The Press Box - Our Broken Media Ecosystem, Replay Reviews for Everyone, and Lachlan Cartwright of Breaker

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David examine the ways in which information about Charlie Kirk's killing has come out to the public (0:20), before they share some audio from the weekend in football, including Pat McAfee's rousing 'College GameDay' monologue, some instant replay insight from Clemson–Georgia Tech, the tush push getting on everyone's nerves again, and more (14:17). Finally, Bryan and David are joined by the founder of Breaker, Lachlan Cartwright, to discuss a slew of media topics, including Puck's expected acquisition of Air Mail, concerns from people at CBS News about Bari Weiss's new role, Lachlan Murdoch retaining control of Fox and News Corp, and more (30:25). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Lachlan Cartwright Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Danny Kelly, and it's officially fantasy football season, which means the ringer fantasy football show is back with the latest news from around the NFL and everything you need to get ready for the fantasy football season. So join us at the ringer fantasy football show on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel. David? Yes. Five days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, I've been reading a lot of the reactions on social media. You hear people saying, correctly, our country is broken. And I don't know how we're going to fix it. Yeah.

To that, I would like to add this. Our information system is also broken. And I don't know how to fix that either. Go on. Even before the suspect, Tyler Robinson was arrested. All you had to do was pull up Twitter. And you would see this rush to imagine I think that's the right word.

The ideology that must have motivated the killer. Yeah. And this collective imagining or aggressive interpreting is overwhelming everything. Whatever actual information there is. Yeah, it's true. I mean, I think, I mean, I think for a lot of people like me who found out about this news on Twitter and sort of accidentally,

you know, that sort of became the place to search for updates, and we all have a thirst for more information. But yeah, I mean, overwhelmingly, I mean, listen, at this point, sort of, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the, the unofficial, the hyper-online right-wing PR machine moves exactly the same way every time these things happen. Just blame it on the transgender Antifa activist right off the bat

and hope that it's true. And if it's not, that fake reality sticks with enough people that it sort of becomes half true. But even aside from that, unfortunate reality, yeah, information doesn't get out fast enough to state the audience.

And so you even have like major periodicals that are going, you know, they're doing their best to report it out, but are still kind of going with social media conventional wisdom until proven wrong, and that conventional wisdom is often totally flawed. And, I mean, you said even before he was caught. But I do think it's notable now that you add this extra layer of he's caught.

And there's been no trickle about his kind of social media profiles, any post history, whatever. It definitely seems like, I mean, without getting too conspiratorial, it seems like the FBI certainly has more information that they could be releasing that they are not. And whether that's because it doesn't, the reality doesn't fit their own preconceptions or the narrative that they would like to put out or not,

there's just a gaping hole where information would normally be and we are, we as a journalistic establishment as a culture are not equipped to handle that, that lack of information. Or maybe the information is just confusing and contradictions. Yeah. As it often is with people who commit crimes like this. Yeah.

You mentioned mainstream media. So a lot of people have pointed to this Wall Street Journal story from Thursday. That's the day after Kirk's murder and the day before the arrest of Tyler Robinson. The journal had a piece saying that investigators had found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and anti-fascist ideology. Yeah. First of all, transgender ideology.

Not totally sure I even know what that means. That story went up. The New York Times, the story by Glenn Thrush and Devlin Barrett, knocked it down, and the journal immediately throttled back. Well, it was just a bulletin that said this. Yeah.

this is what this is a bulletin circulating with law enforcement sources and you look at that story and you're like on one hand that's a very common mainstream media mistake in instances like this yeah it's almost like there's two manhunts going on there's the manhunt with the FBI and the authorities looking for a suspect and then there's a manhunt within journalism looking for anything competing yep so you you reach for a bulletin, a theory, partial information from law enforcement. Yeah. And when you hear stuff like that, it's almost like everybody should just have a test in journalism.

I'm about to publish a story, but just think of it this way. I'm about to tweet this. You don't want to be cowed by Twitter, but if I tweet this, will people be able to poke holes in this immediately? Or just throw up their hands and be like, wait, what? Yeah. which is exactly what happened with the journal. But then Twitter gets its hands on everything, right? So some people still go with the journal story despite the fact that the journal had hedged it considerably.

Other people said, what you may have been interpreting a certain way was actually online meme culture. Yeah. Which a lot of people in mainstream media are just not equipped to understand at all. But then you have our interpreters on social media being like, whoa, what about this Fox News story about Tyler Robinson's roommate? And now, according to authorities, reportedly his romantic partner. Can we draw a sweeping conclusion from that fact that, by the way, was the same sweeping conclusion that some drew before we even knew who Tyler Robinson was? Yeah. It's just this whirlpool.

I mean, the best one, and I'm sure you saw this, was people saying that Robinson had been radicalized in college? Yeah, despite only spending like two months in college and dropping out. He went to a trade school after that. Yeah. I'm sorry, do we now have the indoctrination of trade schools in America? Now, that would be a story. Trade schools. I like this tweet from Dave Troy, an editor and publisher.

He said, people need to understand that the darkest forms of online radicalization. don't lead to left or right orientations, but rather to an extreme, cynical, and purposefully impenetrable disdain for society and existing power structures. Everything is irony. Everything is a joke. Yeah.

It's good advice to remember that. Yeah. To take a break, to get offline, but guess what? That's advice that nobody is going to take. And I would, to go back to our original question, I'd just ask, can you fix a country that's broken if you can't fix

the information system that's broken. Yeah, it's really hard to imagine. Very, very hard to imagine. I mean, you see, you know, I mean, people are just on every, not sides, people of no matter what your ideology is, are looking for news that confirms your hopes, your suspicions,

your whatever else, you know? I mean, it's why like, I've been saying this all along. Yeah. If you go on to Reddit now, where maybe, some of that aforementioned indoctrination took place. I mean, you can go to like the conservative board, and, you know, they're 100% sure that this is a leftist still, you know.

You go on other places, more liberal places. They're, you know, firmly under the belief that, well, it's like the quote that you read. It might not be a right winger, maybe more something in the Groyper family. There you go for your new newsword of the week, which I think seems pretty likely. But then what do I know? But then you have people like, is it a brother named Brooks Singman from Fox News who broke the story,

quote unquote, broke the story that Robinson was living with a transgender person who is his partner or his lover, like whatever. And that person was, was working with the FBI at this point, which I don't think has been backed up by any reporting outside of sources that are just citing her.

And she does not have. have a great track record on these big cases. I do believe just to just to hear this just, I just read this way before we came online, that authorities in their news conference this morning did broadly confirm some parts of that story. So just, I'll just put that out there and say that we're talking about developing news here.

But regardless, it's that, it's that, that, you know, that, that story took off because to so many people, it's more than just a piece of the puzzle.

You know, it's more than just a tiny, little bit of anecdotal evidence, it confirms everything. And evidence of what, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the thing. Yeah, I'll just read from the Times piece here that just went up right before he came on. The governor, that is Spencer Cox of Utah, said that a person who was initially described

as a roommate of Mr. Robinson was actually his romantic partner and that that person was transitioning from being a man to being a woman. Again, that's just reporting from the New York Times this morning. A couple more observations for you. This whole information system. What if it contained an FBI director, David? who was tweeting his way through a manhunt. Yeah.

Talked a little about Cash Patel's tweets last week. This is what Patel said this morning. Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure. But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not. I was telling the world what the FBI was doing. I do not, in fact, regret my tweets.

Cash Patel now being called Embattled by Fox News. So once again, we have our favorite word. New York Times story by Nicholas Bogle Burroughs, who's been covering the whole story here. He has messages from Discord that Tyler Robinson apparently wrote after the shooting while these news stories were circulating around the world. Here's some quotes from it. I heard the ammo had something about trans stuff on it, but they aren't really. releasing photos or exact quotes. Quote, and also the claim wasn't backed by the official FBI, just some dude in the briefing room.

So you have the specter of the suspect talking about the media coverage we're talking about on Discord. Do you read Ezra Klein's column? Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way. It's hard to talk about this stuff in the moment. I felt when Joel and I talked about this. story on Thursday. We didn't do a fantastic job of getting Charlie Kirk's ideas out there. I didn't stick my pivot foot in the ground and be like, here are some of Charlie Kirk's ideas in case you don't totally know who this person is. Ideas that Kirk himself enthusiastically back.

I understand it's hard. I did find one sentence interesting in Ezra's piece. He said, I envied what he built. And that to me was interesting because if you think of Ezra Klein, he's built something very big with this column in his podcast. But Ezra Klein has built that empire that has influence in a Democratic White House, the U.S. Senate. He looks at Charlie Kirk and he says, well, Charlie Kirk had that, but he also had this incredible presence in colleges, the grassroots with young people. Just thought that was an interesting line buried in there. then right before we came, right before we got on the pod this morning,

Karen Adia of the Washington Post's opinion section. She writes on Substack that she was fired last week after making a number of social media posts about gun violence, one in which she quoted Charlie Kirk directly. So that's out there now. Yeah. What a week.

What a week. And I feel like this is one of those times for you and I come on here and we can, you know, wag our finger at the Wall Street Journal and be like, don't, don't, don't you rush into, to reporting things like this in a fast-moving news environment when you might be wrong, when you might be relying on authorities that only have partial information or no information. And that will not make a single- Or a narrative to push or an axe to grind.

Exactly. And that will not make a single bit of different. Yeah. Because the journal can correct. what's going to happen to the rest of us. Yeah. All right, David, coming up on today's podcast, we got lots of football audio fresh from the weekend. Can a sport bring a fragile nation together?

And wait, we get to listen to referees as they watch a replay. Plus media reporter Lockland Cartwright joins us to talk about why Puck is buying airmail, what Bari Weiss is inspiring at CBS News and other intrigues from this here media beat. All that much more from the press box. A part of the rear. podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Kyle

Crichton here with you. David, as I was watching college football on Saturday, there was this sense that whatever unease America was feeling could be, if not alleviated, at least eased by football.

Tim Brando, a fox who was calling Texas Tech, Oregon State said, in what has been a tumultuous week in our country, football is here to save the day. And with college game day in Knoxville for the Tennessee, Georgia game, Pat McAfee said this. It's not just a great day to be a Tennessee volunteer. It's also a great day to live in the greatest country on earth, the United States of America. And all week, we've seen and heard maybe a lot more than we ever showed about what separates us and what makes us different in our,

differing opinions. But on this beautiful campus, on this glorious Saturday, you'll see a hundred and two thousand plus in the eighth largest stadium in the world from different economic backgrounds, political backgrounds, religious backgrounds, you name it, all coming together for one

thing. And that's the kid George's ass. Some monologue and he went on from there talking about how football brings us together. What do you make of that? He's in monologue. I say promo.

Probably the correct term. Yeah. I mean, listen. This can be our next episode of everything is wrestling. But, you know, when all those fails, you wave the flag and you yell into a microphone, you know, it's a little bit odd with so many voices out there announcing that football is here to save the day. Usually that's the sort of post facto think piece that'll be, you know, that'll emerge after a, you know, it's a week or two after a rough moment in our country. But, you know, it's self-promotion.

I guess there's nothing wrong with that. This is America after all. Yeah. Remember the when the Cubs World Series was going to save us in 2016? Mm-hmm. during Trump versus Hillary Clinton. Yeah. That was a fun thing piece to write.

I just imagine ESPN executives watching that. And just, I mean, hands were ringing all parts of the body were as tight as they could possibly be. And then he sort of brought it around and they everybody just exhaled. Yeah. And they probably really liked it. Yeah, absolutely. That was great because you nodded at the thing without.

saying the thing. And then you said the thing that we're going to show here on ESPN, that's the cure to the other thing. Yeah. At least the temporary cure. And I bet they love the hell out of that monologue. Yeah.

promo, if you will. Another thing from Saturday. Georgia Tech upset Clemson. I think that was the second best game of the day. Mm-hmm. After a Clemson touchdown, the referees went to the replay. This is the ref on the field

looking into that box that looks like the viewfinder from our youth. And what was very cool about this was that we actually got to hear the ref on the field talk to the ACC game day people that were showing him the replays. Here's a little sound

of that. On that shot right there, do you see a loss of control with a foot in the white? I don't think he has control there. I agree with you. Didn't that sound like the astronauts talking to mission control? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Struck me that we have all these refs in the booth now, these Mike Pereiras, these Dean Blandinos, because we don't have that sound on most broadcasts.

So the refs watching the replay and we need the X-Ref to give us the words and interpret the pictures. But if we can just hear all that, we don't actually need the ex-ref. It's pretty incredible. It really is. And I know you have to get like sign off. I mean, to get Roger Goodell to agree to this would be a massive lift. Oh, yeah. But like hearing the ref talk it out, you just understand so much more of it.

But what if like the best referees, the best football referees in the world just cuss all the time? When it's just on there. The stadium's going to hate this one. Yeah. Just nonstop F bombs throughout the whole thing. No, I do. I think that's great. I mean, having that kind of sign off, you're right.

I mean, why introduce something like that that, that, you know, that's not necessary as it stands? Maybe the ref mics will be another, another thing they could parcel out. Just sell the, sell the ref mic broadcast to, you know, a tubey or something. But yeah, it is. It's just, we get to hear them come out and say the verdict, obviously. It seems it's so much more informative to hear him talking in real time. And that's like the weird, the most halting part of any football game, right? Where you're just like waiting and waiting and waiting for a thing,

letting other people litigate it and then it may or may not match up. I don't know. I thought it was, I thought it was really a nice addition. I guess you lose the reveal when the ref, you know, steps in the field and faces the cameras and makes the big announcement. But I think I would take that if I could hear the explanation. Yeah, the big reveal is like great if it goes your way, but it's just a reveal that always leaves half of the audience upset. You know, at least if you hear them talk it out, you can get a little bit of insight into what they're saying. Yeah. And then to go back to our, the point

we started the show with, I think that does diffuse a lot of conspiracy theories or a lot of at least incompetent ref theories. Because you know, when there's a really bad call, they have this hilarious practice where one member of the journalistic pool in the press box gets to go talk to the ref. Yeah. And they release this transcript, which is like two or three questions long. Why did you make that call? And it's just kind of useless at that point.

I mean, at least it explains their reasoning, but there's just not much there. But if we can hear them talking it out in real time, that's a much better version. Yeah. But if the mics are on, the mics are only on at the table, then it's not like... I mean, imagine if you just saw the refs like walking away from a, or, you know, walking off during a timeout and saying like, woof, we really missed that offside stall back there. Wait, they're miced up the whole game. Yeah. It's like the Sam Donald seeing ghost thing with the rest.

Like, yeah, I'm drunk as hell from last night. I haven't seen a single pass interference all day. Yeah. I've always hated the jets. I'm going to keep calling things against the jets. Yeah, here we go. Another note from Saturday, the big. Florida, South Florida game was on the CW.

Because they've got college football now and Tom Brennaman where have I heard that name before was calling the game. Brennam said this is like the biggest day in CW's sports history which is one of the saddest boasts you can possibly imagine.

WW's NXT program is on there every week. There you go. So you're a watching. It's a great show. Then what happened is there was a lightning delay. So CW Sports just had to vamp Yeah For the better part of an hour on this set that looked like Dude, I mean, if the ringer had filmed a podcast on this set

Would have been like, guys, let's take a breath and rethink. I mean, it just looks so weird and like a big dark chasm of a set. The whole thing was amazing. Yeah. Great day of NFL football yesterday. If you had the double header of the Cowboys Giants, which was exciting bad football, and then Chiefs Eagles, which was exciting better football.

Of course, the big play was Travis Kelsey, bobbling a would-be touchdown pass that turned into an Eagles interception. A dude. You and I like to stiff arm any, hey, he's in love, he's distracted, he's been captured by startup. But oh my God, when I saw that, I was like, here we go.

Yep. write whatever you want. Somebody who lived through the Amazon Prime Day version of this with Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson. Remember that? I was just like, dude, this is unbelievable. This is just what a perfect story.

He will talk about this on the podcast. Someone will ask him about this at some point. Yep. It was amazing. Great stuff. Other big story from this game, Bill and South talked about this this morning, It was the tush push slash brotherly shove,

which figured at so many key points of the game. The aforementioned Dean Blandino has seen enough. I am done with the tush push, guys. It's a hard play to officiate like we've been talking about. So they either ruled progress or that Hertz was down. Really hard to see what's happening with the football. We're inside two. So replay has looked at this.

And they've determined that there was no fumble. I was thinking about this. They tried to change the tush push rule this year, didn't work. It's going to have to be something like what happened yesterday. A big game, Eagles players off sides seemingly every single time. Or the play just gumming up the works of what the NFL considers to be a marquee game. Because that's what's going to have to change, right? This is not about changing it on the merits so much as having the TV moment.

Yeah. When everyone's locked in and everyone's like, I hate this, this has to stop right now. Yeah. I know if we're going to be able to do that on a Sunday afternoon or if it's going to take a playoff game in January. But I'm just like, what's the moment? Again, not because of unfairness, not because it's a rugby player or whatever. Just how big does the moment have to be? Yeah, exactly right.

our listener Bruno Alves notes that Josh Allen during Bill's Jets was bleeding profusely

according to Tracy Wilson good one you do very little profusely other than bleed see what else

I got for you apologize profusely too okay you apologize profusely does that mean you did it

like at length or many different times I think it's just oh my God I'm so sorry I wish it yeah

whatever yeah I think at length. Profuse apologies. Yeah. This was a funny clip. Shador Sanders, David, made news once again, not on the football field, but in the Adam Schaefter insider zone.

Here's Schaefter on ESPN's pregame show. Argoni was all said. A consensus had been reached. The Baltimore Ravens, the Ravens were planning to select Shador Sanders in the fifth round with the 141st overall selection. But when he found out, he got word back to the Ravens. that he preferred not to go to a place where he would be competing and backing up Lamar Jackson. He wanted to be in a place that he could play. And so when the Ravens got that message, they pivoted

went a different direction with the 141st overall selection. And three picks later, the Cleveland Browns selected Chador Sanders, who will be in Baltimore today. Shepter didn't really need to make all those connections at the end of the clip there. We're really getting into Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln territory, I think, but the point is interesting. And I feel bad about this because when all that stuff came out right before the draft, I was so defensive. I was like,

this smells like player is a diva coloring, using the primary colors of the 90s sports column to me. Yep. And again, I'm not saying it is all true or that that's the way you would characterize you, Dora Sanders, but there was just stuff going on there. Mm-hmm.

That I did not do a good enough job of appreciating. in real time. Sure. Last club, David, from the other football. Ray Hudson, legendary British soccer player, manager and then commentator, has retired. Ray Hudson, unbeknownst to me or you, has a legacy of legendary calls. Alert listener Derek wanted to send this along because we eventually got ourselves to a media piss test.

Ronaldo, whose free kicks have been a bit erratic this year. Magical. This one drops in. You kidding me. It's ecstasy. Astonishing. This is not just a dream. It's a wet dream of orgasmic proportions.

And this one deludes everybody. It seduces everybody in Real Madrid's fan club. That's for sure. The wonder strike from Cristiano. This has got more curves to it than Jessica Rabbit on steroids. Jessica Rabbit, of all things, on steroids. That's great. Now, would steroids improve her curves?

Theoretically, you know, she hits a gym in the right way, yeah. It's, that's just an unbelievable call because the play-by-play guy says the word ecstasy. Mm-hmm. And then Ray Hudson says, I'll take ecstasy and actually go to a wet dream. Yeah. And then I will use the words like seduce and just, just trail into infinity from there.

I love that it was necessary to qualify wet dream with orgasmic proportions. There was. All right. Coming up at 30 seconds, the guy who's breaking the big stories for breaker. But first, let's do the overword 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 on Twitter or Blue Sky where they are always, always gratefully received. As you might imagine, David, this week's winner jokes about Travis Kelsey's bobbled ball in the end zone.

Travis Kelsey hasn't given someone a gift this important since his engagement. Travis Kelsey did not drop or fumble the biggest catch of his life and that's all that matters. Good night. and for Travis Kelsey's pregame wardrobe, he is spoiling that his Halloween costume this year will be the guitarist for ACDC.

If you never before thought of Travis Kelsey and Angus Young in the same sentence, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, I ignore most of my emails unless they come from Lachlan Cartwright. Lachlan is the Scoopmeister

behind the excellent media newsletter breaker. I am a charter subscriber. It's fantastic and very different, purposefully so than many other offerings in this space, as the kids like to say. Breaker turns seven months old this week, and Lachlan's here to talk to us about some recent media intrigues. Lachlan, welcome to the press box.

Good night. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. You had a big scoop on Thursday. Puck, you wrote, the media company founded by John Kelly in 2021, has entered into an agreement to acquire great, Carter's airmail translated a Graydon Carter spin-off is going to buy a Graydon Carter reboot. Lockland, what are the details there? Or as I framed it, the apprentice is buying the master because John Kelly was Graydon's assistant

back in the day at Vanity Fair. And even as a nod to those days, the customer service email for Park is Fritz at puck. dot news, which is a nod to the Waverly that obviously Graydon owns, that you would have to email Fritz to get a VIP seat. But look, these are two loss-making businesses. I'm told that the losses at Puck are far less than the losses at airmail, and the revenue at Puck is greater than that of email, but still they both lose money. And they both also share two of the same investors, the glamorous roofing company standard industries and TPG. And ML is coming up to its, I think, sixth year.

Puck has just celebrated four years. And it's pretty clear that AML had been on sale for more than a year. And there weren't that many buyers. I believe there had been discussions with Jerry Cardinal, who's obviously Redbird, who's a friend of Gradens. His purchase of the Telegraph still has not gone through. So when those talks stalled, I think things with Puck are heated up. And this isn't going to be a big cash transfer.

I think this is going to be more stock changing hands. But the hope is that they can combine both of these entities. They can share some of the back end. Air Mail has a beautiful townhouse over in Greenwich Village. Puck, I like to say, in South Tribeca, although every time I try and find South Tribeca on a map of Manhattan, I struggle. but in any event they have these two offices and so maybe they can combine that

they can combine the back end, add sales, etc. And hopefully stem the losses and something can maybe become profitable here. Well, in size too, right? I mean, as much as we've seen media go in such a direction of the sort of micro trend, right?

I mean, everything from newsletters on up, which is the form a lot of these puck and air mail things take as well. Yeah, including Breaker. I mean, do you think that there will be a broader move towards amalgamation, towards joining forces to sort of have a bigger footprint in the online space? A hundred percent. I think you're going to see more consolidation, more of these types of ups.

You know, there are just too many newsletters. And people have inbox fatigue. And I do think particularly to scale, you're going to see some of these other, smaller publications strike similar deals to what we're seeing here with with puck and ML. Lockley, we've been talking a lot about the possibility of David Ellison buying the free press and installing Bari Weiss as the spiritual advisor. I believe that's the exact title of CBS News.

What are people at CBS News feeling right now? So I wrote a column a few months back. I think it was in May that absolutely took off. I think the headline was, why is everyone fleeing the free press? because I kind of traced back several key appointments that had lasted anywhere from four months. That was Chuck Lane, the deputy editor who came across from Wappo, to someone who was the executive editor who came across from the New York Post, only to go back to News Corp after just under two years.

People over there are somewhat concerned about a number of things. And one of those, and it gets back to that piece I wrote, why is everyone fling the free press, is about Barry. management style, which is described to be generously as erratic. And I think that people there are, you know, someone concerned, A, that she lacks broadcast experience. Now, that's not to say that with the right Sherper and the right kind of people around her, she can't come to groups with that.

But she does have a pattern of really struggling to hold on to talent and to hold on to people. And you go from basically managing a substack, and that's what the free press is. It's a substack. and to managing a giant network news organization, numbering thousands and thousands of people. And I think there are some concerns over, you know, what positions she'll be taking. I think the Times had some reporting

that it would be some kind of sort of editor-chief role. I don't know how this comports with then Tom Zabowski, who's the news president, who was actually only installed a few months ago. I think I tallied up in Breaker. There's been at least half a dozen news presidents since David Roe. And that was only a few years ago. And so I think, yeah, there's some really serious concerns around Barry and around how she will run, you know, CBS Barry. She's never ran anything to this magnitude.

And the publication she's running, which is tiny, she has, you know, very serious issues holding on to key talent. Has that trend continued over the past two years since you first wrote the piece as far as you can tell? Has there been more stability inside? Yeah, no, I mean, that piece was only back in May. Oh, too much. Sorry. That was only a couple of months ago that I wrote that piece. But she had someone like Andy Mills, who, you know, was the co-creator of the Daily.

There was a bust up there, and he left. There were a couple of blokes who came across from Vice, Michael Morneahan and Alex Chitty. They're now over at Mark Halperin's Two-way. There are Lars, who's now over at Business Inside, Alas Cole, who was on the business side. But there has just been a number of people time and time again that she can't hold on to. And obviously, you know, you go from managing a subsect to managing a huge network news division. You take away the politics of it all, which obviously that's a huge part of this. And Israel is a massive factor because Larry Ellison is close to Nanyahu, as is David Ellison,

has always been a big cause for them. But then you just kind of come down to sort of the nuts and bolts of how she is a manager. I think there's some very serious questions around that. I do think the politics, I mean, personally, I think that politics are incredibly problematic, especially as we've seen, I mean, with the potential for the way that's handled on the news in, but I do feel like the politics are a huge part of this, right? I mean, and theoretically, I mean, it's not, it's not wild to think that someone who, given the free press is a substack, it's also sort of a startup, and they're going to pay

upwards of $100 million, maybe $200 million for it, right? So, like, it's not crazy to think that someone. Which is an insane value. I mean, she's not pulling more rev than maybe 20-20-mell. And that's probably me being being generous doing back in the book. Napkin Mass as a son of an accountant who's terrible at maths. But yes, look, the politics here are front and center. But maybe that's what Allison wants.

Like Bezos has allowed Will Lewis basically to reorientate that newsroom. And they have not seen to give a monkeys about losing key towers. They've allowed key talent, not just to walk out the door, but to go to their direct competitors, the Atlantic. The New York Times have poached, you know, dozens of brilliant WAPO former journalists. So if the play here is we're going to reorientate CBS News, and there are key indicators that they're trying to do that, the ombudsman that was named, I think, is a key, you know, a key part of this and that person's politics, which are none too discreet, a former Trump aide. If the purpose here, guys, is to reorientate, um,

CBS, then bringing Barry YSE and and sort of blowing it up is maybe something that they want. Speaking both of Lachlands and Australians, Murdoch's succession now seems assured after the agreement, where you might say payoff that will allow Lachman Murdoch to remain in the cockpit after Rupert Murdoch's death. What do you think Lachlan wants to do with Fox and its media properties? It was a big week for blokes named Lachlan in media last week. Look, I think that, you know, it's very clear that, Rupert had wanted to install Lachlan to protect his legacy. He wanted the business to stay in the family.

Obviously, if this did not happen, there was a chance that pieces could have been broken up and sold if he had passed and gone to the big newsroom in the sky before this was resolved. And James had to come in and caused this coup, which was always the fear. Lachland's politics are more conservative than his father, but he's also a businessman. And both Fox and News Corp's share price right now are sky high. They have never been better. So what is happening right now is working.

I don't think he's going to try and shake things up too much further. I think there's some key decisions to be made about certain aspects of the business that are underperforming, such as the Sun in London, such as newspapers in Australia. I think those assets are going to need a very strong look. But in terms of Fox, I think Susan Scott, under her leadership, steadied the ship after Tucker Carlson. Do we even recall when Tucker was in prime time now that Jesse Waters has taken on that slot?

I know Fox comes in for some criticism, or a lot of criticism, but what they're very good at and where some of these other outlets could take a leap out of their page is grooming talent. They always have a strong bench. So if someone, you know,

if they have a TJ and Amy scandal, say, at GMA, they actually have a bench to come in and replace those people. So to answer your question along that way, I don't think there's going to be at least initially much dramatic change for what you see in Fox and News Corp. Bearing mind that Locklands been running the company for the last two years. And that has been, while this whole project harmony, the family does have a sense of humor, Nevada case has been going on.

What do you think, I mean, there's been a lot of different takes on this, but what do you think the motivation for the other Murdoch siblings was to end this battle now? I think we're also, you know, we all watch Succession and now we only view the Murdoch family through the lens of succession. And it seems implausible that the other three Murdoch siblings would walk away at this point, that they wouldn't be starting a competing network or something. But could it be as simple as they're just done? They're just exhausted.

They're ready to do something else with their lives? I mean, firstly, the price was right. you know, there'd been maneuvers to buy them out before, but Lachlan had, you know, in their view, I low-balled them. So in this situation, the price was right. The Nevada case, it appears,

you know, they were having some luck with the appeal. They were using, for instance, James' Atlantic interview against him and there seemed to be potentially some movement there, or at least it was going to continue to drag out. Yeah, this stuff is exhausting. You know, I've had friends go through litigation, and it's costly and it's time-consuming.

And even if you're a member of the Murdox, if, you know, two years of your life is put on hold by this and someone comes along and says, here's $1.5 billion bucks, you know what, I'd take the money and run. Would you, Bush? Yes. Yeah, I mean, would I take $1.5 billion, yes. Fact check true. Lachlan, you could cover a lot of things.

Why do you like covering the media beach? I always have said that media is, you know, I'm really covering power, because media intersex with so many other touch points, whether it's Wall Street or Silicon Valley or politics. And if you have the media beat locked down, what you're basically covering is power. You know, I was saying if we went out today and, you know, asked a bunch of people, you know, where did a cultural movement like Me Too start? They would probably all say, well, it was the New York Times and they would be right in saying that.

And they'd probably also say Harvey Weinstein. They'd be wrong if they said that. It was Bill O'Reilly. It was the New York Times breaking the Bill O'Reilly story and NDAs that were going on there with Fox and some very smart editors got some very smart journalists in the room and said, who else? Who else is putting people under NDAs and silencing them? And that's where the Weinstein reporting and that's where this cultural movement started. I always say if you can get that media grid down, you're really covering power. Plus the characters are just so much fun. I mean, to cover the likes

of, you know, the Murdox or Barry Waste or, you know, I've had a lot of fun this year with places that are a bit stuffy like Bloomberg, where I broke a story that they won a Pulitzer, and they didn't realize that they'd won a poster because an editor went rogue and entered a writer to save CityLab. So there's just great yarns, and there's great characters, and it's fun. And I think I've brought that sort of sense of fun to breaker.

As well as breaking these scoops, I'm staking out the Salzberger barbecue. We're doing the Sun Valley captions. We've got a guest column from Can Lion. I've got Hamish's Hot Sauce now, the co-founder of Subsec writing on, So, you know, I always say if you tell the punters something they don't know and make them laugh at something they do know, that's a compelling product. All right, you mentioned tablets. You wrote in the New York Times magazine last year, we'll end here, about working at the National Enquirer when it fell under the orbit of the Trump campaign.

How do you think Trump has changed the media in his second term? Well, I think, you know, similar to the first term, he's just flooded the zone to the extent that no one could focus on one story for any more than, you know, half a day. You know, and I think that we're all still struggling, uh, sort of to, to, you know, figure out how best to cover him. And I, I don't think anyone's properly figured that out. Um, you know, I think, you know, there's a lot of places, the journal, um, uh, the Times, uh, and Woppo doing incredible, uh, reporting. But I think he still is the master at manipulation. He is the tabloid president. And he knows that bit of red meat will distract away. I'll put the troops on the streets of Washington and maybe that Epstein coverage will go away. And I think that,

you know, we all have to be pretty vigilant to make sure that we're not getting distracted and we're, we're, you know, chasing the stories that matter. Lachlan Cartwright writes the newsletter breaker. There's seven candles on the birthday cake this week. Hopefully many more. Lockland, thanks for coming on the press box. Cheers. Thanks for having me, guys. All right. It's time for a feature that is American by birth, but Australian by temperament. It's time. for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Ooh, yeah. I thought you were good, what was it?

Was it American by birth, Southern by the grace of God? Was that the old, the old... It was a bumper sticker, wasn't it? Texan by the grace of God? Yeah, was that the old bumper sticker? Yeah. Dude, I'm lucky enough to have some Australian journalism friends, but the word of yarn to describe a great story,

which Lachlan is there is just one of my absolute favorites. So good. Long form sucks compared to the word of yarn. I mean, let's point to Australia in the world media power rankings. All right, last Monday's headline about the Trump administration talking about giving a job to Eric Adams was, I love new work. Today's headline comes to us from alert listener, Mike, the wrath of God. Anytime we can get a Klaus Kinski reference into the press box, you have to do it. David, the headline comes from those clever scamps over at the Guardian.

Okay. Turns out European cheese producers are leaning into their craft despite the Trump tariffs. So tariffs are making it very hard for those cheese mongers in Europe. But David, damn it, they are going to try. They are going to figure something out.

What was the Guardian's strain pun headline? So you tease me by using craft in the windup, which can't have. anything to do with this headline. No. They're going to try. That was misleading. Uh, try.

Um, uh, if at first you don't succeed. Okay. You're on the right. You're that. It's a saying like that. Uh, it, um, because, you know, where, where. Let me spot you a word. Where?

Where the. Where there's? I have no idea where you're going with this. Where there's a... Oh, where there's a will, there's a W-H-E-Y. There we go. There we go. Good work, Guardian.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Thanks to Magic by Kyle Crichton. Back Thursday with Joel Anderson. Shoemaker, you and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.