The Press Box - Joe Biden Does Howard Stern, NBA and NFL Draft Observations, the Return of ‘The Onion,’ and the ‘New York Times’ vs. the White House

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Hello media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the week with a headline we never thought we'd see: Joe Biden did ‘The Howard Stern Show’ (0:41). They then get into the following: A recap of interesting sounds from NFL draft weekend (8:43) NBA playoffs observations, rights negotiations, and Cari Champion’s LeBron James tweet (22:53) Bryan’s playoff grinch takes (34:02) Then, in the Notebook Dump, they discuss the following: Politico’s Eli Stokols story on the feud between President Biden and the New York Times (40:01) The Onion is back! (50:53) Graydon Carter opens a newsstand (53:04) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, Only in Journalism, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. It's the Maskman David Shoemaker. It's a new era in professional wrestling, and that means a new era here at the Ringer Wrestling show. Kaz here, every Monday and Thursday hang out with me and my guys' shoes on the Masked Man show. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal and Brian on Tuesdays for Ringer Wrestling worldwide, where we hit on the most interesting headlines and even react to some of Maskedmans and even your hottest takes. Don't tap out. Tap in to the Ringer Wrestling Show feed now on Spotify. or wherever you get your podcasts. Worldwide. David? Yeah.

Here's a headline we thought we'd never see. Joe Biden did the Howard Stern show. Is it that shocking? I think it's shocking if you imagine Joe Biden being teleported into the 90s. Howard Stern menagerie where you had Beetlejuice over to one side and Jackie Martling going, oh, oh. Right. The president of the United States, Joe Biden playing butt bongos.

Seems a little bit hard to imagine. That's pretty wild. But the new Howard, the grand old man of media Howard, conducting one of his patented long-form interviews with Joe Biden. Not that surprise, I guess. But it was a bit of a shock when this came down Friday morning because we and the rest of the political media had no idea it was happening. Sure. and I went up driving my son Owen to school

and listening to this important moment for the nation from my car radio which is always a little disorienting feels like we've gone back to the FDR fireside chat era of American life first funny thing was Joe Biden's voice was so quiet that I had to jack up the radio just to hear it Oh, yeah. Because he's very, very soft and very talking like this.

And Howard, of course, is just blasting through the radio. Alan Siegel sent a text that morning and said, I would have loved to have heard the negotiations between Biden press secretary, Corinne, Jean-Pierre, and Baba Booie about where this interview could go. But it turned out, of course, to, A, be a very friendly interview. And B, be a very biographical interview. Yeah.

Almost as if Howard were doing the video that would play before Biden speaks at the Democratic convention. Yeah. You lost your son, Bo. Here's what kind of dad you are, what kind of father you are and also what kind of father you are for America. Yeah. Really reminding listeners who have forgotten about Biden's life story or maybe in Stern's case never knew Biden's life story. about what he has gone through, making the case for Biden,

you might say better than Biden often makes the case for himself. Yeah. The other thing that was so interesting is you and I know at this point, Joe Biden will often trail off when he's speaking or tell an anecdote that kind of steers the whole conversation into a cul-de-sac. Howard was treating him like a normal Howard Stern interview guest.

so as soon as he would kind of trail off a little bit, Howard would just jump in and redirect the conversation or prompt him to say something. Or be like, yeah, let's talk about abortion because that's a really important thing in this election. Now, that's the way Howard Stern interviews like David Crosby or Madonna or whatever famous person is on a show. But journalists, when they're talking to the president of the United States, don't normally. jump in to make sure the interview is exciting. Yeah, well, there's more of a premium on awkward dead air in political interviews for the most part. But yeah, no, I mean, there's, this is not just how, you know, it's not the Howard Stern interview versus the standard

politics interview. This is also, you know, kind of how real people communicate versus the alternative. You know, I mean, usually when someone you're talking to trails off in the middle of a sentence, you don't just stare at them until they regain their composure. You just keep talking to them. You want to make the conversation fun and interesting. Yeah.

You don't want to just let them keep going so that you can get a sound bite or a little scene for your piece that you're writing about your friend in a bar. But it was really striking with Biden. Because again, if when New York Times reporter sitting across, you know, the Oval Office from him. He's not jumping in and being like, well,

what about this? What about this? Let me prompt you with some good memories. Shouldn't the Howard Stern audience at this point? Yeah, I was going to ask. We know Joe Biden has been looking for outlets like smartless where he can go and give interviews and reach people.

Who do you think he's reaching when he's giving an interview to Howard in the serious XM era? I have no idea. Is it just for social? Is that where we are? I'm sure that's the, I mean, that's probably what they consider kind of like the baseline, right?

But I mean, obviously people still listen to Howard Stern. I just don't know any of them. Yeah. I mean, at least theoretically, it's kind of the rogany, apolitical,

non-political, edgy political audience that Joe Biden would like to speak to. Are we going to have to talk about, we had like, you know, soccer moms and all the different voter designations. Is serious dads going to be the story of this election? Let me tell you, I felt very seen as a serious dad when this interview was happening because it was very clear that many leading members of the National Press Corps did not have serious. Yeah.

Because this interview, if anything, was undertweeted when it was happening. Yeah. Sometimes I forget I have serious. But this is one of those. instances where not only was I so happy I had it while I was driving my Sunday school and driving back, but I had the kind of Howard Stern moment you and I used to have in high school where I parked in my driveway and then kept the car running so I could finish the segment, which in high school was one of those Howard segments, which was somehow like 45 minutes long despite the fact

that it was on terrestrial radio. Yes. Yeah, I remember those days well. Biden did make some news Stern and I'm kind of half remembering this but didn't even ask him about debating Donald Trump. He just said something like, I don't know if you're going to debate him or what. And Biden just jumped in and said, yes, I'm debating him. He said, I'm going to have to debate that guy at some point. Yeah.

Which is something we did not know or had not heard from Biden's lips yet. Yeah. Whether that will happen or not, I guess it is. Also, the interview was very funny at the end. Because Stern was talking about getting the high sign from Biden's people to wrap up. And then he said, I had to wear a suit in here today or I wore a suit to try to dress up for the president. And he kind of started saying, well, you know, look, I put on this suit and my belly's hanging over my pants because I've gained some weight. Joe Biden just did not know

what to do with that. Did not know how to parry Howard Stern's body consciousness. But then Stern did say, look at me. I'm sitting with the president of the United States. to which Joe Biden responded, look at me, I'm sitting with Howard Stern. It's good. Big recognition of the moment, which was awfully, awfully weird. All right, David,

coming up on the press box, and here's a segue. You know who didn't get an interview with Biden? The New York Times, and its publisher, A.G. Solsberger, how the paper of record and the potus of record got sideways, plus some NFL draft observations

from Bill Belichick to anonymous scouts, NBA playoff observations from Amazon getting in on the rights deal to some wayward nostalgia and also The Onion is back and should we defenestrate defenestrate? 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 Brian Waters here. We had some big sports watching moments over the weekend that were not on Sirius XM radio or at least not exclusively. I'd first like to hit you. with some NFL draft observations.

All right. David, you know I am a student and chronicler of the terrible sideline question. Let me tell you something. The NFL draft was the Apex Mountain or perhaps Nadir Valley, Nadir crevasse of the bad sideline question.

Structurally, there's a little bit of a problem here, right? because the draft pick gives the big bear hug to Roger Goodell. In the case of J.C. Latham picks him up like I pick up my children when they come home from school and wave him in the air. And then there's really nothing to ask them. We just want to get a little bit of that emotional moment. Like, isn't it cool that you were just picked in the first round?

So we get questions like this one that was asked to LSU wide receiver Malik Neighbors, one of the many LSU receivers that's been drafted recently. How important is it to you to represent that brotherhood and add right away to the Giants offense? Or to J.C. Latham, Alabama offensive tackle. There's a rich legacy of Alabama offensive linemen in the league. How surreal is it to add to that legacy? Very, very difficult to answer these questions. Yes.

How surreal is? Fairly, fairly surreal. on a scale of 1 to 10, like a 4.5 surreal rating. Oh, my God. But the absolute best moment, another LSU wide receiver, Brian Thomas Jr.

got drafted in the first round. It goes 23rd overall to the Jags. And I want you to hear how his mom, Sandra, handled this question. Sandra, how far has his family come? We came from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. sometimes the best way to handle a question like that is just to answer it in the most basic possible way we came from Baton Rood

that is how far we have come I mean honestly if anybody it's perfect that it's the mom but it does go to show like if anybody asked you a a draft question or you know whatever like whether or not you are a player your human instinct to be just translated into regular human conversation. We're talking about real life conversations a lot. And we should stipulate that we're not the spokespeople for having human conversations. And 90% of my speaking goes on over a Zoom reporter talking to people on podcasts.

But yeah, if someone's like, how far have you come? I wouldn't be just like, the way that my family has risen above our means. You know, I would just be like, I don't know, 800 miles, I think the O'Don. said that makes a lot more sense. Let me go back to Great Grandpa Shoemaker to answer your question and give you a sense of our family. Thanks to Ira Rigo and Bugsy Tarkhanian

for making sure we saw that clip. Also love the low-calorie draft update. Before the first round started, we knew the Vikings were looking to trade up for a quarterback. They wind up trading one spot for J.J. McCarthy from Michigan. but pre-draft ESPN's Jeff Darlington got on TV and he laid out some of the Vikings target

and then ended his update this way. My point in all of this is the Vikings realize they're going to have to trade up to get one of these guys. The question is how much will it take will they find a suitor and for what quarterback will it be for? Okay. So yes, the factors involved here are which quarterback will they trade for? how many picks will they trade and which team will they trade with.

So all of the things. Yes, all of the things that would describe any trade that is made in the NFL draft. I just love the way that was presented as a summation. The Vikings organization is familiar with the concept of trading. Breaking news. We also got cuddly Bill Belichick during the draft. Oh, yeah. doing Pat McAfee's alternate telecast.

He got a ton of Twitter traction for telling a story about trading for Randy Moss from the Raiders, where you had to get him to New England to do a physical so they could agree on the draft choice and everything. This is one of those stories. The Google machine will tell you that Bill Belichick has told a billion times. And Randy Moss has told a billion times. And in one clip I watched this morning, they have even told together on television. It's new to a lot of people.

But I think what people were responding to is the way Bill Belichick was delivering it. For sure. He was telling stories. He was having fun. He was wearing his pink pocket square and he was doing stuff with Pat McAfee. Speaking of being a grand old man,

in this case of football. And this is the move we've seen. in a ton of times, dude, and it goes back to just the beginning of sports TV history and probably radio history before that. You have somebody who has absolutely no time for the press.

None whatsoever. They lose their job, they retire, and then they become Mr. Media. Yeah. Hello! Please ignore the way I treated reporters in my previous

life. I'm now one of you. I'm just, to have fun. By the way, if I get the Cowboys job at the end of the season, we go back to Bill Belichick number one, to my old personality. I was getting the impression that Belichich, sort of like Popovich, like, feels like they're sort of undermining the process, but in a way that acknowledges the system, rather than just giving bad answers, I'm just going to, you know, just going to troll a little bit. But I feel

like there's a there's a good hearted acknowledgement at the core of it like i understand the rules so i can break the rules and the thing with belichick is people always say like it's not he's not like that in real life right you always hear that about coaches public figures when they're likable you know it's just like oh my gosh but you should just hear him when he's talking at the bar or whatever you know um i'm not that shocked i'm not that shocked i think with i think the big question is when you look at somebody like belichick because it's not like you know tom brady got 40 million dollars or whatever he got At some point, an athlete's clock is up, right? I mean, there have been, obviously there have been quarterbacks that have come out of

the announced booth to play and Brady might very well be playing in 10 years, you know, and with like robot legs or something. But Belichick, someone who's just like so famously, like monomaniically obsessed with the coaching process, with the organizational structure, with like being that guy, I wonder if he can overachieve to the point where it's not financially, there's no financial, incentive for him to go back to coaching and, you know, he just sort of says, you know, maybe this is actually better. You know, not everybody's like a one track person. It's just like, I know what I'm great at. But it turns out you're great at something else and you're enjoying it. And there's a

potential to make just as much money doing that. That'll be an interesting one to follow because he was truly great, you know. And one can imagine that he's got the mind to stay plugged in for as long he wants to be, you know, on that side of the microphone. That would be a true U-turn for Bill Belichick of all people to realize I've got this second career in me. Yeah. My entire being is not just devoted to being a football coach. Right.

But it's not, I mean, listen, yes, it's a U-turn for like our perception of Bill Belichick. Dude. I think it's the real, it's the real Bill Belichick. I mean, I don't think there was, when you talk about the whole thing, you're right. People would be like, you know, he has a great sense of, humor, which is what they always say about humorless people. Like Al Gore, yeah. You know, if you just get him alone, he has a great sense of humor.

But Bill Belichick was doing on to Cincinnati. And if that had a Popovichian wink to it in a press conference, I missed it. You know, he just seemed like I want to win football games. The whole human relationships and media relationships and everything. I mean, Nick Saban, who, by the way, was also doing his ESPN debut during the draft, Nick Saban would take a call from a national reporter. Nick Saban, you know, used the media and enjoyed the media because it helped him build the brand of Alabama.

I was going to say, I mean, Nick Saban had to recruit. Yeah. And he even talked to ESPN about walking away. What was it? Eight years ago, nine years ago, something like that. But I don't know, Belichick, that would be a U-turn. I love any NFL prospect who gets. put in a mock draft to one team mocked, as they say in the business, to one team for like nine

months. And then the draft happens and they go somewhere else. Yes. This was Brock Bowers. Like I woke up the morning after the first round being like, wow, I can't wait to see Brock Bowers play for the Jets because Brock Bowers has been going to the Jets in every mock draft. It turned out Brock Bowers had gone to the Raiders the night before and I had watched that live. But in my mind, Brock Bowers will always be a jet because that. a mock drafts all told me he would be a jet. Yeah. That was kind of funny.

We also need to talk about anonymous scouts, David. Okay. You know the figure of the anonymous scout from Sports Illustrated? Sure. Those season previews when that was often the best thing in Sports Illustrated. This guy just talking smack behind the veil of anonymity about players. Well, Bob McGahn, who's a writer, long time NFL writer, now writing for the go-long substack, which is Tyler Dunn's substack.

He is still doing the anonymous scout thing. And he's doing it for draft choices. And he had this whole update about A.D. Mitchell, who's the University of Texas wide receiver, having diabetes and being difficult to deal with, often because of his medical condition. This is something I as a UT fan and UT obsessive did not know about. So it was just really, really fascinating.

But it was also something that, was pretty off message from normal draft coverage. Having scouts say, hey, this guy's difficult. He's hard to deal with and all this stuff. Well, the Colts took A.D. Mitchell in the draft. And then Chris Ballard was not happy with those anonymous scouts. Our typical league, unnamed sources, you know, bad interview.

That's such bullshit. I mean, it fucking is. It's bullshit. Like, put your name, like, put your name on it. I'm tired of, we tear these young men down. These are 21, 22 young men. And if you can, if people out there can tell me they don't, they're perfect in their lives, it's crap.

The funniest thing would be if that was an anonymous cult scout. Right. Was feeding McGahn. And Chris Ballard was bagging on his own guys. I got to say this. I feel a little bit conflicted about anonymous scout. on the one hand, perhaps the important hand, I read it. Anything that's written like that where it's just like, here's the real stuff.

Yeah. I'm in. And I imagine you are too. Yeah. Peter Schrager also mentioned on the pod last week. He said draft reporting, like a lot of sports writing has gotten to be very, very positive. Yeah. There's not a lot of the old school.

I'm going to give you the forearm shiver. It's all very, this guy's great. He's amazing. What a prospect. So anonymous scout has now risen to fill the void of, I don't like this prospect. So there's a little bit of the balancing thing of it. I could also see how it was just completely be completely maddening if you were a

prospect or a team or anybody and they were talking about somebody you liked that way. Yeah. And you're just running all these quotes in a row, said one scout. said another scout said another scout. Yeah. And at some point, if you're giving interviews for the anonymous scout column, you might be like hamming it up a little bit, right?

It's just like, hey, Brian, you want to try your hand at shock comedy? You know? It's like when people used to go for interviews in the Howard Stern show, you know? It's just like, let me try to keep up with that. Let me get my handful of like, you know,

college sex stories in a row or whatever, you know? Like you get it's, you're playing to the type of that. Yeah, I want to make sure I pop if I'm an anonymous scout in that Bob McGinn column. I also learned something interesting. I heard the term pet cat used over and over again in the pre-draft media process. Pet cat in draft Nicklingo means it's a day two or day three pick that I like more than other people like. Turns out, this is according to Brian Brodus, former scout now a radio host in Dallas. Petcat comes from Bill Parcells.

Quite a pedigree for that pet cat. I did not know that. Got some NBA playoff observations for you, David. You and I both know the NBA playoffs is really about setting up the free agency period later this summer. It's basketball, but really it's about free agency. Yeah. In this case, this year's playoffs are about setting up the NBA rights negotiation,

which will kick in at the end of next season. Yeah. Kind of perfect. So we got some news over the weekend. First of all, from Pucks, John Iran. ESPN came out of its exclusive negotiating window, ESPN being a long-time partner of the NBA with the framework of a deal. They are almost certainly going to be back in on the NBA and the next rights negotiation.

And may even, in fact, according to Iran, of course, we don't know totally yet what the details are, may even be able to keep the finals every year, which is a big thing. That's number one. News Flash number two comes Friday from Andrew Marchand and the Athletic, which is that Amazon also has the framework of a deal. Amazon. So here's a new partner for the NBA. Marchand says it will include significant regular season and postseason games,

perhaps even some conference finals. What do you make of Amazon being a big, big part? of NBA coverage going forward. Well, I mean, we knew that there'd be streaming services in play. And I think for the next, probably most of the next decade, we're going to see one major streaming service in the bidding more for every single substantial sports media, right? I mean, I think it's interesting that we don't see, hear a lot of stories about them going head to head.

And I don't know if there's just some mutually, you know, assured destruction packs that's going on where they kind of like opt out if someone's going in strong. or if it's just a cyclical thing, you know, I mean, like, like, you know, when Peacock launched, obviously COVID through a monkey wrench, I mean, Peacock launched on the, like, theoretically on the back of the Olympics, right? I mean, it's like, and if you're, if you're gearing up for fill in the blank, okay, let's just go all in with the NBA. We'll increase, you know, or maybe traffic's down by X percent and we need to get it back up. All right, NFL rights, like, whatever. Obviously, Amazon's already been in the sports business with football and, and, um, from personal

place. It's my least favorite app to navigate. I'm sure a lot of that stems from the frustration of my five-year-old thinking that we have things that Amazon is just trying to sell me, you know, as opposed to most of the other apps, which just show you the similar movies that are there on the platform. But yeah, I mean, Amazon can do this. It'll be interesting to see which way they go with the announced teams, because Contra, the NFL, NBA is much less of a, it's much less about comfort, at least in my viewing experience. You know, there's a, there's a lot of interesting possibilities. Also, if you're Amazon, are you really going to, I mean, who know,

I'm not going to get any conspiracy theorizing, but if you're Amazon and you're suddenly have an NBA deal, are you really going to not just back up a truck to Jeff Van Gundy's house? Like, wouldn't, like, is that, and maybe it doesn't mean that much to you. Maybe all it takes is a little, like, you know, tisk, tisks from the office, or something, but it seems like the kind of move that they would want to make. A little call from Adam Silver, like, is that the guy who was bagging

on the refs all those years on the SPN? You want him back? Yeah, yeah. But, you know, for Amazon, I think for any kind of new media platform that gets involved in sports rights, like they're, like, it's not bad for them if there's a referee

controversy until people walk away from the game, you know, it's just, that's probably better rating. So, I mean, anyway, which all this is to say, I thought it would be some mix. The numbers, different than what we're, a slightly different point of view from the last time we spoke about this last week, because when you look at the numbers, how quickly the transition is going to be happening over the next several years, away from, you know, traditional cable and two streaming platforms,

it's pretty clear that the NBA has to build all of this into their, into their, their, their, their, their rights, you know, appropriation formula at this, it's got to be baked in. You got to know how, you got to know how this is going to be both streaming and on conventional television two years from now. And me,

in full-throated ways. It's not just like, you know, TNT saying like, oh, yeah, we're building an app, you know, which is, I know they're part of Warner Road of Discovery and they have Max, whatever, but I'm just saying. It's interesting. It's interesting they both have frameworks of deals, too, because I wonder if they'll, My continued question is whether there will be any over.

You know, but... Well, there's probably going to be a third partner, right? Or in fact, there's certainly going to be a third partner and there may be a fourth partner. So just to set up that, I mean, so you've got ESPN, probably. You've got Amazon probably. And then if there's one more slot, you've either got Turner coming back, this very, very long association than for the NBA that goes way back beyond the year 2000. Or you've got NBC.

which of course was the soundtrack of our childhood, that would be maybe coming in. So you got NBC versus Turner. Now the NBA could say, hey, we actually want four packages because we have all these people willing to pay us. Do we want to slice the pie four ways?

Which potentially gets confusing or becomes like that last NASCAR deal that they sign where there's races on in 20 different places. And it's very, very hard to follow. Yeah. So that's part of what you're worried about there. Right now it's very easy, right?

This night it's on turn. This night it's on ESPN. Now you're bringing in Amazon and are you going to bring in a fourth? I agree. And as much as I old man complain about those things, you know, maybe not as much as some others, but I'm not immune to it. I feel like that piece is a problem that you can kind of silo off.

Right. I mean, it feels like people complain about this stuff all the time. We're just, we're probably six months away from whatever app or meta app or like at home aggregator is telling us what we want to watch exactly when we want to watch it and just taking us from platform to platform because it's just it's a problem with everything. This isn't just like, oh, where is my NBA specific? You know, and this isn't, this is more akin to typing in what time does the Super Bowl start in Google and realizing that 8,000 platforms, I mean, 8,000 websites have written this article. This is, that I'm sort of less

concerned about. They could have different, as long as you have, as long as you can access relatively everything that the NBA is putting out with a relatively minimal number of subscriptions, I think they'll be okay. To your question about why does it always seem like there's one streamer involved in these packages instead of multiple? I think that's just the league's hedging, trying to figure out how do we sign a deal right now and keep one foot in the media past and one foot in the media future.

Yeah. We know the world's going here. We don't totally know how fast that's going to happen. Mm-hmm. So we want to be here and we want to be there and we want to be in both places at the same time. Yeah. And with the NBA, I said this last week on the podcast, frankly, they need the streamers, right? They're in a different position than the NFL.

They can say all they want, we're embracing the future. We want to be online. We want to be in streaming because we're the league that's always looking forward. I think that is all true. they also need the big payday from the streamer much more than the NFL does where the NFL's priority is like we want to be on free television as much as humanly possible yeah we want to be on NBC ABC CBS that's where we want to live fox NBA needs a little bit different this is a little bit of a different calculation your point about the announcer's also fascinating dude because you and I both know

somebody that's a number one announcer that reaches the highest place you can in the business they're a number one announcer because their network thinks they're a number one announcer. So if Amazon is doing the NBA, who's the number one announcer? Who do they think? Van Gundy would be a fascinating hire. I don't know if they bring him back for that spot just because a lot of times these people want new people. They want somebody they can say, this is our person, if not the person we discovered, but the person we gave the first big promotion to.

Yeah. So that it doesn't seem like a former ESPN person on Amazon. That's just how this works. I have no idea whether they mentioned in Gunny or not. I guess depends on the size of the, you know, the deal that they did. Yeah. And by the way, the big one is if Turner doesn't renew with the NBA, guess who's, guess who's available?

Charles Barkley. Yeah. Guess who's available, Ian Eagle and Kevin Harlan. I was going to see. Yeah. No, no, I mean, there's big name. And listen, they have a track record for going after the big names. It's not, I mean, I know, but I don't know.

I mean, but there's also, this is a, this is a tech company, you know. Doesn't it just feel right that like, you know, they would just give Noah Eagle $70 million to spend the rest of his life there or something, you know? Noah Eagle's agent is just texting. Thank you, David. Yeah. That's a starting figure, yeah. I thought you were going to say Shams or, you know, worldwide Wob or some, you know, figure of Twitter since they're a tech company.

Oh, no, that could totally be it too. Let's stay away. Brian Waters sends us along for our amusement, David. The Nuggets beat the Lakers to take a 3-0 series lead. And the T&T crew was not happy because they were waiting to get that obligatory locker room sound. from LeBron James and this is what they said There were 130 paint points to two teams tonight

just 30 from three point land What's up? Are we just going to stay on TV to LeBron Come out to shower? No, we've got Because you know we got stuff to do Like Shackton. It's 119. Like Shackton of food.

Are we just going to sit here until LeBron? LeBron, get your ass out to shower. That is, by the way, every reporter in the NBA who is waiting for the star to make it to the podium. Yeah. I saw people grumbling about Luca. After the Mabbs Clippers game yesterday, Luca finally got to the podium.

Also, we got this tweet from Kerry Champion right before we came on the air. Just got a text from my friend. He says, tonight is LeBron's last game in purple and gold. Speaking of setting up the next free agent period. Finally, before we change, topics here I'd like to play the NBA playoff Grinch. This is this is where I get to elbow my way into the celebration of basketball with a few complaints.

All right. Number one, round ball rock. The song of the NBA on NBC. Something you and I smiled at and heard many, many a time during our childhood. Love round ball rock. Just I absolutely love it. Here is a PSC. for anybody making a commercial or tweeting about basketball, the existence of round ball rock is not funny just on its face. Yeah. I saw people tweeting when the playoffs started, here we go,

this will get you in the mood. And then it's like John Tesh doing round ball rock. Yeah, we got that. Thanks. Bill was making fun of that in his column 20 years ago, folks. Kevin Hart doing round ball rock on the commercial. That's not funny. Yeah.

We know we are familiar with the song. Yes, thank you. We are all good. The song, the song is kind of like dumb and, you know, of a time or whatever. But the funny part about it is that it's called Round Ball Rock. And that it was written by John Teshue. By the way, it was funny because it was written by the dude who hosted entertainment tonight. You know, like it was just like, and that whole PBS special and every, you know, the vest.

Yes. But the song in and of itself It's just a freaking It's a bumper song You know It's not that inherently humorous It rules but it is not funny That you would share

Round Ball Rock with the rest of it Yeah We know We got it. Thank you very much Playoff Grinch Observation number two ESPN's random nostalgia

So on So I'm watching the Mavs Clippers game As I'm sure you were yesterday Mavericks are down 17 at halftime. And NBA, or excuse me, ESPN goes to the half. And the final image they show, David, is a still photo of former Mav Mark Aguire, which notes that in 1984, he became the first Maverick to make the All-Star team. This is the final image before we go to Stephen A. and company.

Now, I love NBA history. I particularly love the 1980s Dallas Mavericks team I grew up with. What does that have to do with anything we are watching right now? Yeah. A photo of Mark Aguier. Same thing during the Knicks Sixers game for earlier in the day. They're going to commercial and here's a photo of Marie's Cheeks. Now, he played for the Sixers.

He also played for the Knicks. But are we doing let's remember some guys? That's what I was just going to say. During the NBA playoffs, like if Dr. Jay and AI are sitting courtside like they were on Sunday, take as many camera shots of that very unlikely duo as you want. Have at it. If you want to come back from a break and be like,

in 1984, the Nixon Sixers had a memorable playoff matchup and give me like a couple of grainy highlights. I absolutely love it. I don't get random NBA history. injected into meaningful games. No, I totally agree. Somebody's playing like Mark Aguier?

Maybe he could do it. No, it felt like a, like, this was the first time the Mavericks had ever made the playoff. It was like, it was like a team that had gone a thousand years without a championship. And now we're just going to review all the great moments of the, of the franchise. Like, because this might, you know,

this is, it's so great they finally, all these people have laid the bricks, like the foundation for getting here. they have. I don't know. Maybe they're just trying to just spike Mark Aguire's Wikipedia page views. ESPN needs a whole NBA aesthetic revamp, which I am happy to outline here on the podcast when the new rights deal comes in. Part of it is when we go to a commercial, we should just be showing the stadium and all the fans going cuckoo or the players like shaking their heads on the bench or high-fiving

playing a neat little jingle like round ball rock. Still photos and weird mellow things like that. I think that just takes you out of the game. What are we doing here, folks? All right, coming up in 30 seconds, the Biden White House and the New York Times have decided to see other leaders of the free world. What happened?

But first, let's do the overworked 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, always gratefully received. David, the Lakers beat the Nuggets Saturday night after losing to them 11 straight times. An overwork Twitter joke to write, nobody beats LeBron James 12 times in a row. Thanks to Rhett Bender for that one.

But this week's winner, David, the weirdest offseason and the NFL goes to the Atlanta Falcons, who signed Kirk Cousins to a $100 million contract, or excuse me, $100 million signing bonus, $180 million contract, and then took a quarter of a quarter. quarterback at number nine in the draft. Michael Penix. It was an overworked Twitter joke during the draft right now. The Falcons will also draft

Spencer Rattler from South Carolina. We would have also accepted the Falcons must have been on auto draft. Thanks to Peter Schrager and Dennis Schwarz for that one. I agree. If you're smarter than the Falcons, congrats. You made the

overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, a couple of things in the notebook dump. I want to direct your attention to this big story in Politico. Came out Thursday. It's by Eli Stokels, who may listen to this podcast, or at least is in the extended press box family. The title of the story is the petty feud between the New York Times and the White House. Oh, yeah. A petty feud, David. And the first two-thirds of this article is very interesting. It's got a great opening anecdote that I will not spoil here. I encourage you to go read the story. But the complaints we hear from both sides, from the New York Times, but especially

from the Biden White House, are somewhat predictable. They remind you of the complaints a Democratic administration is almost always going to have with the New York Times. You're short selling our accomplishments. You're not tough enough on the Republicans. You're trying to do on the one hand, on the other hand kind of journalism when the other hand is the end of democracy as we know. Yeah. And look, it'd be a little alarming

if the Biden White House and the New York Times political team were actually getting along well. Yeah. Kind of not the job. But then, David, about two-thirds of the way through, the story takes a very interesting turn.

And this is what got a big reaction from the Times itself. Give you a few quotes here from Eli Stokel's story. as Times publisher AG Solsberger often tells colleagues, and as he and executive editor Joe Kahn have stressed in private conversations with the administration, every modern president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has done an interview with the Times. In Solsberger's view, according to two people familiar with his private comments on the subject, only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit

to hold the presidency. Dot, dot, dot. Here's a quote. All these Biden people think the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they're mad at that day, one Times journalist said. It's AG. He's the one who is pissed. Biden hasn't done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting

on his age. So a couple of interesting things there. The Times nursing the grudge that Biden hasn't talked to them. And then the. the insinuation. I don't know if it's reporting exactly if it's in a quote, but let's say the contention that A.G. Solsberger, the publisher is the one

encouraging the tough reporting on Biden's age. New York Times reporter is not super happy with that contention and or insinuation. Jonathan Swan, star reporter tweets out, for what it's worth, I have spoken AG over the past year about this topic, and this caricature is unrecognized, I never usually comment on media stories, but this irritated me because it's such a BS mischaracterization of his views about the importance of serious long-form presidential interviews. Called the idea that Salzberger said that only the Times could verify Biden's fitness for office untrue and preposterous.

As Ted Herndon, who has appeared on this podcast, said, quote, all of you all have too much experience with politico-anonymous quotes to be treating this as gospel. Yeah. So what do you make of the New York Times Politico and Joe Biden? Well, I mean, I think it's court, it feels like a story in search of story, right? I mean, it's like the fact that there is a quiet feud, I think, is a fact. I think trying to sort of parse the whole thing out is where you just immediately go astray because these are both big organizations with a lot of, conflicting motivations and, and, um, I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of, a lot of, a lot of situations

like this are indeed, uh, built upon some level of pettiness. But it's like as soon as you say, this is why this is, this is why you like go to therapy and say these things out loud, because you just immediately realize just the, like the ridiculousness of what you're thinking, you know, of your, of your thought process. It's like as soon as you write the story, it sort of ceases to become true if it ever was. And I don't know. It just like, I don't know. These are just the, it's, this is too big, you know,

organizations. I'll use a term again with a lot of things in common that are just sort of, you know, at odds right now. I'm sure, you know, they just wrote the story again in six months. It could be a totally different situation. Maybe. I mean, aren't they, aren't they just destined to be at odds? with each other? Well, I think so. I mean, that's kind of what I'm getting at. I just don't know what the,

I don't know what the story is. And, and I mean, the New York Times should on some level always be at odds with an administration. And I would just assume that the administration, and of course, we're using that term as a blanket when more than anything, it's probably, you know, the, the comms team of the administration. Oh, yeah. Right. Is, like, it would, it's, why is that even a little it shocking to be like, oh yeah, they're pissy about what they perceive to be bad coverage. Like that's like that's the perpetual state of being for a comms team.

Was interesting with Biden and Howard Stern. He like asked Howard what he thought about the media. Uh-huh. And clearly, I mean, I think we don't have to guess that Biden also shares this idea. The institutions like the times are not alarmed

enough about Donald Trump. Yeah. This is this impasse we talk about between the paper of record and it could be Joe Biden himself. It could be Democrats and liberals on Twitter that are mad at the times. This is what they say, right? There's this thing happening and you're worried about these other things. You're worried about Biden's age.

You're worried about getting an interview with Joe Biden. You're petty journalistic concerns. You're just not meeting the moment, right? This is 18 versions of the same argument. I will say something that really struck me when I, I read the thing about verifying Biden's fitness for office with an interview. On the one hand, that has a very, very entitled. I think that words actually used in the piece feel to it.

On the other hand, let's imagine this. Let's imagine there was an aging wrestling impresario. And I'm going to leave names out of this because the one that would actually fit the bill is not a wrestling impresario anymore. But there was an aging wrestling impresario. and there were some questions about whether he could run the WW. He was up to the job. You would want an interview with that person to draw your own conclusions or at least inform your own conclusions about that.

Yes. I mean, you would want and you could have people telling you inside the wrestling organization, hey man, he's fine. He's up to the job. He's doing great. No problems here. But as a journalist, of course you would want as much. firsthand information to inform your opinion.

That's what I was going to say, because it informs the other things you're writing about. It felt like they're talking about specifically writing a piece where it's like, like, you know, like when they're when they endorse a candidate or something, where they're just sort of like put out, put a giant thing on the op-ed page where it says, like, Joe Biden is a nine out of ten mental acuity. Like, are they really doing a rating? Because here, because what you asked, because you, because you, you ask that, because you, said what you said was the right thing to say. I would want that to do that interview too so that I

would know, right? And certainly that's helpful for like I said informing other things you write, the rest of your coverage for having some kind of frame of preference. But in terms of like the intrinsic job of a newspaper, which is to report and inform the public, I think it seems a little bit misbegotten because who, like, who is the person that would change their, their existing opinion of Joe Biden's mental state based on the say-so from the New York Times? Wouldn't that, wouldn't, if they wrote about it, wouldn't it immediately just be hacked up in the same partisan, like, cotton gin that just chops, chops up everything else? I mean, I just don't know, I just don't, I mean, I guess if you were a, a traditional liberal,

and you read the times every day and you're like, oh, sorry, guys. We did not know how bad it was. Then that might affect your opinion. But I just think if they came out and said, oh, no, it turns out he's really smart. Nobody's, this doesn't change anybody's opinion. I love the phrase partisan cotton gin,

which I hope ran in the Atlanta Constitution 40 years ago, at least once. Well, first of all, I don't think that, I don't think the interview at the times would be like a cognitive test necessarily. Right. a lot of information they want from Joe Biden too. Like, what are you going to do to end the war in Gaza? As we've seen on college campuses, that's kind of an issue these days, right? There's a lot of stuff you want to ask Joe Biden about.

So that's part of it. You're right. Them, even in an imaginary world where they would come out and testify to his fitness for office, I don't even necessarily even think that's what it is so much. I think it is about like we just like with. any presidential candidate. It could be the fact that he's 81 years old. It could be just to be a fact, like, we want to talk to George W. Bush to see, to get a sense of how decisions are made in the White House. Like, what does he know about foreign policy? What does he know about these things?

Okay. Because it's, to me, it's a, there's a broader just, I'm a newsman or newswoman and I want to, I want to talk to this person for myself because of course I do. Yeah. I mean, I think the Biden administration's message is really clear. If you want to talk to this guy, go back in time and start a shock jock morning radio show 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And then you will get to talk to him in 2024. In other news, the onion is back. Oh, yeah. Big news.

Big news. We have so many stories on here about the bad people bought a publication. Yep. Is it possible that the good people bought a publication? I don't know, man. It kind of seems like it. It kind of seems like it. I mean, I don't want to get overly excited here.

I don't want to get overly optimistic by the future of journalism. But man, I hope there's somebody sitting at a, you know, hedge fund somewhere that's got a bunch of newspaper assets that they're big body they're going to buy that just see the warm reception that they're getting by just saying, hey, we're just going to let the people who know how to do this or run the show and hopefully make them a lot more money in the process. And not destroy the thing that we bought. Yeah, not set it on fire first. I hope there's somebody watching this and realizing that maybe this is a path forward. Because there's not going to be a million versions of, you know, the onion being saved. But, you know, maybe they'll present some semblance of a model for this,

for just, you know, legacy media moving forward. The they you speak of is a firm in Chicago called Global Tetrahedron. Love global tetrahedron. I'm a longtime fan. Which is the Times notes as a winking reference to the sinister fictional company featured in the book Our Dumb Century. The real life global tetrahedron, Times continues, is owned by Jeff Lawson, a co-founder and former chief executive of the technology communications company Twilio,

The chief executive has Ben Collins, who was a former, who was a senior reporter at NBC News until recently. Ben Collins has been on the press box. Also, Dawes Mavericks fan. And he's got a lot going on right now. Very importantly. And he tweets this, my friends and I now own and run the onion. I'll be the CEO. We're keeping the entire staff, bringing back the Onion News Network and share the wealth with staff.

Basically, we're going to let them do whatever they want. Get excited. The new onion. Amazing stuff. In other 90s media news, David, Graydon Carter is opening a newsstand. Wait, I don't know about this. He really is?

He really is. In the West Village of New York City, he is opening a newsstand. Though as airmail, his publication notes, even the most useless actuary would advise you against opening a newsstand. Oh, God. I'm a huge fan of this.

So I want to ask you, like the old dreams, which you and I certainly, certainly harbored at various times, open a movie theater particularly a repertory movie theater that showed old movies open a bookstore now do we have to add a third leg to that stool

open a newsstand I mean I wanted to open a newsstand before I really knew what a newsstand was or at least was living in New York and constantly you know in their presence I guess they did travel around enough as a kid to like Europe and stuff that I must have seen them.

A bunch of weird, you know, asterix comics off of news, you know, from newsstands in my travels. By the way, there's a, there's a newsstand in Philadelphia. Philly has a,

a former newsstand that has been converted into a old comic book shop. So everywhere where the magazines used to be are now just like 20 year old comic books, which is just an, and not even, almost an even better idea. But opening a new stand would be,

So much fun. I mean, part of it's just the just the allure of I get to read magazines. You know, this is your dream when you like just sit around reading magazines and newspapers and drinking cups of coffee all day. It's like, well, this could be my job. And, you know, that's, it's sort of like, the idea is sort of like what being like active on Twitter is like now where you just get to say, hey, look at this article,

you should read this. And people are like, God, Brian, thank you so much for pointing this out. it's really true and then you make some droll comment and they're just like that's why i come to your newsstand and then that's it's so true would we have a special section in the newsstand for the like life magazine presents the history of mash or jesus or would we banish those kind of things from the david and brian newsstand oh man i think you got to keep them i think they'd probably make you some good money i don't know i just may just give them their i like to just treat them with not with just over-excitement as a sort of mode of winking disrespect.

Just like, holy shit, did you see the new issue of Jesus that just came out? Would you be like a newsie hawking that? Oh, yeah. Like, just give bad advice, but hopefully everybody realizes this tongue and chikis you should put up your issue of the U.S. news and world reports in Bloomberg. And I'm just like, oh my God, did you see that Crosby still is Nash and Young just hit the shells? It's a new aggregation, ladies and gentlemen, hot off the press. It seemed like the perfect audience for this.

Few only in journalism words before we go. I apologize to everyone because there has been an avalanche of only in journalism submissions. I'm going to have to hold some until next time. But we did get some great ones. This was self-reported. We encourage all journalists to self-report their only only in journalism submissions. You get a more lenient sentence from the press box if you do. Variety, Stephen Roderick wrote a review of Conan O'Brien's new show on Max.

And I want you to guess what the only in journalism term is here. All right. So it's a positive review, David. But then in the final paragraph or perhaps the penultimate paragraph, you have a few reservations about the thing you're reviewing. You have a... Um, Cota. Uh, no, a, uh, a post script.

just a few I have a few reservations I don't know what is it a minor quibble oh minor quibble that's right that is the

Acapulco gold of only in journalism for reviews 90% of the review positive and then a minor quibble yeah and if you do

the full New York Times book review then in the last burger if you go still this is and wash all those reservations away the Nuggets went up

3-0 on the Lakers as mentioned they took a commanding 3-0 series lead that comes from listener L. Horse. And I love this one, dude. Winswept. Win swept. Our friend Rattie says every island off the coast of Ireland or England is always winswept.

True. It's kind of only in travel writing. I actually don't even know like really what windswept means. Like I feel like I can picture. it when it's written, sort of, but like, it's not just that I wouldn't use that word. It's like, I can't imagine being in a situation where I would be like, ah, wind swept. That's clearly what I'm looking at right now, right? Does it just mean windy?

That's why I don't know. There's often wind here. Reminds me when I was younger and would read the lonely planet books all the time. And if you went to like a rich foreign capital, the go-to adjective was always flashy. and he went to a less wealthy foreign capital. The adjectives were always gritty but soulful. Yeah. Defendistrate.

I've gotten a lot of emails saying that Puck has taken to fenestrate too far. You know now you never lose a media job. You are only defenestrated. Puck specifically? Yeah. Well, Puck, I believe, either started or has popularized the bit, which you and I have also had a hand in. Yeah.

But do we need to defenestrate, defenestrate? Uh, I mean, I feel like it's kind of tongue and cheek when they do it, right? It is.

It's written in that kind of puck style where it feels a little bit like somebody reached into a bag of SAT words, grabbed a handful, and then threw them on the screen. And eventually it becomes a catchphrase. I don't know, you're the judge. I'll let you decide.

Don't you love that one, when you get a puck lead that's like, Ms. Onsen, the fenestrate Vulcan chess at ABC News. And I'm like, I don't know what this means, but click, I will read this story. Very, very funny. It does, it does have that kind of, kind of flattering feel for a reader.

Yeah. These are bigger words. We know you know what this means. It makes you feel good because you know what it means because you read Puck. And for the outsider, for the uninitiated, we either want to understand where you feel left out. And I'm sure if it's puck, just like, that's not our reader. I've also told you how obsessed I am with the magazine headline whenever there's a celebrity profile. Celebrity doesn't care what you think.

Oh, yeah. Dude, we got a new one. New York Times is doing an interview podcast with Andrew Marchese. It sounds pretty cool. Ann Hathaway is the first guest. Here's the headline. Anne Hathaway is done trying to please everyone. Yeah.

By doing an interview with the New York Times, that's how we know they're done. They don't care what we think. They talk to a major magazine. All right, speaking of major, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Tuesday's headline about a divergence in political leanings between men and women was, he said she fled.

Today's headline comes to us from loyal listener Matthew Felling. It's from the Portland Press Herald in the great state of Maine. It's the story, David, of a buoy. a buoy. Yeah. This buoy washed up on the beach. I'm not going to clutter your mind with any place names or anything like that. I'm just going to ask what was the Portland Press Herald's strained pun headline.

Is it like buoy? Bowie Meets. Bowie Meets World. Oh, booy meets world. Is that really it? He went right there, folks. Oh, that's great. He went right freaking there.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Brian Waters. Coming up Thursday, we got Andy McCullough, the athletic on the podcast. Nice. Monday, Shoemaker and I return with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.