The Press Box - Kamala Harris Is Coming to Your Podcast, Players Are Trying to Eject Reporters From the Locker Room, and Our National Bit Crisis

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David open with two contradictory ideas: “The return of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog” and “there are too many bits (0:36).”Then they get into the following: Kamala Harris's current podcast tour (10:12) NFL players wanting to kick reporters out of the locker room (22:54) Kate Winslet playing a war correspondent in the movie 'Lee' (31:03) Everyone is introducing a paywall (36:27) Later they react to breaking news, as Shams Charania joins ESPN as the new senior NBA reporter (44:34). 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

Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, Jalo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, colon the 2000s. Wow.

That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 songs that explain the 90s, colin the 90s, colonel in the 2000s. in the 2000s, preferably on Spotify. David? Yes. I want to start with two contradictory ideas. Oh, okay.

Idea number one. We have seen the return of one of our most intrepid investigative reporters. I speak, of course, of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. I thought that's where this was going, all right? born on Conan O'Brien's show 25 plus years ago he reappeared in the spin room at the VEEP debate last Tuesday now working for the Daily Show

triumph as a freelancer just like many of our journalist friends always weird to see something rebooted that you thought was funny a quarter century ago then the question becomes is it still funny or maybe was it even funny? to begin with. Or am I just old?

Am I just old? I'm pleased to report that for me, DuPopan, is still funny. He shows up in the spin room dressed as Hulk Hogan. Mm-hmm. And he even had a placard

printed up like they hold in the spin room that you can identify which Democratic or Republican luminary is doing the spinning that just said Hogan. Then he came off. wearing a wig that looked like one that Vicky Lawrence wore in Mama's

family. Wow. And he was playing J.D. Vance's me maw. Somehow you got even more just like more nostalgic than trying to insult comic dog by going Mama's

family of all these. That's a good, that's an accurate point of reference, but also wow, mama's family. Speaking of stuff that holds up. So Triumph is wandering around as Meemaw and as the Hulkster and he happens upon the CNN set.

By the way, you can watch this entire act on YouTube. He wanders to the CNN set and of course, Jake Tapper immediately understands what's going on here. And understands what a wonderful opportunity it is to welcome

Triumph, who's been photo bombing him onto his CNN debate reaction show. Yes. But the gold here, is the Daily Show cameras capturing Dana Bash, who has, is absolutely stone face, either doesn't know what's going on or doesn't want to be a part of this. And Abby Phillip, who coincidentally just needs to be on her phone at this moment and not engaging with the dog puppet, Tapper welcomes him on the air and then realizes that he is doing

J.D. Vance's meme on immediately shifts the car in reverse. It's like, whoa, we're not, we're not doing that on television. At least our television. A little too hot for CNN. Triumph did score one-on-one interviews with both J.B. Prisker and Mark Kelly, as well as the press box's very own Alex Thompson of Axios.

So idea number one, Triumph is back. Yeah. Now here is the semi-contradictory idea number two. David, there are too many bits. Oh, wait. In life? In life. Not particularly with comedy shows. Not particularly with the Great Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, with us in the media. Oh, okay.

So two days after the vice presidential debate, I turned to the New York Times homepage. And there is a video starring Tony Hale, which is called a Veep Star vibe checks, the Vance Wall Show, down. Right. In this video just transplants Tony Hale onto the moderator's desk of the VEP debate and has him make funny faces whenever the candidates say stuff. Right. This is in the module, the New York Times homepage that has all the opinion columns. Yeah.

We got Brett Stevens and then we got a Tony Hale bit. Yeah. Now, if you have been reading various media entities in 2024, you notice. bits all over the place. Sometimes you get something fairly polished like this. Sometimes you get just a comedian that has been enlisted by the media entity to just do something funny on camera. Last month, a New Yorker tweeted out a comedian telling jokes about this prompt,

and I'm not making this up. Here's what your seat choice on an airplane says about you. That is the should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame? of comedy. Like surely that bit was done for my entire life by everyone. One person tweeted when they saw this New Yorker bit, at least when the cartoons aren't funny, I still feel smart.

The third form of media institutions doing a bit is the spiritual air to either triumph in the Star Wars line or maybe Cousin Sal working the streets of Hollywood for Jimmy Kimmel. Yeah. Where you give your reporter a microphone. and send them to a game or a big event. Yep. Except in this case,

the reporter usually isn't very funny. They're just like, hey, guys, I'm at the thing. Yeah. I'm making content at the thing. I am here, guys.

Look at this, guys. This is my message, David. We're not that funny. We're journalists. And I know because we all have websites now and we all have YouTube channels and we all have podcasts and everything that we think we can do what television sketch comedy shows do, we can't.

No, we cannot. Unless you are funny, funny, you should not be doing those things. If you're just journalism funny, there's a perfect medium for you. It's called a podcast. Yeah. You know, people driving the car, they get a little smile. That was cute, that thing Curtis of Shoemaker said. That was mildly clear.

clever. There are too many bits. You agree with me here? Can I enlist you to my side? I agree. Listen, I'm sympathetic, right? I mean, it's like, well, you mentioned podcasts. I mean, it's like, you know, when someplace like the New York Times first starts doing podcasts, like this is not what we do. And, you know, this is not, we're not going to become some podcast empire, but maybe we can figure out a way to have a couple of podcasts that feel of a piece with what we're doing. And then if it, it, can bring some of that podcast audience back into the fold. You know, everybody's got a place here, big media tent and all that.

And I'm sure that there's, you know, a lot of conversations about in a similar way. How do we go viral? How do we get? How do we find just some little thing? If you can just get one funny thing to pick up some steam on Twitter, then maybe that'll bring some people back into the New York Times full.

But it's just, it's a lot harder than, you know, doing a podcast. or to do it well, right? And I don't mean to make light of what we do here, this hard, hard work. No.

But, yeah, but not to minimize it. But, yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it's a lot of bits. It's a lot of bits. I mean, part of the difficulty is even Tony Hale is, I'm sure probably the highest paid person at the New Yorker, you know, when he's doing that thing. You know, I mean, it's, we're working at. New York Times.

Sorry, the New York Times. It would, and, yeah, we're working in a different stratosphere, you know? I mean, it's, it's, this is always going to be the push pull of, of, of new media integrating with old media, you know, I mean, there are times of the ring or I was just like, you know what, like, what if our most talented writers were the ones running our Twitter account? It's like, that's actually, our voice would be out there in the world, right? But then it's like, well, we're paying an awful lot of money for someone to tweet, you know, we're paying and we're also not getting, and also that person's now not writing anymore. So, you know,

you did. Sorry, David. I was busy with. Twitter. I couldn't file the day. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it was, it's, it's tough. I always think media entities get in trouble when they try to do everything. Yeah. Economically in trouble and also artistically in trouble. Sure. Because you just see that. And again, I understand. It just feels like the world's flattened out. There's not a lot of distance between the New York Times and the Daily Show. Why can't we be the Daily Show? Why can't we do something funny? Well, It has to be funny. Yeah.

Otherwise, we're just, we're just trying to do too much here. Coming up on our podcast, which contains absolutely no bits at all, congratulations, David. Kamala Harris is probably doing your podcast. Yeah, this one, no, not ours. Tang. Yeah, maybe the mess man. Plus, NFL players want to kick us out of the locker room.

Kate Winslet plays a war correspondent, and media companies have declared, we're going to build a paywall, and the readers are going to pay for it. all that and much more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shumaker, and producer Brian Waters here.

David, there's a lot of talk that Kamala Harris wasn't doing enough media. Sure. Ooh. You should see her schedule this week. Yep. She's already done the Call Her Daddy podcast. She's going to do 60 minutes tonight.

On Tuesday, she is doing The View, Howard Stern, and Stephen Colbert. Oh. And she's got an Univision town hall later this week. Meanwhile, Tim Walls,

who'd also been kept in the bullpen for quite a while, is going to be doing Jimmy Kimmel tonight and also taping the Smartless podcast. Yeah. So now we're going to go from, wow, they're not doing any media to, oh my gosh,

you and I as keepers of the media podcast have to listen to a ton of stuff. How much of Call Her Daddy or the previous Kamala Harris podcast, all the smoke, did you allow yourself to sample? I did watch a good bit of all the smoke and

cut the clips from Call Her Daddy. But wait, let me ask you a question. Do you feel more obligated to keep up with Kamala Harris on podcasts because that's your realm than you do her say like Jimmy Kimmel appearances or what have you? It's a good question. I don't know if there's any more obligation.

They seem more fun. Yeah. Just on the surface, but they are also longer. Mm-hmm. And you and I both have that clogged podcast cue. That's true. True. A president, even at 1.5 speed,

can take a lot of time and energy to listen to. Indeed. Our presidential candidate, I should say. Do you want to talk about all the smoke? Because I thought that was the better of the two interviews. Yeah. It's so interesting when you put somebody on a podcast

rather than the formal newsmaking network TV interview. One, because the topics are different, but two, because the questions are different. Yep. And they tend to be very, very open-ended. They tend to kind of follow the candidate rather than trying to lead the candidate into or force the candidate to answer the very specific

question you want them to answer. Yeah. It's sort of like how we discussed Howard Stern, who's relevant to this conversation, you know, in previous conversations we've had about him. And I wouldn't want either or where it's like, okay, we're never going to force you to answer a question about Iran or Israel, because certainly those are important questions and sounds like Kamal Harris is getting into that on 60 minutes tonight. Yeah. But they are a very different experience.

I was watching all the smoke and she starts talking about being a stepmom. And she was talking about how she had to create this environment with her stepchildren where she could love them and they could love her, but she didn't want to make it feel like they were or didn't want to make them feel like they were being disloyal to their mother. Yeah. By having a relationship with her. So she was saying, well, I would just always ask them, how's your mom doing?

How's your mom doing? And when I was cooking, I'd be like, oh, your mom's a good. cook. How does she do this? Yeah. How does she make this? And you're, I'm sitting there listening to that. I'm like, I am so much more likely to remember Kamala Harris talking about the little subtleties of being a stepmom than I am almost any other question she answers. Yep. During this campaign cycle.

Mm-hmm. It's really interesting. And, you know, it's like in both cases, right, the politician is trying to ace the test. Sure. sit down with Dan Abash. You're trying to get the right most politically adept answer on whatever burning question you're asked. What would you describe this?

You're trying to ace the test on you are a good hang, as Bomani Jones put it on Thursday. Yeah. You're a real person? Yeah. I mean, I think it's just a good hang test. Yeah. But also, there's just so much stuff like you were saying that you can, that it's, It's conversations that don't exist in the regular media sphere.

You know, it's like as much as the traditional news networks will go, will analyze various types of voters, you know, going back to, you know, soccer moms and whatever else. Like they acknowledge there's all these different demographics that are incredibly important to sort of predicting the election to the election itself, to who's going to win. Yeah, the news interview, the traditional

news interviews seem to sort of be stuck in a very specific point in the past, right? I mean, I don't know if most of that news anchors would be the people you'd want to talk to or want to hear them, hear candidates talk to about those things. But, yeah, I mean,

it's which president, which candidate would you rather have a beer with? I mean, this is your audition for that trip to the bar if you're a candidate, right? Yeah, I totally think so. Benji Silerland was tweet about this today, like that when you think about those conventional news interviews, they're often very, very short.

And it'd be interesting if more news anchors were given 40 minutes, like Alex Cooper was given with Kamala Harris. Sure. Because maybe they wouldn't just do, okay, burning issue number one, burning issue number one, burning issue. I got to get through these, right? I got to get you on the record about all these things. And maybe they would treat it slightly differently.

It'd be interesting to see what Howard Stern comes up with, speaking of long-form interviews when he interviews Harris tomorrow. Also, a really funny over-correction on Twitter about these interviews. I feel like there were a lot of, like, hey, why is she doing fake interviews with podcasters instead of real interviews with journalists? Somehow that got over-corrected to all these interviews are fantastic, and all the questions are great if they're asked on a podcast. Yeah.

Folks, I invite you to actually listen to all the smoke and call her daddy interviews. And then you write down all the questions that we're asking, you come back and tell me if every single one of those was a fantastic question. This is my thing about podcasts. It's like, I love podcasts. I am a podcaster, but the more successful they are, they become less about the world out there and more about. about the podcast itself and its hosts.

Oh, absolutely true. And you could feel that a little bit early in the old smoke interview where the host kept interrupting Kamala Harris when she was talking. He's like, oh, it's my turn now because I usually, you know, get my time, get my reps on this.

It's like, no, no, this may be one of those times where you just want to ask a question and get out of the way. Yeah. Just let the possible future of the free leader of the free world go. Yeah. On the Call Her Daddy podcast, there were so many questions from Alex Cooper about the Call Her Daddy podcast.

Yes. The second question was, why are you doing this podcast? Yeah, that's an important question, but yes. But what is, what is Kamala Harris going to say other than to compliment the podcast itself when you ask, why are you doing this podcast? Yeah. What's the other answer there? Well, what's so great about this podcast? We've been looking at lots of different things

and this one came up. It's very funny and I feel this goes to a confusion sometimes on media Twitter about whether you're doing actual media criticism or you're trying to give advice to Kamala Harris about how to get her message out. Yeah. Those things are often not the same.

So you wind up saying, well, of course she goes on this spot. Well, this doesn't mean that everything was fantastic. It was done exactly how you'd do it. Got a couple of vice presidential debate leftovers for you. I was watching the debate and the first smile I had of the evening is when CNN put the file photos up of J.D. Vance and Tim Walz. And J.D. Vance looked about as dower as you could possibly look.

And Tim Walls looked like the Jack Nicholson Joker in the first Tim Burton Batman movie. Yes. Like here is the dower candidate and here's the smiling candidate. And then J.D. Vance pulled the switcheroo and he was really nice, which clearly threw Tim Wals. Yeah, for sure. Also, Tim Wals was writing a ton of stuff down during the debate. Did you notice that like every time J.D. Vance started talking, he was just writing and writing and writing notes to himself. Yeah, I think it's a good move. I also think it's like a defensive move, right? It's just like when the camera's on you, the most, like the least problematic thing you can probably be doing is to be looking down and writing notes. Right?

People, yeah. Well, I mean, of course, there have been moments where, I mean, many moments where the reaction on the face of the candidate is helpful to the reactor. But in terms of just like minimization of potential harm, just look down, write notes, draw doodles of your dog. You know, like that's, you look studious. You look thoughtful. You certainly don't look like you have an opinion. Every time, too, he tried to make a face.

it wound up being a very memeable face. Yeah, exactly. You know what it reminded me of is football coach sideline face. If you just took screenshots of coaches during games when there was a bad call or a missed field goal or a fumble, I think they would look like Tim Walz's face. Yeah, well, let's see, you know, he's a coach. He also had kind of that nervous coach energy

where he would just like be looking down right notes and then spin around to his right and suddenly stare at JD Vance. Very coach-like. We always get a couple of very unfortunate quotes from a debate. You know, it's high pressure. You're asking questions. You're trying to think on the fly. And Wall's definitely one with the quote,

I've become friends with school shooters. He was having this very emotional moment where he was talking about Sandy Hook and he was talking about gun laws. And then he said, I've become friends with school shooters. And for some reason, it was forced to actually clean it up with the press. I think we all know that Tim Walls did not mean to say that. I don't know that we needed a fact check from Daniel Dale on that one.

All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds, NFL players want to kick sports writers out of the locker room. So why are we there in the first place? But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrated gag. It 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 were always, always gratefully received. Last Monday, David, we lost Pete Rose.

Hit King, 83 years old. You sure did. Banned for life from baseball for gambling. Would you like a sampling of the tweets about Pete Rose who we lost at 83? Sure. Number one here for you, damn it. I took the under at 82.

two and a half. Number two, Major League Baseball is heartbroken to hear of the passing of Pete Rose. Please use code Pete Rose to get $1,000 first bet insurance for the 2024 MLB postseason. And finally, for... That's good. And finally, for eternity, Pete Rose will be across the street from heaven signing baseballs. You were a 90 sports columnist and you wrote every other column about Pete Rose.

Congrats. You made the overworked. Twitter joke of the week. By the way, you saw Donald Trump tweeting about how Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame during the vice presidential debate? Yes. Such a primo sports radio topic that even

during the debate, Trump could not resist. Weighing in. All right, in the notebook dump, turns out, David, that NFL players are trying to boot reporters out of the locker room. They would love to take those interviews we do while they are changing clothes or wearing a

towel and take them someplace else. A public space rather than a private space. Now, league policy says that the locker room has to be open after games. But NFL players last week were taking advantage of a stipulation the Washington Post explained that locker room interviews that were done after a practice during the week, those the player could say, hey, I'd rather talk to you outside. Yeah. And in that instance, player and report.

step outside to do the interview. Yes. So it brings up an interesting question, which is why are reporters interviewing players in the locker room to begin with? I feel like we've been here before, but yes, go on. It's very weird. An inherently weird, you might say. If you were interviewing Joaquin Phoenix backstage on the set of the Joker 2,

he would likely not be taking off his clothes while you were interviewing him. hopefully not, yeah. A former wide receiver, Tori Smith, tweeted if y'all, if only y'all knew how awkward some of the male reporters act straight meat watchers this week, that sounds funny, but that is a complaint that reporters act weird or that they're staring at the players that you hear often. Michelle Roberts, who was head of the NBAPA, made similar comments a decade ago saying, why are people just hanging around the locker room? if you don't have a question you need to get out. Yeah. So that's from the player's point of view. Sports writers will tell you,

yeah, it's inherently weird, but it's the only possible way to talk to a bunch of players efficiently after a game. Yeah. Got 53 players on an NFL roster. Think about the Cowboy Steelers game

that I was up late, at least in West Coast terms, watching last night. I want to talk to Dak Prescott. you want to talk to running back RICO Dowdell, who had a great game and then almost fumbled it away at the goal line at the end. Wide receiver Jalen Tolbert caught the winning touchdown. Zach Martin got hurt.

So did Tyler Guyton. So did Marshawn Nealyn. Tyler Smith had to fill in a left tackle for Tyler Guyton. C.D. Lamb was saying something to Dak Prescott on the sidelines that NBC made a big deal of. Yeah. Probably want to get some clarity there. We're pretty close to 10 people already. and that's just my amateurish cowboys fan viewing of the game.

So sports writers would say, how do we do that? If there's not a locker room setting where we can just quickly go, maybe only spending 20, 30 seconds with some people, but quickly go from station to station to try to get the information. Yeah. And I think part of the reason that we're still doing in the locker room is that the answer that that question has not been figured out.

If Toyd was doing it in like an ante room or something, right? Okay, so there's a locker room. That's private and that's where the players change. Maybe you hang out in this other room for a while for 30 minutes and then go into the locker room. Yeah. But what player's going to want to do that

coming off the field covered in sweat trying to get their stuff off, trying to get in the shower, trying to get home? Uh-huh. Then you have that happening, right? And really, are you going to build another room that's going to have 53 people in it plus all the media? Yeah, probably not.

It's just, it's one of those things that is. So that's like the, I think that, you know, the reason you would say, why is this happening? That's the reason in terms of convenience and in terms of letting the media do their job. The other part of it is hanging around that thing that makes some players kind of arch and eyebrow. That's how you build relationships with players. which doesn't mean the players like you, doesn't mean you kiss their ass, but you develop a working relationship

that is the basis of sports writing. So that you know each other a little bit. Again, who, you know, how that's going to go, I don't know, but there was an example of this after yesterday's Raiders Broncos game where Max Crosby, Raiders defensive end, had missed a game. And he wasn't on the sidelines for that game. And Mike Lombardi, former Ringer podcaster, went on the Pat McAfee show and wondered if there wasn't some disconnect in the Raiders

locker room because Max Crosby was not around. Yeah. So here's Crosby with reporters in the locker room after the game. And then I got to hear these, you know, clowns that talking online and talking on the Pat McAfee show saying, you know, I'm something's always. on and they're speaking for me saying I should be on the sideline when I got a high ankle spring you know what I mean these clowns are sitting on a couch talking about what I should be doing but the reality is I'm gaining yardage and trying to get right and so I can get back on the field

everybody knows my intentions they try to speak for me when shit if you speak to me and you know what's going on then we could have a conversation but don't speak on my name you know what I mean so that's kind of the nub of it right do you want people going on television and freestyling or do you want reporters in the locker room who are asking you questions? Yeah. And working from a position of knowledge and a relationship. And again, maybe there is some magic solution that the NFL will invent and the NFLPA will get on board with and even reporters,

beat reporters who do a really good job and are in there every day and say, ah, this works. This is a locker room style setup that is not the actual locker room. where we can do our job or we can do it efficiently, we can build those relationships, but I haven't seen it yet. I don't totally know what it is. Yeah,

I don't know what the answer is either, obviously, but it does seem like it, it seems like it should be solvable, right? I mean, it's a pretty straightforward question and answer. I mean, and,

and, yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe a post game mandatory. I mean, could you not just, yeah,

just a locker room that's not the locker room, right? Like everybody comes out of the shower and has to stay in this room for another hour, you know, and you can do, you know, do whatever you want. It seems fixable. But it's, I think it would be really hard. I think that all the questions that you initially raised are right on.

And I think it would be, it feels like one of the things that would be almost impossible to negotiate, right? Like the status quo would never be negotiated if they, if we were starting from scratch. And so a functional. fix that leaves everybody happy, at least to the degree that they are now, would probably be impossible to negotiate as well, because everybody would have to sign off on it. It's easier to keep the terrible version of the thing that we have now. It's interesting, too. The Cincinnati

Bengals alignment, Ted Karras quoted in the Washington Post talking about this, and he dates the discussions back to COVID. Yeah. This is what a lot of us said during COVID. Yeah, we talked about this before. I remember this. Right. As soon as you stop it. everybody's going to be like, why are we doing that to begin with? And obviously during COVID, there was no reason to have reporters wandering around the locker room during a public health emergency. But you knew that as soon as you started, as soon as you began to cut that off, everybody was going to be like, well, we're not going to go back, right? Yeah. To letting all those people in here.

Mm-hmm. After a game. Remember the whole Zoom era of post-game interviews? Yeah. Every beat writer shudders when they remember that one. Talk about non-relationship building. David, I went to the movies the other day.

Oh, there's big news for you. I went to a 9.45 a.m. movie. Oh, that's great. Does anything feel better more of a guilty pleasure than being at the movies at a time when you shouldn't be at the movies? No, it's the best.

It's the best. Like those great 10 a.m. screenings back in New York. Yeah, it's incredible stuff. There was one other person in the theater in Pasadena. them on the front row me on the very back row of a fairly small theater. You could feel both of us just enjoying the fact that there was one other human that had made the same decision we did,

but that a human was far away. Yeah. Nowhere near our space. The movie I went to see was a new biopic about a journalist called Lee. Stars Kate Winslet as Lee Miller, who was a model for Vogue who became a war photographer and covered World War II for vote. Kate Winslet, really good in the movie,

very easy to believe she is a photographer, less so Andy Samberg, who plays Miller's real-life friend from Life magazine, David Sherman. I'm not sure I got all the way there believing he was a photographer tromping around in arm of fatigues during the war. It's got all kinds of interesting things in it.

Of course, there were, as you can imagine, access issues during World War two about women who wanted to cover combat. One scene, Winsland has to disguise herself as a man to even slip into a press briefing. There was a scene I liked where before shipping out to France,

she's told that she should write her own obituary and mail it to Vogue. Oh, man. Which is standard practice for war reporters. We see Lee Miller go to liberated Paris to concentration camps. She visited Hitler's a

apartment in Munich, which had been repurposed as an American officer's club. And there, both the Kate Winslet character and the real-life Lee Miller took a picture of herself or had a picture of herself taken in Hitler's bathtub. That really happened. This is one of those, David, if this movie had been made in another time of cinema, it would have been a handsomely mounted only in journalism biopic with a big budget. here it's pretty lean and mean a lot of the shots look like we picked one angle that makes this look like it could credibly be post-World War II Europe

script to me also felt like it could use a few more trips with the typewriter but I enjoyed it I think it's worthwhile if you want to watch it at home when it gets to a streaming service near you it's got Alexander Scarsguard in it Marion Cotillard closing credit show Lee Miller's Real Life

pictures, which we see the character, the Winslet character taking in the movie. And it made me want to read a biography of Lee Miller to learn more, which is probably a pretty good result of a biopic. Yeah. Some other news from movie theaters. I don't know if you've experienced this with your kids, but are you aware that they're now selling two different kinds of Cheeto-flavored popcorn at the concession stand? I am sad to say I missed that. This is now happening. And we already had cheese popcorn so I don't know how much of a leap forward this is for no this is good

you get the official Cheeto cosine cosine. You get the Cheeto cosign and it's popped fresh like this is not something out of a box like it's popped with Cheeto dust on it. Yeah. And then there was a flaming hot bin and I believe

I was offered I did not take advantage to this especially at 9.45 a.m. but I believe at a previous movie I was offered a mix I wanted some butter popcorn and then also some Cheeto popcorn mixed in. Oh, you could go like 50-50. Yeah. Oh, see, that's always, that always feels like a treat. You used to do that with caramel corn and cheese popcorn.

Now you do it with butter popcorn and chito popcorn. I'm a big fan of the caramel corn and the cheese popcorn, but I've never been a fan of the mix. I don't get the mix. That's not my idea of, you know, sweet and savory together. Did you do this when you were a kid? You'd get the weird giant permanent canister of popcorn for Christmas. Yeah, it was like it was the trifle thing inside of the caramel, the cheese, and the regular, the butter. From a relative you weren't particularly close to you.

Yeah, the popcorn itself is the savory part. I don't need the cheese. The popcorn and the caramel play off each other just fine. But you wouldn't do the thing where you'd have a handful of caramel and then a handful of cheese. No. Do sweet and savory. Maybe, maybe incidentally, but no, I would just have like a caramel day and then a cheese day. Just remember being so weird going to like an airport years later and be like, oh, you have caramel corn mixed with cheese popcorn.

Like, oh, you want the Chicago? Like it had a name. Like, oh, that thing I used to do with the canister. Oh, my God. Where was? I was at some sports arena and probably in Cleveland where I got that. And it's just so seductive, right? It was just like, I got like, I came back to my seat.

I like, you know, left the seat, love my family. He's like, I'm going to go get us something to snack on. And it came back with just like three giant bags of popcorn. I couldn't decide which one. Who wants which? Got to get them all. Final topic for you today, David. Everyone is putting up a paywall.

Again? Again. CNN.com, according to Reuters, quote, is asking some of its users to pay $3.99 a month for access to its content. We've talked a little about CNN.com. Mm-hmm. A truly strange homepage. Yeah. It's like if the New York Post and the MSN homepage made the Beast with two backs.

The Daily Beast.com? I went over there today. I'm going to ignore that, slur against the Daily Beast. And of course, they have coverage of Hurricane Milton and one year after October 7th. And then I went to something that said, latest CNN headlines. and I'd like to read you a few of these to show you what's at stake with this paywall. Great. Al Pacino reveals he nearly died of COVID and shares his view on what happens after death.

That's semi-clickable, but it's based on interviews that Al Pacino gave to the New York Times and people. Okay. So we're doing that thing where Variety does, you know, on Twitter. I don't know if you see these where they're just constantly tweeting out like, celebrity says amazing thing to someone else. Yeah. Here's another one. Andrew Garfield recalls awkward moment. when he and Florence Pugh didn't hear cut while filming love scene.

That was something revealed during Garfield's appearance at the 92nd Street Y. This was the weirdest of the celebrity headlines. Kathy Bates shocked she forgot this moment in her 1991 Oscar speech. So that's written like a headline that makes me want to click, but I'm like, was there something that Kathy Bates left on the field during the 91 Oscar speech? that I'm supposed to remember. You forget to thank Stephen King. I can't remember what that would even possibly be.

It's also tons of consumer news on CNN.com. Wayfair just dropped its biggest sale of the year. Here's everything worse shopping. Here's everything worse shopping. It's not even something that really makes sense. All right. So that's CNN.com. Reuters, the aforementioned Reuters,

is going to put up a paywall, a dollar a week to read, the Reuters website. I guess I'm going to be paying. Take all my money, Reuters.com. By the way, kind of amazing when you're doing a random Google search for something or other historical and you find a wire story about it and it just solves all your problems. Like when you find a wire story about something when you're Googling around.

Oh, like something historical. Yeah, APPI sometimes or even on there. and you're like, here's everything I wanted to know in a very easy to read manner, written in perfectly, perfectly usable form. Yeah. Elsewhere in paywall news, Oliver Darcy on his newsletter status reports that The Verge is considering the introduction of a paywall.

They've started exploring it. And how about a paywall for old podcasts? Axios' Sarah Fisher reports that come October, listeners will need to subscribe to the New York Times as audio content to unlock older episodes of the Times hit shows such as the Daily

and the Ezra Klein show at launch the three most recent episodes of the daily will be available to all listeners for free on any platform but the deeper archive

will be available to subscribers only Fisher writes. I'm not sure if the best way to launch us with a podcast called the Daily

but who knows. I'm sure there's some daily completists out there being born every minute that they can you know, get some money from. They're completest, but they just started listening?

Well, presumably they'd have to have just started listening if they want to go back to the archives. What if they'd like to revisit their own favorite daily episodes criteria style again and again? That's true. You have them starred or somehow hearted in your plate, whatever your platform of choices. Yeah. It's an interesting question of what would you pay for at this point in journalism history? I think podcasts are not bad in theory. People will pay for podcast content theoretically.

And I get the idea where it's like, oh, I'm so into season five of this thing. We're used to like, oh, I like this show that's free for streaming. I'll go back and buy the episodes on, on,

you know, whatever iTunes so that I can watch them right now. But podcasts, people sample podcasts. And no one wants to decide if they want to listen to something off of like a two, minute snippet, you know, sample or whatever, you know, like, how many times have you gone on a

trip where you've just, like, downloaded 12 podcast episodes and you're just like, oh, one of these might stick, you know, and that's how you decide what you're going to, what you're going to be listening to for a while. Yeah. And also feels like the old newspaper website problem where if you just, there have been a magical world where all podcasts cost money at the beginning of podcasting, then we would all pay for them, but they don't. Yeah. And they won't. And so now you're not going to pay for any of them. You're like, oh, I'll find something that's reasonably similar. I was trying to think of CNN.

Like, if you and I were hired to come up with what would people pay for on CNN.com? It's a truly harrowing exercise. But I'm like, there's stuff, not Al Pacino in the afterlife aggregated from two other media sources, but there's stuff on CNN that's really. good. There's, you know, Brian Stelter's newsletter, now back in the morning. I think you and I would probably

want some kind of daily political tip sheet that was written by Abby Phillip, John King. Oh, you're saying like, what could they have that would be worth subscribing to? So we're kind of creative.

We decided that CNN.com is going to have a paywall. Now we have to put stuff behind the payball that people really want. so some kind of thing right like that you know David Axelrod Van Jones we have a big bench here yeah

they have a lot of stuff but again I mean this is not that's dissimilar to the problem we were discussing before like how much extra do you have to pay David Axelrod to do a thing that might have only marginal impact on your web page you know I mean

CNN has good reporting and they do have good insight and stuff like that. But like, you know, maybe the, I mean, could they do more video content? I mean, that's what they're doing really well, right? And that's what guys, you know, a lot of these analysts are paid to do. Maybe they just, maybe it's like when you, you know,

back when we used to work in the office where you would like record a podcast and then on the way out, there might be someone from the social media team saying, hey, can I get you for 30 seconds just to do a thing for this thing I'm doing? Maybe it's just bonus. content from the green room. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's, there's, there's somehow that they can create content from the studio with people that are already there. Maybe they can just get them to say stuff that they transcribe into some sort of trumped up newsletter or whatever that they can push out there. I don't know. I mean, they certainly had the talent. It just takes a certain

willingness to be, to be a part of it. The last time they tried this was with CNN Plus. Remember, this is how we got Jake Tapper's book club and who's talking to Chris Wallace. Exactly. we're going to take people you like and just have them do something else but there's got to be an answer to that question of who's talking to Chris Wallace well that has been

that has been asked and answered but just we got to create something that we know that we want to know you've got some breaking news here Shams just signed with ESPN you did yeah all right bonus segment

only for subscribers of Press Box Plus pretty predictable in retrospect, don't you think? Yeah. If they've decided they need that guy, that's the next guy. Are we still recording? Are we going to like re-working? All right.

This is that breaking news. Sean Shurani joins ESPN, a senior NBA insider. He tweets, I am honored to join ESPN as a company's senior NBA insider. I can't wait to be a part of an incredible group of colleagues at ESPN and serve the sports audience worldwide. That was revealing. that comment from him that he's honored to be at ESPN. I mean, that makes a lot more sense than whatever the weird rumors were that Jeff Passen or Adam Schaefter was going to do double duty or transition into being an NBA insider.

I didn't. I usually wouldn't even mention it, but it was just such a brilliant thing for five seconds, like the old internet. Did you see the dude? It was like something Rosenberg who started up. It was a fake account that started up as the new Adrian Wojurowski. It was just like some made up name, some made up like milk toast looking white dude. And it was just like, I'm pleased to be taking over for Woj on this beat and just immediately started tweeting like fake scoops or whatever.

But it was just a one, it was just, I mean, I never went back to the place. But 30 seconds of like chef's kiss, this is what the internet exists for. Beauty. So yeah, Shams at ESPN. it's a little bit surprising to me a little bit surprising to me because I think as we said when Woj when Woj left

Shams is incredibly well-connected and very good at his job but I think you know in terms of the transactional nature of the job is maybe a little bit uh probably see there's probably still some old dogs at ESPN

that don't think that's the way that you know quote in capital J journalism gets done um but that's certainly not the ESPN, the way ESPN is anymore. And I'm not trying to even intimate that that's a bad thing. Yeah, I mean, he's the most plugged in,

the most insider-y insider in all of basketball. If ESPN decided that's what they were, that they were going to go get him, then they were. Do you think, I guess his contract was up at, with stadium and wherever all the various places that he was working? Does that sound? I mean, I don't, I mean, but it does seem like quite coincidental.

You don't think Woj like timed his exit to facilitate the hiring of his old projeet Shams, do you? I don't think so. Highly unlikely. Yeah. That doesn't seem like it jives. It's, it is funny because when you talk about the old dogs at ESPN, I think there are fewer those people around now.

Yeah. In fact, I think they're almost, they're, they're, you know, when I think of the list of people that would qualify as that, no offense to any. anyone calling them an old dog, but they don't work there anymore. And I think there was an interesting question that you and I got into a little bit. And also Fennacy and I got into is like in a world where ESPN is no longer the box store that has everything. Yeah. Is this a highly paid character that we have to have?

Mm-hmm. I think that's an interesting question. I think for whatever reason, they think that's the character they have to have. I think so, too. I think that there's a second tier, like a second level of the question, though, that's interesting to me, because I don't, I think there's always going to be at least two of these people the way that Woz and Shams sort of bounced off each other. And there seemed to be, and I could wrap my head more easily around ESPN tries to replicate from within. And Shams is the countervailing force out in the rest of, you know, the other part of the basketball universe. It's going to be interesting now is if Shams has, now that Shams has that role at ESPN, is from where the competition emerges. I think it's a really good question. I mean, I think you could imagine a scenario

where Shams just gets a lot more powerful because he goes to ESPN and because there's no Woge breaking scoops. Like Adam Schaefter took a big step when he went from the NFL network to ESPN 15 years ago. Yeah. You know, from a guy getting a lot to a guy getting basically everything.

and I do think there's a scenario where it's basically everything, especially if windhorst and all those guys are also breaking stuff and we group that all under the ESPN scoop banner. I could totally see one where it is, but you're right. It feels like there's some, you know, there are people that don't like you,

right, people that will never do business with you that aren't going to give you stuff or reporters in the world who have a great end somewhere else. What about like the Players Tribune? Could they get, could like Darius Miles just decide he was going to become the new Woj with all the power that the Players Tribune has? Guys, guys, agents, players, just call us like we had. We're all in the same group chat.

Just let us know what's happening. We'll get it out there. We'll make the money. We'll pass it around. That's a fantastic idea. I mean, not for journalism, but for comedy. Yeah. It's a bit, you might say.

It's a bit with a purpose. That's the best kind of bit. All right, some, In Julian journalism before we go. These are words that you read constantly in news articles but never actually

hear in human speech. Brandon Handelsman of Spectrum News 1 here in Los Angeles gives us barbs, as in the candidates traded barbs on the debate stage. Sure, yeah. We would have also accepted

sparred on the debate stage. Kenny Jacoby, investigative reporter at USA Today, gives us penned Olivia Nutsi pinned a feature about RFK Jr. Yeah. Should the word pinned be used in any context other than someone drawing a cartoon strip? Is there ever a time where...

No, I mean, the difficulty with pinned is that like you, is that it sounds like it's, it's a homophone of too many other words or even even not direct one. Like it's, no one, like literally nobody knows what you're saying when you say pin unless you do the very like, my English teacher was very strict about pronunciation penned or whatever and then everyone just thinks you're weird. I don't, yeah. The only, the only thing I give to pen is it does indicate to me that someone wrote like a,

like a flowery magazine story. Right. Nobody penned a gamer in 30 seconds after a basketball game because they needed to meet the first edition. Sure. Okay. Radio host Travis Rogers gives us erstwhile, erstwhile L.A. Dodgers ace

Walker Bueller I love erstwhile I don't know man I mean that feels like we should permaband it from all stories but especially all sports stories what a weird fit that is in the sports pages the erstwhile

ace dude as someone who's written more words about professional wrestling than just about anybody else there's very few words to describe that very few interesting ways to describe a former friend who has become a rival.

Well, you'd say he was formerly under the tutelage of so-and-so. That's a perfectly valid. There are other ways to say it. I'm just, when you have to say it three times in a paragraph, you get to erstwhile in a hurry, David, that's your problem that you're saying it three times in the same paragraph. Maddie Wasserman says, I would like to turn myself in for using an only in journalism word, using campaign as a synonym for season in sports writing.

Yeah. It's always been a weird one, especially when there is a campaign going on, an actual political campaign. And this I wrote down myself, Mercurial, the story on ESPN's homepage about Stefan Diggs, it's now with the Texans coming back

to play his old team, the Bills. It was a look at what went wrong between the Mercurial receiver and the Bills. That is the ultimate safe space word for sports writers. Because you just imply things about a player without using a harsher adjective. Yep. That might commit you one way or they says they are mercurial. Yeah.

If they've ever had complicated feelings or complicated actions about any particular subject. Mercurial athlete. Yeah. Athlete. Also a great sports writing word. How many times you've heard that about an athlete? All right. Speaking of Mercurial, it's time for David Shoemaker.

I guess this is the strange button headline. Thank you, yeah. David, feeling critically mercurial today. We didn't get the usual cheer. Thursday's headline about some hockey injuries in Toronto was it's autumn and the Leafs are falling.

Today's headline comes to us from Marty LaBelle. It's from the bulwark, David. A story about J.D. Vance winning that vice presidential debate. Mm-hmm. Winning it like an ancient general might have won a war.

What was the? Bull Works Strained Pund headline An ancient general might have won a leader Yeah Advance

Is it like an advance and conquer Sort of thing Advance In the neighborhood If I told you that ancient leader Was Julius Caesar Oh What like Vinny Viti Vanchi or something

That's it Is that it VD VD Vancey. Yeah, it's strained. Where is that from the bulwark? It's from the bulwark. Yeah, that sounds about right. They do some good stuff over there.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. But I'm some magic by Brian Waters. A lot more press box coming your way. On Thursday, David, Eugene Daniels of Politico is going to be on this podcast. Wow. One of the writers of playbook, one of the go-to journalists. to understand Kamala Harris

and her campaign. I met him on the floor of the DNC in Chicago and here's something fun. He played football at Colorado State before getting on the path to journalists. Oh, really? Football, defensive end at Colorado State.

Eugene Daniels podcast on Thursday, Shoemaker and I'm back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.