The Press Box - Listener Mail and The Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are opening the mailbag and answering your Listener Mail. They talk through Joe Biden's first prime-time address, Mike Pence's new podcast, strained puns in the newsroom, and much more (3:30). Later Evan Smith, CEO of The Texas Tribune, joins to discuss how his team of journalists are covering recent events in Texas. They weigh in on Ted Cruz fleeing during the snow storm, Greg Abbott lifting the mask mandate, and discuss the controversy around banning the University of Texas's fight song, "The Eyes of Texas" (25:10). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Evan Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twice a week, Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay dissect the biggest topics in black culture, politics, and sports on their show, Higher Learning. They discuss the most important and timely conversations while also frequently inviting guests on the podcast and occasionally debating each other. Check out Higher Learning on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, there is a hair care product on the market we should know about. According to listener Evan Grossman, it's called. called news anchor pomade. News anchor pomade. What I want to know is if you could have the hair of one news anchor,

who's would it be? Man, that is a great question. I think as counterintuitive as it sounds, as impossible as it would have seemed to me to say this at any point in the past, I think you have to go with Ted Cople. Wow. Ted Cople. As someone with no hair, the volume of hair is appealing.

But also it's like, there's nothing that's going to be always be in style. So being permanently out of style is kind of the next best thing. I hear that. We definitely drank at some bars in Brooklyn in our day where Ted Cople haircut would not have been out of place. I'll say that. No, no. I think I probably did rock it for a couple of years. years there in the early odds.

When I was thinking, I was like, I think I would trade hair with any news anchor at this point. Yes, agreed. I'm not going to be too picky about it. I mean, you, you were the first person in my life who shaved their head. You shaved your head like 20 years ago. Yeah. Whereas I'm still, I'm still kind of trying to news anchor my pomade my way out of trouble. As long as you look, as long as you look good from head on.

Everything is totally fine if you're a news anchor. Well, that's the thing. And, you know, I can look at myself in the mirror and go, you know, it looks pretty good. Looks pretty good. But the real test is, you know, David, is the pool. Because you go into the pool looking like you could host the news at 11 and you come out looking like the leader of the British Labor Party in 1950. I mean, we've got to a point where I look at Adam Gopnik's author photos and I'm like, that's a pretty good look. I'm jealous.

Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, listen, having kids has made the pool more fun than ever for me. And it's not just because, you know, it's fun to play with your kids in the pool. It's because, like, dad in pool is a whole different mode than, like, dude in pool. You know, like, it doesn't, like, the hair doesn't matter. The body doesn't matter. As long as you're, like, keeping your kids alive and have a smile in your face, like, it's just, it's a, it's, it's, the pool have become fun again for the first time since I was in, like, fourth grade. Coming up on today's show, we answer your listener mail, including the question,

and what advice would you give Joe Biden about his big speech tonight? Plus, Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune stops by to talk about covering the storms, Ted Cruz, and other disasters. All that more on the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis

and David Schumaker here. David, it's Thursday, which means we ought to answer a little listener mail, shouldn't we? Let's do it. All right, from listener Nick Field. He writes, White House Chief of Staff Ron Clayne calls you.

He wants advice for President Biden's first prime time address on Thursday night. What do you tell him? Wow. Be honest. Be straight. I mean, listen, the grades, the real-time reactions, whatever, it's going to be what it's going to be. I think if there's one thing that we learned from the previous president, it's that you just got to level with the American people, be straight with them and give them really reasonable expectations. Now, you know, you don't want to undersell the positive, the positive aspects of what's going on right now. But I even think, I mean, he was part of the Obama administration. He knows how, you know, what a, what a albatross, if you like your plan, you can keep your

plan was to their, to everything they did after the ACA got passed. You know, that's, let's not put too much, let's not put, you know, put too much of a happy face on something. Just be straight, be informative, be real. It's interesting because this is, by. Biden's first prime time address, but it's actually the third time he has held an event that is essentially a national mourning event about the coronavirus. There was that one in the Lincoln Memorial. There was the one the other day when the U.S. passed 500,000 deaths. So the whole thing feels couched in, appropriately couched in. We are gathering on a solemn occasion. Yeah. We are doing the kind of national mourning that our previous president refused to do. So, you know,

I think that's part of it. And I think, look, we've talked about this before. Joe Biden, empathy is Joe Biden's superpower. He's good at that. He's really, really good at that as a politician. You would expect maybe, given the mass mandates that have vanished from some states over the last week, that that would be a topic here, at least as a sub-tweet, maybe. He said in his kind of preview remarks, there is a light at the end of this dark tunnel of the past year, but we cannot let our guard down now or assume that victory is inevitable. So maybe that's a part of it too.

But I kind of think Joe Biden just needs to do what Joe Biden is good at doing tonight. I completely agree. And honestly, it would be enough of a distinction from the last administration for him to be present, you know, for him to be there with us and for us. What he says is almost secondary to that. But he has a lot of opportunity to do a lot of good with what he says too. So I don't want to undersell the opportunity. But you're right. I mean, it's, it would be, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of easy dunks that he could be making.

I don't think any of that's particularly necessary. And I don't think it's going to change anything to be like, well, you know, to wag his finger at Greg Abbott or whoever. I think that, you know, the important thing is to do what he actually can do, which is to say, you know, do your best. You know, there's going to be a lot of people pulling, you're trying to keep trying to prevent you from doing. your best. Let's just all do our best as, you know, do it together. This is from Derek Magnata. You guys are going to talk about that Trump statement, right? It seems like somebody in his orbit listened to Monday show and said, watch this. So we talked on Monday's show about how Trump had not just been deprived of the platform of Twitter,

but of the actual form of tweets. Trump was able to take his odiousness and reduce it to a short, pithy, odious statement. Well, now he has. put out this statement that says, quote, I hope everyone remembers when they're trying, when they're getting the COVID-19 vaccine, that if I wasn't president, you wouldn't be getting that beautiful shot for five years at best, and probably wouldn't be getting it at all.

I hope everyone remembers. Exclamation. And I purposely deleted a term that Trump refers to COVID-19 as in that read. But now he's doing tweets, David, as statements. he's innovating the form so remember we first we had like 500 boring words about carl rove that nobody read now trump is back to tweets just in the form of statements that then get put on twitter yes i mean i don't even know what to say about it he's he's no one has been i mean first all he can take all the credit he wants to for this vaccine i don't think anybody's going to argue

the point right now although even if it were true and it's not that he had that much to do with it and that it would have been years and years different. Even if that were true, his refusal to promote the vaccine since it's been available, his refusal to do it on camera, his refusal to do anything positive for this country in that direction, I think balances it out in the negative. We didn't even know he got the vaccine until recently that he had gotten it in the White House in January. That was incredible. Several people wanted us to talk about Tucker Carlson's obsession with New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz.

I don't know if you've peeked in on any of this, but Tucker Carlson has devoted a really wild amount of time on his nightly talk show to talking about Taylor Lorenz. And then, and I watched this today, unfortunately for me before we came on, he's done this thing where when the New York Times says, you know, objects naturally to Tucker Carlson doing this, says, oh, I didn't, I didn't know that New York Times reporters were above criticism. Oh, oh, oh, you know, if you read a Trump tweet on the air, I guess it's okay. But if I read a Taylor Lorenz tweet on the air, oh, I guess that's not okay. Just like the absolute worst kind of studied ignorance about the whole thing.

Yeah. It is, it's truly incredible. What do you make of that whole dynamic? I think that, and I don't, I don't mean to make light of the situation. there are very few things that I've sort of pledged to myself will stop me in my tracks in my career and I am like will force myself to reconsider everything that I've done. And one of those things is if someone said, if someone said, if anyone said that you're writing or our podcast or whatever, something that we said led to them being harassed by an army of online trolls. At that point,

you have to reconsider literally everything you've done in your career and in your life, right? I'm not saying, it's not always the person's fault when that happens. I'm not excusing Tucker Carlson at all. But there's, there are people around whom troll armies just magically grow. And so they're in this perpetual state of denial. We haven't changed what I've been doing for 10 years. It's not my fault that everything that I say leads to every woman online being harassed that I talk about.

But you still have to stop. It's like, I act, you know, there's a lot of parallels to this. But there, this is, he, but Tucker Carlson is so oblivious to this. point. He's like basking in the glory of leading armies of harassment, right? I mean, he is just like, listen, there's not, I could, I'm not even going to start comparing this to GamerGate or anything like that because it's going to like shine too brightly on one party or the other. But it's, it's, it's, there are a few things that sort of are, are completely modern inventions that are also just like utterly indefensible, you know, in this way. It's leading spearheading, spearheading,

movements of harassment is like is is is one of the most deplorable things a person can do and it and and and to do it knowingly and deliberately as just a exercise of power is is heartbreakingly evil this is uh from wesley lowry on twitter for those who haven't gone through it it is extremely destabilizing to have major conservative media attack you by name you get a flood of deranged threats what Taylor Lorenz is dealing with is not only unacceptable. It's dangerous. Fox News should be ashamed were it capable. David, I've got a Mike Pence employment watch for you.

All right. Last week we learned that Mike Pence is going to host a podcast. He wrote an op-ed for something called the Daily Signal website. And now, according to Alex Wepparin of the Hollywood Reporter, quote, Mike Pence will narrate a four-part limited series about Rush Limbaugh for the Fox Nation streaming service. So what Liev Schreiber is to Hard Knocks, Mike Pence is to the Fox Nation Rush Limbaugh Tribune.

Oh, man. That is a real insult to Leib Schreiber. It's one of the real important forces in our modern lives. Sports documentary, yeah. All documentaries. It just narrates my daily life in my own head. This is quickly going the wrong. route of embarrassing for the former vice president. I mean, if he had literally never made a

public appearance again, you know, I think he would have graded out at like a sea in the public memory, but this is just, he's just going, this is like someone who knows that their 15 minutes is functionally over and is just cashing out. I mean, I don't know how you can hope to have any, any future in politics after you've taken like a laughable page. check to do something for like the Fox's over the top platform. Sorry Fox News is over the top platform. Yeah, it's like I guess Mike Pence

was a talk show host on the radio. So is there a radio show radio host to radio host tribute? I don't know. I'm trying to explain Mike Pence's career moves, but yes, I agree. That seems pretty low brow for a former

vice president of the United States. This is from Evan Grossman. David, if you could storm off the set of any show breakfast or otherwise, what show would it be? Evan is referring to Pierce Morgan storming off the set of Good Morning Britain the other day. Oh man. I feel like you kind of have to be, this is really, I have no idea what I'm, but where this, where I'm going to lead with this. I feel like you have to be starting at a desk for one thing. You have to be in like a seated position because it doesn't quite have the same, the same, you know,

know, resonance if you're like just standing up and you walk away. Dang. Do you have to detach a mic from your lapel or pull something out of your ear to really complete the effect? I mean, if it's some sort of traditional show, I mean, you know, like a Super Bowl halftime show. Well, I mean, the studio show would be pretty good, would be a pretty, you know, great moment. I don't know. Is there something really obvious that I'm not thinking of here? No, I just, I always kind of imagine you storming off the set of the mass man show.

Oh, wait, I have to pick one of my shows. Well, that's kind of what Pierce Morgan did, right? Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, it was, and he was one of the hosts, but it was his show. And he walked, he wasn't, it wasn't like he was in, you know, the hot seat on, on like MSNBC and said, like, I'm done with this and walked out of the interview. It was his show, which is pretty notable. But maybe I think so, I think that's part.

part of the answer here. If you were going to storm off the set of a show, it should probably be your own show. You should be sitting down and you should have to detach a microphone as part of it. I mean, it would be pretty legendary. Speaking as two people who've been on the Bill Simmons podcast in the past week, it would be pretty legendary to storm out of a taping of the Bill Simmons podcast and have that make air and then somehow continue to stay employed. I'm trying to imagine what would cause me to do that. I'm not coming up with anything. This is from JJW, can you shed light on strained puns in newsrooms? Do they have contest to see who can write the winner?

Is it all self-aware? Or do some editors, reporters genuinely say, man, this is clever, with no hint of irony? What's your experience with that? I can only, I can tell, I mean, mine's pretty limited, but I can tell you. I think there's a lot of newsrooms that think of strained puns like you and I think of strained puns. Where it's a little bit of a groaner, but you kind of appreciate it on that level. Yeah.

You appreciate somebody, somebody was sending me a bunch of headlines this week about Joe Biden's dog that said faux pause PAWS. Like to me, that's just a pure groaner. But there's a kind of a half step above that like some of the ones we have on here where you're just appreciating the strained quality of it. You know, you're sort of winking at the audience a little bit. Yes. I mean, that's kind of what we're doing here, right? When we mess with puns on this podcast. Yeah, and to say, I mean, to talk specifically about, I mean, I can't obviously speak for every newsroom in the, in the country or even any number of them, but I mean, even most of them.

But, I mean, it's kind of depends on who's pulling the trigger. In the digital media age, there's a lot of, a lot of headlines are kind of decided by the editor, you know, with not without a ton of oversight or it's not like the, you know, the headline writing department in, in legacy newspapers that we were talking about last week. So, I know, I mean, I've seen at the ringer where it's been situation. where it's just like the writer or the editor in some conjunction landed on something they just thought was amazing and they put it up there and just sort of waited for the you know compliments from their co-workers to roll in or just to be completely ignored which is worse than you know being told to take it off yeah and we live in this we live in this world now of SEO heavy headlines and very functional headlines to make sure everybody possible sees the story but in a world where

headlines have a particular voice, it's the voice of the publication and it's a voice, a shared voice with the reader, a voice the reader appreciates. And again, I think that's, I think that's something that, you know, again, if you're doing strained puns, you are essentially saying, our readers appreciate this, we appreciate this. You're winking at me. I'm winking at you. And there is a connection there of some sort. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The self-awareness is really key to the strained pun genre for sure. David Mitch Carr is an anchorman at News 12, the NBC affiliate in Phoenix. He is obviously a friend of this pod because listen to the way he introduces a report on a sled dog race. And the show must go on. The most famous sled dog run in the world is happening this year, but there will be some changes. The show must go on.

Wait, that sounds familiar. That was our straight pun. A couple of shows ago. Can I tell you how excited it makes me that Mitch Carr got press box material on the news at six? Now, you get an extra Oxford comma if you work any of our material into any television broadcast. Yeah, for sure. I'm just going to, that's number one. Number two, we look forward to seeing what Mitch Carr can do with Maya Cuomo next week.

Good luck. This is from Mike Shaw is staying six feet away. I can't deny the convenience of e-readers, but I love it. I love physical books. They're like trophies, records of my accomplishments. They also make for great Zoom backgrounds. Would you pay a little extra for an e-book, physical book, combo deal? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, but I've been saying that forever. It's a little bit, well, I mean, there's a lot of very boring reasons why they don't do that in publishing. And mostly it's to make you spend more money. But yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've gone back. I had a brief, you know, several years. dalliance with e-books. But, but...

A torrid. A short but torrid affair. Well, it's just, it's, it's just wonderful. It feels very, it makes you feel more accomplished to hear about a book, to decide to read a book and to push a button and to own the book, right? I mean, it's like, this book is now in my hand. But the actual accomplishment of, you know, reading is not, is not so real. You know, I mean, it's, you, I own a giant stack of, of electronic books.

and don't really read them. At least there's, you know, you tend to read more if you have the physical thing. At least I do. And listen, and so much of reading in book form is leisure activity that it's just sort of, I know it sounds, I'm such a ludite for saying it,

but there's no leisure if you're not unplugged. There's no, it's really hard to have it the same way, you know, it's, it's, you're not going to read yourself to sleep the same way. It's hard,

you know, it's just, and just, it's like, nice to sit on your porch and, you know, have a beer or a coffee or something. something and read a physical book. There's nothing that's no e-book will ever replace that.

I also find I just skip so much when I'm doing e-books. Mm-hmm. Because I just scroll. You scroll. And if you kind of missed a paragraph or sentence, you kind of go, eh, I'm just going to keep going here. Mm-hmm. It's like you're playing a video game as much as reading a book.

Yeah. Whereas if you have a physical book, you're much more likely to savor every sentence. This is from Craig Meyer. I've noticed David has effectively stopped saying, I think that's right. As someone with his own bad, annoying verbal, tendencies. I admire it. David, how'd you do it? Well, first of all, I told Erica that if she left anymore, I think that's right. It's in. Then I would fire her. So that was the, I'm just kidding. I don't know. I've caught myself saying it a couple of times. I think I still say it occasionally,

but I change the emphasis. So it seems like I'm saying something different. I've definitely I catch myself halfway through and pivot sometimes. But I don't know. I mean, it is a very functional thing to say. The thing is, now I hear everybody saying it. It's not just me. I hear my wife saying it. I hear people at the Wendy's drive-thru saying it. It's like at that point, it becomes a thing that you're observing about the world. And it's easier to stop doing something because of general loathing than it is self-loathing. Self-loathing never gets me anywhere. But seeing in the rest of the world has made it easier to stop. I hear Mitch Carr saying it on the news at six. I mean, it's, it's everywhere.

finally David we talked about Harry and Megan fallout on Monday would you like to hear the top three Harry and Megan pun headlines from around the world please Andrew Solomon sent this in from the New York Posts page six thrown under the bus thrown that's fantastic under the bus great simplicity there Aaron Galoney sent this from the Sydney Morning Herald

no winsers, just losers. Oh, that's fantastic. Quite good. Michael Solomon, greatest headline writer I've ever met, sent in an absolute gem from the UK Metro newspaper, Anas Heribulus.

But it's Anas Heribulus. Wow. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wish I'd have thought of that. Anis Heribulus. That is the Harry and Megan headline to beat. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week

where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to At the Pressbox Pod where they are always gratefully received. David, we are still doing Harry and Megan Twitter jokes in addition to Harry and Megan headlines. A few more great ones from this week. First off, going to start referring to all my Twitter followers

as the firm. Another one. Imagine bringing your wife and kid to America because it's less racist. And David, did you see that insane Burger King UK tweet that read women belong in the kitchen? Oh, yeah. They were trying to do something about female chefs for International Women's Day and wound up having to apologize. It was a big mess. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, Queen Elizabeth.

No monarch could possibly be having a worse day than me. Burger King. hold my wapper. Thanks to Big T. Leah and Derek Burke for those. As mentioned above, the Royal interview gave us a bonus, Peers Morgan is an asshole news cycle. After his weird criticism of Megan Markle, Morgan has left the show Good Morning Britain.

It was an overwork Twitter joke to say the show will now change its name to Great Morning Britain. Thanks to Derek Lombardo, we would have also accepted Peers seemed a bit unmoored. Peers seemed a bit unmoored. That was an actual David Axelrod tweet. Very, very good stuff there. And finally, David, Joe Biden's German Shepherd Major has reportedly nipped the hand of a Secret Service agent that startled him. Major has been sent to Delaware to recover his bearings. It was an overword Twitter joke to put Major in the chair opposite Oprah and write, The press has a story all wrong.

The Secret Service agent bit me. If you think we'll be feasting on the Oprah interview for another month, you're right. And congrats. You made the Overword Twitter joke of the week. In The Notebook, David, a very special guest from the great state of Texas. All right, let's bring in Evan Smith. He is CEO and co-founder of the Texas Tribune. He hosts a podcast called Point of Order, where the episodes often carry the pun titles

Evan loved to use when he was editing Texas Monthly magazine. Evan is a world-class editor and observer of Texas politics. He is one of my all-time favorite people. Evan Smith, welcome to the press box. Thank you and back at you. You know, I always wanted you to be the editor of Texas Monthly after me, and I had to settle for Jake Silverstein. Don't think I don't remember that every time I'm waiting in traffic on the 405.

Yeah, we have traffic down here, but I will admit it's not California, that's for sure. Evan, as you know more than anyone, Texas news almost inevitably becomes national news. Yep. We are the most important place in the world. This is the center of the universe. Exactly. Exactly. So with that said, are you surprised by how many giant stories have come through the Tribune Newsroom in the last month? In the last month, yeah, probably. I mean, look, it's been a hell of a 12-month period, Brian. We had the pandemic, which everybody else had. we had the economic downturn, which everybody else had, although we in Texas had gotten to the point of thinking that we were immune from economic downturns. You know, we found ourselves to be mortal over the last 12 months, which is something that Texans hate to acknowledge.

We had the reckoning on race, George Floyd, a Texan. And of course, we watched with horror at Brianna Taylor and Ahmed Arbery and suddenly we were having this conversation around systemic racism in a much more persistent way overdue. then we had the election and the insurrection. And, you know, because this is Texas, so many of the people, it turns out, who were destroying our capital were Texans. This is alarming to me in its own way. And then we had this deep freeze.

And you as a native Texan understand that, you know, we don't dig on snow here in Texas. This was the most snow that fell in the city of Austin, Brian, in 70 years. 70 years. Incredible. And so we spent the last 12 months weathering the storm metaphysically,

and then we weathered it. actually. And the result is, well, a saying from the old days of Texas monthly, we used to say at Texas monthly, bad for Texas, good for Texas monthly. And I would say the same is in effect here, bad for Texas, good for the Texas Tribune. We have certainly not lacked for things to write about. And, you know, if we're doing our jobs properly, then we become the reliable, credible source of information for everybody in the state and out about how this stuff affects us. And I think we did a really great job. Let's talk about the Tribune. You, and a handful of others founded the site 12 years ago now.

Right. For people who followed a link and may not know the origin story, why did you start the Tribune? Well, I was alarmed at the decline in the number of newspapers in Texas and the decline in the number of reporters in Texas and the decline in the amount of coverage of politics and public policy. And what I associated with those things was the corresponding decline in civic engagement generally and voter turnout specifically. Texas loves to be first and best at everything, Brian, as you know. for a long time, we were first and best at shitty voter turnout. We were dead last or near dead last

every election cycle in the percentage of people who were registered to vote or were eligible, but unregistered, and who actually turned out to vote. And you get the government you deserve when you have a low voter turnout. And to me, the way to say this was, or to think about this, was that, you know, if we provided reliable information to people in Texas, they would have a better sense of the things going on around them that they needed to care about, the issues that they needed to pay attention to, the fights being waged in their name at the state capital, the stakes they had in the outcomes of those fights. I can't guarantee you or anybody else that if we report on something that people will care, I can almost certainly guarantee you that if we don't report

on it, people won't care. And I think there was too much checking out by the people of the state. And the people who are in power were being not held accountable by journalism or by voters. And, you know, the danger when you, this is not about journalism. This is about democracy. And the danger is that if you don't have a check on people in power and institutions, then the whole system doesn't work. And we want it to be that check. We want it to be that accountability mechanism. And that's why we started the Tribune.

My read on the Tribune is that if Beto O'Rourke runs for president or Dan Crenshaw becomes a thing in Congress, you want to own that story. But even more than that, you want to own the nitty, gritty policy stories that affect people's lives. Is that fair? Yeah, I think it is fair. And, you know, Beto O'Rourke or Dan Crenshaw are very interesting to us, but so is the Public Utility Commission of Texas when it fails in the middle of a winter storm to protect us all by regulating the power grid that Texas is on, with the effect being that four and a half million or more customers, which is not the same as people, because every household has more than one person. Four and a half million customers. of the utilities in Texas at the peak of the winter storm were without power. The public utility commission is as sexy to us as Dan Crenshaw or Beto O'Rourke as a subject to cover. Now, of course, you got to do the big stories. But quite honestly, Brian, where the media has fallen down in Texas,

they haven't fallen down on the big stories. Anybody can chase a fire truck or cover a crisis. You know, I like to say that when the legislature comes in, as you know, our legislature is in Austin five months out of every two years. When the ledge comes in, the news organizations around the state staff up like the department stores at the holidays. They hire seasonal help. And then the session ends and they lay off all the elves. We don't have elves, right? We don't have seasonal help.

We cover this stuff all the time. So everybody does the Dan Crenshaw or the Beto O'Rourke, everybody. But we do the Public Utility Commission. We do the Texas Railroad Commission. We cover the nitty-gritty of policy and politics at the granular level for the benefit of everybody in the state. And we translate it into English. And we put people at the center of our coverage so that it's relatable and accessible. And I think it actually helps us in terms of telling stories.

How many reporters do you have now? Well, reporter is an interesting word, Brian. we have a lot of different kinds of reporters. I would actually rather define it as journalists. We have more than 40 journalists deployed in service to this amazing mission that we have. And we have the most journalists at a state capital of any news organization, for profit or nonprofit in the whole country, or something like the eighth straight year.

And partly it's because we only cover policy and politics. And so we can deploy all of our resources to that. We're not a full service news organization. We don't have the need to be sending reporters off to cover the, you know, the BTS concert or to cover the Austin FC, you know. From our perspective, the stuff that really matters is the stuff that we're covering. And so all in on that. In the beginning, you were hiring lots of reporters away from newspapers. Right.

What do you find reporters or journalists now? That's still the case to some degree. I'll tell you the big difference is that it's a much easier sell today. You know, at the very beginning, the pitch was, you know, it's like we were Thelman Louise and we were saying jump in the car and drive off the cliff with us. We don't know if there's anything to catch us at the bottom. And I think now people get it. They see the work for 12 years. They understand that we're serious as can be about the work and the mission. We've won a lot of awards. We've proven that the economic model is resilient and can sustain us. We've raised more than $90 million in 11 and a half years to pay for serious journalism. No one is more surprised to be saying those words than me. And if I told you where that money came from, you wouldn't believe it either because they're the kind of people who don't wake up every day thinking in the case of many of the wealthy individuals who have supported the Tribune through the door of major philanthropy. These are not the kind of people who wake up every day and say, you know what I'm going to do with all the money I made in my life? I'm going to give it to the media. That's not what you would think. But we've been able to persuade people that this is not about journalism. This is about democracy. This is about something larger than the news media. It's about making sure that,

Texas is the best place it can be by shining a light on good, bad, and indifferent, the challenges that we face, the opportunities that we have, the big issues that affect all of us. And so I don't have to persuade people as much as I did in the early days to come work for us. Today we get, you know, many, many more people who want to work for us than we have jobs available. And that's great. Now, look, traditional reporters, yes, but also really to the heart of your question. I don't think there's only one way to come in the door to do this work. I think you can be, you know, you're not to be a journalism major.

You might be a law student. You might be a liberal arts major. I think you can have worked at a traditional news source. You maybe are more of an issue expert, somebody who's a more deep vertical person. We take all comers, but we hire really smart people who are open to the idea that we can do this work better than we've done it before. I always want to be moving forward. Running in place is not a strategy for this business or for life. So you get money through donations.

You do this amazing festival in Austin every year that every politician on earth comes to. That brings in money. How much did all this get screwed up by the coronavirus? Well, we haven't done a live event since March 6th of 2020. That was the last live event we did. It was with the Commissioner of Education of the State of Texas, Mike Morath. And I remember very clearly that he came on stage and we were far enough into the virus at that point, that he came on stage and he wanted to shake my hand. Natural thing to do.

And I wouldn't shake his hand. I elbow bumped him and I said on that day, if I shake your hand, Mike Pence is going to bust through the back door of the event space and put us in coronavirus jail. Not very funny now to think about that. But, you know, we couldn't do the live events. We typically do more than 50 live events around the state a year. Couldn't do those. We couldn't do the festival in person. But you know what? We held our own. We didn't lay off an employee last year. We didn't furlough an employee. We didn't cut a salary. We've run this like a business, even though it's a nonprofit, and we've insulated ourselves against the kind of, you know, singular event like this last year was to the point that we came out of it,

upright and intact. You know, we didn't raise as much last year as we had intended, and we won't raise as much this year as we would have had there not been a pandemic year. But, Brian, the money is there to do this work, individuals, foundations, and corporate support. The money is there. And I really believe that anybody can do a version of this in their state or their community. And that's the part that I try to tell people. I am a proselytizer and a sermonizer with no equal. I believe in this work, and I believe that every place can have a Texas Tribune if they want to done their way, the money is there. You mentioned the winter storms that hit Texas in mid-February. Right. What did that reveal about Texas politics? I think it revealed that

we have been whistling past the graveyard in terms of some of the things that we just baked into the value system of the state, beginning with deregulation. I mean, I was maybe the moment that really brought it home from me was on February 24th, there was a Wall Street Journal story. The lamestream fake news liberal Wall Street Journal reported that Texas power customers paid more than 28 billion dollars to deregulated utilities than they would have paid had they been customers of regulated utilities. Deregulation is like apple pie and motherhood in Texas, Brian, as you know. And I just think that we had all kind of like gone, eh, deregulation, eh, you know, nobody really taking accountability or taking responsibility, pardon me, or any accountability for anything,

eh, that's fine. And, you know, everything, it was, it was like a literal perfect storm, a literal perfect storm in which the cracks in the facade and the, the, the mold in the foundation of this state and everything else, all were revealed. And then, of course, we also had the Ted Cruz thing. I mean, I think the number of stories inside the story, like sort of Russian dolls during that period of time. It's just extraordinary. I'm a big believer in this idea that there was the before. For me, the before ended when the mayor of Austin canceled South by Southwest. That was the end of the beginning or end of the before and the beginning of the during. So there was the before. We're in the during. There'll be an after. We say about this last year,

the after will be different from the before in all ways. And I think in Texas politics, actually, after is going to be different from the before as well, because we really did see, and especially in the weeks of the storm, we really did, and the aftermath, we really did see that we have a lot of work to do. And I think, I think we have to do it. So the reckoning takes what form do you think? Well, do I think, I mean, the question I was getting is, do you think Ted Cruz will pay any price at the ballot box for having jetted off to Mexico for, you know, apparently he packed really heavily for 19 hours on the road? You know, if only the Democrats were alive, If the Democratic Party of Texas were not as enfeebled as it is, they might have an opportunity

to get into a conversation about accountability at the ballot box for these couple of weeks. I think there's going to have to be some policy around the way we regulate the utilities. I think there's going to be a serious conversation about whether it makes sense for us to be on our own power grid. There's already been accountability in the sense that the chair and one of the commissioners that the Public Utility Commission have been forced to resign. And the CEO of Ercot, the Electrical Liability Council of Texas, our grid operator, was let go. I think there'll be consequences, but there'll be unsexy consequences. There'll be policy consequences.

Everybody wants somebody's head on a pike for politics purposes. And I think that's a harder sell because you can't beat somebody with nobody. And right now, the Democrats have nobody. You mentioned Cruz. When you were editing Texas Monthly, you did the annual Bumsteer Awards. which were a little like Esquares dubious achievement awards, but better. If you were editing Texas Monthly now and you saw Cruz getting on that plane with his roller suitcase, would you have gone ahead and commission the cover art for this year?

Could there anything possibly? I wouldn't have waited for the bum steers. Listen, I actually had a conversation with some former Texas Monthly people when the last issue of Texas Monthly arrived in the mail, which was about two weeks ago. And I said, I understand what they did. I know why they did it. But if I had been the editor, what I would have done is had Ted Cruz, than that roller bag on the cover, no type, no type.

Right? I mean, there's no more iconic image than him in that, you know. No. No. I mean, to me, that's the story. The real story of that trip, who narked out Heidi, right? I mean, everything about that, everything about that trip to me, I would have, for Texas Monty's purposes, not waited for the bump steers, I would have done the Ted Cruz cover

immediately. And what was so striking is once we got past the good dad stuff, there was really no explanation. They really, there was no theory of the case he had other than, yeah, I went to Cancun. The only good thing that came from that whole story is I immediately got out of every group text I'm in. I don't want to get thrown into Greece. You don't want anybody going to the New York Times is your text. No, you know, you should see my, no, my text has got a lot more boring. I promise you since that.

I was going to say, I don't know you as a boring, as a boring person in text or any form. So I can imagine you have some liability hanging out there somewhere. How funny. Yesterday was a big day in Texas. Governor Greg Abbott's order went into effect to lift the mask mandate and open businesses at full capacity. Indeed. Is it too easy to connect the government failures during the storms to Abbott making that move when he did? Well, there are people like Lena Hidalgo, the, um, uh, the, um, the, uh,

County judge in Harris County, third largest county in the country, first largest in Texas. She presides as the chief executive over a county of 4.6 million people. She's practically the governor already. She's just a governor of Harris County. The population she's responsible for is larger than the population of 25 states. Wow. She said out loud, the governor is doing this to distract from the scandal over the storm. Like she didn't even hesitate.

She just said, that's what it is. You know, there was a poll out a couple days ago, Brian, that showed Dallas Boy News University of Texas, Tyler, that the governor's approval rating despite the storm was still north the 50 percent and that his approval rating on his handling of the storm was north to 50 percent. I said to Judge Adalgo, what does he need to distract from on that basis, right? I mean, it hasn't sunk in that he had any responsibility for it. Look, the governor appoints the commissioners on the Public Utility Commission. Two of the three had to resign. Right? I mean, the guy at the top of the ord chart is always responsible for everything. Always responsible for everything. And so, you know, I don't know whether he did A to distract from B, but you can do B because B is either the right or wrong thing to do and still have a conversation around A. So, you know, it was Texas Independence Day that he made the decision to lift the mask mandate. Independence from masks. I could write that press. release, so could you, right? Sure. But here's what I'll point out. On the day that the governor

decided to lift the mask mandate or announce he intended to and lift the restrictions on the coronavirus, there were still 200 daily deaths from the coronavirus in Texas on that day. There were still 4,000 new confirmed cases on average that day and every day around it. There were still 5,000 people hospitalized from the coronavirus in Texas on that day. The pandemic is not over, right? Wishing it won't make it so. But the governor and the people who are, support this decision have apparently decided that we're going to, we're going to move on. And so he owns the consequences of that. I mean, don't you think? I do. Absolutely. And I say this somebody with a 70-something-year-old mom living in Texas, but the criticism was you stigmatize mask wearing

when you do that. So instead of a social pressure to wear masks, there's a social pressure to take your mask off. The stigma already existed. We have already had this incredible politicizing of masks over the last year. You know, the governor found himself over the last year, essentially attacked from the left and attacked from the right. He was attacked from the right by people who were, you know, liberty, liberty, don't tell us what to do. We can't make us wear a mask. You know, you can't make us get vaccinated. Of course, we don't make anybody get vaccinated. He's very quick to point out that it's voluntary. But they didn't want any restrictions at all on businesses. They wanted to be able to go to restaurants and go to, you know, do whatever else. Then on the left, he's criticized by people who

said you didn't do enough. And, you know, the mask conversation has been one of, quite frankly, many over the last 12 months in which you just kind of can't believe that this is where we are, right? I mean, what is the role of government but to try to litigate between competing points of view and do what is right for the best interest of the state, the public good, to advance the public good? I'll tell you, it's been weird. And, you know, the numbers in Texas have been bad. The vaccine rollout's been nothing to write home about. And yet here we are now in a state in which no longer have a mandate on masks, reopening business is 100%. It just doesn't square with either the science or the statistics. I think sometimes people unfairly conflate Texans with politicians

from Texas. So do we know how actual Texans feel about a mask mandate? Well, we don't. There'll be polling, of course, about that. I mean, we've had some polling over time. about that, but I really would want to know right now what the temperature of the public is, and I expect we'll see from us or from somebody else the results on this. I think, look, can we just stipulate everybody in the state of Texas is tired of the coronavirus. Everybody in the state of Texas is tired of talking to their dog and talking to their coffee table. Everybody is tired of not going into the office, maybe not everybody. Everybody's tired of being limited in what we can do.

But there's no going, you know, there's no going back. get a mulligan for this. This is where we are. We are where we are. And so that's it. Evan, as far as I can tell, every single national political reporter has written the when will Texas go blue piece at least once, probably three times, maybe five times. Yep. What is a reasonable date for Texans, for Texas to go blue? Well, it's always the same piece, by the way, right? I mean, every piece is the same piece. And it's all essentially wishful thinking on the part of whoever's quoted or the journal. was writing it or both. And I'm always the last person airlifted off the roof of the embassy

at the end of the war on that subject. I mean, I do not believe that on the ground, from my view, that the state is right for a political takeover by the Democrats. The last cycle that we were in, the last election cycle of 2020 was the best chance Democrats had in a generation to be back in the game. Remember what happened in 2018. 2018, Beto O'Rourke got more votes than any Democrat running statewide in the history of the state, more than 4 million votes, came within 2.5 points roughly of Ted Cruz in the Senate race, close to Senate race in Texas in decades. By comparison, the last time John Cornyn was on the ballot, which was four years earlier, he won by 27 points. Cruz won by two and a half points.

Democrats won 12 seats in the Texas House, couple seats in the Texas Senate, and were within range of being able to take back control of the House majority in particular in a year in which we were then going to do redistricting. So that would have given the Democrats an opportunity to have a place at the table for that. and they ended up net zero on Texas House seats. They won one, but they lost one. So it was the same partisan split as before the election in 2020. Democrats won one seat that Texas said it fine,

but Joe Biden still lost by six points. Democrats hoped to win maybe four congressional seats. They won none, including a couple of congressional seats that were close enough that it seemed like it was just a matter of time. Of course, they were going to win them. And so the result is, now Republicans have their hands on the apparatus of government. They can lead redistricting in the direction that they want, and they can basically solidify their grip on control here for the

foreseeable future. Democrats don't have a bench, Brian. They don't have a bench. The aforementioned Judge Adalgo is mentioned as a potential statewide candidate. She's all of 30 years old. She's having none of it. Various Castro's are mentioned, but I don't believe that in this next election cycle, you're going to get either one of those two to run. Congressman O'Rourke is still out. there potentially as another candidate for something, but it drops off the table pretty significantly from there. So not soon is the answer. Not soon. And the idea that demographics will take care of everything was given the lie in this last election when South Texas, which you know well, went significantly more for Trump than anybody imagined. And there's a lot of reasons for that.

But the evidence of that is that if you have more Hispanics voting, it doesn't mean that you're going to get more Democrats elected. Before we go, I want to ask you about. about the Eyes of Texas. Yeah. Eyes of Texas is a school song at the University of Texas, my alma mater. Last year, members of the football team

asked the university to replace the song because of its racist origins. University just released this big report about this. Step back and second, Kate McGee of the Tribune did a fabulous piece

about the Eyes of Texas. What did she find out about the battle inside the university about the song? Well, the reality is that Kate's reporting was about the communications

from alumni to the university, on the subject. You know, people say, well, your stories about the subject said that the song was racist. No, we didn't. What we acknowledge was that there were some student athletes and others who had raised questions about the history of the song, racist overtones of the song. And the university thought that it was enough of a subject worth paying attention to

that they commissioned this analysis of the song's history that they then took about a year to then release the results of, which they did in fact release this week. people are jerks is what we found. People are racist is what we found. Many of the emails that went from alums to the office of the president or to other leaders of the university contain things that you would not believe people would say out loud. Not all of them, not necessarily even a majority of them. But enough of them that there was a story about the controversy. Look, people love the University of Texas. People who've gone to the University of Texas, people whose family has gone to the University of Texas. They love the University of Texas deeply, passionately. traditions at that school, as you very well know, matter enormously. And it was going to always be difficult to get the community behind the idea that they were going to get rid of the eyes of Texas. What are you going to do next? Barbecue bevo, right? You know, so leaving aside the merits of the song, which is a little bit like saying, other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play, right? Leaving aside the merits here, it is entirely unsurprising, entirely unsurprising, that people of this

community feel strongly about this. And so now the university has to put the pieces back together, which they're trying to do, and listen to the people who are not satisfied by the answer that we think the song has some issues in its history, but is not problematic enough to get rid of it. every single university in the country is going through a version of this conversation around race, diversity, equity, inclusion, systemic racism and all that. This is now UT's time in the barrel to do it. But the eyes survives. All the live long day, Brian, we'll be having this conversation. I am always amused by the difference in reverence for a song like this in theory and the actual reverence displayed when you are.

sitting in these stands at a football game in practice. You know, we, everybody, well, we can't change it. We must respect the traditions. We must do this. Every time I go to a UT football game and I try to go to them in normal times and sit in stands with all my old pals, you know, people are talking to their significant other. People have had a couple too many beers. People forget the words.

People are booing because UT lost to Oklahoma again. Or worse to Maryland. Or to Maryland. Right. So it's just amusing. The difference between. between here we have a chance to do this sacred tradition and here is that. Right.

And give the university credit and that they took seriously enough the concerns that they did the commission, this commission to study, they put the commission together. They did deal with some statue and monument issues on campus. They did do some things. But, you know, the eyes was always going to be the flashpoint. And, you know, I'll tell you the feedback that we got on our story from the people from UT. Just, you know, just reporting on the controversy was this. controversy itself. I mean, so, you know, you and I could have gone into banking. We chose to go into

this, Brian. Finally, I noticed you're doing a live interview with George W. Bush on March 18th. People can watch. Well, actually, secretly, it's not a live interview. It's pre-recorded, because we are in Zoom world. So I've already recorded the interview. Oh, you've already recorded it. I've already recorded it. It is for South by Southwest in the Tribune. It will be the first interview that the former president has given on his book that is about to come out about immigration. can you tell us if you got W to break his omerta about Donald Trump in this interview? What I will tell you is we talked a lot about the state of the current political and policy universe in a way that I was really very happy at the end I got an opportunity to do.

More important for fans of the ringer and of this podcast, we also talked about whether it's a good idea or a bad idea to have a runner on second base at the beginning of extra innings. I imagine he had opinions about that. He and I both have opinions, and, you know, spoiler, we agree. You can check out Evan Smith's team of muckrakers over at the Texas Tribune. Listen to his podcast point of order. Evan, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you, Brian. It's time for David Shoemaker.

Guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about Andrew Cuomo's semi-apology was Maya Cuomo. Today's headline comes from Mike Shapiro. Piro and Matthew Cox. It's from the Louisville Courier Journal. Yeah. Yeah, and I learned how to pronounce that city because David Shoemaker used to live there and he

wouldn't let me pronounce it wrong. I'm going to read to you, David, from the Courier Journal. Quote, if you live in Kentucky, you may know the story of cocaine bear, a 175-pound black bear who unfortunately consumed the contents of a duffel bag filled with more than 70 pounds of cocaine. that's roughly $15 million worth of blow the drugs were dropped from an airplane by a local drug smuggler

Andrew Thornton dot dot dot cocaine bear was found dead next to a ripped open bag with about 76 pounds of cocaine in his stomach the occasion here is they're making a movie about cocaine bear but you don't need to know any of that what was the Louisville Courier Journal's

strained pun headline bear the cocaine bhaen bear. Yeah. You're going to focus on the cocaine bear. It's like an Ursa

may a grizzly Ursa major crimes. That's that's where you're going. Grizzly man Coke powder

blow. What if you were to think of a famous drug lord? El Chapo? A little bit before El Chappo. Oh, the guy with the flamingos. Yeah.

Columbia. Yeah. What's his name? Pablo. Oh, Escobar. Escobar. Pablo Escobar. Pablo Escobar.

That's fantastic. Some great work down there in Louisville. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantas. We are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.

I think that's right.