The Press Box - Screwing Up the Ohtani Story, the WaPo Walkout, and Mahomes’s Meltdown

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Bryan and David start the show discussing Shohei Ohtani’s blockbuster deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers and how it was the first spoiler-free signing since Adrian Wojnarowski joined X. (00:30) Then they discuss the Washington Post union staff’s walkout (9:16). Later in weekend audio, they react to Patrick Mahomes's meltdown after an offensive offsides takes the game-winning play off the board—and the media reaction to that  (25:50). Bryan shares a Time magazine person-of-the-year update and discusses the amount of presales the magazine has garnered (33:30). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, this is Jason Gough from the full go podcast. Me and the crew, we like to entertain you. And we're going to do more of that this football season because the bears should be more intriguing. There should be more fascination. Justin Fields. Is this the make or break year? Is DJ Moore the piece that's going to put them over the top? You can catch us on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, or when we have an emergency podcast when we have breaking news.

Make sure you follow the full go on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. David? Yeah. on Saturday, Shohei Otani agreed to a 10-year, $700 million deal with the Los Angeles

Dodgers. Is that a lot of money? That's a lot of money. Even more than some of the big NBA contracts we spend time talking about here at the ringer. We had a 48-hour period that offered a rare window

as they say in journalism on the job we call the insider. Oh, yeah. Now, there were three fun parts to the Otani store. Number one, it was the first spoiler-free, free agency since Woge joined Twitter. Okay. And this was at the request of the Otani camp.

We're not going to leak. And we expect you, the teams that desperately want to sign the best player in baseball, not to leak either. and if you leak, we will be mad at you for leaking. That was the implication. And at one point, the Dodgers manager, Dave Roberts, came out and just did the most anodye. Hey, we had a great meeting with Otani.

And even his front office was like, no, no, dude, cut it out. You're not supposed to say that. You're not supposed to leak at all, which is so funny, because you and I are used to this insider ecosystem where everybody eats. Insider gets those tweets about the meetings and about the bidding. The player feels like a bigger deal because everybody wants them. Maybe even the money goes up because of all the little calculated leaks along the way. Sure.

There was almost none of that. Nothing. At the request of all parties. Very, very strange to just experience insiderdom, you know, vacuum. Yeah, outsiderdom. Outsiderdom, as it were. Number two was the screw-ups that happened when insiders tried to penetrate the Omerta around the O-TOPI signing. So by Friday it was thought that he was down to the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays.

Now, the subtext here, of course, is one of MLB's biggest stars, heck, its biggest star, signing either with an iconic team in the city of Los Angeles or, no offense, the Toronto Blue Jays. Yeah. Well, MLB Network writer and talker John Marosi posted this on Friday's sources. Shohei Otani is en route to Toronto today. A representative of his agency, CAA would not comment when asked about Otani's travel plans. this hour otani does not have a signed agreement with any MLB team and there was another report out there linking him with the blue jays too

then another insider or outsider bob nightingale gets on twitter and says this show hey otani is not in toronto otani is not on a flight to toronto Otani is at home in Southern California. The Canadian Broadcasting Company and an old school touch you will appreciate

sent a photographer to the airport. Nice. To actually check out who's getting off this plane. It was not Shohei Otani. It was a star

of Shark Tank. I'm not making that up. Which star of Shark Tank was it? I can get you a name. Oh, it was Robert Herkovick. All right.

There we go. Sorry. A shark technology is not what it needs to be. Oh, you have things to do in life rather than much shark tank reruns, I guess. I'm a shark tank outsider, as it were. So Morosi got

the story wrong, which is bad, but not the biggest deal in the world. But then he did not post a correction to Twitter for seven hours on Friday. seven hours. So you and I talked about this before.

Insiders are the highest paid sports writers of our generation. And they have convinced us that they are the highest paid sports writers of our generation because it is important to beat another insider on a story by seconds. Doesn't matter if the team's going to announce the signing anyway. I'm earning the big bucks because I beat Kenny Rosenthal or Jeff Passon, and whoever it is by seconds. Because you're very present on Twitter. Exactly. So if an insider's talent can be measured in seconds, a correction should not take hours.

No. I'm sorry, that seems like a little bit of a contradiction. What we were told this entire job was about. Skill that was at issue here. Number three on the Otani story. We didn't have a lot of insiderdom. We did have pundits from the two key cities, Los Angeles and Toronto, taking shots at each other. First up, this is Sid Sexero of Breakfast Television, Toronto, taking a shot at Dodgers broadcaster Jerry Hirston, Jr. You know what? Show you, Tony. I know you watch every day. And I appreciate you, man.

You're the greatest. But in terms of the person you just heard from Jerry Hirston, Jr., first of all, he played for nine teams and 16 years. Nobody wanted him on their team. Played for the Dodgers for two years. I know as much about the Dodgers as Jerry Hirston Jr., You played for them for two years. He's an absolute joke.

Let's talk taxes. Yeah, we got taxes up in Canada, but California has a fifth highest taxes out of any state in America. Oh, you want to buy a place close to Dodgers Stadium? Worst traffic in the world is in Los Angeles. Even if you're 10 kilometers away, it's still going to take you eight hours to get to work every day. Weather? Yeah, it's cold in Canada a little bit. You know what?

Also snows in California last time I checked. And based on what Hollywood has told me, the great earthquake is coming. any point and you don't want to be around any part of Los Angeles when that happens. Lots of valid points in there. Where would you rank? L.A. has high taxes and earthquakes on the comedy meter. Well, above or below those clowns in Congress. How about those clowns?

By the way, I looked up Sid Sexero's work on YouTube. A lot of big takes. Yeah, a little take machine? Toronto is lucky. It has a genuine take machine, apparently. And Sid Xero. Anyway, here was Jerry Hirsten's Jr. response to that particular broadside. To all of Canada, I think it is incredible the love you have shown for your beloved Blue Jays.

Awesome. To the gentleman who tried to make this personal, it's Shoah. Not showy, show hey. one love. So apparently that sealed the deal that the Dodgers in the city of L.A. more generally knew how to pronounce Otani's first name. Yeah. I also love any message that begins to all the people of Canada.

Very hello people of Earth. It is. Yeah. Vives there. And then we need to have Jerry Hirsten Jr. Ready to go. If there's ever any invasion of Earth by the, Martian.

The right guy to just kind of put things just like we like them. Coming up on today's pod, David, we go inside last week's staff walkout at the Washington Post. How did a Trump-era media success story come to this? Plus, Patrick Mahomes had a meltdown

after the refs took a touchdown off the board on Sunday. What should sports writers make of it? We have some sales numbers to put with Times Taylor Swift Person of the Year cover and we have updates on prodigal sons and what might be the only in journalism word of the year.

All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Brian Waters with you. If you looked at the homepage of the Washington Post last Thursday, David, and I know that you do, you would have seen this line, this byline, by Washington Post staff.

Pretty generic because the papers unionized writers walked out for a day. Yep. According to CNN, a strike like this has not happened since the 1970s. More than 700 staffers walked out and 400 of those 700 were protesting outside the building at one point or another on Thursday.

The prelude to this is two things. The Washington Post Union has been an endless contract negotiations with management. That's number one. And number two is the paper is on track to lose $100 million this year. Wow. That's according to a report earlier from the New York Times. The Post is slashing its staff, trying to get 240 staffers to accept a buyout. And in journalism, that just means you are volunteering to lose your job.

They found 175 people, they say, but if they don't get to 240 this week, they're going to start laying people off. Now, there's been a lot of bad news in the media world, including here at Spotify, over the last weeks and months. The Washington Post is arguably one of the biggest feel bad stories in media right now.

Yeah. Not because the quality is bad. It's the opposite. The paper is so good. Yeah. Other than the New York Times and maybe the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper best positioned to survive in non-zombified form deep into this century. Yep. Yet something is not working either financially or in terms of the vision the leaders have for the paper or perhaps both.

I thought it was worth stepping into the time machine for a second. Remember the post during the high Trump period? Sure. Remember the slogan, democracy diet? in darkness? Yep. Which is going to be an example, let's be honest,

of yes, this is a thing that actually happened during the resistance. Not quite the marshal of the Supreme Court going after Trump. It's going to be

an honorable mention on, no, no, this really did happen. Washington Post made its slogan, democracy dies in darkness. It had so many things going for it.

Jeff Bezos, we got our rich guy funding the paper. Got Marty Barron, editor. We got Ashley Parker and Josh Dossy at the White House. Hell yeah. Squeezing those scoops out of Trump

and his staff. It did not feel like the one B to the mighty times. It felt like a peer of the Times in some ways. Absolutely, yeah. At least in terms of Trump coverage. Post-Trump, we've seen the New York Times continue to grow into this lifestyle

brand of journalism. Political news, a little more boring these days. How about some wordle? my friend. How about a cooking app that you might enjoy a little chicken and broccoli tonight to feed the family?

Well, if you read the stories about the Post, and especially some anonymous staffers quoted in them, you feel a lot of people saying, what is the plan for this newspaper? Post-Trump. Yeah.

There's some shots taken at Sally Busby, who's the editor, Fred Ryan, who's the now departed publisher. But there's a larger question of what are we supposed to be headed into the future? Yeah. I mean, it's obviously it's what every old school media outlet is dealing with. It's kind of too big of a question to answer neatly. I mean, obviously when you're talking about a hundred million dollar deficit or whatever, then you're, you know, there's either a massive failure in terms of monetization.

And that, you know, could be as simple as, I mean, it'd be easy to say, you know, sell better ad, sell more ad, sell more expensive ad. But that comes with its own issues and difficulties, right? I mean, if it was, if they've made up that gap by SponCon, then we'd be talking about that here, right? Absolutely. But, you know, we talked about this with TV networks. We've talked about this with other periodicals. You know, the Trump era was a boom time for news in a lot of ways. and there's obviously a huge downside to that

when it's no longer the Trump era. Now, I'll be the Trump era again soon, so, you know, looking towards that, it might feel like an odd time to downsize. But I guess you're right, they got to look towards the future. Like, what is the future going to be? I mean, I think as maybe pie in the sky as it was

to hope that the Bezos Post would be able to continue along even with, you know, even at a deficit, at a financial deficit, we talked about it before. I mean, there's a long history of wealthy people subsidizing art, right? I mean, that's just the sort of way that the world has worked for a long time. And as unrealistic as that might be, you know, I think that there should be some hope. that moving forward. Now, $100 million, obviously, is just a shocking amount of money to not, you mean, to be, to be in the red. So I don't know. It's, it's, it's really tough. I don't, I don't, I don't think there's a simple answer. It's interesting the way, looking back at the

Trump here is that obviously helped all these news outlets financially and solved the problem, at least temporarily of how are we going to get our money. Because so many people were like, I object to Trump, subscribe. I am, I cannot, You know, I cannot send the marshal of the Supreme Court to take Trump out of the White House, but I can subscribe to your newspaper, sir. And that is me registering my objection. But it also solved the mission statement. You know, this is Marty Barron, right?

I'm not a partisan person. I'm not part of the resistance. I am being, you know, unwillingly dragged into these fights at the White House, but I understand that this is the story of our lives. This is our job to cover Trump White House and war. what is happening in the United States as a result of his actions. It's very, very clarifying and especially helpful to a paper like The Post, which again, its strength is going to be politics.

Wall Street Journal, as we move into this new world, its mission statement is right, we're the financial publication. And guess what? As a bonus, you get all these great book reviews, you get Jason Gay's Sports column, you get a lot of other good stuff. But this is for a financial person. This is your paper. Tells you what you want to know.

The post-Trump, and I found this interesting anecdote in an article, Charlotte Klein wrote for Vanity Fair, it says during the latest town hall national editor, Matea Gold, said a goal for 2024 was owning coverage about, quote, politics, our divided nation, and threats to democracy. But then rattled off a bunch of other corners of the newsroom, including sports, health and science, as well as culture, arts, media, and entertainment. as one post reporter put it to me, quote, we thought they were probably just going to come out and say that all they cared about was politics. Instead, they said we care about all of you, but then couldn't articulate a vision for what that meant.

Yeah. So you see it's a subtle thing there, right? They're not going to get rid of other sections, hopefully. But there is an idea of what is the Washington Post. We can't continue with pre-year. internet vision of the post where it's like it's everything you want in this newspaper that lands at your doorstep even the times it has to pick things that it can be and then importantly it can get people to pay for and like i said it's at the top it's a particularly weird problem

because there's so much there that's so good you get the best newspaper sports section in the country right now yeah if sally jenkins was there alone with a substack it would probably still be the best newspaper sports section of the country right now you have Ben Terrace and Jesus Rodriguez writing profiles. People like Dan Diamond have been on the show. They've got so much good stuff there. But everything you read, you find these people going, what's the plan?

And maybe the plan is just going to be to put new people in some of those leadership positions. They get a new publisher starting pretty soon. Unclear if Sally Busby is the person to take that paper into the future. But like I said, as feel bad stories go, at least complicated feel bad stories. It's got to be pretty high on the list. Oh, for sure.

Did you join me in skipping the Republican debate last week? Yes. I watched some of it the day after, not just clips. So I tried to dive in a little bit. But it was, yeah, it's really bizarre, the sort of parallel universe. It seems like the debate matters more than it did

when the debate cycle started, maybe just marginally, but in reality, it feels like it matters less. Maybe it matters more because it feels like Nikki Haley is sort of ascending to the throne of option B after Trump. But it's just such a weird thing. You kind of get the feeling that debates are never going to be the same.

I'm sure a million people have made this point, it kind of feels like we'll never see an incumbent in a debate again and we'll never see there won't be the presumption that anybody with a 20 point lead will ever participate in a debate again certainly could be right and your point about niki haley i think is right right it's a data point because people are attacking niki haley or at least attacking her more ferociously that they see her emerging as the possible distant second place candidate behind trump and then the of the debate is Chris Christie yelling at Vivek Ramoswamy and Ramoswamy doing that thing that Lanny Poffa made so popular where you write something on a sheet of paper and hold it up.

During the debate. Not sure I've seen that one before. Do you see all the tweets about News Nation, which showed the debate being the graveyard of former cable news anchors, or at least cable news anchors on? I missed that cycle. So Megan Kelly was one of the moderators. Also Elizabeth Vargas, who had a big career. Chris Cuomo and Bill O'Reilly,

and again, I'm relying on screenshots here, we're talking to each other after the debate was over. That was a postgame show. It felt like at the in-season tournament when you had the Turner and ESPN post-game shows kind of going back and forth with each other, they were doing that little dual production, except this was like every iteration

of every cable news channel that ever existed. Yeah. Meeting this weird wrinkle in time and space. It's Bill O'Reilly and Chris Cuomo. Wait, that wasn't even the same scandal or the same network. That was different stuff. Yeah. It's like, well, I mean, it'd be like if a network that didn't have the NFL

got the Super Bowl or something. And then they were just like, crap, who can we get on here? and it's just everybody who's just incidentally out of work right now. Yeah, people you didn't even know we're looking for work. You know, like, oh, what's Brent Musburger doing here? I thought he was happily in Vegas. We like to call Joe Biden the Kobe Stopper on this podcast. Because much like NBA players who called themselves the copystopper,

he articulates his talent as I'm the guy who can beat Donald Trump. Yeah. I might not beat Nikki Haley, who I'm trailing by 700 points in some of those polls, but I can beat Donald Trump. That's what I was put on this earth to do. Mitt Nickroff, alert listener, sends us this quote from Biden last week. He was talking to donors. If Trump wasn't running, I'm not sure I'd be running.

Joe Biden wearing the mantle of the Kobe stop. The name will live on to. I bet he'd be running between you and me. Oh, he'd be running. He'd absolutely be running. Here's my evidence. He's president and wants to continue being president. That describes everyone who is president.

Mm-hmm. I would like to be president for one turn. Yeah. Or even Donald Trump. I've been president for a couple terms. I would like to continue being president. We've seen how that goes. Coming up in 30 seconds, David,

Patrick Mahomes is mad at the refs. and reporters are mad at Patrick Bohomes. But first let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. I also set up a Threads account.

At Light and Shopper. Go find me over there. What a party it is over on Threads. Anyway, runners up, David. last Monday, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence injured his ankle. This incredibly heartbreaking and inadvertently hilarious shot of him

limping down this long tunnel. Everybody's tweeting, can we just get a golf cart for Trevor Lawrence? Are we afraid that golf cart means season's over? Yeah. Because it was taking forever. ESPN went with a shot and just held it. I was like, whoa, it's taking a while.

It was a long walk, or limping walk, whatever. Long limp. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Unfortunately, the Jags are now ineligible for the college football playoffs. To skip Skagins, Brian and shy J.D. Doug for that one. Another NFL headline for you, David. Former Jaguars employee is accused of stealing more than $22 million from the team. I saw.

It was an overword Twitter joke to write, damn, they are finally coming for Blake Bortals. Thomas A. Win for that one. And this week's winner comes from MLB Free Agency. It's about that period of time, that interregnum, if you will, when Shohei Otani was not on a plane bound for Toronto, would you like to hear what Twitter thought

Otani was doing instead during that time? Yes, please. First up here, Otani and his dog are driving across the country in a big truck talking to locals feeling the pulse of America

writing a memoir that earns him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Another one here. Otani is at a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. That would be my

favorite answer to this question. This one I like to Show Hey Otani, the hitter, is on a plane to Toronto. But Shohei Otani, the pitcher is back home

in Southern California. And maybe my favorite MLB Twitter did a balloon boy. If you mentioned a dubious media anniversary that we are definitely going to celebrate next year, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump. Let's do some weekend audio. All right.

This is Dateline Kansas City Moe. Patrick Mahomes, David, and the chiefs were trailing the Buffalo Bills in the fourth quarter at home by 3.4. points. I don't know if you're watching that game, but I was like three points. Patrick Mahomes, even with the creaky chiefs offense this year. Yeah. It's not going to do it. It is not going to do it. They got two minutes. At least they get a field goal, take it to overtime. Yeah. Well, Mahomes whips a pass to Travis Kelsey, catches a ball, runs with it, and then laterals to Cadarius Tony, who runs for a touchdown. Very excited. exciting. We cut to time person of the year, Taylor Swift,

celebrating up there in the press box. Yeah. One of the great game-winning NFL plays you will ever see, except it got called back. Here's the bad news as relayed by Jim Nance and Tony Romo. And I can't believe my. Offside. Number 19, offense lined up in the neutral zone. Wow. Five-yard penalty. Tony was lined up.

To be kidding me. In the neutral zone. So Travis Kelsey, who went to Cincinnati at a Cleveland Heights high school in Ohio, an old quarterback through a perfect spiral for what looked like an improbable touchdown. So Cadarious, Tony, the chief's wide receiver was off sides. There's no question about this on the replay. We had the very nice shot of his entire foot blocking out the ball, which is not ideal. But Patrick O'Holmes was not happy with this. call. Should note the Chiefs went on to lose the game. We see him exploding on the bench and then he

brought up the call in his postgame hug with Bill's quarterback Josh Allen. Is the implication this is like, is this like the NBA where it's like you don't call knick-knack fouls in the fourth quarter of a big game? Is that the implicit argument? That is definitely the argument, more than the implicit argument. Is that what, did people think that? Chiefs players definitely think it. And Andy Rebos. I know. I know. you think it did they I mean Mahomes thinks it today but I mean is that is that a normal is it

are people normally just like yeah line up wherever you want it's the fourth quarter especially offensively right yeah we see the defensive version of this all the time but you're off sides you stopped them but now they get another shot at it or they get an automatic first down but offensively he was lined up off sides anyway here's what

Mahom said in his post game press conference with reporters where he continued to vent. In that moment, I mean, I've played seven years, never had that, never had offensive all sides called. I mean, that's elementary school. We talk about, I mean, you point to the ref, do all that different type of stuff,

and it doesn't get called. And if it does, they warn you, and there was no warning throughout the entire game. And then you wait, there's a minute left in the game to make a call like that. It's tough, man. So part of the reaction, I think, there was that people are not used to seeing Patrick Mahomes be like that.

in a press conference. Yeah. Behind the mic at least, he's very similar to the pre-deflategate Brady. And he's smiling, friendly, you know,

doing interviews, but not giving up all that much. They have to be. Certainly not that much. I mean, that's pretty, that was a lot.

That was big accusations coming out of his mouth. It's interesting, too, because there's a lot of takes about this today, as you can imagine, on Twitter and on the talk shows. I heard, you know, I lost respect for the chiefs.

Why can't they just own up to their mistakes? And I think that's all fair. I think that's all very valid. But I also just think, what if he came out and said the opposite? What if he came out and said, Cadarius, Tony, has made mistakes like this all season. And he made another one. I mean, wouldn't we be having the conversation today about

why is Patrick Mahomes throwing his teammate under the bus? does a real leader take responsibility? But that goes back to what you're saying about we're not used to hearing this sort of thing from homes. I think we're not used to hearing any other direction, right? I mean, from all of our quarterbacks, all of our football stars, what we're used to hearing is just sort of emptiness, right? I mean, it's just, yeah, you can't make those mistakes or, you know. So that's what, but that's the media sweet spot we want, right?

We have to play better. Oh, no, we don't want it. We want what he said. Like, we want the extreme. That's actual media sweet spot, but the sweet spot, but the sweet spot we pretend. we want as reporters. The thing we pretend we want the quarterback to say is the kind of

second person, we have to be more locked in than this. I'm not going to call out Tony. I'm going to take responsibility as a team. We need to play better than this. I'm not going to blame the refs. We need to be more locked in. That's where we like these things to land. Sure. Of course. Yeah.

And then there would be no complaints about anything in the Petra Mahomset. Oh, look at him up there taking responsibility. Without throwing his made under the bus. So we don't want honesty is in the sense of, I think the refs blew it. We don't want honesty

on the other end of the spectrum in that I think Cadarius, Tony blew it. We want sort of middle course dishonesty where I put all those actual thoughts aside and say we just need to be more likely.

Yeah. Just making sure. I was going to do a little check-in with American sports writers. I know what we want from athletes. it's behind the podium. Yeah.

Let's get more, more boring out there. As anodyne as you can get, man. I'd also love to throw this in since I'm happy that the Eagles absolutely trashed the Cowboys last night. How freaking funny is it that since the media tried to make Dom the security guy, the next Philadelphia hero,

who was going to get the statue next to Rocky, that the Eagles have played absolutely miserable football since that moment? Yeah, they've given up like, like, what's like seven touchdowns since then. If, if you, and you,

we know this, if it had turned, if that 49ers game had turned at that moment, and the Eagles had gone on to win, and then the Eagles came into Arlington, last night, killed the Cowboys, we would be doing the Dom story out the ass right now.

Dom is the hero. Ever since Dom, the Philly, Philadelphia loves Dom. we would be signing book contracts right now that said how an overlooked quarterback, a crying coach, and a security guy changed football in Philly forever.

Mm-hmm. Nice rule of through there. But what we need, I think in Philly is a Dan Shaughnessy character to step up and say, no, no, this is about the curse of Dom. Oh, yeah, the curse of Dom. He screwed it up.

It's his fault. If we were going to build this whole storyline on Dom turning it around, it's the least we should we can do as sports writers to now build the opposite storyline. He messed up. It's his fault. Yep. My voice is still too weak to get excited about this, but you know what I mean.

I've got a Person of the Year update for you, David. Oh, all right. Talked about a little bit of this on Thursday's pod. Taylor Swift, Times Person of the Year, as I am sure you've heard. we got some numbers from time about how well that issue has been selling. The 23 person of the year, Time says, has sold so far,

this is as of 9 a.m. Eastern time on Monday morning. 221,000 copies. Disclaimer, you cannot walk into a newsstand and buy it. This is completely people getting online and purchasing a physical magazine. Yeah. It will not be on sale to newsstand until Friday, the 15th. So 220,000 people have gotten online to buy a thing they don't subscribe to.

Crazy. There are three different Taylor Swift covers that Time came up with. 59,000 people, the magazine said, have bought the bundle with all three covers. Oh, that's like my old comic book collecting days. VARARIA VARIA covers Just people line up by the whole thing In one mylar bag Yeah, that's a great gimmick

TV guide did that bit too for a while We got the whole cast of Deep Space 9 Got to collect them all In case you're wondering, Time says the cover featuring Taylor Swift's cat Is the top selling single issue With 30,000 copies sold And for comparison sake here

The magazine says at times 2022 person of the year issue That was Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky in case you'd forgotten sold 65,000 copies total and that's including newsstand so we're more than three to one

already the last cover of time that sold at this rate was the royal wedding cover back in 2011 better moment media time 232,000 copies which so Taylor will certainly surpass that wonder how many covers they put on that one imagine if they had really if they'd done the

will on one and the Kate on the other and then together in the middle, the third one. Harry looking mad on the fourth one to prepare us for everything that would come after. I got a prodigal son update for you. Last week you were explaining to us about how reporters that use the term prodigal son to describe somebody who returns to a publication. Oh, no. Am I wrong? Aren't using it exactly in the biblically correct sense. No, you're not wrong. in fact you're right this comes from listener

Thunder Lips Oh good I got thunderlips He points us to the Barack Obama Bruce Springsteen podcast called Renegades See if you hear

The phrase that pays here With Barack and Bruce Go go go So we're sitting here In The great state of New Jersey With one of New Jersey's

prodigal sons That's about right. And David, with the very serious stipulation that I don't care, is it fair to describe Bruce Springsteen as a prodigal son of New Jersey? No, I think he's like at these, these, these, these, this favorite son. Favorite son. That's the way, that's a phrase I was looking for. Yes.

That's just an error, right? That's just a, that's just a slip of the tongue. That's when we reach for prodigal son all the time. The prodigal son returns to New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen? What? We may have an only in journalism word of the year here. I was reading the New York Times on Sunday.

They had their year-end book review. Uh-huh. Always cool. Always cool to see the... One of the best, yeah. The lists and everything. And they did some fun stuff in the margins. One was, they said,

Reckoning seemed to be publisher's favorite term to signal that a book mattered. this year, reckoning. Yeah, you're reckoning with tough facts. It was a reckoning. Here's some examples for you. Romney, a reckoning by our friend McKay Coppins. Wanna be, reckonings with the pop culture that shaped me.

Holding fire, a reckoning with the American West. We also had, I am still with you, a reckoning with silence, inheritance, and history. And finally, V, former Eve Ensler titled her memoir, Reckoning. A lot of reckonings. Possible only in journalism word. Reckoning.

All right, speaking of Reckoning, because it's time for David Chewmaker guesses a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about the talented Mr. Santos's ouster from Congress was George jettisoned.

Today's headline comes from P. Marty, NYC. It's from Smithsonian. I believe that fine publication's first appearance. in this feature. It's a podcast about otters, David. Quoting Smithsonian, North American river otters are popping up in places they haven't been seen in decades. And nobody really knows why. As we search for answers, we discover a trail of fishheads, poop splats, and cuddle parties.

You can ignore that last sentence. I just kind of wanted to stick in that little rule of three. but I want you to think of a sitcom that was maybe a little before our time as you ponder what was Smithsonian's strain pun headline Utter is enough no not otters enough Is it an otta pun

O-U-G-H-T-A? Is that what I'm going for here? You ought to know better? No. Yeah, you ought to know I don't know. Welcome back Otter. Welcome back Otter. I was about to give you a hand, but you beat me to it.

Yeah. Very solid stuff. Welcome back Otter. That's great. Nice work from the fine folks at Smithsonian. And he is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Brian Waters.

I am back later this week with a guest to be named later. And next week, Shoemaker and I do double shows. Mondays like normal and then a little year in media round. up. Who says we're above a list? Let's do a list. The close out 2023. Of course, we'll have more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Can't wait for your take on the Tucker Carlson Network. See you later, Brian.