The Press Box - How Tiger Woods’s Accident Was Covered. Plus: Listener Mail.

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the news of Tiger Woods’s car accident and how the media decided to cover the story (6:10). Then, they open some Listener Mail and answer your questions about Twitter’s new features, favorite journalism movies, and much more (27:20). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker 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. David, a new Wall Street Journal magazine article asks, is it time to kill the book blurb? You know, those little one-line recommendations on the back cover? of books. What I want to know is, is it? Time to kill the book blurb? The old book publishing employee in me says, God, yes. The slightly out of the loop bookstore customer of me, I'm inclined to say no. Listen, you got to take the blurbs with like a million grains of salt.

They're all BS. They're all written by friends and former classmates and writers that, have something in, you know, have a debt to pay to the, to the writer of the book or they're in trade for a future blurb or co-appearance or something like that. They're all, the premise is all BS, but they do do, generally do a good job of informing you what the, what the book has to offer, right? You just assume that it's over the top and it's too effusive or whatever else, but like I would, I feel like I glean more from a couple of blurbs than I do from the jacket copy itself a lot of the time, right? And actually there's other, there's instances where like I read a lot of graphic novels. And the graphic novels come out, they don't have reviews on the back.

And so occasionally you'll get one line on the front that's like from another comic book writer who's just like, this is a gym. But there's no blurbs or reviews with any substance in them. And I thought, and I'm completely lost as to what, like, there's no way by picking up a graphic novel, I can figure out which ones are supposed to be good or not, right? Because even if, you know, Stephen King's blurb on a novel is not totally heartfelt, and I have no reason to doubt the wonderful blurbing work of Mr. King. But, you know, for example, if there's no reason to believe the blurbs are totally heartfelt, there at least is like, they reach a level of, they reach a level where the blurb is worth giving out, right?

where it's like this is either actually a good book or it's actually a writer who might have a future in the business or it's a you know there's some sort of validation that comes from just the existence of the blurb and like I said the one or two sort of like fruit you know fru-frew sentences that they write can actually convey a lot about the contents even if they're not even if even if the praise is over is overdone I have two reactions this book is a gem is the ultimate blurb number two I guess I'm I guess I go either way on book blurbs but I demand that they not be written like book blurbs. You know how there's this formal language of the book blurb?

David Shoemaker has written an insightful study of the wrestling ring after 1998. You know, a perfect book for songs. Just don't write like that. The people who are doing that are actual good writers most of the time. There's no reason to have to like put on your your dinner jacket to then write a book blurb and write it in this really stilted way like you were issuing a statement. It's so strange. It's so strange.

You should just like dictate them over the phone. Like what did you think? Like whatever. But there is there. I mean, I know working on the inside, there is actually like you want to get so much information across, right? That you could that,

that, that, you know, if you ever have to edit someone's quote or, you know, from time to time, go straight a blur for somebody who's promised to give one. And you do end up trying to,

you do fall back on. this on this very wrote style and try to convey maybe too much in the quote the one thing that always got me and this is going off subject the one thing that always got me is you would do there's the blurbs have such a big presence everybody kind of knows they're full of it but like the exit like when you if you if you paid a million dollars for a first time novel the people the buyer at barns and noble when you go and present me like this is the best novel we've ever read we paid more than we've ever paid for a book we had this is the most the biggest deal you know on our list this year, the buyer will say, like, well, did you get any blurbs? And it doesn't matter

if you're like, well, if the answer, I mean, if the answer is no or the answer is, yes, I got three, there are three best friends who happen to be writers to write it. Like, even though there's no qualitative difference there, obviously, they desperately want this validation to be on the cover of the book. All of this is a long way of saying, the thing I never got is, it's so, it's so mercenary. It's so, you know, PR-driven, but still, book-public. But still, book, is too proud to do the thing that like every other industry does, which is like acknowledge it like when the Da Vinci Code came out, this is going way back, when that editor bought their next book, it was a major story in the publishing world, right? Because it was the guy who

made the Da Vinci Code taking his next big shot. So why in the hell did they not just put from the editor of the Da Vinci Code on the cover of the next book? There were towers of this book in Barnes and Noble, and nobody bought one because no, because no readers knew there was a connection that everybody who was selling the book knew. Anyway, book publishers should always put from the editor of so-and-so on the cover of the book. Also, it gives, you know, good credit to the editors who work really hard. Anyway, moving on. Today's show is a gem, folks. It really is. Tiger Woods was in a car accident. We asked, did cable news cover it the right way, plus your listener mail featuring one of my favorite corrections of all time. Really, it is.

All that more on the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Schumaker here. David, let's begin with the coverage of Tiger Woods' car accident on Tuesday. Because this feels like an occasion when your local media critic will write the Tis-Tisk, how cable news got it wrong story. In fact, there's one of those up at Zombie Deadspin right now. But while I'm sure you and I can find plenty to hate about cable news, as we do every day of the week.

I want to start out by having at least a little sympathy for the people trying to cover this story because this strikes me as a very, very tricky story to cover. Yeah, I mean, this is not apples to apples, but, you know, if Donald Trump Jr. led a rally in the, you know, District of Columbia and people started getting out of hand, all the news networks would go there immediately with live coverage and say this, because this looks like or is adjacent to a thing that happened that is a major news

story that we would be justified in covering all day. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but this felt in the beginning moments a lot like Kobe Bryant's death. And it felt maybe even more like some of the moments in the past where there was breaking Tiger Woods news, it took us a while to get our arms around, right? So I don't think anybody would be justified in saying they were wrong and jumping in early and heavily to follow this. I mean, I don't, I mean, maybe someone would tisking about that, but it's only because that it turned out to be not the tragedy that it sort of felt like, even if it didn't look like it.

So at that point, well, you can, I mean, jump in. I just feel like at some point, maybe they should have pulled back. And I'm guessing, I'm guessing by then every, you know, the producers were saying everybody's tuned in. Everybody's watching because of Tiger Woods, you know, update. So he can't really stop now. Although I was watching MSNBC and they certainly tried to go back to confirmation hearings, you know, a couple of times. But I don't know. I mean, there's there's the, there's a sort of, if there's a moral argument, it feels like there's an emotional argument to balance it out. This felt like something that we should be covering full steam ahead. Does it, did MSNBC really pivot to near a tandon in the middle of?

Well, they had been covering, see, okay, so this is an interesting, this is sort of a sidebar, but MSNBC was doing what MSNBC does, which is covering confirmation hearings as if they're covering the apocalypse in real time, right? I mean, or whatever, this is like their, the, the, the, the gravity of the music and the presentation is that of a major, major story. So when something appeared that seemed to be more of, well, it's not more. but a different sort of mass appeal major story. Of course they went there without knowing exactly what was going on,

but then sort of had to justify the attention they were paying to the confirmation hearings along the way, which is easily justifiable, a different argument. But yeah, they did pivot back a couple of times, and it was a weird tension between the sort of actually intellectually important thing that we are overblowing and the thing that might have been a bigger deal but is now overblown because we're pretty sure there's no super tragedy. There was a lot of tension there, but yes, they did try. See, that's funny to me,

what you just put your finger on right there, because it's almost like, can we make the intellectual argument about should we be covering the near a tandon hearings like this? You know, because it's just this is a thing and somebody's going to win and somebody's going to lose and all that stuff. And you're right.

It's the thing we should be covering, but we're making perhaps too big a deal of or treating with this kind of weird countdown clock sort of treatment versus this thing that we kind of maybe don't think we should be covering this way, but in fact, there's a huge demand for us to cover, which is what's going on with Tiger Woods? Well, I mean, and listen, Nicole Wallace probably did the best job of any of the MSNBC hosts somehow at covering the Tiger story.

But yeah, I mean, MSNBC, it did feel like that by not switching the host duties, there was kind of this weird mental disconnect, right? I mean, you wish that you had like Harvey Levin on speed dial that you could just like bring him into the studio and make him host coverage of like celebrity coverage when it's the biggest news of the day. Not actually Harvey 11, but someone of, you know, have, have someone who's more of either a straight anchor or a or someone who that's more in their wheelhouse. But, but yeah, it was a, it was an odd. There was an odd tension the whole way through. ESPN had like the miniature version of this, right, where they went to the jump at some point during the day, even though This was clearly an ESPN world, the biggest possible story happening right now as well as what's going on with Tiger Woods.

But they had to go to the basketball show and there was somebody tweeted out a headline from their website that said, Kendrick Perkins wishes Tiger Woods the best or something like that. I think that's where we were during the news cycle. I mean, what is interesting to me about this is Tiger Woods is one of the world's most famous athletes. He's one of the world's most famous people. he's in a car accident. Information about it was pretty sketchy at the beginning. Later, we kind of got a sense that the injuries were very, very serious, but not life-threatening.

So then cable news and all of us really have this issue where there's this huge demand to answer the question, what's happening with Tiger Woods? What's going on? Is he going to be okay? and there's really not a lot of information to provide. But if you are CNN and you cut away from that coverage and go to near a tandon or whatever else you think it is, people tuning into your news network going to be like, wait a second, what's going on with Tiger Woods? Like I just heard about this thing and I want to know what's going on or I at least want news anchors to be talking about this story. So it's actually like just like it's a it's a it's a really tough one. It's not it's not easy.

And I just think people saying like well this wall to wall cover like I'm sorry. Tiger Woods being in a very very serious car accident is a huge story. Yeah. I don't I don't feel I don't feel like that that's even a close call in terms of is this newsworthy? Yes, it's newsworthy. Yes, it's absolutely newsworthy. Yeah, it's absolutely newsworthy. And, you know, more importantly, probably, it's what everybody's paying attention to.

I mean, honestly, do you, if you're, if you're any of these networks, news sports, just your regular networks, are you, are you just going to hand over like every, like, just give up? Just put your arms in the air and say everybody go to Twitter if this is what you care about? I mean, no, you have to do your best to respond in real time to the, well, trending topics if we want to speak in Twitterese, right? I mean, it seems like this has to be, I mean, the sort of thing that every TV channel, you know, news channel has had meetings about over the past year or 10 years, right? When things are this important, we go full steam in that direction. And networks have had presidents hired and fired based on like those exact sort of edicts. Totally. The incentives are going to be to cover it too much rather than cover it too little and cable news.

Because if you cover it too much, then your local media critic complains after the fact, look at this saturation wall-to-wall coverage. Do we really need all that coverage? But if you don't cover it enough, that's when you get in trouble because people change the channel. Or your viewers actually get mad and are like, I'm out of here. I'm going to go someplace that's telling me about this big story. I was reading this piece in Deadspin that I mentioned. Let me just give you a paragraph or two of this to kind of. of run through the

criticisms. As the tweets, alerts, and headlines about Woods' accident began to pop up on my phone and TV, I watched in the same way I did a year ago when the news of Kobe Bryant's helicopter crash went viral. It was like watching a reshoot of a bad movie, but noticing that the writers and directors were making the same mistakes they did in the original cut. Were Woods' injuries life-threatening or not? Was serious damage done to his legs, or was he okay? Was this bad driving or were alcohol and narcotics potentially involved? And then there were those who thought this was a hoax.

They've since deleted those tweets, but we know who they are. The damage is already done. See, the thing about criticism like that is I can't actually tell what we're talking about here. Are we talking about cable news? Are we talking about cable news and everybody who said something about Kobe on Twitter? Because if we're trying to do, if we're trying to criticize the latter, it's never going to be good. Twitter's not good today. Twitter's not going to be good tomorrow.

There's no, there's no possible sense where you're going to be like, oh, wow, a horrible news event has happened or a really concerning news event has happened. Today, everybody's going to be great on Twitter, including the guy at Barstool. That's never going to be a day. That's never going to happen. No, absolutely not. I mean, if you're making a, this is what's wrong with our culture argument, it's kind of hard to pin any blame on the networks or on media in general, right?

Because you're, unless you think that, you know, CNN should be the sort of like moral leader of our country, of our society, then, and I'm sure no one's making that argument, at least not in good faith, then I don't know, then what, of course they're going to be, if the problem is with our culture, is with our society, then of course the news networks and sports networks are going to be covering this wall to wall, right? If we're all of that kind of irrationally obsessed with it or something, then of course they're going to be covering it. But again, I don't, I would, I would only push back slightly, and I know you're not, you don't mean this, but just to say irrationally obsessed with us. Yes, I am very interested

in what has happened to the most famous athlete or one of the most famous athletes in the world. Yes, I am interested in that. I'm not a TMZ person. I'm not an inner lives of celebrities personally, but this strikes me as a very normal thing to be interested in. And I think, by the way, the fact that this happened in Los Angeles and the fact that TMZ, as they were with Kobe Bryant's death, is mixed, is sort of, you know, covering this and around this, that it feels in a way like one of those like a celebrity story, or at least there's a whole celebrity lives of celebrities element mixed into this story. I honestly think that is part of what happens with something like this. Because everybody's radars go off and they go, oh, I feel uncomfortable with this or I shouldn't

be watching this. Like it feels like, you know, something else on TMZ's website. And I'm like, something can be a very legitimate news story and also be a TMZ story at the same time. Yep. And I kind of think. That's what happened here. Yeah. I mean, it does feel, especially like by the time that we all started changing the channel, it did feel a little bit icky. I mean, I think my wife walked in at the, I mean, after it was all but established that Tiger was fine and,

you know, certainly injured, but like was not in any mortal danger. And we all kind of had a pretty clear picture of what was going on. And she said, like, why is this? why are they doing this, meaning the channel that I was watching? And I had to explain what we just talked about, how it looked when it started. And, you know, the sort of imperatives for airing it, you know, covering it in the way that they were. And it made immediate sense. But it's a very practical argument, right?

And it's a practical argument in a reaction to a, you know, an emotional one. Or, you know, it feels weird in the pit of your stomach. But that's not like, if you were there from the beginning, there wasn't any sort of like disconnect. there, right? I mean, it, well, there was, in some viewing some of the channels, but, but, I mean, we, but it was clear why it was covered that way. I don't think that there's, I don't think that anybody would do it differently if they had to do it all over, except, I mean, certainly at the very beginning, it felt like the one, the one, the one thing that, I don't know, I don't know, this is something to be critical of. The one note that I would have

is that when, when Kobe Ryan died, since that's the point of comparison here, you could tell that he died in the way that they were covering it. before anybody had the green light to say that he was dead. You know what I mean? Like you could tell that the people on TV knew that he was probably dead and that affected the way that it was being covered. Just the way they were handling the story and the tone. The tone of their voice, the tone of, yes, exactly,

the tone literally and figuratively. And it did feel like that at the beginning of this Tiger Woods story. They had people, you know, people calling in, you know, sports writers, whoever else and who were just, who were speaking as if Tiger Woods had died. And that affected, I think, the way everybody was reacting to it as well. Of course, they didn't know any better and they want to be sufficiently grave if it does turn out that it was that tragic. You wouldn't want to be like making light of a situation or anything. But I think the only thing, all that's to say, if they had it to do all over again, I think the only thing that any channel would do differently is to be slightly less downbeat at the beginning of the coverage, right?

Right. But that was unknowable information. Of course. Of course, yeah. And you want to be cautious. And as you say, like, again, the mistake to make is to have the wrong tone. You know, it's better to be safe, right? And say, look, we don't know what's going on.

We're treating this as a very, very grave situation without information. That seems like common sense. I was, you know, when there's a version of breaking news that involves politics or an important figure in government history, world, world events, let's say. the cable channels have people that are ready to just come on TV and be on TV for a really long time. They've got Michael Beschloss. They've got John Meacham. They've got guys who are just like, your role here, even if we don't have information or if there's nothing, there's no reporting you're going to add to the story.

It's just essentially to come on and tell us about this person. Tell us who, remind us who they were, remind us, you know, what they went through, remind us. us why they're important, that kind of thing. Because that, that, that, that is a, that is a, that is a role on cable TV and it during a story like this. Yeah. And I noticed like CNN had Bob Costas come on, who's now a contributor over there. He was the, he is the perfect person to do this for a sports story. I think Mike Torrico came on MSNBC or NBC at one point to do essentially the same thing, right? But it's a very particular role because you have to understand the history of this person and you have to just kind of be able to talk on television for a really long period of

time. Yeah. Even if, like I said, you're not sort of, you know, what are you going to, you know, again, you're waiting for information just like everybody else. But you just have to be able to sort of talk about the subject that everybody else is talking about. Yeah. It is an interesting role.

And it's sort of a necessary one. You're right. I mean, it's a sort of, it's a, we need a lot of the. viewership needs background, right? Even a lot of sports view, someone who might know exactly who Tiger Woods is does need a sort of frame of reference for, for who they are and, and, and, and their significance. And I think the significance argument is, is, is important there too, because I think even in moments of like a national tragedy, we sort of need, well, not a justification, but we sort of need to explain to ourselves and to each other why we feel, why we're mourning the way that

we are, right? You have to have voices talking over even the most tragic pictures on the screen, you know, no matter how many words a picture is worth, we have to make sense of it. And the way that we do that as a culture is like storytelling, you know, and you have to, you explain why we care about the things that, you know, we're looking at and feeling things for. And I think the thing I'd add to that is that what that figure does is it softens the edges of the rest of the coverage. Right. So if like if CNN or MSNBC covering Tiger Woods and showing the same, you know, 10 seconds of footage over and over again feels a little invasive, feels a little tabloidy in some kind of sense, when you go to that figure, they're the one reminding you about

challenges in Tiger Woods's life. Tiger Woods as kids. Tiger Woods is family. Tiger Woods as parents, right? They're the ones who are sort of saying, okay, if we've gone, if this feels, you know, like something that you're wondering whether you should be watching, I'm going to kind of tonally reset for you. Yes. And in a way, want, you know, provide the sort of provide the, sustenance to the coverage, but also just kind of, I think, make the viewer feel a little bit better about being part of that experience. Totally. And that feels like a really important ingredient, you know, as cable news rolls out a story like this. Yeah, I mean, it's like I said, especially important when you're talking about a cable news, not just not ESPN, but one of the news

networks sort of refocusing their, you know, refocusing the camera onto a sports figure, someone who's not a part of the daily coverage of the channel. But yeah, in a bigger sense, it does. It softens it. It justifies it in a lot of ways. Yeah. And again, I don't want to, I don't want to make it like David and I are sticking up for everything that was done on cable news. over the last 48 hours. We're not. We're not. I just feel that this is one of those stories where it's tricky.

It really is, really, it really is tricky just to get the tone right and to figure out what you're saying and figure out at what point do we stop covering this every minute of the day and do something else before we come back to it, trying to try to understand what is our commitment to news here? What is our commitment to what our viewers want to watch here? Uh-huh. And balancing those things with also our sort of judgment about what people need to be watching. It's a really interesting question.

David, let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. David, we had a little Bruce Springsteen news. Oh, man. Okay. I'm aware of the news. Yes, according to the Washington Post, Josh Hawley, if others haven't seen it, quote, D-U-I charges against Springsteen dropped after test showed his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit. Now, we were groping the other day for the right Springsteen pun. At this news, CNN's Jake Tapper tweeted, wrecking ball like B-A-L like blood alcohol level. wrecking BAL.

Oh my God. And my question is, is that better or worse than dancing in the drunk? I don't think I would put either of those on my list. But, you know, I'm sure there's a better one out there. Until we find one, I'll just give them each a nod. Sure. Thanks to Lacey Ward and J.W. For pointing that out.

Funny moment from the U.S. Senate this week, David. A CNN, Kyron said, Senate holds first hearing on insurrection at U.S. Capitol. Senate holds first hearing on insurrection at U.S. Capitol. The picture of the senator speaking was Josh Hawley from Missouri, who of course was wrapped up in said insurrection, at least at a rhetorical level. It was an overwork Twitter joke to put Holly in a hot dog suit and write,

we're all trying to find the guy who did this. That's funny. Thanks to Austin Alter. And finally, David, have you followed the shenanigans over at CPAC? Yes. Only from afar, obviously. The Twitter account of the annual conservative conclave writes, We have just learned that someone we invited to CPAC has expressed reprehensible views.

It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, you're going to need to be a little more specific. We would have also accepted, I can't believe they disinvited Trump. Thanks to a whole bunch of people for that one. You saw the guy they disinvited was young Pharaoh. Yes. Who CNN describes as a hip-hop artist and right-wing social media figure.

He was disinvited for anti-Semitic tweets. The theme of CPAC this year is America Uncanceled. America Uncanceled and they, yeah. If you wallowed in uncanceled culture, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke. of the week. Let us do some listener mail, David. You, you mailed me a story right before we started this thing about Twitter and a new premium tier of Twitter user. What was that about? Oh, man, you're putting me on the spot to know the details here. But apparently there's going

to be a basically a paid version of Twitter where, you know, premier users. I mean, you obviously have to opt into it. But where you can charge for access to, you know, premium tier. tier of tweets, sort of like a Patreon thing, or I'm sure there's a million other social media examples of it. But my mind immediately went to, well, two things. One, that there's a sort of tier of newsbreaking reporter, particularly in the sports world, that we talk about a lot, who stand to earn a lot of money from something like this. And parallel to that, there's a sort of workers' rights issue, right? I mean, I'm sure a lot of this stuff is carved out. in the contracts of like your, you know, Adrian Wojneroskis and people like that.

I mean, they have good agents who are on top of this. But it is a really interesting question, right? We're like, whenever that, whenever the, you know, Woj and ESPN came to the last deal, and I'm just using him as an example because he's the biggest name, right? But you could say Adam Schaefter, you could say Shams, you could say a lot of people. Sure. The people who are newsbreakers first and foremost and, you know, writing, journalists or talking heads second and third or whatever else.

I mean, the great value that they provide to the Wode provides to ESPN is to basically having the profile that he has on Twitter, right? I mean, he does all this other stuff for him, but he drives traffic to the site from by breaking news on Twitter. Now, however much money he gets paid and I am, you know, sure that it's a lot by ESPN, I guarantee that he can make all of that. and one NBA offseason alone,

charging five bucks a viewer for an off season of coverage, right? I mean, that can be, that is an massive amount of money that he stands to make doing that. Now, and setting aside all that, you know, that Hoopsipe is going to aggregate it all and whatever else, there's still a lot of people who care that much about breaking news.

Obviously, that's why ESPN pays him all the money that they do. The question is going to be, is he allowed to do this on the side? people like him, are they allowed to make some money on the side if they want to have a premium tier? If not, is ESPN going to be very motivated to recoup some of their investment in this person by themselves taking this money, you know, having like an ESPN insider apparatus on Twitter and various other social media? And then, you know, there's a really obvious question

where if you're someone of that very highest high profile, do you even need an employer anymore? If Twitter, your main outlet is going to provide a better financial incentive than being in a big company. So super follows, which this is called becomes the new substack, essentially. I am going to monetize my Twitter account. I don't need my employer anymore to for a certain, as you say, very, very select group of people. Sure. It's interesting because the Twitter newsbreaker, the tension with them, the tension was always like my, I'm doing a huge percentage of my work on that platform rather than the platform of my actual employer.

Yeah. So I'm bringing them attention. And of course, that informs in the sports case, their TV shows and their chat shows and I'm breaking some news on TV and that kind of stuff. But like, I am, I'm doing my work product over here. And it's not directly benefiting you in the sense of like I would breaking the news on your website, like a New York Times reporter. Most of the time, sometimes reporters also break news on Twitter, I guess. But now it's like, well, what if I just, what if I'm just literally getting paid for that stuff, too? In addition to, in addition, just breaking news over there.

Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, to be, I always take arguments in this direction. There actually was a recent situation that was slightly similar to this in the world of professional wrestling where WWE basically said that all of their employees who have. had Twitch accounts and, you know, other third-party media accounts had to stop doing it. Now, W.W.E's this whole separate thing because they call their employees independent contractors, even though legally it's really hard to make that case. And there's, you know, a very odd, longstanding working relationship between the parent corporation and the people that go out there

killing themselves to make it money. But there, I mean, there was this, there was a very short standoff where there were a lot of WV employees who were making as much or more money doing on like Twitch streams than they were on their real contract. And at WWU's like, well, we want all that money or you have to stop doing it basically. And there's, you know, obviously there's a different argument when it's a workers, you know, when it's an independent contractor issue

about what at what point you're allowed to do work off the clock or, you know, when you're not employed. But sure, it does stand a reason. If you're Woge and ESPN is hiring you because of the success you've had on your own, you created for yourself in the social media world, to what degree do they have control over what you can do there? I mean, I think it's a really interesting question.

And even if, like I said, they signed a contract that said Twitter is a carve-out. ESPN has no control over what just, I don't know if they have, but that's like the normal kind of thing that someone would say, oh, my podcasting life is carved out from this contract or whatever else. If they've agreed to that, are they still bound by that? Now that there's this huge financial incentive for Woj to care, and everyone else to care even more about what happens on Twitter and less about what happens in their day job.

You know, I mean, it's a very interesting world. I guarantee that we will see either a worker, employer, standoff, one of a major, major name, or someone in that top tier just ditching the employer at some point in the next year or two. If the superfollow thing catches on or is established enough and to the point where it could really be justified, I mean, the difference between substack and this is that Twitter is a major player already.

And all they're doing is letting you opt in to a way to make. It would be like if YouTube started monetizing today, right? Then suddenly there's all these, all the, in anyone that has a big YouTube channel would just be like, well, why am I doing anything else but this? Because now the money is going to start rolling in, right? So it's a, it's a very, it's going to be a, it's going to be something to watch. What are the odds that Twitter selects you and I as super follows, do you think? Well, that's why I actually brought it this up.

I wanted to ask if you're interested in a... Oh, we're going to do the negotiation right now, I see. Let's do it. Let's do it. No, I mean, it's a... I think the odds of that are zero, but I think the odds of us talking about super follows on the show in the coming year or 100%. You don't think there's a premium tier for me when I pass along the news that a sports writer at a small town newspaper has passed away? You know, I think there's like somebody's going to pay $5 a pop to read that kind of stuff. Well, if you can't get it anywhere else, Brian, then maybe the super follows the way to go.

Yeah, I do have the market cornered it in a way. All right, David, this is from Seth Somerfeld. What is the issue that you feel like has the most weight? You're not doing any better than Trump at this potential to take hold of the media narrative and blow up against Biden, if not remedied soon. So he's pointing out, right, the take on Donald Trump was like, Donald Trump is bad at this issue and this issue and this issue and this issue. So what if Joe Biden has momentum stall and he gives some examples here, immigration, stimulus checks, postal service issues? Which of those are we going to see media members say, aha, Joe Biden is not even better than Donald Trump at what?

I think that the I mean the the thing I mean the the point of comparison that springs to mind was the Obama administration's sort of drone warfare policy and in general they're kind of Middle East conflict policy that went under discussed during that those eight years and have sort of become a point of discussion more so after the fact but I do think that I mean it does seem like I don't know so it's hard to imagine exactly what that would be because that was not given a whole bunch of discussion or a a whole bunch of air time during the Trump administration. So it has to be something that people identify with the Trump administration, right? So, I mean, certainly the Postal Service, if it, I just don't see how that could be the one, but that was, you know, an identifiable problem for the Trump administration at the end. I think it has to be immigration. And I don't think it's any accident that the Biden administration is making big moves on immigration right now so early in the administration when one might not have expected them to.

Because I think that everything that happened on the border, everything with ICE, I think that that's going to, that is policy-wise, probably the great sin of the Trump administration and the area where the Biden administration does need to get the most distance in terms of that question that you just asked. Yeah, and to Sest point, it's the thing that would actually be really hard for Biden to actually solve on his own. We talk about what did Biden learn from Obama? Obama really, really wanted an immigration reform bill.

The first thing he did was he didn't get it done in his first hundred days because he was worried about saving the economy. He was criticized for that. But he really wanted it. But he was stimmed by congressional Republicans from getting it. George W. Bush really wanted an immigration reform bill, was stimmed by congressional Republicans from getting it. So if Joe Biden wants it, he could still face the same hurdles, but then be blamed because nothing got done in this kind of way. It's like, oh, wow, Donald Trump had a rotten, evil immigration policy.

Joe Biden is pursuing a more benign immigration policy, but he can't get his past. therefore he's just doing like in some weird media brain way he's doing the same bad thing as Trump or he's not making any more progress on this issue whatever it is I can see that being a trap for sure for sure yeah yeah and you're right there is a sort of political conversation that's going to go on on the you know on amongst liberal voters or just liberal activists and the one that's going to go on in you're right the media brain sort of thing, the sort of semi-discenuous journalistic argument of, is he any better than the person that came before him, which I think is sort of a separate, a separate category.

You can make, you know, you can write that article on just about any subject whenever you wanted, but that is going to be, he's going to be wide open on both counts there. If he doesn't make a big move. Almost all these things are different categories, right? Like Donald Trump pursued a really, really awful policy on blank. then the second category is Joe Biden is unable to make blank more humane because the government and American politics is structurally lined up to prevent him from doing this. Prevent him from doing what he wants to do.

Like those seem like completely different boxes, but we'll see how much they get smushed together. This is from Isaac Crawford-Ritchie. What are your favorite movies shows about newsrooms or journalists? And as people who have worked in newsrooms, what movies show has had the most accurate depiction of them. Oh, so glad you asked, Isaac, because I just wrote a story today about a new documentary. This is not to plug my story, but to plug the movie a little bit, it's called Collective. It's a Romanian documentary directed by this guy named Alexander Nanao, and it is about a daily sports newspaper in Romania that wound up breaking an amazing series of what you would call

just straight news scoops that changed. Romanian society that changed Romanian politics that after a time led to the resignation of various government ministers. And it's funny, David, like, I've, there's certain scenes in this in this movie that are just really cool newsroom scenes. Like there are all these whistleblowers from various hospitals and various parts of society that come into this newspaper. And they filmed it. They filmed them like coming in and telling the reporters everything they know, holding up documents, bringing a video in from a hospital, things like that. And it's, I've just never seen whistleblowing

happening in real time in this sense. And that was like a revelation for me. The movie is not only a shortlisted for the Oscar for Best documentary, but the Oscar for Best Foreign Feature Film, period. So, collect it. Check it out. There's a, there's a good recommendation. Maddie Wasserman, when you guys are doing interviews,

do you generally have a good BS detector or, since for whether the interviewee has actually read any of your work slash listen to your podcast before as opposed to just seeing you as yet another media appearance to check off the list. Well, I think BS detector aside, if someone says something nice to me, I believe them 100% whether or not there's, whether or not there's any reason to believe them.

David is a journalist, so we are all susceptible to flattering. I mean, I'm sure there's an example. I'm sure there are examples here, but I feel like people are usually pretty straightforward, just to say they compliment you if they have a compliment, if they mean it, and they just avoid any sort of commentary if they don't, you know, or they engage with you sort of as a human without, I don't, I can't remember sometimes any time when I've heard someone say that they're a big fan of a podcast that I do or something and have it be any,

and have it seem like a lie, but maybe I'm just oblivious to it. Well, I think you could kind of generalize it right. Like, I'm a big fan of everything you guys do. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, yeah. There's definitely people who say, I'm a huge fan of the ringer and everything you guys do. Yes. To me, that's the kind of generic compliment that means I don't really listen to your podcast.

I don't really know who you are, but I like the ringer and I like Bill and I like everybody. So I want to include you a compliment. And by the way, nobody needs to know who David and I are, or listen to us or read us, or anything, but that's not a prerequisite to coming on the podcast. Like, we're, we're asking, right? There's not, there's not like a test, you know, what was David Shoemaker's last wrestling piece? That, that doesn't come up. So they, they can hate us. They just have to come on. Like, that's, that's what we're, that's what we want. There's no, there's no,

there's no need to actually, uh, to, to actually like us. This one comes from that guy. You guys have some very great interviews. If you could do one no holds barred interview, then retire, who would it be with? Who? I mean, you've checked off a lot of, I mean, probably every box that you could check off in terms of like sports media, right? All the list that you would have made 10 years ago has been finished. Am I right in saying that?

Yeah, I don't know that there's a white whale out there that I'm still pursuing in that, in terms of that, no. I don't say there's a self-compliment, just like this is like a smallish number of people, that kind of thing. I'm not, I'm not, I can't think of somebody as like, oh, wow, I've always wanted to talk to that person and haven't been able to. But I don't know. I mean, if it just in terms of the press box, man, I mean, what would be the, who would be the one person that we would, what would be the, what would be the press box retirement episode? I don't know. I don't either, but I bet it's a big author. It's who it is. I mean, you and I could just think

of general famous people that we would love to talk to and love to interview at any time. but in terms of like in the bounds of this podcast, I'm guessing it would be like a big author, maybe fiction, maybe nonfiction. I'm not sure. John Grisham come on the press box. Well,

if he wants to. I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's like, you know, I don't know that there's like one. Is that like, you know, I've seen your bookshelf,

David. I know the kind of people you like. I don't know if I could point to like one person that you've always wanted to talk to that you haven't just been able to talk to. But I bet I could find like 10 that you would think, oh, this is really cool to talk to this person. Sure. And like discuss books with them, literature with them, whatever it is.

Yeah. Let us think more on that question. And maybe we'll even get them on the press box. I know. Let's put the, maybe if we put the list together, we could actually make some of them happen. We wouldn't even have to retire.

After we talked about Rush Limbaugh the other day, we got a note from Mike Shaw is staying six feet away from you. He writes, newspapers infamously, excuse me, have pre-written obits for celebs, notable figures who could go at any moment. How many remembrance emergency pod outlines for media figures do you have that are ready to go for whom and who are your guests? Oh, man.

This is kind of supposing that David and I are way more organized than they actually are. I don't have that many. I mean, every time, you know, I write a lot about dead wrestlers, obviously. And so when there's definitely a few that I've thought through. I don't have three quarters of a Hulk Hogan obit written and stored in a file somewhere. Although there's definitely some people where I've jotted down sort of big think notes, the directions I would go have had to do. And if someone, you know, if you ever hear, like if we were the sort of person, if I was the sort of person who would write an obituary for Rush Limbaugh, I may well have had it written half written by the time that he died only because there had been stories about his illness and sort of imping. ending death for some time, right?

But I don't, I mean, I don't have anybody that's just in the hopper. It feels like such an artifact of newspaper days when you had these huge staffs that were, you know, kind of sitting around a lot of times like, oh, you're just sitting around. Can you go ahead and freshen up that obit for that famous general? Yeah. Who's like in his 60s and we just want to make sure that's kind of ready to go? I don't know how much that happens outside of newspapers, like the Times. I don't know how much that happens anywhere anymore.

that people are just sitting around on on on material as you say you write down notes about people that you might write about someday all the time and have them in a place where you can go get them but um but yeah that is a very uh there are no episodes of the press box that are currently sketched out we don't even have next monday read we don't even know what we're doing on monday forget when somebody famous goes i mean it's weird i think that like especially at the new York Times, which is, I mean, the, the role of obituary writer has become, like, slightly glamorized, right, or, or legendary. They, the sort of, Bruce Weber and Marglet Fox, and, I mean, there's, but there's several names that sort of will come up and you'll remember every, every year or so,

right? But, and I think when Rush, I think when Rush died, if I remember correctly, the, the, the obituary was immediately published and had a sort of had a note at the bottom that was like, we will continue to update, you know, I mean, because they presumably they published what they had on file and didn't have a lot of present tense information about his actual death. But yeah, I mean, it is, it is slightly an artifact, but it's also one that probably because it is sort of an interesting artifact that's been, a lot of attention has been drawn to it at places like the times over the past couple years. Yeah, I also think it's like one of those things that everybody knows about like people who aren't in journalism,

you know how they all know about Friday news dump. They know about pre-written obits. That's the thing that just has kind of an unusually like wide circulation that that happens. They know more about it than how much it actually happens anymore. That's always funny to me. Brian Judson does in a few weeks ago and I saved it. Speaking of saving stuff. Hi, I have a general listener question for you.

I took this picture at CVS and it made me wonder what chain bookstore has, excuse me, what chain store has the worst book section? So he went to the CVS little book rack and took a photo and says, what chain store has the worst book section? Well, there's, okay, there's CVS and then there's CVS where the book and magazine section is in the basement, which is a New York, a Manhattan specific sort of thing. Yes. There's definitely been times where I've just been like shopping around the store thinking,

like I win it like oh I'll go look at the book and the book rack just to see and it and it takes me half an hour to realize it's on a different floor and it's scary down there. I don't know usually when you find a book section outside of a traditional bookstore it's a it's sort of wonderful to find but the but the drugstore ones are pretty dire. Yeah I would also just nominate like the airport bookstore for worst book section. I love the airport bookstore. I mean there are some that are great. Like there's one in Chicago and I can't remember the name that's just awesome. Uh-huh. But I'm talking about like the one that's like named like the New York Daily News store. Oh yeah. Right. The Hudson News or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. There's candy and there's there's like bugles and other things you could eat on the plane. And then there's like one rack of books. And even even when we were in the download era, remember you get on a plane, be like, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I don't have anything to read. So I'm going to walk in there and I'm just

going to buy one book. Yeah. And I'm going to read it on the plane. Hopefully it's a long plane flight and I'll just read the whole book right now. And you're like, it's a bunch of bestsellers, but I bet there's going to be something really cool to read. And you get it there. You're like, who there's nothing to read. Like I was not, prior to this moment, was not aware that Stuart Woods had like four bestsellers at the same time on the same list. Yeah. Yeah. It's difficult. You would have taken John Grisham absolutely in that scenario. Yeah. I don't, we don't even want to read this, but like, okay, I will absolutely take a John

Grisham, Page Turner, it's like, it's even worse. It's, it's just really, it's bad out there. Finally, David, correction of the week via Daniel Offman. I love this. NPR last month did a story on the musical Rent. It's a 25th anniversary of Rent. Cool idea for a story. NPR wanted to do a funny headline that rift on the famous song from Rent's seasons of love.

You know, 500,000, 6,700. You and I had the same drama teacher in high school. I know you know that song. So, the headline was 13,140,000 minutes. It's been 25 years since the first performance of rent. That's funny. Unfortunately, they had to correct that. Not all years NPR rights have 525,600 minutes.

Leap years have 527,040 minutes. And there have been seven leap years in the last 25 years. and thus the headline has been changed to 13,150,080 minutes. It's been 25 years since the first performance. Oh, that's fantastic. You try to do something clever and you forget to add the leap years. Amazing. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline.

All right. Monday's headline about Ted Cruz's trip to Cancun was sneak on a plane. Still think it should have been sneaks. Today's headline comes from Dan Perkel. It's from the New York Times. It's a typical life during the pandemic story. In this case, David, the Marsh family, the Times reports, gained extraordinary fame for their musical spoofs of lockdown life.

I did not have a chance before this podcast to actually go and visit the work of the Marsh family, but I'm guessing they are doing family locked indoors and they are doing musical stuff. I want you to think of singing families. family music troops. Is it the Von Trapped family or something? Oh, there we go. We're done. Folks, we're done.

Von Trapped. Oh, that's great. Thought I might have to lead you there a little bit. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We are back Monday doing, we don't know what. It's not in the can.

But we know we'll have more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.