The Press Box - L.A. Times Columnist Erika Smith, the Protests in Washington, and Newsroom Reckonings

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are joined by 'L.A. Times' columnist Erika Smith as she takes us through protests, column writing, and the future of the 'L.A. Times' (1:20). Next, 'Ringer' intern Lex Pryor joins the discussion from Washington, D.C., to talk about what it was like covering protests three days after the infamous Trump church photo-op (17:20). Finally, Curtis and Shoemaker break down the "media reckonings" that have resulted in the resignations from 'The New York Times,' 'The Philadelphia Inquirer,' and more (31:05). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. This is the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoeemaker of the Ringer here. We've got a number of things for you today as we continue to examine the more than two weeks of protests across the United States that follow the killing of George Floyd. We're going to talk to Ringer writer Lex Pryor about his impressions and experiences covering the protests in Washington, D.C. Then David and I will talk about the reckonings, to borrow a word from Jenna Wortham, about diversity, about journalistic voice, and about power. We've seen in newsrooms from New York to Pittsburgh. How did this period of protests change the way newsrooms are run? But first up, David, I wanted us to get a sense of the protests here in California. Did you see those amazing pictures from Hollywood Boulevard over the weekend?

Yeah. Truly incredible. We had protests where I live here in Huntington Beach. Erica D. Smith is writing a new column at the LA Times. She's just three columns into this new gig, and they've all been great. So here's Erica D. Smith on protests, column writing, and the future and present of the L.A. Times. All right. Erica D. Smith wrote columns at newspapers in Indianapolis and Sacramento. She started writing a new one at the L.A. Times on June 1st.

Erica, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I want to start by asking you about that June 1st column where you wrote about the protests here in California. A point you make is that wherever the protests are happening in this country, they're at least partly about people's lives. in that particular place. And as you see them, what are the protests here in California about? I think there's as a couple things going on.

I mean, as you, and we all know that California is a huge state. And so the issues are different depending on where you are. I think that in coastal California, I think for a long time there's like this idea that there's this, you know, utopia, so to speak,

we're more advanced than I think that a lot of the country. And that's true. But there's still problems, particularly with policing and, you know, with minorities. black and brown in particular. I think in other more rural parts of the state, maybe the Central Valley in other parts,

it may be more about farm workers and immigrant rights. But I mean, there's all sorts of intersectionality between income and race and ethnicity and just economics and social justice. You mentioned that idealized image we have of the state or tend to have. It's interesting in your personal story because you were a journalist in Indianapolis for 10 years.

I was. You wrote that you moved here. You liked Indianapolis. You did a lot of good work there, but you moved here at least partly because you were looking for a place that better matched your ideals. So can you walk us through that a little bit,

like how your vision of California from afar then meets up with the reality? Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in Ohio. So, I mean, I didn't grow up in Indianapolis. And it was funny when I moved from Ohio to Indiana, which is not very far. I always thought I grew up in the Midwest

and then I realized I moved to Indiana and that's the real Midwest, which is a lot more regressive in a lot of different ways. But, you know, California was, always kind of my dream to come out here and actually to work for the LA Times and in the job that I'm in now. And so I had this idea of particularly in Indiana, which has a series of passing laws that are designed to not help people of color succeed and seeing California kind of do the opposite. And sometimes the same week, it just was hard to not want to move out here. And I still

love being here. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. But I think the longer you live in a place, the more you see how nuanced it is. And I've definitely seen that about California. And of course, Northern California is very different than L.A. And every city has its own problems and every region has its own problems. But I do feel there's a sense here of wanting to be better. And I don't think that exists in every state in the union for sure. Governor Gavin Newsom has weighed in saying he's ready to do things, as we've seen many politicians do over the last few weeks. What kinds of concrete action would you like to see after these last couple of weeks of protest?

Well, I think it's some of the bills that have been introduced in the last, I guess few days, Shirley Weber's suite of bills pushed towards reparations. I mean, it wasn't very long ago that people thought that reparations was a pipe dream. So the fact that this is even a legit policy that's being considered in Sacramento is just crazy. But it tells you how far we've come in such a short period of time. But I think that, you know, one of the things I'm particularly looking for is more of a push against the police unions, which has, you know, the unions have a tremendous amount of power in the state and police unions in particular. And they've been dealt a few setbacks in recent years. And so it'll be interesting to see whether or not they actually, you know, whether the governor actually caves, whether the assembly and the Senate cave or whether they push forward some more robust policies that actually are meant to protect citizens and they kind of push back on the police unions a little bit more.

I also want to ask you about this column you wrote on June 3rd titled, No white people. You can't ease your guilt over racism by paying black people via a cash app. So George Floyd was killed by a police officer. officer on May 25th. And would you tell our listeners about the messages you started getting on May 26th? I had multiple inboxes these days, as we all do now that we're working remotely. And so I started getting messages on Facebook Messenger and a little hidden inbox, which I check every now and then. And just kind of being like, hey, how are you? And it, you know, it's people that I hadn't talked to at least 10 years. People had to actually look up on Facebook to figure out exactly who they were.

And as a journalist, we get all kinds of weird emails, even in my previous role as an editor. So I kind of just thought it was just me that was getting messages and random app replies on Twitter. But, you know, I had a conversation with a coworker of mine and somebody else who was saying they were having these conversations with other people. And I realized that it wasn't just me. And so that's why I kind of decided to do the column because I realized that it was actually a thing. But it was funny when that column actually published, I got another flurry of messages from friends being like, I hope I wasn't the person that offended you or I hope that you weren't, you know, thank you for saving me for because I was going to reach out for this person. I haven't talked to in 20 years.

And so it was it was kind of a public service journalism column without even actually knowing that's what I was doing. But yeah, it's been really interesting. We're the last like, you know, week and a half or so. And there were instances, I believe you tweeted this where white people were sending black people, they didn't know money through cash app. That happened? Yeah. It does happen. And actually, the funny thing.

was is that somebody, people started retweeting my column and saying, well, no, you can pay me and they were putting their cash app on it. So my Twitter feed was like going berserk for the basis of the next 36 hours. But I actually kind of want to know how many people got paid off of that tweet or that retweet. But yeah, it's a thing. And there's also a thing where people are just putting it in the comments or people are asking for advice and, you know, what books to read or where can I go? And people are like, okay, you're going to pay me like a consultant. So it's, yeah, things are top to see to everybody right now with what services are being here. required and how you're getting paid and guilt and all of these things. You wrote about the phenomenon has gotten to such a point that somebody whom you did not name came up with a list of canned responses that you can that you can deliver to suddenly curious white people. We'll let the writer remain anonymous, but can you share any of the canned responses that are suggesting? Yeah, there were a few.

I think one of them was still like, how can I get involved? It was something like, if you want to get involved, thank you for wanting to be an ally and be involved in the movement, here's a website to check. Or, you know, how can I, what can I do? You know, there were responses that were a lot more pointed that I would probably give most people, but it was, there was a list of books that people could read, including white fragility, it was, I think, number one. And several other types of just, you know, resources and links out. But, I mean, it was a pretty, it's a pretty lengthy document. It's a good, like, 10 pages or so, the one that I saw. There's probably more than one floating around, but this one was pretty,

pretty robust. So somebody took some time to do it for sure. You write that some percentage of these messages comes from a good faith effort at allyship to use a word we've heard a bunch over the last couple of weeks. What other things do you think are mixed up in sending messages like that? I think there's a little bit of ego, right? I think that, you know, one of the things I've noticed just at the protests and just in general is there's this sense of supporting black lives now is kind of like not cool or it's just a thing to do. And that's interesting. I mean, it's fine.

It's great. I'm glad it's happening. But I think there's also this self-interest in wanting people to know that you are the person that supports this. And so there's this sense of, you know, I'm at this rally. Look at me or, you know, I support Black. I mean, and so it's like nobody wants to be thought of as racist. Nobody wants and everybody wants to be thought of as that ally that's the cool person in the group. And I get it.

I mean, I just think I would hope there's also some introspection. about why people are actually doing it and that it's more than just this brief time period where there's protests or you can put a meme on your your wall on Instagram. You have to actually do the work over a long period of time. And that's really what matters, I think. You write too that there's something really strange about expecting another person, especially a person whom you do not know very well to become your adjunct professor and provide you with a reading list.

It's just such a funny ask, isn't it? Yeah, it is such a funny ask. Yeah, it's like as if, you know, I suppose there are people that have that reading list ready of things that they have. I'm not one of those people. I'd have to Google it other than a few, but I know off the top of my head. It's funny how the reading list has become our default setting because I feel the pandemic started. And it was, okay, what's my reading list? What's my pandemic reading list, movie watch list?

And then the protests began and probably the same people are like, okay, what's my protest reading list? Exactly. It's a good thing the bookstore is reopened. probably gave us a little bit of the leeway because Amazon would be swamps yet again. So you wrote this column, you put this stuff out in the open. And then you got a second wave of emails saying, I would like to potentially apologize for the first wave of emails if I was one of those people. Yes, that did indeed happen.

I have a lot of those emails in my inbox. And like I said, I'm going to choose to believe they come from a good place. I'm not one of those people that wants to just like trash everybody. but a little self-awareness for everybody doesn't help, doesn't hurt rather. You've written columns in Indy and Sacramento, and I imagine a column takes different forms based on the newspaper and, of course, in the moment you're writing it in. What form do you see your LA Times column taking? Well, the goal for this column, I mean, we have a number of pending writers and just journals

in general kind of covering LA County in Southern California. I think one of the areas that the Times is looking to expand is statewide. I mean, one of the things we've noticed, not only with the coronavirus, but also with this is we're getting quite a bit of readers from Northern California, the Bay Area, Sacramento region, even further north than that, and in the Central Valley to an extent. And we want to kind of expand that and to reach those readers as well. And lucky for me for spending a few years in Sacramento, I have some knowledge of Northern California. I try to get out of explore as much as I could when I got here. And I want to try to marry that knowledge that I have from up there with what I've learned in LA to kind of do more stories that knit the state together and talk about different corners of the state that we never really. hear much about, which was kind of behind one of the, some of the things in my first column

when I was talking about different protests happening around the state in cities that you would never think that might have one. And so I want to get out to those places and I want to talk to people and I want to, you know, bring those stories back to, you know, Southern California and share a bit of Southern California with those audiences as well. A little bit difficult right now with the traveling and coronavirus and everything else. But I feel hopefully as this year continues to get going and I can do a little bit more of that when it becomes a little bit safer. So once the world opens up again, it's going to be a reporting base column, at least partly, something where you go out and find a story and tell it in column form.

Yes, it'll be a mixture. I mean, I'll have some definitely, I want to have it about 50, 50, maybe, or 60, 40. My editors may disagree. But I definitely want to have a huge number of reporting columns, but I also have a lot opinions to share as well. And I imagine that the closer we get to the election, the more opinions I probably will have. want to, you know, balance it out. But I mean, definitely it will be focused very much for a

California audience and talking about us. I think that's one of the things we're missing in this ecosystem that we have, media ecosystem. We were talking about this on the pod the other day, but we live in this incredible age of think pieces. I mean, you get on Twitter and I'm just floored by the sheer number of columns that I am confronted with every day. Many of them, by the way, quite good. Is that harrowing for you as an opinion columnist to think, oh my gosh, there are just so many things in the world. Not only may I try to say something different, but I'm trying to break through and, you know, get people to pay attention. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a very different. Yeah, it's just, I mean, and maybe it's our own like being in the house is contributing to the

number of think pieces that are out there. But I definitely, writing opinion in this environment is just nuts because you're competing against so many different people and people have fractured time. They have limited time to do all sorts of things. And so it is tough to break roads. And so, you know, I think the more that I or any journalist kind of moves their audience and kind of talks about the things that they're thinking and they haven't yet said and they go, yeah, that's right. I was thinking about that or, oh, this happened to me. I think the more of a chance you have to kind of break through that noise and connect with readers. And that's kind of my goal. Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you about this phenomenon that Jenna Wortham called Media Reckonings we've seen over the last week.

And even today as we talk at the New York Times. at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Bon Appetit, Refinery 29, I could probably keep going. You've worked at newspapers for a long time. What do you make of those reckonings and how do you see that manifesting itself potentially at the LA Times? I think the reckonings are, you know, as the word implies, are probably long overdue. I mean, I've been the only or one of the few African American, you know, reporters or journalists and newsrooms my entire career. and this has not, for the most part, changed at the LA Times. And so, yeah, there's a real, there's a real issue there. I think it's, I think layoffs and cuts have hurt us because you cut oftentimes the youngest reporters and the people that are the people of color. I think the LA Times is going to be grappling with that as well. I mean, there's still, people are still upset in some ways

about how we cover the 92 riots. And so there's, that has come back up, you know, today with the way that we're covering some of the stuff now. So I think the discussions are healthy. I think they need to happen. And I just hope that there's some real change that comes out of it, not only for the Times, but for newsrooms across the country. And I guess for the public reckoning is I guess the public family gets to see what happens inside of newsrooms. So that'll be interesting. A lot more publicly anyway. Yes, absolutely. What has the conversation been like between you and your core workers about how the paper covers this period of protest? Because there are a lot of interesting questions, right? They're about headlines. There was a big, I'm a print subscriber and there was a big headline about looting

over the top of the newspaper that I winced at a little bit the other day and thought, is this really the biggest headline today? Is this the story? Tell me what you see. I mean, I think that's been probably the point of contention, I think, about, you know, our coverage is that we, if you look at the body of our coverage on this, we have done quite a few stories that are not just about looting, but for whatever reason, the looting stories made to the top of the home page, the looting stories made to the top of, you know, the front page. There was discussions about headline choice and not. I mean, And I personally, as I have a column going up shortly today on Wednesday that's going to have looting in the headline, but I don't have a problem with the word. I have a problem with the word. The word is used. And I think that those nuances are being discussed. And I think sometimes when you're in a breaking news environment, you don't, people don't always have the time to sit down and think about it. And maybe the right people who might see something as offensive aren't in the room when that story makes it through the process. And I think that's where diversity and newsrooms comes about. I think that's where

these discussions really matter. And, you know, we are, there's a push to do more, you know, anti-biased training. There's a push to, you know, have more people of color on newsroom, which is no different, I guess, than any other newsroom in the country right now. But those are kind of the bulk of the discussions and we'll see where they go. You could read Erica D. Smith's new column right now, probably in the LA Times and follow her on Twitter at Erica underscore D underscore Smith. Thank you so much, Erica, for doing this. Thank you. All right, David, speaking of the future, Lex Pryor just started at the ringer about a month ago. What did you do during your first month at the ringer, David?

Man, that is a really good question. I think I, like, I think I responded to a lot of emails about logo design as if I knew what the hell I was talking about. I think that's pretty much it. I just tried to look busy and send Sean Fennacy a bunch of email. Exactly. Ask questions before they ask you. Lex Pryor, on the other hand, went to Washington, D.C., and wrote a great story you can read right now,

scenes of protest and the demand for sustained change in the nation's capital. Lex, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate you having me on. So you go to the protests in Lafayette Square a week ago on June 4th. Most of us have been watching protests on TV or through social media, and I've been interested to ask all the guests we've had on over the last two weeks this. What was most surprising to you or striking to you about actually,

being there. I think the diversity of the crowd was the thing that took out to me. I've been to protest in and around D.C. just because I went to college there. So post-Trump being elected, there have been a lot of, like, the women's marches and other protests in response to police brutality. But I've never seen a crowd as diverse and just as large and diverse. Generally, like, they're just smaller, less people, like a lot less white people. This is definitely like the most white folks I've ever seen out. You come around to the end of your piece. Do you deal a lot with the question and with the issue of the white folks that are out there?

And it's a really interesting question about the sort of significance of, you know, the white people who are out there marching. The white people are ideologically sympathetico sort of with this entire movement. Is that, you know, you talk some people on the scene who kind of fit that description. What do you feel like, I mean, do you feel like that is the, is, are other people they're feeling the same thing? Is this like, are people looking towards the white establishment as the, as, you know, looking to see if that appetite exists? And if so, the appetite for change.

And if so, what do you think people are feeling right now? Well, I think it's different. I think that a lot of the black protesters that I spoke. to, they're highly aware of the fact that this crowd is a lot more diverse than it had been. Almost everybody I spoke to specified that when I was talking to them. I think that the white folks who I talked to were there, they were a lot more positive about that meaning sustained change. I think that they looked at it as an inspiration.

One of the people that I spoke to in the interview or in the article was a white volunteer for St. John's Episcopal Church. And he spoke a lot about how he was inspired just by looking around the crowd and how it was just nothing like he had seen before. I think with black folks, we are happy to see that there are white people engaged in these protests and that there are white people listening. but at the same time. We're also weary of the fact that there have been moments of sustained progress before in our country's history. And eventually, I think white America loses its appetite for it. So it's cautious optimism, I think. You're in Lafayette Square on June 4th.

That was obviously the scene a couple days before you got there of law enforcement officials pushing through using chemical sprays to get the protesters out of the way so that Donald Trump could have a photo op? What was the mood there when you got there? And what did people say who'd been there about that event a couple days before? Yeah, that was one of the things that actually surprised me there. I guess I expected it to be more somber and for people to at least project more fear of standing somewhere that, I mean, I went on Thursday. So three days before they had thrown tear gas at protest.

just we were standing literally right outside of the church. And that just was not the vibe I got from people. I don't know if it was because it's broad daylight. I don't know if it's because they saw how the news media covered that event and how Trump was criticized. But people really, despite the fact that there were armed law enforcement surrounding the entire area, people were not at least out. outrely fearful as I expected.

I think part of that also has to do with the crowd. And if it was an entirely black crowd, I think that they would perceive the threat of law enforcement differently than a white protester from Arlington. I saw a lot of white families. And I appreciate them coming out, but I also understand how they're perceiving the threat of law enforcement in terms of how they're going to react to the protest.

It's going to be a lot differently than how I'm looking at it. or how another black protester would look at it. I wanted to ask you, too, about that patio section right out there in front of St. John's Church. That has become such a scene, one because of Donald Trump, but also on the days before and after Donald Trump was there, as the clergy at that church described it as a place of peace, as a place of protest. Tell us about what that scene was like as you observed it. Yeah, I mean, I've been to protest before in D.C. and around that area. And I think that this was just a lot more like conciliatory.

And I think that the church volunteers were out in force. There were a number of them out in front. And even just walking amongst crowd, people giving out water. It was just obscenely hot that day. Like just horrible. So yeah, I mean, it was, it was just a weird vibe. And then you got there. And eventually the crab kept getting larger and larger as I think the day.

day went on and more people started to crowd around that area and moved in and out. But people were usually just using it as a place to rest from the heat and talk. There were a lot of people from the church either volunteers or people who actually like worked directly with St. John's who were out just speaking to protesters. I think that it was important to the church to show that they weren't fearful of what had happened and show who they were standing with, especially after the church. or what happened, you know, three days before, I think that was a conscious choice

on the part of their leadership come out and not straddle the line. They tried to show whose side they were on. You talk, I mean, you just mentioned a minute ago about the way that, the many different ways that this protest felt different, as diverse as it was. And there's certainly an aspect in the piece

that you wrote for the ringer of hope, of hopefulness, right? And you, I mean, you catalog a lot of the, ways that the moment we're in right now is different from moments in the past with, you know, legal issues with, I mean, with, with, you know, statues coming down with the NFL stuff. I mean, there's a lot of ways where now feels like a more pivotal moment. And there's a sort of persistence of the protest, right? You touch on that at the end of your piece.

But there's, but it's not a purely hopeful piece. I guess, I guess a pretty vague question. I apologize. But where do you feel you are on the sort of spectrum between like hope and like the potential for hope. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I hear you. You know, I was talking to my dad before I went out and I actually reported this story. And I'm from Albany, New York, and Albany's really, really segregated. It's one of the most segregated cities that have lived in. And I was talking to my dad, and he and I were both just speaking about the protests and they're

having them at home, not the same amount of people that they would in D.C., but people were coming out. And I know my dad was excited about it, but at the end of the conversation, we both ended it by, you know, saying it would be nice, but I just, I don't know if these people will actually care in a year. And I think that's where I find myself. I'm just, I really would love to be hopeful.

I really would love to have this be a watershed moment. But I also know that the people who elected Donald Trump three and a half years ago, are still in the country. And that racism in our country, it's just, it's such a part of who we are. I think that you can look at this moment and see some external factors that may be motivating people kind of actually listening. But I just wonder what happens when the economy isn't awful. when people have things to do other than look at clips of our deaths on social media, like when there isn't the imminent threat of deaths from a virus that has like ravaged our country,

I just, I don't know if under better circumstances we would have the same reaction. And I know that people find that depressing, but that's just what our reality has been for a really long time. You wrote in the piece about how for a week before you went out there, you'd heard helicopters in Washington, D.C., police sirens pretty constantly. What's the mood like in D.C. now? Yeah, well, I mean, I think it depends on where you are. I think that I live in Foggy Bottom because it's where I went to school and I still have my apartment off campus. And if you look around the neighborhood, there are a lot of businesses that are boarded up, which is ironic because I think they're more concerned about, you know, people of color, black people looting them than they were about the virus.

risk beforehand. So it's a ghost town, especially during the day. I mean, when you get to the bubbles of protest, then you're going to see people, but you can go blocks at a time without seeing anyone. I'm just, I'm having trouble kind of discerning whether or not that's from the pandemic that's happening or from the fear of law enforcement around. There's definitely outside police force right now. That's something that I've noticed. I was here when Trump got a They had tanks on my campus, and I've not seen anything like this just in terms of the number of law enforcement that they have and the different departments from where they're from. So that part has been different. I just think the mood is also different based off of where you're from and who you are. A lot of black folks in D.C., this has been what they have been living with in terms of the threat. of imminent violence from law enforcement since they came here in the first place. I have friends who their families have lived in the city for three generations over,

people who have been here during the post-MLK riots after he was assassinated. And, you know, the guiding forces that impact their life haven't fundamentally changed since now and that. I think the people who feel the difference the most are a lot of transplants. And a lot of white people who came here and expected a city that they probably did not imagine to look like what it looks like right now. So, I mean, I think that you actually talked about Albany. I happen to spend some time over the past couple weeks in several mid-sized cities in the Northeast. And there's a lot of, I mean, there's protesting everywhere you go. I don't know if that's a

I mean is there a sense from the ground in D.C. when it's the biggest crowds that you could possibly, you know, that you've ever experienced there for this sort of thing. Is there a sense that the world is not just watching but the world is marching with you? Yeah, I mean, I think people are definitely like cognizant of the fact that there are protests happening

in Berlin and in London. And I know that stuff that I talked to a friend whose grandmother was talking to her about how she never could have imagined anything like that 30 years ago. And I think about my grandparents who migrated up north from the south or in the middle of Jim Crow. And I know that they could have never imagined worldwide concerns for their livelihoods on a scale like that. So they're aware of it. And I think people are fed up right now. People are desperate right now.

and they are committed to not letting this moment pass about forcing folks to look at what our reality is and has been. So I think there's that. I'm just not comfortable ascribing an optimism onto a large population. Like, black people are multitudinists, you know? Like, I can't speak for every single one. But what I know is that white folks have never followed through on their promises to make real sustained change in the history of this country. You know, we've had black senators in the 1800s in that.

And 10 years later, you know, there's a complete authoritarian state in the South. So I just, I don't know what this spring. I know it feels different. I just, I don't know. You can read Lex Pryor's article, scenes of protest and the demand for sustained change in the nation's capital and the ringer.com right now. Lex, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. All right, David, let's end with a word on newsroom reckonings. We've had a week plus of these. New York Times, Philadelphia Inquire, Pittsburgh Post Exit, Refinery 29, Bon Appetit. In the spirit of disclosure, you can check out the Ringer Union's tweets about diversity, too. A couple of I want to pull from this that I think are really interesting for us to talk about. On the one hand, I think this is probably a last stand or a last-ish stand for newspaper style.

The argument you hear editors making in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette guy makes this in a piece he published yesterday is about that the right way to cover things, even civil rights, is in this dispassionate news. newspaper ease. And furthermore, the argument goes that even on Twitter, you should be more or less restricted to this dial. Ben Smith and that PC publisher in the week says, newsrooms are trying to find common ground between a tradition that aims to persuade the widest possible audience that its reporting is neutral and journalists who believe that fairness on issues from race to Donald Trump requires clear moral calls. You and I have really never worked in a newsroom like that? What do you make of just the feasibility of continuing to report things in that style and be that person on Twitter going forward? Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of degrees here, right?

I mean, I don't, I mean, and this is totally talking to abstract. I'm not a specific, I'm not specifically trying to declare some referendum on the, on the protests that are going on right now, but it does seem like there is some area in between the sort of almost like self-parodic, archaic newspaper detached style and, you know, a completely sort of self-absorbed, uh, take on everything, right? I mean, I, whenever, whenever, whenever there's this talk about newspaper style and detachment, my mind always goes to, um, the onions are dumb, are dumb century when they, their fake headline for the for the first moon landing was holy shit man walks on fucking moon and i think like the i the joke there is great but it's also there's like the but the deeper

truth is that like that is how we would all i mean that is the appropriate way to respond to that moment right and that is not like a self-absorbed way to respond to it that is and i do think that there's a sort of i do think that there is a means of expressing a universal emotion, a universal reaction to something without it being, without it feeling like you're violating the rules of the newsroom. But again, that's really speaking in the abstract. I think that, especially as it pertains to Twitter and everything else, I mean, the different rules are going to apply. And, you know, all of these rules, all the copy rules, all the journalistic rules are at their base, presumably made for the purpose of clarity, right? And if you're not being clear at the

of the day because you're relying too much on, you know, your old tropes and old rules, then I don't think you're actually serving anyone. Well, I think the rules are made for a couple of reasons. One is the appearance of neutrality, right, which is so important for newspapers historically, right? We are down the middle. We're serving everybody. But, you know, you could also argue that those rules are made for control, right?

That if everybody has to adhere to this kind of style, that nobody really gets, nobody really diverges from whatever the newspaper editor thinks should be in the paper, right? So there's a single vision that is kind of, you know, going down from the editor's office. And, and I think that's part of this too. Second thing I've seen this week is just belatedly addressing a lot of egregious behavior from management at various media institutions. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette Guild charged this week that a black writer was pulled off the protest story because of a tweet, whereas a white writer at the same paper who was also scolded for a tweet was not pulled off the protest story. And if you needed any further evidence about what management is like at the Pittsburgh Post

Gazette, go read Keith C. Burris, the executive editor I just referenced a moment ago, the story he wrote, right? He accuses the guild and or his own staff in this story of, quote, defamation. This is the story. I just, I think this almost, we were, there's so many things happening in the world. We almost race past that this week. an editor of a newspaper accused his own staff or the guild or both of defamation quote unquote I mean think of how hard it is to print that word in the newspaper and then imagine turning it on the people who work for you that's incredible and and that is to me a symptom of exactly the kind of behavior and the kind of attitude that these reckonings are meant to address yeah I totally agree I mean, there's a lot of, you know, every newsroom, every corporation, every business, like every group of people has, you know, had to reckon with their own pasts in over the past several weeks.

And I don't think it's a political, I don't think it's a political decision to wrestle with that in real time and to confront those things. Obviously, this is a, this is, you know, no one could have predicted where we are right now, but that's not, that doesn't shield you from, you know, the sins of the past. The other thing, of course, coming up this week is a lack of diversity, both in the newsroom and in leadership roles, right? We had Will Bunch from the Philadelphia Inquirer on the potter this week. The Philadelphia Inquirer is the paper that ran that headline that said, buildings matter to a insanely bad riff off of Black Lives Matter wound up in the editor of the paper leaving, right? And one thing that Will mentioned was there's clearly nobody in the room to say, hey, that

headline sucks, right? that that sucks that's clearly a failure of diversity on the philadelphia inquirers part june first main headline here in the l a l a times was this is a big above the fold looters rampage across the region i asked erika smith about that on this pot she said a version of the same thing there's nobody in the room to go uh is this is this the right headline is this the word we want to emphasize again, if this sounds like a really basic issue, it is. But it's one that clearly has not been confronted and or addressed nearly as much as it should be. Yeah, it's totally true.

You know, you mentioned the ringer. I mean, we've talked about these things over the years and certainly in recent days this stuff has come up. And I can just say from a personal point of view, because I'm not really a decision maker on any level. You do sort of just come to a point where you say you can understand on a very basic level. Like, you know, I mean, you can kind of cut the pie a million different ways. And you can understand the situation, a lot of newsrooms, a lot of corporations, a lot of different situations are in. And you can, and you can understand. I mean, there's a way of looking at all of it in a sort of, I mean, there's a way of making a defense of a lot of different things.

But at the end of the day, you're right. If that person isn't there to say that thing, then it doesn't matter if whatever. It doesn't matter how you got to that position. The fact of the matter is that no one stopped you. And there's a really clear reason why. No one was there to say that. And that's on the organization. Absolutely.

When I think about this, like the New York Times wants to break news on the Trump beat, you know what happens? They break news on the Trump beat, right? Yeah. They get it done. They either do it with the people they have or they go out and get people. and do it with people they don't have, right? There's no reason you can't do that on other things, right?

Whether it's diversity, whether it's decision-making, whether it's people in positions of power. If you want to get it done, you will get it done. And it's just a matter of wanting to get it done. Fourth thing I want to bring for you, David, and finally is just writers using their collective power, right? Newspapers, media organizations can be very top-down. We saw this at the New York Times after that Tom Cotton op-ed came out,

all those writers tweeting, running this puts Black New York Times staff in danger. A couple of the writers apparently took sick days there too after that. Same thing was done at the Philadelphia Enquirer with writers taking sick days, right, to say, I don't like this. This is not, this is beyond the pale. And again, using what collective power they have to make a difference at the paper and at the media organization. Yeah. I mean, I've seen a lot of people frame this as some sort of like very modern, sometimes millennial sort of, you know, moment of excess or something that like everybody feels entitled or entitlement, I guess. Everybody feels entitled to have their own personal feelings kind of steer the ship. This is nothing new, you know, I mean, and certainly there are very, again, issues, there are degrees here. But the idea that like the voice, the united voice of the staff shouldn't have. a say, a prominent say in a moment such as this is ridiculous.

And, you know, obviously there will be different cases and different moments and different instances where, I mean, it's totally conceivable that like a staff could be acting in excess. But this is not one of those, you know, clearly. And I, and I don't think that at a moment like this, anyone's reaction should be to question the intentions or the or the motives or the, you know, the metaphorical significance of something like that. I mean, what matters is I mean, these are real things. These are real issues of safety and of morality. And I think that that should always take precedent.

Exactly. And I see this, it's really funny because whenever I see people push back on this, it's usually older people who don't run anything anymore. And sometimes I feel I see this on Facebook because that's where this is coming out. But they're always treating this stuff like an academic exercise. Well, you know, that Tom Cotton Abed, that's a dangerous idea. But dangerous ideas should be put in the newspaper. not realizing that every media organization is a collection of people, right?

That's the media organization. And if the people there completely lose confidence like they have in a couple of these newspapers or say, we're not, this is completely inappropriate, you don't run the media organization anymore, right? That's just, that's it. You know, that it doesn't work. And so I don't think this can be, and I, if you want to talk up principles, of publishing op-eds or whatever that is, that's fine.

But this is not a debate society, right? This is not an academic exercise. You know, all these places are collections of really, really talented people. And if you want to keep the talented people working for you and get their best work out of them, at some point, their voice is going to matter in these things. Totally true. Totally true. I mean, nobody would fall, you know,

nobody would have fault an employee for quitting if their boss said something offensive, right? I mean, that's on them. This is just a matter of like multiple people agreeing on it at the same time and actually affecting change, which in some, you know, one would think that would be a much more positive outcome than like half the staff quitting over this and leaving both the employees and the employer kind of up a creek. That's the press box this week. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Monday to talk about more. We'll see you then, David. See you later, Brian.