The Press Box - RIP Longform, Carlson vs. Cruz, Bob Saget Obits, and Postgame Question of the Week

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Bryan and David break down Ted Cruz’s appearance on the 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' discussing the siege of the Capitol on January 6 (9:25). Then, they bid farewell to longform.org (30:05), present the Postgame Question of the Week (43:49), discuss Nick Kristof’s attempt to run for governor (45:54), and share some Bob Saget obits (52:36). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs for the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. When we talked about Ben Smith last week,

we left out one very important part of the story. Oh, yeah? Of course, Ben Smith is the New York Times media columnist who is giving up his column to go work for a journalism startup. And David, when someone leads to a news, a prestige journalism job, it is an occasion to peek inside the inbox of the people who are hiring his or her replacement.

Oh, right, of course. Yeah. So what do we name this feature? Inbox, inbox paloosa. Yeah, the applicant pool or like just, we could go like Hollywood and call the replacements or something. We had the, what else? Yeah, maybe leave it open to listeners.

What should we call the inbox of a hiring authority and journalism on the occasion when there's a big job of? Yeah. All right, David, let us imagine what the inbox of New York Times media editor Jim Windolph in hell. New York Times executive editor, Dean Bekeg. Go right to the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going right to the top. I would say that in terms of who is applying for Ben Smith's job, number one, any of the

media reporter who works for a less prestigious publication. So any media reporter. Right. In another manner of speaking, yes. Yeah. Shoot your shot moment. There's not a lot of people for whom their beat is media. I mean, obviously people working in television or something or maybe on a different pay scale,

but not a lot of people who are on the media in the media sphere who would not jump at the chance to work for the times. Number two, any New York Times reporter who would love to be able to write in their own voice for a change. Yeah. Yeah. It does. I mean, I think that's where my, I think even subconsciously, that's where my mind went when I heard that Smith was stepping down, that it would just be a little shuffling of the deck chairs situation in the editorial department or just from somewhere else in some other department. Because it is a desirable job for a lot of reasons. Writing in your own voice is a huge one when you're working in that world.

Yeah, we forget Jim Rutenberg did it between David Carr and Ben Smith. So there is precedent there. Number three type who is in the inbox looking for Ben Smith's old job is a person pulling a Ben Smith and coming from another prestige journalism job. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's for better or worse, Smith definitely definitely sketch the outline for how you use this as a pivot job, right? Or this kind of becomes a segue from one big post into another one.

And you, listen, coming from one, coming from a prestigious journalism job is one thing. The desire to follow his path into the second half of the pivot, which is going towards a big money startup situation, I think makes the job even more desire more. Yeah, and it becomes your ad. It becomes your job application for the next job. I think it's a really, really sharp media critic. Okay, what is the appropriately sheepish way to start the email you send when you're angling for Ben Smith's job? Oh, wow. This is where I think everyone in any line of work has probably run up against the sort of procedural brick wall, which is like if you don't know the person you're writing to super well,

are you better off with the more sort of self-aware, like, dear sir, or to whom it may concern, or dear Mr. Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so, or if it's somebody that you might have been introduced to once at a party or something like that, do you just swing for the fences and say, hey, Dean, it's David Chewmaker here. Like, what would you do in this situation? There's no way, journalist to journalist, you go to whom it may concern, right? right? I say this is the son of a guidance counselor who probably had one of those how to apply for a job books back in the day. You're just going to go, I think high

dean is the move. Maybe dear Dean, but I think high Dean is the move. And then if you've met him at any point, you probably don't remember this, but we met at X, X, X, X, X, X, party a couple of years back. Yeah. The next sense to me, though, is fascinating. Is it not to be too bold, but or not sure where you are in deciding who will run, who will have the media equation, but that's really the money shot here, right? How you sort of back into selling yourself? Well, you know, I mean, I think there's a little bit of odd reassurance in the fact that, like, I think I would walk in to this email assuming that they already had a path.

I mean, they already had somebody, a person in mind. Okay. Just because they have the ability to have anyone they want or just about in that job, right? So there's a little bit of a freedom that comes with like just shooting your shot, right? Like, hey, I'm sure you have somebody that you've thought about for this. But here's a couple of clips of mine that you might be interested in reading if you're so inclined. It's like the rate of it. Yeah, it's like NFL team.

They want to hire Jim Harbaugh from the University of Michigan. But hey, I'm an offensive coordinator. And I want to, I want to make my case before you do anything at all. Yeah. Yeah. No, I hear that. Second paragraph to me is pretty obvious. You remind the hiring person who you are and state some of your accomplishments.

on the media beat. In the last couple of years, writing media for the Daily Beast or writing media for Politico or whatever it is, I have broken X, X,X, X, X, maybe a couple of nice links in there so they can follow it. Yeah.

What's the other question? Third paragraph, do you lay out your vision for the column? Are you so bold at this point to think they're still reading and you're actually telling them what you would do with Ben Smith-old column? I think if you can do it in a sentence,

you know, or to, why not? It's not like if you're sending a letter, if you're sending a cold, you know, a cold letter to Dean Bouquet or whatever, like, you know,

why not? I mean, it's not like, it's not like he's going to get a paragraph in, just be like, well, there's this much more and then just close the email. I mean,

he's either going to read it or read, I don't think he's going to be mad at you for writing an extra paragraph. Well, you know, it's like there are word counts in newspapers, David. Can't go on too long.

The sign off, the sign off to me has to be happy to talk more. That's kind of the, oh, yeah. kind of the one size fits all journalism sign off whenever you're asking for anything. Yeah. Just easy, easy phone number,

email link, however you think you want to communicate. Signal. Yeah, all the options. Put all the options out there and then, you know, hit send and hope for the best,

right? David and I want to wish good luck to all the applicants who right now are cold, emailing the New York Times to try to get Ben's missile job. Yeah. who would you have in mind? Who would you be looking for if you were in that chair? Would someone, I mean, would you be inclined to go in just a very general sense,

someone that's kind of against the grain or? I mean, I guess Ben Smith was a little bit against the grain when they, I mean, a little bit unconventional when he was selected and turned out to be sort of perfect for what they're trying to do. It was a big surprise when he was hired. I think if I'm, I think we're sitting here,

the people that interest me most are people that work for the times who aren't obvious candidates for the job. like you told me like mark lebe of it just left the times to the Atlantic but you've told me he was interested in doing that job for a year or two sure right because he's got the same the sort of reporting style that would be necessary for that gig and also just a great i mean he's just incredibly interesting writing about things that aren't inherently interesting you know so that's that that would be a good pick yeah um i got it i got one for you sure just that left field you know Why don't we just go all the way in the other direction and hire Carlos Watson of Ozzy to come in?

I think he's probably available and everyone's going to recognize him. I mean, talk about a big ticket hire. No one, nothing would get more attention. No one could have seen it coming. It turns out he was auditioning for this all along, just like Ben Smith was auditioning for the startup. Unbelievable. I love the idea. Coming up on today's press box, we score last week's bout between Fox News,

is Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz. We say RIP to longform.org. We maybe say RIP to the gubernatorial campaign of former columnist Nick Christoff. David, we've got Bob Sagitt, Obitz, we've got our sports television post game question of the week, and Michael Wolf going off the record.

All that more, and I'm bursting at the seams press box a part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Happy NFL Black Monday media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. along with producer Erica Servantes. Whenever you wonder, David,

what kind of power does the NFL have over us media people? It's that they created a holiday devoted to the firing of NFL coaches. They created that as a discrete media event. So we got the Super Bowl, we got the playoffs, we got the NFL draft,

and we also have the day a lot of people get fired. That's a big, big content day on the NFL calendar. All right, let's start here, David. We've got to do a little play-by-play of the January 6th showdown between Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz on Fox News.

This was fascinating because it's a semantics debate or at least it's billed as a semantics debate, but it's also a debate about power. Ted Cruz, Texas senator, former presidential candidate, probably future presidential candidate. And Tucker Carlson, Fox News host, also may be a future presidential candidate. it. And in the meantime, this guy at Fox News who's trying to position January 6th in the conservative imagination and also position the party and the conservative movement along with it. We've got to set the scene for people in case you did not watch this on Twitter. Ted Cruz was appearing remotely on Tucker Carlson show and had the skyline backdrop that we've

been enjoying on television news for more than 30 years. Yeah. Love a downtown skyline backdrop. Tucker Carlson was on the other side of the screen doing Tucker Carlson face. We've said, you know, there's Peyton Manning face or they used to be Peyton Manning face. There is now Tucker face on Fox News. That's it. David's doing it to me on the Zoom. See, the thing is, if I'm very conscious of facial expressions now because we have Zoom,

and I'm always kind of giving you a nod or a smile. Like, good job, buddy. Keep going. I like where you're going here. If you did Tucker Carlson face, we, if you, I would just be totally thrown off. right? Why is Brian staring at me

as if confused when I'm just rambling as always like that I would just be should I start over can we do another take did you just read

about the death of a relative in email? So what did Ted Cruz do to earn a trip to Tucker Carlson's show here is a statement he made about the invasion

of the capital on January 6th? We are approaching a solemn anniversary this week and it is an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol where we saw the men and women of law enforcement demonstrate incredible courage, incredible bravery, risk their lives to defend the men

and women who serve in this Capitol. Doesn't sound terribly controversial, does it? Well, it doesn't, I mean, it shouldn't be controversial, but even in so much as it is, it's hard, the hardest thing for me to wrap my mind around is, Ted Cruz doing that without confidence. I mean, reading that statement, composing that statement,

without the courage of his convictions, well, okay, it might be a little bit too far, but without just the foresight to be like, you know, terrorists is a word that you must use, I mean, that will raise some eyebrows.

And I'm, it might make some people mad, right? As it turns out, that was Tucker Carlson's point as well. So let us go to Tucker Carlson's intro of Ted Cruz on the Tucker Carlson and program their own Fox. Senator, thanks so much for coming on.

So I guess what I mean, there are a lot of dumb people in the Congress. You're not one of them. I think you're smarter than I am. And you never use words carelessly. And yet you called this a terror attack when by no definition was it a terror attack. That's a lie.

You told that lie on purpose. And I'm wondering why you did. Can we just relish that setup for a second? You guess that I am about to give a big, nougy to on television or one of the smartest people in Congress. Hell, you're smarter than I am. So what I'm wondering is, and here's where he pivots, why would you use the T word when describing the people who invaded the Capitol in January 6th?

It's just a great, to be clear, my question is a little, I mean, my, my question was a little bit different than that, which was not, why would you, why would Ted Cruz lie? But just why would he say a thing? I mean, anyone could have guessed that if not Tucker Carlson, then someone else of a similar stature, would have taken exception to that word, right? And also, it's so easy to talk around, right? I mean, nobody, the expectations for Ted Cruz's statement on the one-year anniversary of the January 6 terrorist attack whenever you, I mean, the bar. The bar is so low for that, right? All he has to do is just go out and say like thoughts and prayers

and it's not going to really affect his public image one way or the other. Now, with Cruz, there's always this sort of like undercurrent of posturing for a presidential run or, you know, for his imagined version of, you know, Republican movie president would be. And he's not always right about in his calculation about what that. should look like, but it's still kind of shocking, right? I would think his audience is Republican primary voters in a future presidential election may be as soon as 2024. But that's always his audience, right? I mean, that's always. So, but so you're, so you would say he thought he was making the, he was making a very deliberate calculation about the primary audience, but was not

expecting or didn't, didn't think deeply enough it to, deeply enough about it to, be able to expect this blowback from Tucker? Well, I think he was trying to stake out what he thought was a safe space where he says, look, wondering whether Biden won the election in 2020, okay. Fair, yeah. Okay. Invading the capital and causing violence and mayhem, not okay. That's where he's trying to land here. Because you have to, let us not forget.

Ted Cruz is the guy who, after everybody invaded the, the Capitol went in and voted against certifying the election results from Arizona. Yeah. Ted Cruz is not Liz Cheney. He just left the T word in there, right? And if he had not put the T word in there, this probably would have been a completely unexceptional statement. I just don't, I guess I just have a hard time imagining who the Republican primary voters

are that are going to be caught up on his decision, would have been caught up on his decision to not use the T word. Well, that's the thing. I mean, just putting it in there and leaving it. himself open to getting dragged into a controversy and then, you know, we're having to defend himself on television. Because look, to as you and I both know, the minute that ended on January 6th, there was this in huge semantic discussion and not just in the conservative movement. Remember the whole, was this really an insurrection?

Should we really call it that? Is this the wrong word? I feel that was happening by like the night of January 6th, morning of January 7th last year. I think we were talking about it that night. Yeah. And then there's this whole separate one in the conservative movement. Are you labeling these people things? Are you know, because they're trying to reframe January 6th, too, for future primary voters. Let us listen to Cruz's response after that very skillful opening from Tucker Carlson. You were very smart, sir. So why would you use this one word?

It aired your episode last night. I sent you a text shortly thereafter and said, listen, I'd like to go on because the way I phrase things yesterday, it was sloppy. and it was frankly dumb. I don't buy that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't buy that. Look, I've known you a long time since before you went to the Senate. You're a Supreme Court contender.

You take words as seriously as any man who's ever served in the Senate. And every word you repeated that phrase, I do not believe that you used that accidentally. Once again, using the compliment as a weapon, right? You use your words so well that I don't believe in a otherwise unremarkable statement. statement, you could use a word accidentally. You could just throw a word in there. I don't believe you, Ted Cruz, are humanly capable of doing such a thing.

Well, I mean, that's, I think he's right in this case. I don't think he's right that it's false to use the term, but I think he's right that Cruz should have known better. I mean, honestly, talking about the movie president thing that I mentioned earlier, I do think that there's an aspect of Ted Cruz that's just like every time he makes a, he makes a public statement. What's the meme that's just like when you tell a lie and then you, you know, someone lies and you just say, yeah, and then everybody stood up and started applauding.

Like, I do think that there's an element to Ted Cruz where he kind of imagines every public statement to end with just like a national standing ovation, right? That he's going to say a thing and everyone's just going to be like, be please, Ted, be our president, you know? But, I mean, that frankly makes him sense that he would, why he would say something that we just put him in this situation. but you know because you can't even give the guy credit for honesty when he just like calls it stupid five seconds later. Cruz is a big Simpsons fan, right?

Wouldn't that like one of the ways he tried to bond with people? So is it like the Homer dream sequence of old, you know, where he would be imagining himself doing something heroic? Like that's kind of what Ted Cruz does every time he talks. So why is Tucker Carlson so upset about the use of the word terrorist? Here is his objection from that same show. We're somehow terrorists. I was talking about people who commit violence against cops, and you and I both agree, if you commit violence against cops,

you should go to jail. Yeah, but you're not a terrorist. You know, you're not. You're a guy who assault a cop. Okay, so that's, there's a legal difference, as you well know, better than I do, since you were actually in the running for the Supreme Court, and there's a moral difference between a guy, you know.

Tucker Carlson will not let Ted Cruz forget that he was once in the running for the Supreme Court. But you see what's happening here, right? He's saying he's not, we're now just so far inside this kind of looking class that he, Ted Cruz is saying, look, I'm just trying to say that like, I don't want people to, I think that like committing violent acts against police officers is a bad thing. And Doug Carlson said, aha, yes, it is. But that doesn't mean that they're a terrorist. Aha.

But that word again. So strange. I mean, listen, Tucker, to his credit as a power broker, and I guess as an orator, but managed to shut down like a third rail argument there, right? I mean, like, I guarantee of all this, I don't know what I was saying.

I guarantee Ted Cruz sought it when he said, well, but specifically the people who assaulted the cops, We can agree that those are terrorists because no one could have, I mean, once you're, once you assault a cop, there's no, no, no term for you that anyone would oppose. You're just the scum of the earth, right? And Tucker managed to definitely wave that away. I mean, he could wave away, you know, supply side taxing, taxation or whatever, it seems like at this point, if you just be like, yeah, that's, I mean, we like that's, I mean, we like that, but that's not a necessary thing for our party platform. I mean, he's, he can just say whatever he wants now. He's that powerful. One more clip on that score. This is. Cruz's sort of semi apology for his, quote, sloppy language. The reason I use that word is for a decade. I've used that word for people that violently assault cops. I use that word all in 2020 for the Antifa and BLM terrorists that assaulted cops and firebomb police cars. But I agree it was a mistake to use the word yesterday because the Democrats and the corporate media have so politicized it.

They're trying to paint everyone as a terrorist. And it's a lie. So I want you to just listen to that. He's, Ted Cruz is saying, look, I've been consistent. If I've missing,

if I'm waving this word around, I've waved it around against Antifa. Yeah. And all these other protesters. But even though I am being consistent, any protester he says who would attack a cop, essentially, that's what he's trying to say,

right? But he says, even though I was in his own mind being ideologically consistent, I was wrong to use this because the liberal media, blah, blah, blah. I mean, this is, this just, this is, this is academics are, are marveling somewhere at this argument. We are so, so twisted around and getting to such an amazing place. There's some more context here, David, like, why would Ted Cruz go on the show and do this instead of just saying like, issuing an apology or, you know, not even acknowledging it at all?

Jim Newell says this in slate. this was Ted Cruz in maximal damage control mode. He would only undergo this sort of debasement if he felt he'd made a mistake serious enough to threaten his political career and hamstring his chances in a GOP presidential primary. Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely true. I don't know. I mean, you don't want to discount anybody in this post-Trump world running for public office. Although I do think that Cruz is a little bit implausal.

as a candidate. I mean, I think he was more of the sort of bellwether for the Trump era than he is really like a candidate in his own right, like a realistic candidate in his own right, right? I mean, I think that he's just sort of like that, you know, he's the John the Baptist of like people who only exist as like farcical presidential nominees. He's not actually like a real politician, right? But like he's not, but I don't think, but also don't think. think that he is like gonna. I just I just don't think he's actually like appealing or in in any

particular way. That would be necessary to become an actual like realistic candidate. Will Cruz 2024 be using that language on the mailers? Indeed, John the Baptist of people who would become farcical presidential candidates? Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully. Just just put press box after that and you know, that's all we need. We'll get, we'll get, we'll get, we'll get, we'll sure we'll get a bunch of listens. Right before we hopped on the air, you shared with me the new Fox News scheduling bit here. It is Jesse Waters as the new 7 p.m. host on Fox News replacing Martha McCallum's newscast. As they say in a related story.

Well, I don't imagine that Jesse Waters will ever run for president, although I would have probably said that about Tucker Carlson like 20 minutes ago. and now it just seems like, I mean, I still don't know why you would want to give up the, you know, job you have now for a much worse job that just has a slightly cooler business card. But many, many people have done that before and you can imagine Tucker doing it. I don't think Jesse Waters is even on the Tucker Carlson track. However, if you have to make a presidential parallel, remember when they used to call, who is it that called Al Gore an old person's idea of a young person? That was Mike Kinsley. Yeah, it was Kinsley. That is like, Jesse Waters is actually a more of a version of that than Al Gore. And part of that is the audience that he's performing for is rather old. And he's like the young guy on the crew in the crew. But man, he is an old person's idea of the young person. We will tell you why people are so upset about the end of the site longform.org. But first, David, let's do the overwork 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 probably where they are always, always gratefully received. A huge story last week from our corner of the media universe. The New York Times bought the sports writing website The Athletic, known for its deeply discounted subscription rates for $550 million. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, wait. The Times didn't know they could get the athletic for less than $1 a month. we would have also accepted the athletic colon why we join

the New York Times. Oh, that's great. And for real media heads, I look forward to all athletic writers adding their middle initial to their bylines. Pretty good. Thanks to Adam Chandler, Dan Diamond, David Carpenter, Timo,

Bears, Meatball, whatever, and Nulls McLaughlin for that one. Last week, David, as part of a rash of celebrity deaths, Betty White, Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Sagitt. We lost the great actor, Sydney Poitier. Oscar winner was 94 years old.

It was an overworked Twitter joke to imagine God and St. Peter saying, guess who's coming to dinner? Thanks to John West. Somebody did that political cartoon. Oh, absolutely. To the extent political cartoons still exist. You know what I, we should have a whole segment on the show where we just, it's like the George Costanza.

what was the episode of Seinfeld where he had the punchline of the joke like two days later The jerk store? The jerk store. We should have a jerk store segment. My jerk store segment of the week. My jerk store regret of the week

is that I didn't make a joke. We were talking about People Magazine having the Betty White Turns 100 issue. It didn't even occur to me that it really isn't that big of a deal because like five days later they could have just torn all the covers off and had just a Betty White issue

of People magazine. All the magazines that exist anymore are just commemorative issues, right? Like 75% of newsstand magazines are commemorative. They just got out ahead of the curve. That's actually a really good work by People magazine. So the mistake was just putting a number on the cover. Yeah. Well, I mean, really, do you have to appellate, like what is the apology for? They are, if that did not happen, if magically they hadn't pushed print on the press before she had died, they would have literally put out the exact same magazine just with a different cover on it, right? I still want. And it

wouldn't have been shameful. I agree. If it just said Betty White exclamation point, years of love, laughs and television. Yeah. The mistake is trying to publish a monthly magazine. They should just make every good cover story idea they have. Just make it a commemorative issue, whether or not the person's alive. And at the grocery store, you'd find it right next to the Lord of the Rings's commemorative issue and then the one for like the Last Supper. It's all, yeah, it's always Jesus. And then it's always like, I don't know if it's, I don't know if this is everywhere or if it's a regional thing. But it seems like there's been an increased number of like, the male figures of like my mom's youth is just kind of like there's like the John Wayne tribute issues and the Andy

Andy Griffith tribute issues. Just like, okay, like, well, whatever. These are not for the young, most of these. I would, I would like to. Not for anybody with like a Google with like Google search engine access because all it is is just like public domain information. But whatever. Two things. One, we should have a guest on sometime to help us understand the economics of these things. because I really do want to know who buys the Betty White special issue. Also, we need to make the argument for re-bundling these, right? We've unbundled so many things. Why can't we get Betty White and the Last Supper in the same magazine?

Why do I have to buy two magazines? Like a flip book? That would be great. Just like, as Betty White on one side turn it upside down, you get the last supper on the other side, double the audience, one low price. Finally, David, a news item that inspired a little acid flashback, Rudy Gobert, the Utah Jazz Center whose positive COVID diagnosis signaled just how big the pandemic was going to be back in 2019 has been diagnosed with COVID again. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write.

If my math is correct, that means the world will shut down and we'll receive a video of a dozen or so celebrities singing Imagine to us all in the next week or so. Thanks to Josh Peterson and Winsennati, if you helped us remember one of the more horrifying. moments of the pandemic. Congrats. You've made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And we must say a sad farewell, not to a celebrity, but to a website.

Longform.org. One of the leaders in journalism aggregation made an announcement over Twitter this week, or last week, quote, Longform is shutting down its article recommendations service. The Longform podcast will continue to publish new episodes weekly,

Thank you to our contributing editors, our supporters, and the publications, writers, and readers who made it all possible, we will miss you. They recommended more than 10,000 stories since the site was founded in 2010, and those will remain in the archive. What do you make of the end of longform.org?

Well, it's weird because there's a very, I mean, Longform at its core is sort of a celebration of of well it's you know it's not like an archaic form of journalism but it's it's a it's a celebration of like the written word which does feel sort of like old fashioned in its way right i mean the length of the pieces were sort of the calling card but but really it was just like here's a good piece of journalism and it is a little bit like jarring that even longform.org made the calculation that like our podcast is doing all right but the part where we actually have to like employ people and have editors and the basis of what we would be podcasting about

is not an efficient use of money anymore or whatever else. I mean, I don't know if that was the exact calculation, but it must have sounded something like that. Yeah, that is kind of freaky, isn't it?

I did note that Aaron Lammer, one of the founders, said on Twitter, there are non-economic reasons that it has become difficult read paywalls. So maybe this idea that we can recommend something, but then you can't read any of these things because...

Yeah, but how is it? not, yeah, it's, I know, I'm sure paywall is make it difficult to like link out to something. But again, if you're, I mean, your longform.org you would think would have the sort of institutional muscle to be like, hey, whoever Wall Street Journal can you give us 1,500 words of that that we can run as like serialization? And then people can at that point have the option to sign up for your site or whatever. I mean, it seems like there's ways around this. But anyway, yes, there are other, there are a lot of ways in which, you know, I'm sure frustrations that they have that anybody in their position would have.

But it's, you know, it's sad because it's, I'm not sure. Well, we can say as someone who, as people who write for a website that gets, that would occasionally get featured in long form, I mean, it was always a great opportunity to like, high five and hug your coworkers and all that kind of stuff when some, when your, when your piece gets picked up there. And it's funny because my earliest memories of long form or like, I mean, this is not as, this is not as like stone age as it's going to sound.

I was just an adherent to, you know, print like actual words on physical paper for a very long time. But my, and I remember the early days of long form, I would just like print out 20 articles before a plane trip, you know, just have like a physical, like a stack of physical paper of articles that they recommended, you know? And that was, that was a big deal to have somebody sort of curating those things for you. Now, at this point, I mean, the curation. was really key. I'm not sure that you couldn't just like, if ever, you know, I'm sure that if, if,

if there was like a bot driven site that just took every story that was published by like a major publication that was over 4,500 words and turn the cover art gray and linked out to it, I'm not sure that there'd be like a wild difference in terms of people's consumption habits when it comes to long form writing, right? If like every feature story was on one site and it was just like, yeah, people still kind of read what they want to read, you know, and there's a lot of tools for determining what's good, you know? But like, or I mean, obviously just the, the reactions that stories get on Twitter and stuff.

I mean, that's, we have access to these things now in a way that, like, we don't really lean on conventional curation anymore. But it is, it's still, I almost feel like Longform was, became more meaningful as a concept, the longer it went on, even as it became less sort of necessary to our, to the way that we consume the written word. And you mean it became more important because or more interesting? Yeah, I mean, I just think of the early days of Longform. Like I said, there was a functional aspect to it.

But I don't feel like, I don't know. I mean, I guess I just, I guess maybe I was just so in the world, it didn't shake up my life that much. Because I feel like I was reading most of the things that they, they pointed me towards in real time, you know, like before I would see it there. And, you know, there was a lot of jokes about just long form, about the cult of longform, not just from longform.org,

but there are other sites doing similar things. It was a sort of something to sort of lightly joke about at the time, but it did become sort of just the historical repository of like good, well-written, lengthy stories, right? I mean, it was just like very, if you wanted to go back in time and try to remember what, you know,

what new, what would feature writing in 2017 felt like, that would be a good place to start. Oh, I absolutely think so. I absolutely think so. The word was really interesting. So this is founded in 2010. I remember a couple years later, that word was new for a lot of people.

It had not never, it wasn't that it had never been used before, but sort of calling all what was effectively magazine writing to that point, to mostly magazine writing to that point in history and then was sort of migrating to the web or kind of migrating to the web as long form was sort of breaking. of bracing at that point. And, you know, the funny part of it is it is a really useful term. Like if you or I say, is that a long form story? We could immediately say, yes, it is or no, it isn't. But it did put emphasis on the word long as that was the marker of quality. And I think it's funny because, I mean, to me, what I remember about that period generally is that there was this whole state of alarm. Like, we're going to lose the long stories. The magazines are contracting. Magazines are going out of business. you know, the web is not going,

newspapers are shrinking, the web is not going to value this stuff like journalism once did. So we're almost going to create this thing. And you'd always hear people, usually magazine writers talking about, oh my God, the magazine story is endangered as a form. And I feel with long form,

when it got created, almost made that kind of writing into this kind of luxury good. Like, oh, our site will also would like to have some long form writing, says the newspaper, says the website. We're going to publish, the stuff we think, you know, turns the crank, but then we're going to also publish this

kind of luxury, long form tier of writing. And I think one thing, and this is not on the founders of that site at all, but I think what happens is long form really becomes overrated as a thing, you know, long form writing. Well, yeah. It became confused with the best writing as opposed to what Linsky and Lamer were trying to do was to pick the best among long-form pieces. It just became the best writing, period, in some people's minds. And that was bullshit and remains bullshit.

But it became this thing. Well, if I ascend to the long-form tier, I've really made it. I've really mastered it in journalism, which I just always thought was wrong. You're right. I mean, if you're starting a podcast company in 2022, you say, yeah, of course, we're going to have two people talking to each other model to cover pop culture and, you know, football or whatever. but we're also good. We definitely going to have some prestige podcast.

You know, we got to focus on our prestige podcast development. You can't say out loud, well, we're going to have something that's like serial but better because that would sound crazy. So you just have a term that you use

that sort of points people, you know, waves in that direction without overcommitting yourself. But you're right. It did become a sort of bobble, you know, I mean, it was a signifier of value.

The funny thing is about, I mean, the fear that you're talking about, magazine writing was real, right? I mean, there was, there was just like a definitive feeling for a couple years that everything was trending in the direction of like a blog post that's what people said at the time oh yeah or like magazines themselves yes because people were worried about the web being you know and the blogification of everything taking over but you also would see stuff and this

wasn't obviously unique to that era but i'm sure there are people who i know there were people who looked at like chuck close from and writing about technology and esquire or whatever and just being like wait is that what the great writers of our generation are going to have to turn to to make a book you know I mean, it's just, there was a lot, that anxiety's always been there. The ironic thing is that the internet actually kind of trended away from blog posts, or at least blog posts as sort of as a succinct art form. And what they guessed, what people didn't really calculate is that, sure, I mean, there's definitely an economy and just like the more, writing more shorter things online.

But there's also absolutely no downside to publishing 15,000 words, you know, publishing the full length of the first draft, you don't have to edit it down to 3,500 words because you only sold X number of ads that month. The internet allows you to write as much as at whatever length you want to write. And I think that you're right, both because of the practicality of that and also precisely because of what you said, that there's this sort of premium placed on length as this sort of ideal that pieces actually just kind of got longer and longer. And there's definitely some good, I mean, listen, if you're reading an article and you're enjoying reading an article.

And if you're, you know, like me, like I was talking, if you're like, on a plane somewhere, then you're, it's exciting to find out

that you're like 4,000 words in and there's 10,000 more to go. Absolutely. If you're in, that's a great feeling. Everything doesn't need to be that long, but it's sort of just like you, you know,

you, different people are going to have different things that are fascinated by and different pieces they want to read more of. But, but yeah, it is just sort of, it is just sort of irrational to make

everything long just for the sake of it being long. When there's the whole argument about the shrinking nature of long form, you're right, it was very real in terms of like magazines going down and stuff like that. I just always thought like, let's say you and I had been young sports writers starting on the business in the 1980s. Where were we going to go write long form sports articles? Sports Illustrated, you know, the newspaper sports pages would often have one or two people doing that.

Maybe we'd catch the end of inside sports. Maybe we'd catch some version of sport magazine. But there weren't that many places to do it ever. It was always a very rare air for any magazine or any journalist to attain. You know, I'm going to go write, eh, I'm not going to do the daily grind. I'm going to go write six articles a year. Not many people really ever got to that. So I always thought like the shrinkage was real.

But at the same time, it was not like, it wasn't like, yeah, well, back in the old days, you know, they just hired you at the New Yorker right out of college, right out of the University of Texas. That did not happen. The other thing I would say about the whole long form thing, and again, this is not less about the site and what those guys did than the kind of industry of long form is, I think there's always been this anxiety among the people who practice that. Because the truth is, it's a really bad way to become famous. And we can all say we're in this, we're in this to do great work, and we are, but people want to become famous writers. And it turns out that minus a few very, very high-flying top drawer magazine writers and basically everyone who wrote for the New Yorker

because that's its own kind of cult. Long form is a bad way to become famous. It turns out, right? If you think of just sports writers, go pick up a copy of 90s, SI. You show me Rick Riley, you show me Gary Smith, and then who are you showing me? And who are you remembering what they actually wrote? And who had this career that really lasted or the reputation that really lasted for 10 plus years. The people in the journalism business who really obtained those, you know, a lasting impression with people to me were columnists and newsbreakers, I think, at least in sports. Well, I mean, frankly, the long-form writers, even the New Yorker, you know, tier long-form writers, the ones that you remember, the ones that you remember, ones that had best-selling

books that spun off of their writing. Totally. Right. When people say gay to Lisa and Tom Wompe, I'm like, yeah, those guys wrote a ton of books. Yeah. Which are known for as much as anything. I mean, the funny one for me, and I don't know if you have this feeling, but like when Esquire Classic posts those articles and they post all these interesting celebrity profiles and stories, you know, you and I are journalism nerds. And I look at those bylines and I'm like, who are these people? I have never heard at all of a lot of these people. And I think what, you know, a site like Longform did is it sort of said, look, this is an art. This is an art and this art should have masters and, you know, submasters and everything else.

And we should be able to put this all in one place. And we should recognize that this is a thing. And that was a way of kind of curing a little bit of that anxiety about the whole art form itself. And look, you should be anxious because what if you spend three or four months on a piece and nobody really cares? You have to spend three or four months to write another one. Yeah. It's really interesting. it's really interesting.

Anyway, RIP to the fine folks, or I should say the fine website longform.org, now continuing as a podcast. All right, David, after a big weekend of football watching, I'm proud to present to you my post-game question of the week. Okay, fantastic. Do you think this will be a sharp incisive question

that a reporter asked a player after a game? Or do you think this will be a question? You're right. This week's doozy came from the post-game of the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia, Eagles game on Saturday afternoon, the Cowboys, David, are going to the playoffs, which I will remind you as a single elimination tournament.

God. If you lose in the NFL playoffs, you are no longer in the playoffs. ESPN reporter Sal Palantoneo asked Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott after the game, is it a must-win mentality in terms of the playoffs? Is it a must-win mentality? well, yeah, it kind of is because our season's over if we lose to the 49ers next week.

It's always funny when the question put to a player is so strange that the player is kind of thrown by it. I was going to ask because the reaction actually matters more than the question there because the question is inane. But like you also find these reporters who are kind of deliberately speaking in the sort of parlance of the locker room or something. And maybe they have a they've communicated, they've talked to the. player before. Maybe they're the coach. Maybe they're just saying something that in a kind of deliberately odd way. So, back Prescott was like, yes, must win as one of my four designations of game mentalities, you know, and like this actually is half must win and half throw the football around, you know, backyard style. You know, like what I? But yes, if Dag Prescott is

as stymied by this as you or I, then that's a terrible question. Here is Dag Prescott's response. I mean, yeah, I mean, for sure it is. You've got a win to keep going and we plan on doing that. Yeah, so we got to win to keep going and we plan on doing that. Thank you very much for that question. David, when we did our year-in press box awards a couple weeks ago, we gave best exit to former New York Times columnist Nick Christoff. Oh, no.

Left the paper after 37 years to run for governor of Oregon. One problem, Nick Christoph has been. ruled ineligible to run for governor of Oregon. Oregon has a three-year residency requirement. And Christoph owns a farm in Yamhill, Oregon, which he is a family farm. And he said, well, that proves that I am an Oregon resident. But he has clearly been living in New York for longer than this three-year period.

His New York driver's license was lasted until 2020. He voted in New York. as New York's, excuse me, as Oregon Secretary of State noted, for 20 years living, working, raising his kids, holding a driver's license, filing taxes and voting as a New York resident until a year ago, just doesn't pass the smell test. She added it wasn't even a close call. Okay. Yeah.

So it's really funny because what's happening here's a couple of things. One is that Nick Christoph just owns multiple homes. I've got a home in New York. and I've still got the family place in Oregon. Yeah. The other thing is there is this whole kind of spiritual aspect of it. This is how the L.A. Times put it. Christoph told election officials in a sworn statement that he moved as a 12-year-old with his parents

to a farm in Yamhill, Oregon in 1971, and has considered it to be his home ever since. So that's probably something you and I can kind of relate to even outside the realm of election law. My mom still lives in the same house in Fort Worth, Texas. And if you said, is that your home? I would say, yeah. I haven't lived there in 20 plus years. But yes, that is my home. And will always be my home in some sense.

It's sort of like what, like in the case of like a like a zombie apocalypse, like where do you try to wait? All the phones are down. Like where do you go to try to reunite with your loved ones? You'd probably try to try to hike to Fort Worth or something, right? I agree. I mean, I think for the vast majority, not vast majority, but the majority of New York transplants imagine themselves to still be from somewhere else, you know? I mean, like, how many, I was probably in New York for 15 years before I would even

dare think of myself as a New Yorker. And even then, there would be a lot of people taking exception to that. So, you know, a lot of people in the, you know, our country's very, very biggest cities, New York L.A. D.C. because it's sort of transitory nature. Don't think of themselves as people who are from there, even if you stay there for a long time. So I

can totally sympathize with that. And also, you and I and everyone listening to this probably knows that too, when you when you're in a place like New York or any of the other aforementioned places, you probably identify more as a person from another place as you would if you were from. You know, you

would identify more as a Fort Worth you Brian Curtis are probably more of a Fort Worth guy you felt like more of a Fort Worthian in your time in New York and in L.A., then you would have if you had been living in Dallas. Right? Because in Dallas, you're just like, you're up the road, like, whatever.

You're all sort of the same thing. You don't have to be like, you don't have to show off your Fort Worth belt buckle for anyone to like buy your credentials. But in New York, that becomes a part of your personality and your sort of built in history. Totally. I understand.

I kind of feel like I feel like a little bit guilty about our show but also about just the sort of journalism that covered his whole you know his career change Christoph's career change in general

because it's like how is this not a question that we were all just asking up front like is he allowed to do is he allowed to do this? I think I just stupidly assumed he'd been living there in some sort of legitimate way enough so that it would that there was no smell test necessary

I mean that smell was clearly in his favor Yes. The residency requirements are very minimal to run for like House of Representatives and things like that. It's just that in this sense, in this case, the state of Oregon just interpreted his residency and said he can't do it. Now, he's going to take them to court. And here, David, is what he said on Friday about what he thinks is behind the state of Oregon's ruling on his residency. The Secretary of States ruling is troubling. But as you all know, I come from outside the political establishment.

And I don't know insiders anything. They view my campaign as a threat. And so instead of working to end homelessness, they're working to end my candidacy. As Jeb Bush once said, please clap. Yeah. I mean, the political establishment thing, is, I mean, it's an interesting way to go. It's an obvious way to go,

but it's also kind of interesting because it's, I sort of feel like in a, in a pre-internet era, there probably would have been a lot less red tape standing between a famous New York Times columnist and whatever political job in his home state he would have wanted. Right?

The you would just sort of march in with a certain level of celebrity and there would be nobody, nobody would dare ask questions as to what, whether or not that, you know, that passed muster or past the smell test, I guess in this issue.

it's an interesting one it's an interesting one i mean it's a hard it's hard to defend right like nobody really took exception i think in a sort of general way to him going back home quote unquote to run for office but at this point what are you going to say you know like i don't i mean you say what he said but what are you going to say in his defense just like well he doesn't quite pass the he doesn't quite meet the the minimum requirements to run but his heart's in the right place i mean it was like what you can't really start with like we can bend this one rule, can't we?

And then have him, you know, put this man in a position of power? No. It's just, it's not, it's hard to say out loud. Also, if you went to Bill and you were just like, hey, I'm going to run for office in Texas, you know, like, this is really meaningful to me and it's been something I've been thinking about for a long time, would you at this point put a caveat, you're like, please don't fill my job until I've actually talked to the elections board and found out that I'm allowed to do this? Yeah.

Can I just say I'm on hiatus from the president? box, not, I haven't permanently left. We can get a ruling from the Secretary of State. Yeah. Update from the obituary desk, David. Unfortunately, we lost Bob Sagitt. Oh, man. Comedian and star of the series Full House on Sunday.

I thought there was an overabundance of Full House in the headlines. Now, maybe this is really pedantic. One, I thought every time I saw it, I thought it'd be funny if they were just like, Bob Saggett, host of America's Funniest Home videos, you know, or just identify them in a way that's not full house would be just a lot more fun as a headline writer. But I don't know. I just kind of feel like most people know of our generation, certainly know who Bob Sagat is by name. And if you don't know, I'm not sure that pointing at the title of Full House is going to help you that much. What made the O Bits tricky, right? Because Full House was undoubtedly a cultural phenomenon.

Yeah. It was at the same time not a good television show. And I don't think, I think very few people thought that, even if it was an artifact of your youth and childhood like it was for us. And also, if you liked Bob Sagitt, that was certainly how he became famous, but that was kind of the least Bob Sagitt thing ever. Like he was, his whole sort of second career was, I'm not that guy. Yeah. Right?

Even in real time. I remember my grandfather, who probably never watched an episode of Full House, was aware that Bob Saget was like worked blue in his stand-up act. and he was not in my grandfather, for the record, did not approve of this. A little too edgy for grandpa, Bob Sagitt. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely true. I mean, Harvilla wrote an incredible piece of obituary

on the ringer.com that everybody should read. But there is the, I mean, and he frames it really well, that those two sort of aspects of Sagitt were not in competition so much as they were complimentary. But you did, but you did. I mean, even as a, what, a teen or whatever, I feel like you would watch you could watch Full House

and feel like he was sort of in you know that his like dad cable knit dad sweaters were sort of shackles put on him right or something like albatross hanging on his neck you know like it was like it was not it was a burden that we can all understand

that anybody would say yes to but it sort of exemplified as humanity right like we'll all take this deal and we'll all sort of complain about it offhandedly, if anyone asks. We'll all be the straight man to Kimmy Gibbler, but it will be for our good, it will give us a chance to do all these things

we might not otherwise have done. So in terms of trying to capture the legacy of Bob Sagitt, I was drawn to a tweet from E-News, okay, given all we just said about Full House, I want you to listen to how E-News put the legacy of the man. In memory of Bob Sagitt, we're looking back at one of the most prolific TV dads of our generation. The most prolific TV dads.

Now, does that mean that Full House ran for eight seasons? So he was just a TV dad for a long period of time? Like lots of like Gladwellian hours spent being a TV dad? Right. I mean, I feel like when Alan Thick died, I think people would have just said the greatest TV dads of our time. or you know or you know something like that right i don't think anybody was saying the most prolific tv dads of our generation even mean but shouldn't that mean that he like produced a few the like future tv dads or something or it would be the like what was he creating yeah so i click

through to find out what the one of the most prolific tv dads of our generation meant and this is what the headline of the e-news story said quote oh good perhaps one of the most prolific TV dads of our generation. Perhaps. Okay, well, you know, Tom Bosley, now that's one of the most prolific TV dads of our generation, right? You know, Tony Danza, that's top, that's top tier. Bob Sagitt and a husband reduced to perhaps one of the most prolific, even though we don't know what prolific means still at this point. Yeah, and perhaps coupled with the one of is sort of damning almost. You really need to use both of those qualifiers? Then I went down to the text of the e-news article David, still seeking enlightenment about what this might mean. And this is what it said.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Sagitt secured a spot in our hearts as the prolific Tanner family patriarch. What? Does that mean he was virile and had a lot of kids? Well, he did, but I'm not sure, you know, without a wife to speak of. I guess that's pretty impressive, but that cannot be what they mean. A prolific Tanner family patriarch. And this is where I get sense of maybe we're just defining prolific in very different ways, perhaps in the authors of this piece about that second. Prolific. Can you say, could, could they mean like they were in syndication?

So like he was a dad every day on like, he was one of the most like omnipresent TV dads. I think that's what they mean. Okay. And I think it's one of the nice way. It's not one of the best TV dads in the sense, again, because the character was kind of restrictive. I think that's probably fair to say. But I think that's what we mean, right?

Omnipresent. Everywhere you look, you might say, David, Bob Sackett was a, you know. David, we had a high profile breaking of silence noted by our pal, Daniel Malloy. So on January 6th, Joe Biden gave this big speech where he tied the violence and undermining of American democracy to Donald Trump. This was the Washington Post headline. Biden breaks his silence inside his decision to forcefully denounce Trump.

now I know what they mean right because Biden has deliberately tried not to pick fights with Donald Trump since he's been president. Still, it's funny that someone who ran against Donald Trump for the presidency said pick me, not him, would have to break his silence. I think it's been broken probably. Yeah, I think that sort of goes without saying. Michael Wolf came up the other day, David, because he was the guy who reported on the semi-cancelation. of Norman Mailer. It was discussed on a previous episode of this podcast. He had a very funny Twitter exchange with CNN's Brian Stelter this week.

Brian Stelter says, is Wiley still your agent? Presumably Andrew Wiley seems relevant to this week's coverage, especially now that he's, quote, disputing your report. To which Michael Wolf replies on Twitter, he is. And I just spoke to him, and he denies disputing the report. That is off the record from me. But call him.

So this was a public reply to a tweet that said that is off the record for me. How does that work, though, when you, if you, in terms of journalistic ethics, I know that like, average Joe or Jane on the street is allowed to be like, ha ha, look at Michael Wolfe. He thinks he's in DMs and he's tweeting and now I know these things. But he said off the record. So do you, Brian Curtis, as a journalist, have to respect that and pretend that you don't know going? Is that the equivalent of putting it in the subject line of an email? Oh, yeah.

He said off the record, but clearly it didn't pass the smell test. I didn't agree, right? I didn't agree to it, but hey, I opened the email and it said off the record. I read Twitter. I've got a headline rule of three for you, David. You know, we always love it here. Mm-hmm. Because every headline in America now must list three funny examples from a story and then have a colon

and then say what the story is actually about. Adam Zalanka turned us on to this. I'm going to give you the three examples, and you have to tell me with this story from the athletic, which I ran across the other day when I was writing about it, is actually about here we go. A hibernating bear, drinking water, and corny roadmaps. Okay. Already I'm mad that drinking water is one of the three things pulled out. How terrible is the story going to be if that's the third most interesting idea that you can pull out of it? It's not making any judgments here.

I'm guessing because of hibernating in quotes that there is a bear mascot involved and because it's the athletic, that there's a bear mascot involved. Now, corny roadmaps, corny roadmaps. I'm thinking, I'm trying to, my mind immediately goes to like amusement parks

or something with like their fake maps, but corny roadmaps, I'm guessing, Gosh, I have no idea. All right, here we go. A hibernating bear, drinking water, and corny roadmaps, colon, how the grizzlies are thriving without Jah Morant. So he's the hibernating bear?

Or maybe the grizzlies. Yeah, I guess he's the hibernating bear. I didn't read the piece. Just love the headline. Speaking of which, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about the Westminster Dog Show's COVID-posponement. was dog show on pause P-A-W-S.

Today's headline, David, comes from a bunch of people, but we'll credit Callum, Ng, and Lefty, who brought all the puns in this particular sphere to my attention. It's from the Daily Telegraph over there in the UK. Here's a story. Serbian tennis store and vaccine skeptic Novak Djokovic has some problems, David. He was scheduled to play in the Australian Open there in Melbourne.

He flew there, the authorities, there canceled his visa and placed him in immigration detention. Australia is a very locked down kind of place. Djokovic is out now, but it looked for a moment like the Serbian star would have to leave the country. What was the Daily Telegraph strained pun headline? Is this a Tennis pun? Is this a tennis pun?

Mm-hmm. Oh. Might involve his country of origin. Serbia, oh, serve like a, God, I know, I'm so bad at tennis. He's going back, potentially, going back. Return, Serb. Return Serb. Yeah, that's good.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production magic by Erica Servantes. We are going to have the New Yorkers John Lee Anderson on this show. We had to slightly reschedule that. So stay tuned for our second part of the week. Plus Shoemaker and I are back for more. Lukeworm takes about the media next Monday.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.