The Press Box - March Madness Fun, Blasting Your Bosses on the Air, LeBron Speaks, and Declaring a Media Apocalypse Too Soon

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Bryan catches David up on the Ronna McDaniel–NBC catastrophe (0:50). Then, they get into The Washington Post’s profile on LSU women’s basketball coach, Kim Mulkey (12:37). Afterward, they get into some found sounds from March Madness, including one of the most mind-blowing calls of all time (23:09). In the Notebook Dump they discuss the following: LeBron James’s comments on his upcoming retirement (24:55) Whether or not the Media Apocalypse was declared too soon (28:03), Gannett and McClatchy drop the AP (32:54) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. This is David Shoemaker. The pro wrestling world is currently on fire. And so we've got you covered five days a week on the ringer wrestling show. Every Monday and Thursday, hang out with me and Kaz on The Masked Man Show. And this is Peter Rosenberg, the host of cheap heat. Join me and my guys, Stack Guy Greg and Dipperstein on Tuesdays and Fridays. We talk wrestling, we have bagel breakdowns, mage interviews, and so much more. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal and Brian on Wednesday. Worldwide, where we hit the most interesting headlines and even react to some of mass mans, cheap heats, or even your hottest tics.

Don't tap out. Tap in to the Ring or Wrestling Show feed. Now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And stay Mage, everyone. Worldwide. David? Yes. I'd love to start by talking to you about the Rona McDaniel NBC News catastrophe.

Oh, great. I'm glad. Can you explain it to me a little bit? because I thought I understood what was going on. I was on vacation last week. It was not paying the sort of attention I might normally be paying to such media dustups. I thought I understood what was going on,

but then like the second wave just made me rethink that I even understood anything. I'm very perplexed by this whole thing. So the NBC News executives decided to hire Ron and McDaniel as a talking head. Sure. As a liaison to Trump world. Mm-hmm.

Then Chuck Todd, who's not exactly the most likely network news mutineer in the world, came on his own show, Meet the Press, to talk about this and told Kristen Welker, who has replaced him as the host of that show, our boss's owe you an apology for putting you in this situation. Daniel had appeared on the segment before Todd. then David the entire MSNBC lineup spent parts of their show trashing the rana macdaniel hire right including rachel maddow who used 30 minutes of the one hour a week she is on the air now 30 minutes to complain about NBC hiring somebody who has participated in election denial I think the best pun headline for all this is Rahnamuck.

Yes, that's great. And it's not even close. So we're going with Rahnemuk. Well, we've got a think piece, David, written off Rana Muck. It's by Brian Steinberg in Variety. It's a column about the mini epidemic of anchors blasting their own bosses on the air. So you have Chuck Todd, you have Rachel Maddow, Joe and Mika on MSNBC. We've, of course, seen this in our own course.

of the media universe with Pat McAfee and Norby Williamson. And Brian Steinberg has three reasons why anchors are now lashing out. Reason number one is this era of personality-driven news. Yeah. So the news, he notes, is not really what Rachel Maddow is talking about. The news is the Rachel Maddow show. Yeah. And when you rejigger it like that,

that what Rachel Maddow thinks is the top story. Sure. And if she's upset at her bosses, if Joe and Mika are upset at their bosses, then that becomes the content of the news broadcasting kind of an interesting way. Now, are you saying it's because she is the argument that it's, she determines what's news. And in this case, her disgruntledness is the news or that if she had, if she had dedicated 30 seconds to the subject, would that still be the big news because what she thinks is the big news? Instead of cutting a promo for 30 minutes?

Yeah. It's a good question. It certainly had more impact her talking about it for 30 minutes, cutting a 30 minute long promo than it would have at 30 seconds. But I think when you do personality-driven news, you were saying that the truth is filtered through these very highly paid and famous personalities. Right. So if she, to kind of restate what you said,

if she's, if she's interested in NBC News's hiring practices, then that is the news. And then of course he connects this to the world we live in now where people get news from substack and from TikTok and from Instagram and newsletters that have a lot of voice, not so weird in that universe to have those people weighing in on anything rather than just straightforwardly delivering the news of the day.

Yes. I mean, listen, some people will question whether, like, how you correlate this to Fox News, but I think that there's a pretty notable distinction, which is the whole sort of premise of, we report you decide, right? Their personnel, despite what they might profess in their, you know, court documents, it is paramount to them that they are perceived to be unbiased during the broadcast and they're not picking fights

internal fights, sorry, internal fights, yeah. Reason number two from Steinberg, he has an academic say that ultimately viewers see the anchors as the face of the news and not their anonymous bosses. And it really is true that you know, when Pat McAfee is going off in the air,

there's probably not a single ESPN viewer who are saying, you know, Pat makes some interesting points, but as a Norby Williamson fan, as a fan of his management techniques. Or even to say, we all know the great things that Norby Williamson has done to our sports viewership. Like people aren't even aware of them to that degree. No, not a chance. But that's what's funny to me is that in a way every TV anchor has become Howard Stern and every TV boss. has become Tom Chasano. That you're going to go with pig vomit, but yes, go ahead. We know them only as a prop for the TV anchor to complain about.

Or to beat up on. David Letterman used to do this with his NBC bosses too. Reason number three from Steinberg is that cable news networks, as you and I know, are on the ropes. They've got the same existential fear that ESPN does, which is we need to keep these people happy because if they're not happy, then I'm going to go to the news network next door. They're just going to leave entirely. Yeah.

And compete with us in a way that's going to question, make people question whether they need cable news, whether they need ESPN at all. It's not like the ESPN Daypart has some giant audience. But the power dynamic between network exec and host has been changed so much. Sure. that it becomes a fascinating story, right?

It's like, what could they do to actually get fired? What could happen? Again, this is not normal. And I know I've been talking to, you know, people in the sports TV world and they are stunned, quietly stunned, but stunned at how much control they've lost of the talent. Hmm. You know, usually it doesn't play out like McAfee Norby. usually it's more like, oh, you did a competitor's podcast or a competitor's show and you didn't tell us about it.

Yeah. We would have loved to have gotten a heads up on this beforehand. Small scale stuff like that that's more annoying than, you know, a big media catastrophe. But it's changed. And either there's nothing they can do about it or they're afraid to even bring it up. Exactly. Because of these scenarios. as we talk about that somebody would just walk out the door and then, eh, maybe they don't need us the network anymore.

Yep. Maybe they'll follow the talent. Yeah, I mean, we don't know the ins and outs of the contracts of any of these people who are laboring under, but there is a, the power dynamic is, like you said, just radically shifted. You're not going to go to Rachel Maddow, regardless of what her ratings might mean to your network and say, you know, you're suspended because that's basically a description of her schedule already, right?

I mean, it's already been determined that she's... Speaking of power. Yeah. And, and, you know, suspending suspending Pat McAfee, you know, during the Norby thing, or even openly punishing him,

would have only made the story bigger and made matters worse for ESPN. We talked about it at the time, you know. Heaven forbid the, you know, faceless bosses at MSNBC should be seen to be choosing, not just to be employing running McDaniel, but to be choosing her over their established voices.

But, you know, that's the company that they built. And, yeah, this is, I guess this is a new reality. Before we move on, do is there anything you'd like to say about anybody that works at the ringer? Right here, right now. No, but we were talking about wrestling announcers before we came on. I guess there's a proud history there of just, you know,

Jim Ross being like, God damn you, Vince McMahon. Maybe that's that's the not letterman, right? That's the true thing that Joe and me and Matt are quoting here. The letterman core, I mean, the modern letterman is John Oliver

who just constantly takes aim at his corporate overlords and the sort of, you know, broadest, most antagonistic possible way. And it wouldn't shock me if some of these,

you know, quote, you know, more straight news people were taking their cues from him. But yeah, it's, maybe wrestling is the place to go here.

Coming up on today's show, which our corporate overlords will enjoy in an uncomplicated way, David. We've got observations, fun, and sound from March Madness, including what did we learn from the Washington Post Kim Mulkey's story that we finally got to read? Plus, some newspapers drop the AP, a magazine comes back from the dead, and LeBron James, I'll never guess, is in the news again. All that and much more on the press box, a part of the ringer. podcast network. Hello, media consumers. We're back. Brian Curtis David Shoemaker and producer Brian Waters with you.

Let's start with March Madness, David. In an era when players are hanging around college for fewer years, is March Madness hitting you any differently? I feel more invested in it this year, but I don't think there's a grand unifying theory behind that. I think it just, you know, it feels, I don't know, maybe because there's less investment in the big names or whatever, I feel like I'm watching out with a certain nostalgia that I have in most of the past decade.

And I think it's overall, I've enjoyed watching this year more than I can remember in a long time. I completely agree. And I've been trying to think about why that is as well, beyond the fact that there's some amazing centers, speaking of nostalgia, college basketball in a way we don't typically see centers play basketball anymore. It's amazing how quickly you can get caught up, even if like you and I, you were not following this sport closely.

Like watching that Duke NC State game the other day. I was like, okay, Coach K's not here, but here's Coach K's protege and former player. I'm going to root against him now. Yeah. Now I know what to do. And you are, yeah. It's still Duke. I got it.

Yeah, exactly. And you automatically know this, the, you know, in state rivalry stakes. You know, this is, these things are pretty self-explanatory, right? It's, it was, and NC State's got a, you know, like a nose tackle that plays for them, it looks like. So there's like, like, like visual excitement on the screen as well. You know, it's, it's a lot of fun to watch that game. That's the men's tournament. Of course, the women's tournament has absolutely the opposite profile.

from the men. If you're interested in stars sticking around and getting to know them year after year, well, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, who's memorably squared off in last year's title game, are playing tonight again in the NCAA tournament. Nicole Arbach had a really good story about this in the athletic before the tournament kicked off about putting together some of the viewership numbers, putting together the interest in women's college basketball, which is due not only to players coming back year after year, but this was a, a big part of the men's game, dude. Coach is coming back year after year.

Yeah. You bet that a whole generation of coaches that we've now pretty much lost with Coach K and Jim Beheim retiring. And of course, going back, Dean Smith, Bobby Knight, and on and on. The women's game has that now, year after year. You come back and you can see Don Staley at South Carolina, Tara Vandevere at Stanford.

And not least, David, Kim Mulkey. Oh, yeah. You might have heard that there was a story about Kim Mulkey. Not a story you could read for more than a week, but a story that was being prepared and that Kim Mulkey was pre-denouncing in her NCAA tournament press conferences. Peace by Kent Babb finally came out on Saturday. I got the email from the post and it said,

read the post's highly anticipated profile. Nice bit of understatement there. It's interesting reading the piece now. And of course, it's hard to read it without remembering the week of discussion about this object of journalism that did not exist. But then you read it and it's this big sweeping, almost hard to classify piece about Kim Mulkey. Yeah. It goes all the way back to her childhood. and her dad, who she has not spoken to for over 30 years.

The dad is quoted in the story. We talked to Bab. Her players at Baylor, your alma mater and then at LSU, where how she learned coach, where she got some of her methods, both good and bad. And it's one of those pieces that's so ambitious, I think it would be hard to classify in a tweet.

Yeah. There are some things in it that were certainly newsworthy that are worth you could sort of pull out and talk about, but it's just one of those that it is actually almost almost like a book and perhaps it will in fact become a book. But because it was so talked about before it came out, there was this massive amount of interest in. And I think in a way it helped maybe lead people to a piece that otherwise they would have, they would have known they were interested in. Yeah. Does that make sense? To lead them to read the piece or

to engage with the piece. Yeah. Yeah. The best thing to could happen to any profile now is for the subject to come out against it before it comes out, right? I guess. I mean, if you, and also if you're the subject and you think it's going to, you wish more more people read it. Maybe you just come out and take exception to it before it comes out yourself, you know, just get some eyes on it. Everyone's going to be like, oh, this is going to kill Kim Mulkey. And then it's incredibly nice. Well, this wasn't nice, isn't the word, but if there, if it is complicated. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody in Mulkey's position, listen, it was such a big piece.

You understand why even, you know, in pieces, she might have started to become nervous about it, right? I mean, you can open your, you know, open the doors up for a profile writer to come in and talk to you and all that kind of stuff. But I think you probably have a pretty straightforward guess about what it's going to look like. When it grows to this size,

when it becomes this sort of expansive, yeah, as a subject, you're going to be nervous about it. Still, her approach. which was a little bit unorthodox. Yeah, and shutting your door, right, and saying, I'm not talking to you. Yeah. But I know that people in my life,

despite whatever I might have said to them, are talking to you. Boy, then you really don't know what the story's about. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Profile writing is in its, in the most happiest state between author and writer, extremely invasive. Mm-hmm.

So here's somebody who's used to controlling her program at LSU, doing things a certain way and at Baylor again and there's some there's some really you know examples that will make you uh not super happy when you read that piece but who is used to that and then she has this writer who's nosing around looking for things and telling the story in a way that Kim Mulkey doesn't want to yeah you know you could you could feel it right and then she reaches for that word was it hit job because now and on Twitter and I guess with subjects we only understand a piece is either one of two things. It's the greatest piece in the world that is very, very nice to me or it's a hit job.

Oh, yeah. There's no geography between those things of like, here is something that attempts to explain who this person is, which certainly is what Kent Bab was doing in the Washington Post. Didn't she also do the fake news thing where she tried to pretend that they hadn't come, they hadn't tried to talk to her at any point? Well, she did this very contradictory thing where he said they gave me these questions, before the NCAA tournament got going. But in the same news conference,

she said, I've been turning down interview requests for two years. Yeah. So it seems to me you can either complain about one or you can give the interview or provide answers two years ago. Yeah. But it's tough to square those two things. Also,

it was funny, the piece came out. And then people found this other story in the L.A. times that was talking about women's college basketball in this ugly and extremely old-fashioned way. And so what weirdly turned out to be the takeaway of the whole Washington Post Kim Mulkey affair was this was not a hit piece, quote, unquote, we understand Kim Mulkey a little bit more, but oh, look over here, there's still a lot of work to do.

Yeah. In terms of covering women's college basketball. I got some sound for you from this weekend's games. Great. As you know, David, there's some words on TV that aren't exactly verboten, but they're just not right for a sports broadcast. Duke was playing 11 seed NC State yesterday. DJ Burns of NC State, whom you were referring to,

6-9, 275-pound center, absolutely owning the Blue Devils up and down the floor. Here is CBS's Bill Raftery describing his talent. He controls you. He just spins with that durier. Beautiful fashion. Another way of saying bottom. I love that because you and I are both children of the age of euphemism.

Oh, yeah. Where you do not say the word but. But do you think they were actually confused. There'd be viewers who weren't familiar. familiar with Derrier? Is that just maybe a generation of people who weren't brought up with euphemisms? The people are really not know Derrier? I'm not sure that they do. I imagine there was some confusion. You hear Iron Eagle stepping in right there and being like, otherwise known as bottom. We don't leave anybody behind here. Also funny because one of Ian Eagles' catchphrases,

usually with like an early game three pointer is bottom. Oh, yeah. Bottom is bottom is a funny word. Purdue Tennessee, David, one of the other elite eight matchups, Purdue's center, Zach Eadie, speaking of fantastic center play, was celebrating with CBS's Evan Washburn after the game, and

he chose to celebrate by dropping an F-bomb. Unbelievable performance by this team, but by you specifically, what was your mentality in this game? They thought they knew us, man. They thought they knew we had in our hearts. I'll promise you they didn't. We're a

winters. This is what we do. You came back for this opportunity. What's going through your mind right now is your advance to the final four? We still got two more games, but man, I couldn't ask for a better team to spend it with.

Go enjoy it. It's been incredible professionalism there by Evan Washburn to just roll along with the next question. What are you going to do? No, but it's amazing. Yeah. I know that got bleeped. I'm not going to react to it at all.

I'm just going to ask the next question. You should have joined in. How about that fucking fourth quarter comeback? What was the mindset? That was fucking unbelievable, wasn't it? Chris Branch of the Athletic, who writes their excellent morning email, notes this, that the final four will have a 6-9, 275-pound DJ Burns

against the 7-foot-4, 300. pound Zach Eadie and that that matchup will be taking place at the same time as WrestleMania. Well, let's not discuss that next week. Truly a lot of

battle of some battle of the big men energy there. Got a lot of doubters and haters talk during the NCAA tournament. It was amazed that people still getting upset about Charles Barkley, trying to get it going with NC State yesterday saying NC State is motivated by

people doubted them. They're an 11 seed. We don't know quite what people were supposed to make of them. They're fueled by doubt. Yeah. Now in the final four. Also, a great visual during that game yesterday.

There was a gold tending against Duke that was waved off. And CBS caught a very, very young NC state fan, like elementary age boy just flipping off the ref. Always fun to see a child. No, there's nothing funny. And since it was Easter yesterday, David, I thought we might revisit one of the most mind-blowing

basketball calls of all time. Let me take you back to Easter Sunday, 2016, Syracuse had just come back to upset number one C, Virginia, and go to the final four. And here was Kevin Harlan. Back from the dead on Easter Sunday. They're gone. Back from the dead on Easter Sunday.

Amazing stuff. I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to ask Kevin Harlan about this, but planned call. Not planned call. How do we? Definitely. It's got to be in the back pocket. Back from the dead on Easter Sunday. Unbelievable.

All right. Coming up in 30 seconds. LeBron content. There's LeBron content. First, let's do 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 press box pod where they are always always gratefully received there was no obvious winner this week david so let us channel kevin harlan and salute some of the easter jokes i saw on twitter he is raisin and then there was a picture of one of the

california raisins he is former nfl wide receiver andre rhizan etc thanks to david rozenberg that out. If you celebrated Easter in your own special way, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, LeBron James, David, scored 40 points against the Nets last night. But he didn't leave it at that. In the locker room after the game, he said this. Not very long. Not very long.

I'm on the other side. Obviously, at a hill, so I'm not going to play another 21 years. That's the damn show. but not very long. I don't know when that door was closed as far as when I retire, but I don't have much time. So he's been teed up about how much longer he has to play in the NBA. Now,

should we make a rule that you can't complain about ESPN debate shows when you write the Chiron for them? LeBron, I don't have much time left. Yeah, I mean, it's not, I mean, it is sort of his fault, but it's not his fault that they're just going to take anything he says and run with it to that degree. But yeah, I mean, he doesn't know he's playing into it.

So, you know, what are you going to do? I feel so tied in knots by LeBron because I always want to salute athletes for being honest or trying to be honest in those situations at a press conference. Because as soon as they step out of line, we see people do that weird thing where they get mad at them for not using euphemisms that we also hate. Yes, exactly. Well, I can't believe you were so ungracious after a victory. No, no, no.

If you're feeling ungracious, I want to encourage you to be ungracious into the microphone. But LeBron is so weird because everything feels so calculated to hit Twitter in a very particular way. So he could have just said, oh, I don't know. you know, we'll see, well, time will tell. Yeah. But he gives us very specific answer. So on the one hand, well, that's something that's way more interesting than 90%. Well, he's definitely held to a higher standard because he's the face of the Lee, because he's been the face of the Lee, because he's there to Michael Jordan because whatever.

Like he's expected to act like Michael Jordan. He's expected to be, well, a child of the euphemism generation like we are, but also, you know, when it comes to anything negative, but also just a. you know, kind of elder statesman from like the moment he popped out. There's an unreasonable set of expectations that are put upon him. But at the same time, that's sort of his MO anyway, right? That he always sort of,

he'll be a statesman when it serves him. And then he'll, you know, operate on his own accord and then, you know, sort of throw his hands up and say, hey, I'm just, just, you know, just answering questions here. I'm, you know, I'm not a role model. So, but it's a, you know, it's, he, you are. I mean, we're all tied up in knots about LeBron.

You're right about that. Far be it from us to give LeBron media advice, but hey, save something for the podcast. Don't blow that stuff in a postgame setting. Speaking of think pieces, David, I read an interesting one by Richard J. Toffel. He has a substack called Second Rough Draft. Toffle was, is a veteran of Dow Jones, ProPublica. and other places. And he has an interesting piece where he asks,

was what we saw earlier this year really a media apocalypse? Or did we perhaps throw around the term apocalypse a little too loosely? Now, there's still plenty of bad media news out there. Had Emma Tucker of the Wall Street Journal on last week, talking about Evan Gershkevich. But at Tucker's Wall Street Journal, we've seen massive layoffs in the Washington Bureau. One of those reporters wound up at the Baltimore banner.

The journal lost another reporter of the New York Times. Dion Nissenbaum last week, a mid-east correspondent who was once hurt in a bombing in Beirut was laid off. Toffle and his piece notes, media companies are still losing advertising share. Search has become this absolute sarlac pit of AI junk. Twitter has gotten musked. But he also notes some hopeful things that he said should balance out any warnings of an apocalypse. One is that readers are paying for stuff now. New York Times, Pock, other places.

There is some low-level philanthropy going on in the news business and the media business. He said news orgs are getting better at video and podcasting, that creators of generative AI may have to pay off publishers eventually, and that we may get government support for the media, something we've been talking about for quite a long time. So this isn't an answer to the question of whether early 2024 really was a media apocalypse or not. I don't know that we'll know the answer to that for quite a long time. I guess when I read that, the thing that stuck out to me is when you are riding the rails of being reactive to news on social media or like we are coming up with podcast segments, all of your incentives are to overreact to something.

not in a first take kind of way, but in a, you know, I am concerned about the future of my industry that I work in, an industry that I find important kind of way. Yeah. And if you overreact and get it wrong, well,

hell, next week you've moved on to something else so it doesn't really matter. Yeah. So it's just to say it is worth thinking about this and watching this as we go along for the next months and years. It is. How to characterize what happened.

It's not good news. It's not great, but to characterize it, and put it in its proper context. Yeah, I mean, I would just say, one, to answer the top line question, if you're using the term apocalypse, you are like, by definition, using it too loosely. We are all still alive.

Yes. But it's true. We've said it before in the show. I feel like I have this conversation once a week now. It's like our, if you, when we look around, we see all of our contemporaries and people, especially people younger than us, have jobs that didn't exist when we got into the business, right? I mean, that just you couldn't have imagined. And that's not even saying anything of like, just the sort of broader ecosystem of blogs that beget social media, you know, X that beget

newsletters, everything else. I mean, there's, there are a lot of positive ways. I do think that there's, it does feel in a very kind of general way, no doubt out here, but like, like, there may not, there's a feeling on the inside, like there's not going to be enough jobs to go around at some point. You see more people who, more people, particularly younger people who are leaving the business, you know,

at the first whiff of a layoff, the first experience of the layoff, not just trying to find the next thing. And the younger generation trying to find the next thing sometimes establishes the next thing. And it's super important for the, for the continued existence of the industry that people not walk away from it. That's not like you can pass a bill and subsidize out of work journalists.

I mean, you could, obviously. But the despair may be as much of a problem as the reality. That's a really good way to put it. And that even if the reality doesn't measure up to at least the figurative use of apocalypse, there's a kind of despair within the industry among young people who walk away, young people who never get into it that causes something really bad to happen to the media and really bad to happen to journalism that's pretty impossible to quantify at the end of the day. A couple of apocalypse adjacent stories for you.

Did you see the news a couple weeks ago that Gannett and McClatchy, the newspaper companies, dropped the AP? Yeah. No longer using the AP news feed. Gannett had a statement saying that, oh, this is going to allow us to further invest in our newsrooms, which calls for laughter right there. Yes, I'm sure that money will be plowed right back into the old paper. It is interesting when I see stories like this. This does say something about the health of newspapers and about McClatchie and Gannett as companies. I also was trying to imagine, as with many of these media moments that we love to cite. and put together as data points in the fall of media and our think pieces. But who is actually affected by this? Yeah.

So let's imagine somebody who is a subscriber to a print McClatchy or Gannett newspaper. Who is losing the AP wire copy that has been stuffed increasingly into that paper. Yeah. But does not have an. an obvious internet outlet for just looking up free news right now. Right. Which is just available everywhere. Think of what you're getting from that wire copy.

Yeah. And think of how like the preponderance of either that copy or stuff exactly like it that you can find for free. So that that's not, again, it's not good news. I don't totally understand who exactly the victim would be of this besides the people that work at those companies who see their companies sagging even more than it already did. I'm just trying to imagine the consumer. Well, there's the journalists at AP, right?

I mean, there's the people. Presumably, this is going to be a pretty significant financial hit to them. I don't think by and large people go out looking for more news, though, when the news disappears in their newspaper. I mean, Clachio owns a Charlotte Observer, which my parents subscribe to for years and years. My dad still reads it,

although neither is Charlotte residents anymore. But it's, you know, that paper shrunk and shrunk and trunk and trunk. Because I, you know, would come home and pick up the paper to read it over holidays or whatever. It gets smaller and smaller. And I think people,

I'm not speaking just to my parents, but I think in general, you don't look for arts coverage, you know, maybe you pick up the free weekly or something. But, you know, there's a whole generation of people that don't Google with that sort of felicity that just turn, I mean, you fill the gaps with Fox News or MSNBC. You know, you fill the gaps with just like totally separate endeavors. So I do think something

is lost, you know. And yeah, I mean, if they want to, if they want to reinvest in their newsrooms, that's great. They're probably figured out that they could, I mean, they probably think that they could do it on the cheap, you know, and save some money. in the process of that's really what they're thinking. But I mean, those wire stories were sort of, there's so many papers. Those wire stories was all that was like

keeping those shirts starched. You know, the only thing holding the place together and making it really feel like a real newspaper. And, well, it'll be interesting to see where they go. That is a great point. It's like when I, when I go home and

to Fort Worth and I go and you look at the paper and it is wire copy. So I am just fascinated by, how you're actually going to fill the pages to the extent the pages still exist. I do also like reading a wire story now in 2024. Because so much of the time you've read about a thing or you're on social media and you've processed like 10 takes about a thing

and you never actually got the information. You never just read the basic recitation of events. Yes. And when I go out and sometimes, you know, the times will print them from time to time before they, get their own story out. Or you can find them on AP's website or whatever. And I'll be like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I wanted.

It's all the information in order. Yep. And then I can go on, have my boiling hot take about it. Other media news, David, Life magazine is back? It is? It is back. According to Deal Book, Life magazine will come back to Well Life. The investor Josh Kushner and his wife, Carly Klaus,

have struck a deal with Barry Diller's media company to revive it as a regular print title. Life was interesting because it kind of died before you and I were adults and has kicked around both in a couple of rebooted forms and then as the thing you find at the grocery store now that just has pictures of famous people and events.

Yeah. Pretty sure there's a Life magazine of that. Life was undone partly because photographs just became much easier to come by and having a huge saturation picture. Kushner says life's legacy lies in its ability to blend culture, current events in everyday life, highlighting the triumphs of challenges and unique perspectives that define us. Not quite sure what that means, but life is coming back. Life as we know it or perhaps as we don't know it.

Some news, David, from our running departments here. Got some only in journalism for you. This comes to us from listener Paul Henning. Henry, who sent a headline along that Turkey's main opposition party won a resounding victory Sunday in a contest that laid bare voter anger over deep and debilitating economic crisis. That's a double. Our friend Matt McKenna sold along the word spurned. Trump spurned by 30 companies as he seeks bond in his $400 million judgment.

and from the Ronna McDaniels story over at MSNBC, a phalanx of popular anchors rebelled against the parent company. That's only in journalism or only in ancient civilizations. There was a comic book character. I think in the X-Men that was called phalanx, but I remember even at the time, as a child reading it and not knowing how to say it. Only in the Marvel cinematic unit.

Yeah, that's Marvel, right? Only in the Marvel Cinematic. universe or ancient civilizations or journalism. Yes. Phelanx. We got some media piss test here too. This is where we chronicle media members declaring that certain things are like other things, but on steroids.

After making the men's final four, there was a nice athletic write-up about Bama coach Nate Oates. Nate Oates is a former math teacher who got to Bama and then got his staff helping him compile analytics. The athletic notes, It injected Oates's brain with steroids. That's sort of explicit, but I'm getting. Thanks to Ivan Maysell for sending that along.

And then 60 minutes last night, David had a big piece about Havana syndrome or what is alleged to be Havana syndrome. They had an FBI agent talking about her experiences. Let's listen to a little bit of that. One of them is Carrie. We're disguising her and not using her. her last name because she's still an FBI agent working in counterintelligence. She says in 2021, she was home in Florida when she was hit by a crippling force.

And bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids. Now, is it the drilling that felt like it was on steroids or do we think the dentist had injected himself? It's a modifier, a dentist drilling. on steroids. On steroids. Don't you like to hear that classic 60 Minutes diction where...

You know exactly what it was. You knew exactly what it was. And Scott Pelly feels like he's reading a little too slowly. Yeah. And you're kind of waiting on the next word, which makes it powerful. Yep.

I love it. All right, it's time for a feature that has never tested dirty. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strain pun headline. Yeah. The Thursday before last headline about a swarm that left tennis organizers scrambling was Plan B. Today's headline comes to us from Politico's Derek Robertson,

fine writer and listener to this program. Comes from the New York Times, David. It's a seasonal headline. The Times is arguing that The Bunny has become the reigning star of children's literature. Probably been breaking out some of these titles, Pat the Bunny. I am a bunny. So not specifically the Easter bunny. It's just, it's,

I'm sure it was, it was hooked to that, but it's just bunnies in general. The velveteen rabbit, yeah. Yeah. Wide, wide conception of the bunny

in children's lit here. These bunnies, the Times argues, resemble us, the readers. What was the New York Times's strained pun headline? Resimble us.

So it's like, of the, I, um, here I am. Uh, uh, that definitely would have worked.

Uh, is it bunny, is it rabbit is what I'm working with? I'm guessing. Bodies. No, bunnies. Oh,

okay. Um, let me, let me spot you a couple words. Our bunnies. Bodies ourselves? Our bunnies are. Our bunnies ourselves.

You got it. Right. There we go. Our bunnies ourselves. Okay. I'll accept it. David not particularly moved. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Brexton Magic by Brian Waters. A couple of things to put on your schedule here. Chicago, the Democratic National Convention, August 19 through 22nd. We're going to be doing something. If you are interested in doing something with us, hit me up,

Brian.curtis at the ringer.com or DME at the press box pod to get on the list. Looking forward to that. I've got a piece about I and Eagle up, David, on the ringer. Such a good piece. Such a good piece. You don't need me to tell you that. Joe Buck has already told you that publicly on Twitter.

I saw that tweet. It's called Ladies and Gentlemen, I and Eagle. Check that out on the ringer.com. And this Thursday, David, it's April. So we got a new suite of press box guest hosts. First up, Amanda Dobbins. Oh. Ringer podcaster, the pride of Atlanta.

Anna GA. What we say in wrestling intros? Amanda Dobbins is going to be here. And among other things, we're going to talk about this new Netflix movie called Scoop, which is about the BBC's interview with Prince Andrew, which turned out to be a disastrous interview for Prince Andrew.

Gillian Anderson's in the movie. I watched the first half of it last night. It's really good. The first half was really good. That sounds great. Cannot wait to talk to Dobbins about that. Monday Shoemaker and I return with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.