The Press Box - Rachel Nichols, Maria Taylor, and the Week at ESPN

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker unpack the news that ESPN analyst Rachel Nichols will no longer be the sideline reporter at the NBA Finals after making inappropriate comments about her coworker Maria Taylor. They discuss how the saga unfolded, ESPN’s response, and what this could mean for both Nichols and Taylor. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave Chang is an avid student and fan of sports, music, art, film, and of course, food. With a rotating cast of guests, they have conversations that cover everything from the creative process to his guest's guiltiest pleasures. Followed the Dave Chang Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer here along with Erica Servantes. This is a special edition of the press box devoted to the ESPN story that everybody's talking about. David, is there an NBA finals actually going on right now? Because I don't know about you, but I've just been watching the pregame show in the sidelines. That's where my attention has been focused.

Because as Kevin Draper reported in the New York Times earlier this week, ESPN host Rachel Nichols, who is white, made a disparaging comment about ESPN host Maria Taylor, who is black last year. When that came to light, Nichols was pulled from sideline duty for the NBA finals and replaced by Malika Andrews. Nichols' Daily TV show The Jump did not air on Tuesday. It was back on Wednesday.

And you and I talk about a lot of minor grade media tempests and little bits of intrigue at newspapers and TV stations. When somebody is being yanked off the air during a marquee event like the NBA Finals, that's when you know this is an incredibly big story and that what was said was incredibly wounding. Because, man, that does not happen very often. Yeah, I think, you know, with ESPN, sometimes it's most informative.

I mean, with any big company like that, but ASPN is what we talk about a lot. Sometimes it's informative, frankly, to look at what they do in a vacuum, to actually look at what they do in the absence of them really having a point of view because it's hard to imagine them having a real strong point of view on a lot of stories such as this. and what they're doing is reacting to what other people's reactions, right? I mean, they clearly felt pressure from inside the house to take this kind of step, which is, like you said, really extreme and frankly, a little bit surprising.

Yeah, I just think what we will get to this as we as we kind of go through the various details of this. But one thing people should remember is everything we're talking about here happened last year in terms of the comments made. one year ago. And it's now in 2021 summer of 2021 that we're seeing the reaction, which just goes to your point about ESPN reacting to what's in public more than what actually happened within their own building. Or should we say on a server inside their own building? All right.

Here's a backstory if you have not followed this. Go for it. July 13, 2020, Rachel Nichols is sitting in a hotel room in Orlando, Florida. or around Orlando, Florida, because this is back when the NBA was doing its postseason bubble. And Nichols is on the phone with Adam Mendelson, who is LeBron James's media advisor. And by the way, I think we should talk about him before this podcast is over. Now, on this phone call, Nichols is not happy because she's just gotten some bad news from ESPN management.

She's not going to be hosting the pre and postgame shows during the NBA finals. that gig is going to go to Maria Taylor, a rising star at the company. Okay, so Nichols wanted to host the NBA Finals, be the host, which is basically the second best job other than calling the NBA Finals. That job went to somebody else, to Maria Taylor. Now, Nichols is in the hotel room,

and she says this to Adam Mendelsoson, I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world. She covers football. She covers basketball. if you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy long-time record on diversity, which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it, like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.

Translation, ESPN had given Maria Taylor the job of hosting the NBA finals not because of her talent, Nichols is saying, but because they were feeling pressure about their crappy record on diversity. Now, David, Nichols was saying this privately. A lot of venting that goes on in the sports media world in private. The catch is that Nichols had a video camera in her room that she was using to do remote hits on ESPN, because again, this is the bubble. We're not supposed to see anybody. And as Kevin Draper writes in the New York Times, quote,

unbeknown to Nichols, her video camera was on. And the call was being recorded to a server at ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. Private call is suddenly on a server back at corporate HQ. Now, someone back at ESPN watches the downloaded video of Nichols talking about a colleague. They record it with their own camera. And now this comment that Nichols made about Maria Taylor is being passed around the company. So I've got like five things I want us to tackle here. but we should probably say something about the comment itself before we go on.

I know it's obvious, but I just want to make sure we do say it. I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world. This is Rachel Nichols talking. She covers football. She covers basketball. If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy long time record on diversity, dot, dot, dot, dot. Okay, David.

When you make the suggestion that someone got a job because of a makeup call, rather than because of their talent, that is incredibly insulting. Yeah. More than insulting, it's shitty to say that. It's also, by the way,

insane as anyone who has seen Maria Taylor work on ESPN would say. Oh, yes. Maria Taylor's a great television host. Would you not agree? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, if you watch NBA Countdown,

we haven't talked about her on the show, at least not in debt, that she really is a unbelievably talented broadcaster. And I think that doesn't quite do it justice. I mean, if you watch, if you just watch five seconds of it, if you just watch one segue bit that they do, you can see that it's sort of like the evolutionary T&T postgame show. It's related more to that. her talents are more related to that than they are the traditional studio show or this traditional

pre-game post-game show it's like as stilted as those things used to be and sometimes still are in a lot of sports just her personality and her skill has turned it into you feel like you're dipping in for 15 seconds of a running conversation and then maybe that doesn't sound like much but it used to be so stilted and with her her show is so comfortable and so you just you actively want more and more of it, not just because it's brief, but because it feels like an intelligent conversation that you're a part of.

And you almost feel like a generational shit. And listen, I'm not going to compare her to anybody else in this story, but from the people that came before her as I'll paint with a broad brush. It's almost a generational shift between people who were great studio hosts and Maria Taylor,

who is just sort of like a human, like an incredible force of nature. personality that it's so powerful and yet so reserved at the same time. I'm overstating it maybe, but she's really, really like the best there is at what she does. I think you, I think you hit it when you talked about just the comfort of being on television. There are lots of, there are lots of really talented broadcasters who never quite master the idea of looking like they're comfortable being on TV. They're just completely at ease and they're ready to go. And that, that, that, that, is what they're doing. And I think she, I think that is, yes, that is one of the qualities among

many that comes out for me to her. So I just, you know, whether, whatever she's doing, she's done a whole bunch of different things at that network. This call David was supposed to be private, as we said. Those words were never supposed to be heard by people at ESPN that Rachel Nichols was saying. But that, of course, is also what made those words particularly damning inside ESPN. Yeah. Because as Draper writes, multiple blacky espion employees said they told one another after hearing the conversation that it confirmed their suspicions that outwardly supportive white people talk differently behind closed doors. Yeah. That sounds about right. That was like the first sentence from the piece that I like, you know, underlines. Am I right? Just quick sidebar. Was it, was it Twitter fake news? Or am I correct in?

believing that the person, whoever it was that was responsible for leaking the video was punished a year or two ago whenever it had initially happened? Oh, yeah, we're going to get to that. Okay. I just want to make sure that that's true before I go into too much debt. It's real news. That's real news. So, again, like you pointed out before, this happened some time ago, and they dealt with it,

you know, presumably heard the tape and dealt with it to their, to their satisfaction some time ago. But I want to talk about specifically about that New York Times quote, that sentence that you just read from the Times. And I kind of say this looking in the mirror a little bit too, because if you think, like you mentioned that this sort of venting goes on a lot and it does. Venting is a human thing. We all, as humans say things that we would hope would not be circulated around the internet or around the world. And I want to say general venting minus minus, you know, any kind of layering of race and diversity and everything. But yes, venting is a is a right of sports television, sports media and basically every business in the United States. When that Hulk Hogan tape came out years and years ago or whatever,

and everybody was kind of happy to kick him out of pro wrestling history, and I was lined up as one of those people. I did want to make the point that if you're, you know, if you can no longer be a fan of any professional wrestler from the 80s who has said the inward in their life, you're not going to have many people to be fans of anymore. This sort of conversation probably goes on a lot. That's the point of the suspicions, right?

I mean, the suspicion that Black ESPN employees had was well-founded. I don't think anybody would have disputed it in the absence of this tape. But it's not exculpatory, and that's not really the point, right? If you find yourself, if you find yourself like parsing this Nichols quotes or the tape for lucidity for like, you know, subtle points that might be made. And I admit I can be guilty of this kind of thinking. But if you are doing that, you're missing the point entirely, right? Because this is a much bigger issue that Rachel Nichols is now the sort of paradigm of.

She's the symbol of this. And she is both justifiably the target of this story and of the unease at ESPN and of the whatever feelings that people are having around the world. And it's also an issue that's much, much bigger than her. So it's not about how she couched it. And it's not about whether or not this stuff goes on. this is a much bigger issue of which she is now justifiably the focus. Absolutely. Absolutely. She apologized on TV on Monday.

She says in Draper's story that she tried to directly apologize to Maria Taylor. She's quoted saying Maria Taylor has chosen not to respond to these offers, which is completely fair and a decision I respect. I want to dig in. I got five things. Thing number one is let us dig into the corporate ESPN response to it. Because I cannot underline enough that this happened one. one year ago, one year ago and the comments, as Draper reports, were circulated very quickly at ESPN, even up to the executive level. I think when you look at this, when you look at the

whole situation 30,000 feet, ESPN management thought they had two problems last year, two very separate problems. Problem number one was a very normal, almost just depressingly normal television problem, which is Rachel Nichols, an employee they like, didn't get the job she wanted. This happens in television all the time, right? So ESPN says, well, what can we do to fix the situation? We have given Maria Taylor the hosting job. What can we do for you, Rachel Nichols? And again, from talking to people at ESPN the last couple of days, what I had heard is essentially that, you know, they were, ESPN was like, okay, what can we do? How can we help you? One person told me they went back to her contract and said, okay, well, can we, you know, sidelines at the finals,

okay, can we have you do the trophy presentation at the end of the finals? Something, by the way, Doris Burke had done in previous years. And I think presumably still could have done even as she was doing color commentary on the radio, which is what she's doing now. So I think it's worth noting ESPN was working to fix that very banal problem of television, which is we had to pick one person for a job, the other person was inevitably going to be disappointed. Okay.

Problem number two, which was the comments on the tape, was the actual problem. They didn't do anything to solve it, as far as I can tell. I mean, there's just nothing. And to circle back to what you said a minute ago, I'll quote Draper one more time. The only person known to be punished was Kayla Johnson,

a digital video producer who told ESPN Human Resources that she had sent the video to Taylor. Johnson, who is black, was suspended for two weeks without pay and later was given less desirable tasks at work. Johnson later left ESPN. So for the better part of a year, ESPN sees this comment and they punish one person who is involved in sending it around the network.

But that's it. And it's almost, David, like there's this attitude that they just thought it went away. In fact, they were banking on it going away. With this thing that's happened, this, this comment is just going to disappear. To say, I mean, pointing out that it happened a year ago, it's important to spend a second just to focus on the fact that Kylie Johnson leaked this tape a year ago. And think about where we were a year ago. This isn't some like vague period in time.

This is a period in time. And listen, we all can have whatever sympathy for just like, you know, the faceless white men in the corner offices if we choose to, but a year ago, this was a time of incredible upheaval and, like, widespread activism in our country. And the fact that this employee, just regardless of position or anything else, thought it was important for this tape to be seen, was not some sort of isolated incidents of, of disobedience or like, breaking a rule, breaking the ESPN rule. Yeah, whatever. I mean, this was part, you have to see this.

This is part of the fabric of what was going on our entire country and our culture, you know. And the fact that, I mean, who knows what those conversations were like? There's certainly been people that ESPN is suspended sort of performatively and then welcomed back to their previous posts and, you know, whatever. And this was not one of those incidents. It doesn't seem like that was that. But still, you don't know what the conversations were like. but to, but this, you know, from from the kind of uneducated spot that I'm sitting in right now, this feels a little bit, a little bit like the sort of transgression that you turn into a

learning opportunity for everyone and move past as a team and not punish someone. And then almost like, not almost, more significantly than the, than the suspension, quote, later given less desirable tasks at work is the most damning part of the whole thing. You know, I mean, it's just, and then that she. left and you were just like, well, what are we going to do? I mean, you thought you had this contained. You certainly didn't. And it was just, it's just, there's so many just compounding wrongs there. And the why, why didn't they do anything is a, is a key question. And if you read Draper's story, it's pretty clear that ESPN was afraid they were going to get sued if they did something to

Rachel Nichols. Here's a quote, multiple former ESPN employees, including a former executive, said that company executives expressed fears of a lawsuit from Nichols and that Disney ESPN's parent company became heavily involved. The argument being that if you were to whatever, whatever you decided to do to Rachel Nichols, I said, this is what is warranted by that comment. She would say, wait a second, I was recorded without my knowledge by this ESPN machine that was then uploaded to company headquarters. So what ESPN is, you know, what I suspect, to happen as ESPN is in this vice where they say like this very upsetting thing happened, this terrible thing happened, people inside the company are pissed that this thing happened,

but we, I guess, feel legally like we can't do anything. Well, and that, I mean, and to take it the sort of more human side of this, I mean, listen, it's not hard to hear the story in full and have some level of human sympathy for, you know, the idea of being recorded without your consent and having your worst sort of, the worst parts of your it or whatever leaked out into the world. I mean, Rachel Nichols was in a situation that nobody would choose to be in, just no matter what those kind of dark parts of our personality are.

And yet, they're out there. And I think we've reached this sort of broad consensus in our culture that if that happens, there can be some level of, like, sympathy and have that not affect a sort of moral or ethical issue at hand, right? I mean, I don't think there's anybody listening to this that believes that if Jeffrey Tubin had been tricked into believing the camera was off, that his punishment should have been different, right? I mean, the action was what mattered, right?

Not not the, not what led him to believe that he was off camera, right? And so, yes, I understand that there is a legal issue here. And maybe ESPN did the best they possibly could, given the circumstances. I can't imagine, no, no, in terms of, in terms of dealing with the legal aspect of it, right? In terms of not getting the lawyers mad at us, you know? Yeah, yeah, but, I mean, but and, and, but it's, it does seem like repeated, like every, at every point along the way, we're missing the forest for the trees here. If you're missing the forest for the trees and people inside ESPN whom you value noticed. And we're pissed and we're like, wait.

entire point of this, right? Which is like, Wade is, I mean, we hear in the piece about the whole NBA countdown team, the worst of Marie Taylor's, you know, if you just read Twitter, by the way, what a day for Twitter of ESPN employees. Just kind of like the just sub-tweet day of all sub-tweet days where you're going, oh, that's interesting. Like, you know, everybody at ESPN was very, very aware of this. I'll also direct you to a Maria Taylor story, excuse me, email in the story that was obtained by Drake She's writing DSPN management. I will not call myself a victim,

but I certainly have felt victimized, and I do not feel as though my complaints have been taken seriously. In fact, the first time I have heard from HR after two incidents of racial insensitivity was to ask if I leaked Rachel's tape to the media. I would never do that. She continues simply being a front-facing black woman

at this company has taken its toll physically and mentally. And now we get to this weird situation, which we were talking about at the top of the pod, that now Rachel Nichols is taken off the NBA finals. One quick setback in a pod is if we're going to get here in the future. Yeah. It's important just as a sidebar that when we're talking about the question of whether or not Maria Taylor leaked the tape to the media,

someone at ESPN 100% leaked a story about Maria Taylor being a diva and asking for Stephen A. Smith money in the contract negotiations like less than a week before this leak was written about. It's like when they knew Kevin Draper was writing this story, the New York Post published a piece about Maria Taylor's unreasonable contract demands. So like that one million percent came from ESPN headquarters. So as long as you just want to get that on the table as long as we're talking about leaking things to the media. I'm so glad you brought that up.

I'm so, so glad you brought that up because wasn't that interesting? Just a few days before we get this bombshell media story of all media stories. we read a story about how Maria Taylor is turning down a lot of money, you know, putting a figure on it. What was it up to five, in a contract that would have paid up to $5 million, was that the figure on it? The story was that they offered, I believe they offered her $5 million some time ago and that now in all the layoffs that number was no longer on the table. Oh yeah, the offer had been pulled. Yeah. You know, I always resist doing the, I'm going to figure out who the sources are of this story.

and I'm going to figure out what the source's intent was when they were giving a figure because I've had people try to do that to me and they're often wrong when they do that. But come on. This comes out a few days before and it says Maria Taylor is asking for all this money. And you know what? We offered our fair contract and now it's off the table. That sure sounds like somebody in ESPN management. And as you point out, somebody in ESPN management who is very aware of what,

what is about to drop. This whole thing of the ESPN, the ESPN employee's salaries also coming out. This also happened with Kenny Maine. Do you remember this? Oh, yeah. Kenny Maine announced like, look, ESPN offered me a pay cut.

I think I'm worth more than that. I'm going to go bet on myself. Like, was the ultimate high road exit. And then like 10 minutes later, we found out what Kenny Maine's salary had been at ESPN. And you know what's funny about that,

David, whenever these salaries leak? I'm so glad you brought this up. Did I mention that? What's so funny is when the ESPN Salaries League, I get all these messages, get them on my phone, get them on DMs and everything. And the messages are from other sports media people who are furious that ESPN people turn down a lucrative offer. They're not from regular readers, David. Regular readers assume that everybody on television makes a ton of money.

It's from other sports media people who are jealous. who are angry, who have been riled up because they read a salary figure that they themselves do not make. And who is that person to turn down all that money over there at ESPN? Now, again, again, I want to resist the urge to try to guess what people mean when they talk to a reporter and all that stuff. But if the idea of putting salaries out into the world was a diabolical plan to, turn non-management sports media people against other non-management sports media people, it freaking worked. Yeah.

It worked. It reminds me those stories. Remember when they didn't publish the athlete salaries and management would sometimes put out a salary to make all the athletes on the team mad at each other instead of using their power collectively to all go get more money together? That's what's happened here. People get and people you know are mad, we're mad at least for five seconds that Maria Taylor turned down 5 million.

They were mad that Kenny Maine turned down whatever it was, 60% of whatever he made before. Funny how that happened. Funny how that happened. Well, you know, readers and fans will get mad about professional athletes doing that, but you're right. It makes a, there is the presumption that the people in ESPN are making a whole bunch of money anyway.

But I do think that it's, again, Forest for the Trees saying that a lot in this podcast, but like it's the presumption of all the fans that people are, the ESPN folks are already making a lot of money. think, you know, that might not be entirely widespread, but I do think that it's that everybody who's paying attention to the story would agree that it doesn't make any sense that ESPN would lose out in a bidding war for any of their talent, right? That they, that regardless of the cuts or whatever, like, maybe the craziest part of this whole story is that Maria Taylor's

contract is going to be up in like 72 hours and that she's not going to stay at ESPN, you know, in the absence of a statement that like because of this stuff that happened, I'm leaving, which we have no reason to believe that's her point of view, that they couldn't come to an agreement. I mean, like, unless you, I know we're in a world where like Amazon could like walk in and offer somebody $20 million a year or something just for the hell of it. But like that the person who I was just calling like a generational talent in terms of like hosting and reporting on television is just going to walk because you can't. come to terms? I mean, that's wild. I understand there could be hardball negotiations,

but if she does indeed leave, wow. Yeah, absolutely. Richard Deich always says this. He's like when the networks often, and ESPN's been in this period of cost cutting, but when they want to keep somebody, they can keep somebody. Yeah. Stephen A. Smith, the contract is being referenced if I remember correctly was signed in the midst of cost cutting. Totally. I mean, and ESPN has changed into this world instead of where lots of people were broadly paid a lot of money, you know, based on like 90s and a, cable salary figures,

where a small number of people are paid a whole lot of money, your Stephen A's, your Greenies, you know, Kirk Herb Street, whoever you want to put on that woge on that list. There's no reason Maria Taylor can't just join the list. She just,

she becomes one of the people they're paying a lot of money to if they want to keep her. By the way, with Nichols being pulled off the sidelines, Maybe my brain is addled, and I'm sure someone has made this reference at some point. I don't know if you remember, but I'm going to take you back to the 1999 World Series. Remember when Jim Gray had that interview with Pete Rose, where he was asking Pete Rose all those tough questions? Yeah. Well, at the 99 World Series, game three, Chad Curtis hits a walk-off home run.

Jim Gray is the dugout reporter, goes out to interview Chad Curtis. and Chad Curtis says, I won't talk to you because we as a team decided, we're not going to talk to you because of what you said to Pete Rose. Like, we're just not going to do this. And again, I don't know if this would happen. If Rachel Nichols was on the sideline, I don't know if somebody on one of those teams would have said like, I just don't feel comfortable doing this, you know, given everything that's happened right now. But I guarantee you ESPN did not want to find out if that was the case. they didn't want to find out on live television if that was sure that's a good that's a great point because talk about nightmare scenarios i'd like to say one thing david about what's about sports

television if we can go back to 30 000 feet there's this notion in in all the talk about this story about you know you're pitting people against each other and i and i and i and i hear that i just i just want to say like sports television there are so few big jobs number one jobs that almost every job out there pits one person against another person. Yes. Yeah, it's a zero-sum game for sure. And some of the comments that Rachel Nichols made were pretty lucid in that direction, just in the sense that like, I mean, listen, we're, for, we grew up with a bunch of white

dudes calling every professional sport, right? I mean, like, the booth was a white guy sitting next to a white guy in every single instance. And as much as, like, people that we know would, like, joke around about, like, Why do we even have a sideline reporter? Why is there even a pregame show? Like, what's the point? I'm guaranteeing the people who were doing those jobs who were very vocal about wanting those jobs to continue because there were only a very few slots traditionally for women and minorities,

even work games like that, right? Well, his executives saw it, yes, in a very limited executive view. Yeah, the perception was that. So, I mean, it's, so you're right. I mean, it's everybody is being pitted against somebody else. else in all of these roles. That obviously doesn't excuse anything that was that was said on tape or otherwise. No. And I often think, you know, when, when you look at sports television, like the person who's worked really hard, who's, who's, you know, done, who's, you know,

paid their dues, who thinks that they're the next one in line, they often don't get the job. That just happens all the time. You know, that's not, that's not, I don't, it's funny just just to think about this, but I could, I could list 100, 100 examples. I won't. But I just find that's very, you know, that to me is background music to this whole thing, which is, you know, we could look at the succession just at the ESPN NBA studio programming. You know, people are just, it is a very, very, very tough business. And there are not many, there are not many slots available to anybody if you want to work at that very, very top level. Can we talk a little bit about LeBron's media advisor Adam Mendelsoe.

Oh, God, yeah, sure. He had a moment on this tape, too. He says, I don't know. I'm exhausted. Between Me Too and Black Lives Matter, I got nothing left. He has since apologized for that comment. Adam Mendelsohn's a very interesting figure in NBA media world. To use an only in journalism word, I was going to say he's a gadfly,

and then I looked up what gadfly actually meant. I mean, somebody who's kind of pushy and annoying. That's not him. Not him. He's more of like a Malcolm Gladwell connector in NBA media. a confidant. He's a guy. His actual job is if you, David Shoemaker, want to write a profile of LeBron James

or about LeBron James' TV producing or whatever, you go see Adam Mendelsox. If you want to have a sit down with LeBron James on Ringer TV or you want to go to his school in Akron, you go talk to Adam Mendelsoe. Yeah. He had sort of a star turn. I was the right word, but he had a significant appearance in the

Rich Paul piece in the New Yorker that Isaac Chautner wrote a couple, about a month ago or whatever. So that was, I think a lot of people were exposed to his sort of presence and vaguely his influence then. Yeah. And I've met him. I've not talked to him. He is, he's very friendly. He really, I think, leans into the I'm not your typical PR guy kind of mode.

You know, more like, look, I understand journalist. I understand journalism. You know, I'm one of those guys. I'm not going to be this kind of smarmy PR person. And his function, I think for a lot of people, is he essentially is the friendly PR face of a basketball player who has this giant worldwide corporation attached to him. That's Adam Mendelso.

But he is a PR person. And it absolutely, when I saw on the piece, that he was the guy, Rachel Nichols was comparing notes with and trying out PR strategies with when she had had this professional disappointment that absolutely made sense. I was like, of course, right? Of course that's the person who is at the center of all these things that you are doing that with.

That was just one of those things. And again, you're right. He has not, he's had moments where he sort of come out and he's not, I don't think Adam Nelson is hiding from anybody. but it would add just it just absolutely makes sense that that's the kind of person because i'm i am again i don't know about the i don't know about the you know about the professional disappointment part but someone who has long long conversations with nba reporters all the time that's it and who stands at the center of all these worlds lebrons world journalism that's adam metals

finally on my agenda today david i want to talk about new deadspin and by new deadspin I mean, not to be confused with the original and superior Deadspin. Because New Deadspin actually did a story on this tape last summer. Speaking of one year ago. Now, they got only four minutes of the video of Rachel Nichols talking on the phone. But they worked on the story, and this is the headline they came up with.

ESPN creep used the jump video feed to secretly record Rachel Nichols in her hotel room. Video got sent to us. Doesn't this feel like an algorithm has just like that has digested like a decade of old Deadspin and has started trying to cobble together

headlines based on that? It feels like Deadspin karaoke, doesn't it? Yes. Like I read the old ass-kicking Deadspin and I've got the mic and let me see if I can let me see if I can do it a way to It didn't come out just like the original. Oh my God.

New Deadspin did that. And then they had another piece this week where they came back and they said, well, we're going to explain everything that happened. And this, I want to just quote one line from the piece. So grab a seat and a drink because I'm about to tell you how all this, how this all went down.

Now, whenever I read stage directions in a piece, I start to assume that they're not actually going to have the goods I want. And in fact, after reading this piece, I'm like, I still don't understand what happened. And there was no reckoning with how did we get to story A as opposed to the correct and far superior story B? I just don't, I just completely do not understand. Dan Diamond reported the Washington Post emails us this. The original deadspin screed was awful.

But somehow the new deadspin piece was actually more bizarre. News outlets sometimes write how we did. after a big story. This was a textbook how we didn't do it. But I'm grateful for Deadspin's follow-up post. Occasionally I get to speak to journalism students about investigative reporting. I can't think of a better example of one news outlet showing the benefits of putting in the work and another revealing how poorly equipped they were to handle a scoop. That's from Dan Diamond.

I mean, in some ways, like the how we missed the scoop, TikTok does have a weird echo to late stage deadspin old late stage old deadspin or late stage gawker um usually they were fleet footed enough to be the ones getting the scoop and giving the tic-tok of how we the world almost got a scoop that no one else was reporting or something um but again you totally missed the point the only reason you could i'm sure i i can't read any minds but the only reason i can imagine that you would see that video and report the way they did was as part of some sort of political calculus, right? That you were like, that you thought you were choosing one argument over another, that one thing that you, that you weighed the gravity of several

different things. And certainly, like, you know, working as a kind of PR outlet for ESPN or for whoever, you know, sent them to tape, I'm sure is a piece of that. But that you would, like, weigh these things and decide that one was more important for whatever your reasons were. I mean, again, you're totally missing the point. And honestly, I don't know the answer of why they came up with it because, again, the what was supposedly the let us tell you everything that happened story was so opaque that it didn't answer the question. It was like grab a seat and a drink.

Okay, I'm sitting down. I have my drink. I'm ready to find out what happened and I still don't know. By the way, defector, aka old deadspin transferred to a different place, wrote about this yesterday, too. You know, that, Deadspin's old editor, or I should say an editor of old Deadspin, Tommy Craggs was an Arthur Conan Doyle guy. Yeah. So I think he would appreciate this. New Deadspin is what would happen if Sherlock Holmes was replaced by the Baker Street Irregulars. We solved the case. Oh, wait, wrong murderer. It's actually the other guy. Sorry about that.

Yeah. Actually, that's probably insulting to the Baker Street Irregulars. My apologies, if any the irregulars were offended because they were actually good at tracking down information for Sherlock home. This is like the media story inside the media story inside the media story. And this analogy is ESPN is noted Holmes villain ESPN creep like rotting in jail by the time that they identify the true killer. Yeah. He got taken by the by Scotland Yard.

Yeah. He's in he's in prison. God. It's just again, and again, I think we can probably in here, but an amazing quality of the story, a mind-blowing quality of the story is this was all, all this stuff was a year ago. Tape recorded and leaked a year ago. Deadspin story a year ago. And here we are on the brink of the end of Maria Taylor's ESPN contract.

and this richly reported New York Times piece that all of this is thrust before us. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that. I really haven't. I mean, it's an incredible, just totally in a vacuum, it's an incredible media story, right? I mean, it's a sort of Russian nesting dolls and media stories. There's so many layers to this thing.

And that it's happening, like you said, as Maria Taylor's contract is about to run out. It's, it's, it's, um, there's, there's so many just like, unbelievable aspects to this. Um, and that is happening during the NBA finals. Oh, yeah. Like we started with. I mean, it's like, that's the whole aspect to it, right? The whole, like, wait, is, are we going to have an issue here?

Is this going to be happening on TV? A story this insular is not supposed to be so well timed, right? A story that's this like kind of particular to. the media world is rarely on the sports schedule. And I think that's partly why everybody's just so, we're paying so much attention to it. But it's a good thing they are because this is, it's not an easy story, but it's an important one.

Yeah, usually we don't have the Mission Impossible countdown clock, or the shot clock, if you will, happening on the media story, attached to the media story that's unfolding. It's very weird. very weird he is david shoemaker i'm brian curtis production magic by erika cervantes we're back next week david i think we probably are going to talk about this some more have another bite at this apple i i think we are going to have more things to say about exactly what went down at the spn i did announce our next book's podcast which is about david halberstams the breaks of the game i'm hoping that will

happen next week if you want to read it or reread it you're in for a treat so look for that during the nba finals plus more lukewarm takes about the media see then, David. See you later, man.