The Press Box - Listener Mail on ESPN, the White House Press Corps, and Watching the Olympics

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are answering your listener mail about the ongoing saga inside ESPN (7:35), the lack of information coming from the White House press corps (15:48), their Olympics viewing plans (32:50), and whether or not David calls Bryan “babe” (47:02). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The postseason is here and the Ringer NBA show has you covered with real ones, group chat, the answer, and Ringer NBA post game. Check out the Ringer NBA show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, as you know, I'm spending a month on the East Coast this summer. Mm-hmm. And I have been reading a publication that I had not read for a really long time. That publication is the New York Post. Okay, okay, yeah.

And you know how some publications, you, a publication, or even a Twitter account you kind of piece out on for a while. And then you come back to it and it's like, oh, hello old friend. I'm not sure I would consider the New York Post to be a friend or even a friend of me, really. Yeah, but I mean, the New York Post is like, it's a paper that you encounter at the bodega, right? It's the thing that you see on the newsstand. And in that sense, it's like, the New York Post is not your friend, but it's not so different than like the guy at the bodega that you happen to talk to for 15 minutes every day. Or like the guy who sells you your coffee or the, you know, just whatever.

I mean, there's a lot of people you encounter like you encounter the New York Post. It's not necessarily a bad connotation, even if the substance isn't great. Yeah, no offense to the guy at the bodega. Right. So we update. But would you like a New York Post update? What is going on at the New York Post? Yes, please, please.

Okay, so the pun headlines are still intact. Chris Paul having a crappy game for of the NBA Finals today. is Cass Apal, P-A-U-L. The Yankees, their second half opener against the Red Sox is called off because of a COVID outbreak. This Sox is the back page of the post today. So that's all still intact. Sports section? Really good?

Really? Yeah. I mean, it's funny because one, newspaper sports sections have all really, really shrunk. The Post is still really big. it also covers sports in a kind of ringery way, which might be insulting to the tradition of New York Post, but anyway, it covers sports in the sense of like, here are the articles you actually want to read,

and I'm going to grab you by the lapels and make you read this, you know, not the distanced leisurely kind of approach to writing that some newspapers engage in. I am sad to report that Phil Mushnick is added again in the media column in the York Post. I don't know if I need to go into the in any details, but the Rachel Nichols Maria Taylor column was something else.

Let's just put it that way. Yeah, I can imagine. Like Fox News, as we've talked about on this podcast, not a lot of direct engagement with Joe Biden. Instead of going after Biden, they're more likely to just put up the unflattering picture of AOC. Oh, yeah. So there is some kind of Murdoch marching orders,

or at least everybody's kind of learned the same lesson. Do we have any questions, by the way, to speak about Joe Biden's whispering and how that's starting to become the Fox News meme? Okay. That was always part of his vocal affect. I know. Remember that? Especially when he's talking about like something really serious or sad. I'm folks, I get like this and I get like that.

That's Joe Biden. Come on. So, yes, we got that. We got a lot of Hunter Biden in the New York Post, which is probably not a surprise. But I think every day I've read it, there's a Hunter Biden story that I was not aware. was a story and in fact may not be an actual story. But this one really got me. The opinion section on Monday,

because they run some columns in the middle of the paper, there was a column by Andrew Sullivan, Andrew Sullivan's picture and byline. Like, is he a regular contributor there? Good question. There was a picture next to the column. I just want you to know of Ibram X.

Kendi, Kara Swisher, and Tonehazi Coates. You could probably tell where that column was going. But I was like, wow, as you say, is Andrew Sullivan writing for the post? At the very bottom of the column, it said, excerpted with permission from Andrew Sullivan's substack. Oh, I had not imagined this part of the substack marketplace, but it makes a lot of sense, right? I mean, there's always been syndicated contributors, syndicated columnists, et cetera. but if you're already writing them,

if you write them on substack, you're already monetizing them on substack. You don't have to do extra work or anything like that, and it's pretty safe to assume that the readerships of a, you know, dead tree paper and substack

could not be more different. So there's not, no one has to worry about overlap. And frankly, you don't have to be like, you can you can still maintain all claims of you know non ideological you know points of view right you're like hey i'm not i'm not writing for a conservative newspaper right wing newspaper i'm just writing for my substack if they want to exert it maybe that shows says more about them and says more about

you who's asking this question than it does about me yes it is the new syndication in that way hey just i just wrote it you know whoever picks it up picks it up it's also just an amazing window on the state of newspapers, perhaps especially tabloid newspapers and especially conservative tabloid newspapers. Yeah. This is like, we're going to Andrew Sullivan's substack. We need something to pair with the rich lowry column. So we're going to Andrews substack and we're getting it.

That, um, that just really amused me. Back in, I, you know, my late New York days, I used to like semi seriously joke that I wanted to start a magazine that was just based entirely, that was entirely public don't. domain text on the in the inside. It's just like Wikipedia articles you might be interested in reading and like old stories from like, you know, like Harper's Quarterly in 1901, you know, whatever it was. Just like just stuff that you can find in the public domain because, but the, but the story behind it, I mean, the argument behind it was basically that like magazines are just physical items, right? It's like you pick them up because you like the cover and you like the feel

of the paper and you want to have something to read on the subway or to put on your coffee table or whatever, you know? And sure, there's important stories and a lot of them. We all want to keep up with the New Yorker and blah, blah, blah. But that's like a small slice of why we have magazines, especially in the age of the internet, right? It's sort of, it's not too different than what's going on here, right? It's just like you need to justify the existence of the paper. So you put things in the paper, and it's just the things that are available to put in that sort of don't seem too wrong. Did your hypothetical publication have a name? Oh, God, it did.

I honestly don't remember what it is. It was found magazine was taken. I don't know. Steal this content. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Coming up on today's show, we answer your listener mail questions

about the continuing sagas inside ESPN, the Joe Biden White House press corps, the Olympics, which are about to start. Some only in journalism words and the greatest letter to the editor of all time? It's in the pantheon anyway. All that more on the press box

a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here along with Erica Servantes. David, should we do one more

mini round on the ESPN contra temps to use an only in journalism word? Yes, I was excited to see your column on the ringer this week. Kind of coming in, well, it's not exactly the same issue,

but it was a, It was a countdown piece. It was really good. But yes, let's talk about contra temps. It's kind of the related but not related part of this, right? Which is so ESPN has said, and we have seen from that Kevin Draper New York Times piece that the plum job of the NBA finals,

if you're not calling the game, is hosting or being on the studio shows. Yeah. But then this really weird thing has happened where ESPN has downsized, not only the studio show, but the sound bites on the studio show to such a point where the person doesn't have time to say anything. Yeah. I mean, it's like I got out, I was sitting there with my phone watching the studio show of game four, which is on Wednesday. And again, I am not, these are not like the Olympics where it's electronic timers. This is me using my, my thumb.

But I did it a couple of times. And none of the panelists had happened. Halftime spoke for more than 10 seconds each. My gosh. That pause right there. That was like a second and a half. They didn't speak for more than 10 seconds. They're all talking like the micro machine man because they're trying to get in their point. And the whole editorial part of halftime, if you shave off the, this is brought to you by so-and-so, was less than one minute.

So in the age of the podcast where we're having these sprawling conversations, it was one. minute of content. Well, that's what, I mean, when we had the last conversation, I was sort of alluding to this in the sense that I thought Maria Taylor's real gift, real genius, was making the briefest of exchanges feel like you were just catching the middle of a conversation, right? So it didn't feel, it didn't feel like it was a 15 second conversation. It felt like it was an hour-long conversation, which that, you know, that you flipped to and then flipped away from. Yes. She's very good at that. And she has. has that sort of just natural. She just feels like there's something about her that feels very

natural and very casual in a good way. So when she comes back, you're right. It feels like you're continuing a conversation that has already been going on. And I think that's an interesting part of this because it's not the talent, right? It's the structure of the thing. It's not about the people who are on the air. It's about the producers who have decided this should be the way you communicate information. There were also, dude. And again, I understand, of all people in the world, I understand when we watch live sports on television, it is a delivery vehicle for commercials. That's why it's on TV. That's why it gets those huge rights fees of billions of dollars. Again, it's not, it's not my first, it's not my first

experience with beerheads. There were 29 commercials between the second and third quarters of that finals game. Mm-hmm. 29. Yeah, it's probably really, I mean, it's a lot of things, but an aspect of it has to be that it's probably really beneficial to the ad sales team to be able to have a definable piece, you know, place to put the ads, right? This is not just, oh, you're going in the second quarter or, oh, you're going in the third quarter. It's like you're going to be part of the halftime show, right? This is like, we can put you there. We promise that you'll go right after Jaylon or whatever. You are the halftime show. Yeah, exactly. Because the half time show basically doesn't exist. But I think that's the thing, right? It's when you say, when you say,

here are our basketball experts and we're giving them one minute to talk and here are our commercials and we're doing 29 commercials around them, you're telling the viewer in one way or another, this one thing is really important. This other thing isn't quite as important. You really are sending that subliminal signal, which is just really, and I guess, you know, I mentioned podcasts a second ago. We're in the age of the low post. Bill Simmons podcast, all the pods we have here on The Ringer, that kind of like smart, sprawling conversation has really made a lot of TV look really, really short and sort of surface level because you have this whole world. And again, I don't think I said this in the story.

I don't think the NBA finals has a huge general interest audience. So you don't want to make this like a super insider basketball. conversation. I just think if you have people that you really like, you want to give them a chance to succeed. You want to give them a chance to show their stuff. And more of the point, you want to give them a chance to actually have a conversation with each other and not just be like, you make a point, and then I make a point and then I make a point. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's it. That's not, that's not, that's not conversation. Yeah. I mean, it's, and it's not even just, you can, you can compare them to the podcasts that we listen to and everything else. But,

most of these people have, I mean, Woge has a podcast, right? Yeah. You know, Jalen Rose is on ESPN. He's a radio show. And it has a radio show, right? I mean, you can listen to them expound at length. And I guess you could take the other side and say, like, well, they're already talking at length. This is a different platform.

But no, I mean, this is how we like to listen to them. And we know that they're good at doing this, right? And it's just, it just seems wild. I mean, I know, and I know they're worried about the total runtime, too, and everything. else, but it's a very, very strange use of the accumulation of talent. And it is an interesting art because I think like, let's say you're not going to have a ton of time in any case. Hopefully you have more than a minute, but you're not going to have a ton of time.

So like, what do you want to do? I think you kind of want to leave the viewer with like one idea, maybe two ideas about what they just watched and what they're about to watch in the second half. Yeah. And it can be a basketball idea like Janus needs to go. of the basket. But I think even better is just kind of like a big,

big scene setty kind of thing. Like here's what Yonnas, you know, this is why the second half is so big for the bucks. This is why the second half is so big for Yonis. Now you can do the actual like smart basketball version of that. But I just, I would say you need to sort of think broadly,

like we're just going to implant one idea in your head that will set you up. Because part of it, right, is they want you to watch the second half too. They don't want you to tune out. But if that's the goal, doesn't it make more sense to just have Zach Lowe or just have Jalen Rose

or just you pick your voice and have this be the identity and just say this is what I just saw and this is what's going to matter like back to the commercials you know just like really make the point and have one person direct you because you know the old saying it's just like something better than the sum of its parts

right? I mean as it stands right now the halftime show no one would say it's better than the sum of its parts no one would say it's just it's not even the sum it's just parts right it's like we're putting parts on the screen to give you the impression that you're watching a halftime show but the content of it

like it doesn't add up to anything at all it's not supposed to add up to anything it's supposed to look like a halftime show for one minute yes yes no I do I think you're right one person but what's cool about the Turner one right is like it's usually they're feeding Charles Barkley

like Charles Barkley is going to have our very incendiary takeaway from the first half of basketball famously during this playoffs the bucks are a dumb basketball team, he said. But then the other guys will have a chance to be like, I agree, but this, right? Like pivot off it, amplify it, help him make the point or just be like, you were full of crap, dude. You know, you're wrong. And again, I would just much rather be about one thing where you have

people that can kind of, they don't have to argue, but they can sort of weigh in and have like, just like a normal sports fan conversation rather than like a sound bite where you're trying to like, here's me. Okay, I hit my mark. Right. I'm going, you know, and now it's your turn. You got 10 seconds. That just doesn't work. Our friend Max, David, points us to a bit about the post-Donald Trump White House media. The writer Julia Yoffie had a bit in her newsletter. Her newsletter is called Tomorrow Will Be Worse.

She talked to a White House reporter, an anonymous White House reporter, who had some really, really great quotes here. I want to read them to you. The mechanics of reporting has. have changed so much, the reporter said, referring to the environment under Biden. It was just this really aberrant period in which you could almost guarantee that with enough effort. You could find out what's going on in the situation room. Now you can't. And it's infuriating. The reporter rushed to clarify, obviously, I'm not wishing that Trump was still president, but as a reporter that wants a story, it's frustrating how discipline they are talking about

team Biden. Kudos to them. They're very happy with themselves. You can see it. The coverage across the board from everyone is very, very lame. You never get inside the room and hear how this shit's going down. Like, how are they managing this elderly man? The reporter went on. It's very difficult to go from a group of people who had contempt for their boss and are willing to leak on any subject to a group of people who think they're saving the world

and who think very highly of themselves and are very disciplined. I asked the reporter Yafi writes how they're managing to get scoops anyway. I don't fucking know. they exclaimed, I'm working my ass off. So there's an interesting window in the Biden world. A couple of things. My laugh halfway through was not at the reference of Joe Biden as this elderly man. It was the part that you skipped, which is after that quote in a parenthetical,

it said White House press secretary, Jennifer Saki, did not respond to a request for comment, which is the perfect like bow to put on the whole thing, right? Just like the biggest dig in the story and then, but of course the White House is not talking. That's the whole point of the story. Yeah. I mean, listen, this is a, this is, this is really insightful, right? I mean, it does give you a window into the mind of this, at least this one reporter, probably a lot of reporters. And that's a little bit more of an unfiltered point of view than you would get even on Twitter or something like that.

Right. I mean, it's, you know, the anonymity certainly changes the way. that this is presented. I don't know to what degree that Biden White House thinks it's changing the world, but I mean, I don't think it's... I think that there's obviously an implicit dig there from that sort of point of view,

but I don't think any of us should be surprised at any of the sort of people who are in this White House, who, again, we saw most of them on Twitter reacting to the past four years. I don't think it should be a shock to any of us that these people are taking their jobs very serious. seriously and do think that they have an important role to play in history. I mean, I think that's the entire premise of Joe Biden's candidacy, right? I mean, and so, you know, setting that part

aside, though, I mean, being, being quiet, you know, being disciplined when it comes to media leaks, it's not a bad thing, you know? I mean, I don't think it's like that. Well, for them, and certainly, I mean, you know, you could, okay, if you, if you, if you, if you, it's, you know, if, you, it's, you want to make the argument that the public deserves to know more, that's fine. But the public does not deserve to have, you know, private back channel conversations with associate, you know, with junior, you know, office folk at the, in the Biden White House who were like, dishing on their bosses. That's not a part of the, you know, that's not a definitional part of the public good, right? That wasn't in the Declaration of Independence. Right. Yes, exactly. Like, should we know more?

Yeah, probably. But like, do we deserve to have the same sorts of reporting, you know, reporting opportunities? that we had in a totally dysfunctional White House? No, I don't think anyone would say that Trump set the bar for anything in a way that should go forward, right? I don't know. I just think that the fact that this is a young reporter is probably meaningful, right? This person probably learned how to learn a lot of their, learned and or honed a lot of their skills during a very specific presidency.

And it must be frustrating to have to relearn them, you know? but I do think it's true to different degrees for everybody, but the world doesn't need, the world doesn't necessarily need to cover every White House, to cover every White House like it's a soap opera, you know? And there are a million things. We talked about this in the run up to this presidency. There's a bunch of stuff you can be writing about

that doesn't involve palace intrigue. And makes it harder. It makes it less juicy. I'm sure it'll get a whole lot fewer clicks. but, you know, if you're standing there frustrated that you can't get the TikTok on, you know, every squabble in the West Wing, well, maybe you're looking for the wrong thing. Here's what was clarifying to me. I have conservative friends who come up and say, you know, the press was so hard on Donald Trump and it treated him in a particular way. And now they're taking it so easy on Joe Biden. Can't you see this, Brian? Can't, you know, come on, Brian. I know you're a liberal, but you must have. admit that the press is treating the two people differently. And my answer to that would be, on the one hand, yes, Donald Trump was a national emergency

in a way that Joe Biden is not. There is that, most importantly. But the second part was the Donald Trump administration was this absolute perfect storm for journalists because, as this reporter says, the people had contempt for their boss. That's it. So they were willing to go to it to. to, at an extraordinary, to an extraordinary degree, go to journalists and tell them everything that just happened in the White House, everything that Donald Trump said minutes ago.

I remember you and I talking at the end of his administration, I'm like, we're going to miss not only the transparency, we're just going to miss knowing everything that happened in the White House. Now they're in, now they're in covering the Biden regime. They're like, oh, wait, Biden is surrounded by like these four aides who never say anything, who have this ethic of silence about him. The press would love to tell you everything that's going on in the Biden White House in exactly the same way. Sure.

They would love to write the unflattering story from the Oval Office about how Joe Biden said something weird or forgot, whatever it is, but they can't do it in the same way. Now, they will be able to do it over time. You'll get a lot of stories out of Biden White House we already have. But they can't do it to that just like unbelievable degree. and I think that's an important point to make because I think a lot of people just completely misunderstand that. Yeah.

And I want to double back on one of the things you pointed out. It was the notion of disdain, right, that was mentioned in the piece. The entire White House, like everybody that worked in the Trump administration, according to this reporter, had like utter disdain for the president, right? And any other presidency, you could take the most ineffectual, most like low-key, most uninteresting presidency in history. if that had been the case, that would have been the story. We would have been hearing that every single day.

Like, holy shit, can you believe how much everybody in the White House hates Trump? Like, all of them hate him. It's really, this is wild. If that were the case now, that would be the story of a rather low-key presidency, right? But when you talk to conservative people who are like, you got to understand that Trump and Biden are getting treated differently, it's like, yeah, but nope. But the Trump White House just served it up. The point is they didn't even serve it up. They didn't serve up the story of disdain,

but that was, but I mean, that could have been the story, but they served up so much more that the story of everybody hating the boss wasn't even the, like, like, you know, page A1 fodder. Like they, like it was all,

there was so much, there's so many unbelievable stories to tell every day. Of course they treat it differently, you know? I mean, you can't, you, you just can't, you,

you can't treat them the same way. It's like the thought that you could is just like so it's just such a categorical error. Totally. And what people misunderstand is the incentives for reporters are exactly the same. Like if you're trying to get ahead at the New York Times, Washington Post, one of the news networks, you didn't go to your boss after Biden got elected and say, hey, I'm going to take the next four years off. My, my output for the next four years, it's just going to be crap because there's nobody leaking inside the White House in the way they were. anymore. You have to go get the stories.

Your ability to get promoted to become a famous writer, to get book deals, to become a New York Times star is based on your ability to pull scoops out of whatever it is, but this is the hand you were dealt. So they're not stopping. They'd be idiots to stop because their careers would

suffer. That's just not the way journalism works. And again, I think a lot of the conservative critique of the media sometimes just completely misunderstands the idea of how journalism actually works, especially at newspapers. and especially at like networks. They have to, they, they, the currency is still the scoop.

It's just harder to get. David, I have some bad news. Oh, no. I know. Eric Espig sends along a story from the economist. And the story is about how politics in America today is a lot like, wait for it, professional wrestling. Headline, how wrestling conspiracy theories and politics overlap in America.

Subhead. Mitt Romney compared the election conspiracy to pro wrestling. This was perhaps truer than he realized. Now, is the writer saying that Mitt Romney had not read the 150 previous think pieces comparing politics to professional wrestling? Is that what we're saying here? Trurer than he realized. I would like to award something today.

We've circled around this. It's time to formalize it. we need here on the press box, you and me, to have a think peace championship belt. Oh, I don't quite understand, but I'm 100% behind it. Let's go. Whatever think peace America's political writers, political pundits are churning out, and they think it's a new idea, but everyone has already written it. The think piece that just stands above all others that will get you straight onto the op-ed pages of the world. That is the one that holds the think peace championship belt.

And for the last four or five years, a Rick Flair like run, David, it has been politics is a lot like pro wrestling now. Wow. What a rain this think piece has had over us. Unbelievable. And do you know who the previous champ was? Wait, you mean prior, like five years ago the previous champ? Yeah. Who did this think piece beat for the belt?

politics has become reality TV. Remember that one? Yeah. Yeah, that was a good one. I mean, listen, you could say, you could probably make the case that like, while politics is pro wrestling has been a, has been a legendary title holder for the past four years,

that there were like, you know, there was probably like a pay-per-view along the way where like, you know, what is the worst presidency ever won the title and then lost it back? a month later. There have been there have been

some challenges. The worst president ever had it had like a month long run. There have probably been a couple other challenges over the past four years. But yeah, this has been this has been a historical reign for politics and pro wrestling.

Absolutely amazing. And we await the next. Politics is actually like pro wrestling now piece. What a, what an incredible run. Before we take a break, David from Chris Vourlius. Is it time for a definitive

oral history? of the oral history and who would you interview first if you were writing it for the ringer? Well, I don't know. What was the first oral history? I mean, what, like, if you, you could talk to,

um, who would you, I mean, you know, Bill is obviously, it was obviously a big proponent. You could talk to Jim Miller, you know, and like he was there at the sort of early reporting. I'm trying to remember what the first big oral,

like we did an oral history, I feel like at Grantland like week one. Wasn't, didn't we? Of the national. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

so there's probably, some stuff there. I don't know. I'm sure there's some obvious. I don't know the history of the oral history. This would be a thing I would actually read. That's that's, that's, Grantland would definitely be part of the story. They obviously existed before that. I look this up. The Daily, remember the Daily? The Rupert Murdoch internet thing. They did an oral history of the oral history in 2011, which is not easily accessible online. And then the New York Observer did an oral history of the daily's oral history of oral histories right after that that puckish new york observer so that is by the way one of our one of our correspondence who i will not name

sent me the new york times a legally blonde oral history the other day that did not include reese witherspoon and we're talking about like there's just a point where it's okay to write a piece it's just fine. We don't, we don't, not everything has to be an oral history. I promise. Coming up, we're going to talk about the Olympics. The greatest letter to the editor of all time may be in other stuff. But first, David, 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. Senior nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. By the way, thanks to everyone who sent the Wes Anderson, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray thing that was going around Twitter all day yesterday. Very hard to do visual jokes on a podcast, but your tweets were recognized. Please, please know that I read them

all and enjoyed them. But let's start here. David, we lost the fleet this week. You know that tweet that was at the top of your, the fleet? Remember that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The, yes. Yeah, you never read them. That was the problem. Long live the fleet. Yeah, neither did I.

It was a layup of an overwork Twitter joke to write, well, that was fleeting. thanks to the athletics Eric Corrine Eric San Innocentio and new account who dis by the way it is amazing that Twitter invented a tweet that would expire instantly and then that feature expired instantly

certain irony to savor there in other news David there was a very cool story from the national spelling bee last week 14 year old Zahela Vodgard is a the first black American who won the spelling bee. But get this, the New York Times notes.

Not only has Avantgard competed in spelling bees for two years, she also holds three Guinness World Records for dribbling, bouncing, and juggling basketballs. Wow. Spelling Bee champ, Guinness World Record Holder for various basketball feats. It was an overword Twitter joke to write, she's got to be the best horse player of all time. Real Renaissance woman.

That's great. thanks to Joe Knight and finally David did you see the news that Fox is starting a weather channel? No I did not see that like Fox

Fox Fox News has like is starting a weather channel from the people who brought you Waters World yes 24 hour weather channel do you want to hear some of the best responses

to the Fox Weather Channel coming up desperately yes Fox's new weather channel in Accuweather another one every day is sunny and mild except in every big city where the forecast calls for communism it's going to be 75 and sunny every day and if it rains then it was antifa and these final ones i'm borrowing from alexander alexander petri's washington post column which is kind of cheating

but they're really funny uh here we go david dangerous hurricane now making its way from foreign waters to your home because joe biden isn't strong enough another story from the fox upcoming Fox Weather Channel sinkhole given free hour to defend itself I like that another one 16 hurricanes

the mainstream media is trying to keep from you and refuses to name yet and I enjoyed the subtlety of this one rainbows fine in the privacy of their own homes but I don't need one over my workplace

thanks to Jake Christie for bringing that to our attention if you set up Alexander Petrie to own the category congrats you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, more in the notebook dump. This one's from Drew Koski.

What are your Olympic viewing plan, excuse me, and are your kids excited about the Olympics? I'm sort of at the place. I don't know about you, but this is the one of where I'm teaching my kids what the Olympics are. Yeah. Yeah, I know on this question. No, I mean, the two and a half year old is not excited.

And the 12 year olds, you know, not excited about anything that doesn't involve a past the Olympics. A video game controller. the uh but no i mean i'm i've been pretty i haven't actually thought too much about it you know i've watched a little bit of stuff online whatever but like i'm kind of interested to see to experience how we experience this i'm i'm excited to see how big of a deal it is because it's definitely a different landscape than it nor than than usual i feel like one cool part about the olympics is you don't i think a lot of sporting events sort of are much better if you've watched

everything for a year and then you come in. Certainly that helps with the Olympics, but the Olympics a little bit like the NCAA tournament where you can just arrive. And the people who do the TV coverage know you're just arriving. So they're doing a lot of scene setting for you and storytelling for you.

Like here's who this is. And over the course of the Olympics, you can get really into people that you may not have known a ton of belly. Oh, sure. Biles is right. But like there's, they're going to be people that will become stars.

So yeah, it's one of those things like, I cannot say that I have spent a ton of time. Remember, this was supposed to be last year, the Olympics, either last year or this year, like, thinking too much about this, but when it starts, I will be very excited. This is JJW's question. How is NBC going to handle the human interest Olympics stories pertinent to Japan? Will it be mostly COVID-related?

I don't know if I see Mary Carrillo going to some whimsical 400-year-old noodle shop like she might have in a normal Olympics. A good question, right? Because it's like COVID is going to be, to some extent, a huge story of the Olympics. We don't have spectators at the Olympics. So how do you program all those kind of fun stories around the Olympics that you would normally have? Is it going to be about how Japan battled COVID, how they're coping with the pandemic, that kind of thing? Are we talking about like the host city specific or host country specific or just all the human interest stories?

Yeah, because there's always kind of stories about the site, right, about the host city, the host city. I mean, I find it hard to imagine that except in extreme examples of personal tragedy and plight that almost every, like, human story about an athlete, I find it hard to imagine they won't heavily feature COVID, right? I mean, is there, like I said, except in extreme examples, the most, the most significant thing that happened to just about every athlete is having to, like, postpone their training or to reset their end date, reset the target, the competition date in their training schedule.

Like that's got, that's, that's, that's, that's, that would be the biggest story in any single athlete's life, right? And it happened to all of them? So is it going to feel like they're kind of like, you know, this is like the same song, 50th verse at some point watching it? Maybe, but, you know, maybe that unites it. Maybe that kind of makes the storytelling coalesce in a certain way. Now, when it comes to just a general, like not, you know, other human interest stories,

I don't know. I mean, I think that the real, I think there is a sort of, we're all united by what we've been through the past year. But I think that we'll be a pretty significant effort on NBC's part to make this feel like Olympics as usual, right? So maybe we will spend more time in old noodle shops than we expect to. You know, maybe they will find ways to make it seem just sort of, to make it sort of feel normal. I actually think you wrote the media column in the first part of that answer, which is absolutely the pandemic is the, is the, topic, but it will be put into the human interest story of the athlete having to overcome the Olympic pause. All their dreams were put on hold for a year. All their dreams are put on hold is the greatest hook for any single story. Oh my God.

David just did it. NBC Sports David is calling right now because they would like you to feed Mike Toriko some stuff during the Olympics. You just solved the whole problem. That was awesome. Let's hope. Let's hope they acknowledge me.

Otherwise, all my dreams will be put on hold. David's Olympic dreams will we put on hold yet again. This one comes from L. Horse, David. And it is about letters to the editor. This surfaced on Twitter the other day. I'm going to be careful here. This is a letter about Boris Johnson. And I think we will get the point here.

This is a letter from the editor. It's from Tony Mabbitt from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, writing to the Guardian. And here we go. On Saturday, you published a photo of the UK Prime Minister. that is Boris Johnson. Above the headline, a dangerous cult now runs Britain. I was pleased to see that despite the constant turmoil of the modern world,

some things such as the Guardian's famed pension for typos never change. Now, if you are not in like British media humor world, the Guardian's typos have been a subject of last or in private eye and other places for a long time. But I'm just going to read you the headline one more time. I'm not going to overdo this, David. a dangerous cult now runs Britain. You just imagine a slight misspelling. Maybe a British word that is not so okay in the U.S.

A dangerous cult. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's the subtlety in the British letter to the editor pages. This is from Joel Landau. David, do reporters have to publish excerpts of their books on their employer's website? If the site has a paywall can, should you negotiate? it be available for free? I don't know

exactly how this works, but traditionally that would be governed by the writer, the reporter's contract with their employer. I mean, with their employer. If you have books carved out as its own thing, there's

some latitude there, but then when it comes to publishing online, you know, that it sort of reverts back to the territory of the newspaper you work for us. There's a little bit of confusion, but I think the big thing is, if you're a writer for the New York Times, if you're writing a writer for the Washington Post, if you're already an employee of a big outlet like that,

there's no better place, there's no place that your publicist would rather place your excerpt than the place that you write, right? I mean, maybe they negotiate it in the weekend magazine or they get it, they negotiate placement in terms of like front page, you know, above the fold,

something like that. But, but yeah, I mean, unless, I mean, I can't really imagine. I guess if you work for like a smaller newspaper, then it might be in everybody's best interest to publish it a bigger place and redirect traffic back to the smaller newspaper or something. But generally, I think it would just be an assumption

that this book that you're really excited about probably already written by, you know, writers that have big platforms. Part of the assumption is that they will use the platform, i.e. use the periodical that they write with to be the launching pad. There's also some courtesy involved. Let's say you were at the New York Times, you're not going to go to a publication that's nominally competitive with your excerpt.

It'd be a little bit of a slap in the face to take that then to the New Yorker and say, hey, they're going to have the first cut of my book above the newspaper, which employs me and probably gave me some time off to write this book. there was a I'm assuming this would be very, very rare except for the absolute superstar author now but there was a period I remember hearing this story one time a New Yorker writer

in the 90s wrote a book was gonna, it was gonna be a big book and they were able to then go to the New Yorker and sell an excerpt from the book to the New Yorker for this like enormous amount of money. Oh. Yeah, well okay, so this is a separate thing.

This sort of defies the notion of courtesy which would become a real thing. But if your publisher has the rights, the first serial rights, I mean, sorry, if the book publisher owns for serial rights, and sometimes those are held by the author, the author's agent, et cetera. But if the publisher owns for serial rights, then it is incumbent upon them to attempt to get compensation wherever they place it. Now, you see over and over again a sort of courtesy, like, we'll give you $250 or whatever it is just to sort of make, so a check is cut in one direction.

But I mean, it's not crazy to think that somebody would just try to negotiate really hard to get more money out of this, you know, sort of get blood from a stone that way or whatever. That's not, it's unusual. But is it like shocking? No, not really. We did a feature the other day where David listed off all the books, the mandatory books on every journalist bookshelf, circa 2005 to 2010. We started the list. Yeah. We did it was an incomplete list.

Josh W has another one David says I listen to the pod this morning and have spent the whole day wondering if I'm too old or too basic But the book I'd add to the friend's bookshelf list is Dave Eggers Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Well yeah okay I don't consider that I don't put that strictly in the nonfiction category not and I'm not doing I'm not pulling a You know million little pieces and trying to discredit Dave Eggers book although that was my point of reference every time I try to defend all of those all of the pearl clutching about the gravity of nonfiction work back in the day. I was like, because there was a lot of, there's a lot of fantastical moments or a few fantastical

moments in that book. It's a fantastic book. It was a pivotal book in my life. I mean, just in terms of like seeing somebody write the way that like I kind of thought and, you know, processed. But yeah, that was on a lot of shows back then. In the paperback edition, the vintage paperback edition. But yeah, for some reason, I don't put that quite in the same, in the same, in the same, in the same category. And although, and Dave Eggers was, Dave Eggers was still sort of, controversial is not the right word, but it was like okay to be like, to say like, I'm not a Dave Eggers person

in those days in a way that maybe it would be shocking to look back on. He was, he was, divisive isn't the right word, but it was okay to opt out of Dave Eggers. in a way, unlike most other authors of his status. To bag on Dave Eggers. Yeah, because I would, I would, when I saw this, I thought everybody whose bookshelves were talking about in that period had read that book, but I'm not sure how many people were kind of leaving it out for conspicuous consumption on their bookshelf. If your bookshelf is some, as we learned during the Zoom era, is to some extent like

your kind of self image, you're crafting your image. I think a lot of people probably left that off or, you know, dumped that book at a used bookstore again. Nothing to do with the book but more, I think you explained the Eggers part very well. We have some more only in journalism words, David. Speaking of incomplete, our ongoing list of

words people use in news articles but never use in real life. Here's in one. I liked nonplussed. Nonplussed. Surf it. S-U-R-F-E-I-T surf it. That's a very good

only in journalism word. Stint. Surfeit is really good. Stint, meaning a unit of time. James Corky writes, even my phone knew only journalists use it and tried to autocorrect it to stunt. Stint is good. Also, here's another one. Fetted. Have we have FETED? Not fetid

like gross, but... Yeah, FETED. Yes, that's a great one. Only in journalism. Only in journalism and only in headlines because celebrated is too long. And I think that became a journalism word because it's a shorter, in the old newspaper day is a shorter way to say a long word, which is celebrated or honored. Flapp, meaning some kind of problem, some kind of argument. Also a great headline word. Yes. Flapp is very short.

Yeah, it's fantastic. And then Noah Leifert sent along this one, not a word, but a phrase in the, days and weeks to come in the days and weeks to come no one has ever used that maybe maybe like somebody used that on a sunday show an old pundit and then wrote it in their column but i don't think that's way more damning the rest of this list this list is is we're having fun right because we like we've said we're having fun here right days we use these words when we write right there's there's a lot of words that you only use when you write there's a lot of words that that you know make a lot more cents typed out than they do when they're coming out of your mouth or whatever but like but when you but when

you find a phrase like in the days and weeks that come and you register if you find yourself using a man maybe we should just maybe we should just be like you know bringing all the cataloging all the phrases like that that's embarrassing if you use a phrase that only exists it's not exactly plagiarism but it's you know the worst kind of group thing this phrase only exists for the in other articles exactly like the when I'm writing. That's kind of funny. This is not a shaming exercise. No. Except for those, except for the phrases, it's not a shaming exercise. If you want to use Lodestar in your column, damn it, use the word Lodestar. I will say when I have sat down to write a couple of times since we have started this feature, it is really inside my head. Those only in

journalism words. You think it's helping you or just paralyzing you? It's just deering me away from them. I'm a, do I really want to use surf it? I don't think I was reaching for surf it, but words like that,

you, you kind of turn away. Finally, folks, a press box controversy. Mike Soto, Mikey Vanilli, and a number of people

asked about this from our most recent pod. Does David Shoemaker tell Brian Curtis see you later, babe, at the end of last week's pod?

A number of people heard that, let us listen to the clip. Does David Shoemaker tell Brian Curtis, see you later, babe. So look for that during the NBA finals. Plus, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, man.

That's great. It sounded kind of like bade. Bade. Yeah, I don't think there was a lot of deliberate. I wasn't being particularly deliberate in either direction. When someone told me, when I first saw the tweet about it, I should say, I didn't realize there was a controversy. When I saw the tweet about it, I said, yeah, sure, I said, babe.

Like, like, I definitely did that. here's the thing. First of all, I've found myself prior to this. Now, I call like everybody in my house, babe, right? Because it's like somewhere between, somewhere between calling my wife babe and like just the, you know, having a baby who I refer to as a baby. And then some, and just the general affection I have for everybody here. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of words that are interchangeable that aren't, you know, I definitely call my 12 year old by nicknames that in a vacuum might seem a couple degrees off or whatever. But it's a lot of words that. just like, they're all just sort of interchangeable, whatever. So I've noticed myself doing that. I think, I'm sure when we were recording, I know exactly what, I mean, what was going on. My wife and probably some number of the children were like walking in and out of the house behind me because we were on vacation.

And I was like, I was already moving on to whatever we were as a family were about to do as soon as I stopped recording the podcast. So I was, you know, I was probably addressing the sort of spirit of my wife as she walked by. But that said, I don't want that to come across as me having any less love for you, Brian. As I do with the members of my family, you're definitely in the babe category as I've broadened it. You're very nice. And I would, you can call me whatever you want. You and I have known each other since we were 14 years old.

So they literally, I think you and I are also in the like 12 year old son nickname zone. If we looked at the things we called each other when we were roommates in New York in the old days, it would be really, really weird. Somebody had a funny theory. It says, I think David got caught in the air between Brian and dude. That's how Bade came out of your mouth. Oh, that definitely could be the case too. But I do think, I mean, I do think I just, I do a lot of babe. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline.

All right. Two Fridays ago's headline about the July 4th end of pandemic travel scene was planes, strains, and automobiles. Today's headline comes from Michael Salerno. It's from Newsday out there on Long Island. The occasion was the Mets Pete Alonzo winning the home run derby for the second year in a row. It might be helpful, David, to know that Alonzo's nickname is Polar Bear. Polar Bear. What was Newsday's strained pun headline?

Oh, God. Okay. Pete Alonzo, Polar Bear. he won Polar Polar Ice One for the second straight time Polar Bear Club

Polar Bear Club is really good Yeah that's not bad Second double dip Double second What if we just get down from polar bear to bear Oh Bear has won the home run derby for the second time

Bear Second straight time so obvious Second straight time It's two bears to bear Nehnerra bear Getting closer it bears It bears Bears are passive bears a resemblance bears

Mention Bears bears bears bears I want to This is for emphasis David It bears Wait did I just say it or no It bears I don't think so it bears

it bears repeating oh gosh that's so bear bears repeating that's so good god I'm an idiot I'm slow today all right that was that was a really good one he is David Shoemaker I'm Brian Curtis production magic by Erica Cervantes we got a big week next week

our next book books podcast really will be about David Halberstams the breaks of the game this is not going to go the way of Biden's digital divide for all you hard core press box fans. We'll know what I mean by that. Can we just, can we just say that we did Biden's digital divide, digital divide and send all the hardcore press box fans into the archives trying to find it? If you can find the segment where we actually did Joe Biden's digital divide, we will,

we will thank you on this podcast. Plus, David, a special guest, Leon Nefack, our old friend, creator of the Fiasco podcast and Slow Burn before that. We'll join us to talk about his new pod on Benghazi. Can we get Leon to contribute to the book show for? the bookshelf building conversation too because he was he had that bookshelf i guarantee you leon was it leon i can't guarantee that you had it i don't know that i was at his house but he he witnessed he saw these bookshelves alongside us for years and years when i emailed him the other day i said yeah we're going to relive all the paris review parties uh you know from that era and he wrote me back and said he went to one the other day oh my god so everything about benghazi politics the media and what a

Paris Review Party is like today from Leon. Plus, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, babe. See you later, Brian.