brodoer and Matt Thau. That was the mother of all overword Twitter jokes. Oh, yeah. I saw it so many times, and I just still laughed when he said it. I mean, it might have gotten thousands of people might have made that joke.

hundreds of people definitely made that joke. Speaking of which, I was texting with a few of our pals who had similar cultural tastes when they were growing up. How many hours do you think we spent watching

the prices right in our lifetimes? Oh, many, many hours. I mean, we didn't have the benefit, I guess in this day and age we wouldn't watch it at all, right? Because it wouldn't be, it would never be the only thing on.

But we didn't, you know, during we were at school when it came on during the school year. Of course, if you were home sick, you better believe that the showcase showdown was a appointment viewing. And summer, I mean, but I feel like I watched more of that somehow than most other things on television,

especially over the years, even like the Drew Carrey version. Yeah. So there's just a lot of hours. I'm just thinking like every day during the summer for 10 years plus, college when we definitely were out. Did we watch 300 hours of the prices right in our lifetime? 500 hours?

Yeah, probably. It's a lot. Yeah. I mean, I've watched it. I mean, even as an adult, you know? I mean, I watched a lot of it. RIP, Bob Barker, if you hope he's playing Plinko somewhere in the Great Beyond, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

By the way, Plinko was obviously, by far the greatest game on the show, but it wasn't much of a game. It's amazing. No, yeah, I mean, there's a pricing element

to getting the plant, whatever, the chips, the plinks, I don't know. But good on them for never trying to just make it all Plinko. You know,

they could have done a Plinko spin-off. Or just more games like Plinko. I mean, it was people who loved Plinko. When that board rolled out, man, that was the reaction. I love the one with a mountain climber

doing the yodeling. too. That was always agreed. One of the best. All right, the notebook dumped up, David, this is a bummer of a story that reader David A.M. Walenski brought to our attention. There have been layoffs at the Texas

Tribune. Texas Tribune, if you're not familiar, is not only a non-profit outfit down there in the great state of Texas. It is kind of the non-profit. And when it started in 2009,

just set off this wave, created this example across the country for other news organizations would be news organizations to look at and say, hey, what if we could do that in our state or in our city? They have now, according to a memo from Senol Shaw, who is the CEO of the Texas Tribune, laid off 11 colleagues quoting from her here, including two who've been with us since the Tribune's launch, also pausing their various podcasting projects. This is depressing on a couple of different levels.

One is because the Texas Tribune is really good. Founded, as I said in 2009 by Evan Smith, who was at Texas Monthly Magazine. But anybody who ever met Evan Smith knew his metabolism was a tad faster than the metabolism of a monthly. So he leaves a magazine world. He goes and founds this thing. and to me,

I remember when it started, the surprise was, or maybe surprise is the wrong word, but what was so interesting about it is it wasn't Molly Ivan's the website. Yep. It wasn't, you know,

kind of in the vein of a lot of internet writing at the time or even internet muckraking. It was really good, unflashy reporting. Mm-hmm. and digging

and investigating and open record searches and it was doing what newspapers in Texas once upon a time had done except I think a lot of times doing it better

than newspapers in Texas had done and it felt like a website that just constantly had its nose to the grindstone and that everybody liked so there's that bit of depressing news

and then there's the other part of it's like the constant question we come to on those podcasts is how are we going to pay for journalism? Yeah. There was web advertising hasn't worked out so well. There was subscription. Well, worked out a few dramatic cases

like the New York Times, but for a lot of newspapers, for a lot of local news sources, hasn't worked out quite as well. Then we came to what if it's a nonprofit it. And we solicit reader donations. I get a lot of emails from the Texas Tribune. We have some corporate

underwriting. And then we have a big New Yorker style festival in Austin. And we get people like Pete Buttigieg to come down to Austin and talk to people. A really cool lineup. I went down one year for that. Sell tickets. And here we go. What if that doesn't work either? We took the first two off the board. Oh, no. This is really

this is a depressing chart you're drawing out here. Go on. I know. And, you know, I read Sinal Shaw's memo, which is posted online. And I'm not totally sure why after reading the memo that that is not a viable model. I mean, she, of course, says it's still viable, but why it resulted in layoffs. Yeah. People donate less. Did corporate underwriters donate less?

to the festival. Of course, they had to basically change the festival for a while thanks to COVID. Did that create a money problem that they weren't counting on that we're now seeing the results of? I don't know. It's not public. But man, this sucks. And a couple of the writers they laid off were people who had been there since the very beginning of the website. Yeah. And all people doing really good work. Yeah, totally. Jolie McCullough. Oh, yeah. who I saw writing about the death penalty a lot, Alexa Yura, an editor named David Pasteur. It is one of those depressing stories,

and we root for the Texas Tribune to find its footing after this. And the people who have been laid off, especially. Absolutely, in finding new stuff to do because they are very, very talented reporters. Did you happen to see the profile of director Michael Mann in Variety? David. Oh, no, I did not.

This was written by Stephen Roderick, a friend of this podcast, who's been on this podcast. And the occasion is the new Michael Man movie Ferrari, which is going to be at the Venice Film Festival this month comes out for the rest of us in December. Let me tell you something interesting about this profile,

which was very good, enjoyed reading it. It had no secondary interviews, or as we say in the trade, secondaries. because the actors are on strike. And part of the strike is they cannot advertise or do press for upcoming films.

So instead of a profile of Michael Mann that would include quotes from Adam Driver or Penelope Cruz or Shailene Woodley, who's also in the movie, they were just gone. There was a quote from the cinematographer. And that's it. What a fascinating exercise that was in profile writing.

Yeah. In Hollywood profile writing. I'm not sure much should be lost in a lot of those pieces, but... So I don't think much was lost in terms of the actual piece itself, though. I bet you would have gotten really good stories from the set from some of those people, or at least a couple of stories. But you know what was lost was that just feel, that really cool feel of a Hollywood profile where you go paragraph, paragraph, paragraph, and then somebody... swings in on a jungle vine or jumps off the top rope, whatever your preferred metaphor is.

And you're like, whoa. And it's this huge name. And if you're a writer worth your salt, you just slide it in there. You don't make a big deal of the fact that I just talk to Adam Driver, 10 or 15 minutes. It's going to slide it in in like paragraph 18. It's kind of the,

you know, in a way, you know, again, in an ideal world, you're developing themes, right? And you're calling all these people and they're helping you develop the themes or telling you stories or challenging them in a way. But at the purest level or at the simplest level, those kind of quotes are just the great fun. They're the ornaments on the Christmas tree of a Hollywood profile.

Part of the reason you walk in the door. Courage everybody, go read Stephen Roderick on Michael Mann and see if you notice anything that's missing. A couple of only in journalism words Before we get out of here today Let's do it USA Today's Joe DeFazio nominates Usher as a verb Oh God, that's a great one

Usher as a verb Brian Curtis of the ringer.com nominates Rattle as a verb As in Evgaini Pergian Renegade mercenary chief who rattled Kremlin That was the New York Times obit people say rattled that person is rattled

but like is rattled but how about rattled as a verb no right you know here all the time in journalism stock markets

are rattled by news of such and such yeah it's very only in journalism at Jimmy P215 nominates

Potemkin well yes Timken politics but don't we need a Potemkin carve out? I think so. Yes, it's an only in journalism word, but what's so interesting to me about it is it becomes this kind of self-sustaining Washington analogy where you're only using it as an analogy and never actually writing about what that means. Yes.

Like I remember how long people were like the Kabuki Theater of Washington politics. Yes. How many times does that? Yeah. How many times does that use the Washington politics? post and there was never an article about, hey, a closer look at Kabuki Theater. No one ever cared about it as its own thing, but they cared about it as a journalistic metaphor. Potemkin, welcome to the list.

And on a very similar note, a listener named Nancy Beach sent us a clip I think you'll enjoy from SCTV. Remember old SCTV? Oh, yeah. This is a clip from the SCTV news with Eugene Levy. one of the actors who if he were available would give us an excellent secondary quote right now. Eugene Levy was playing a news anchor who was writing his own copy during a writer's strike. That's the bid here.

Sounds familiar. He's holding either a dictionary or a thesaurus. Footage was a little grainy as he is delivering the news. I want you to listen to how many only in journalism words Levy manages to squeeze in to report. Melanville Waterworks Commissioner Fred Stevens stormed out of an expedient

city council palaver today, his bullion facade beaming after an incandescent budget meeting late this afternoon in his diminutive city hall office. The unvarnished Stevens and often loquacious and pedantic man was halcyon and inexorable.

With the anxious and punctilious reporters present, and gave an oracular no comment. There are a lot of $5 words there, but the only in journalism gym is oracular. No one's ever said the words, aracular, but they've written the word,

irregular many, many times. It took me a while to process what that word was, yeah. All right. It's time for a feature that is always auracular. In nature, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strain pun headline. Yeah.

Last Monday's headline about a sports center anchor's controversial exit from ESPN was Sage Against the Machine. Today's headline comes from Gil Gross. It's from the New York Post. Story from the NBA, David. A video coordinator went from the New York Knicks to the Toronto Raptors. And the Knicks are alleging took some secrets with him. So the Knicks are saying he is a traitor to the organization. Trader to the franchise.

what was the New York Post Strain pun headline He's a traitor to the organization Yes sir To the New York Nick's organization Like a Oh god

You're so you're so close already It's like Madison Square Arnold Okay You're right there But just just switch it around a little bit he's not benedict arnold he's uh been the franchise in question is ben a nick arnold was the new york post back page oh my gosh i'm going to google that i got to see how that looks in print that's over that's i put it in the chat right now this may be this may be big for

uh for some art direction here at the ringer he is david shoemaker i'm brian curtis Production Magic. As always, by Erica Servantes. I'm back later this week. And then Shoemaker and I return with more Nick's content and more lukewarm takes about the media next Monday. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.