The Press Box - The Adam Moss Coaching Tree | The Press Box (Ep. 563)

Episode Date: January 22, 2019

The high-stakes journalism standoff following the BuzzFeed scoop (02:30), NFL referees blow a call in the worst possible media age (25:00), and Adam Moss stepping down after 15 years as editor of New York Magazine (40:30). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Before you start the show, I wanted to tell you about our brand new podcast called Tea Time. It's a bi-weekly pop culture show on the Channel 33 feed where me, Kate Hallowell, and Amelia Weddemeier, have four minutes in each category to get out our strongest opinions about what's happening in the celebrity world at large. The episodes air every other Friday afternoon, and you can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. David, well, you are a way. from the press box, we considered replacing you with a disembodied David Shoemaker voice. By which I mean,

clips of David Shoemaker from previous podcasts. They would just sort of talk to me over the air. What do you think about that idea? So far, I totally endorse this. Do you want to see how it might have worked out if we continued the press box, but just with me and your disembodied voice? Please, yes

All right David Here we go What if I asked you In a kind of bad Southern accent What it was like to have And then raise your first child Would you say you've been through hell? Yeah

See that's not bad right It's almost like the real us Okay Okay David I'd like to talk about A new story that I wrote for the ringer.com this week More trash from Brian Curtis And your week is ruined

Yeah See Just like the real repartee we have on here. I don't even need to be here. This is great. All right, David, and here's the last one. I'm trying to kind of express the idea of apples and oranges among contentious issues in media. Can you help me explain that with a pithy phrase? Holocaust denial and a nipple are not the same thing.

Really? That's perfect. That was a waste of my own time. And it truly was. Great to have the real, great to have the real David Chewaker back. We are the Arnold Schwarzenegger prank calls of media podcasts. This is the press box a part of the Ringer podcast network. The Pressbox is the media podcast.

We are not allowed to dismiss BuzzFeed as a supermarket tabloid when the president of the United States has a relationship with an actual supermarket tabloid. We are Brian Curtis and David Schuemaker of the Ringer. Welcome back, David. Hey. We missed you.

The show's still here. This is amazing. There is still media news in the universe. You're going to be amazed at that. It didn't just disappear while you were gone. Thanks for keeping things going for a week while I was going. Oh, we're glad to have you back. All right, three big topics today.

First, we're going to talk about that BuzzFeed scoop or maybe non-scoop that shocked the world last week. We explain a high-stakes journalism standoff. Second, one of the great moments in NFL history was a Rams cornerback running into a Saints wide receiver and the refs missing the obvious pass interference call. We talk about it being a referee inside the NFL Panopticon. And finally, supremely loved editor Adam Moss says farewell to New York Magazine. We talk about his career in the rapidly diminishing figure that is the swashbuckling magazine editor, plus our weekly notebook dump and, of course, the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, should we start with BuzzFeed?

Yes. It's the biggest story. It is the most difficult story I think we'll talk about this week because it's kind of in a holding pattern. To review, Thursday night BuzzFeed reported that President Donald Trump directed his. his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and that Michael Cohen told special counsel or special counsel, excuse me, Robert Mueller about this. The next morning, I read a tweet by New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow that stuck with me. Blow wrote that there are only two outcomes of the BuzzFeed story, and I'm quoting here.

One, if it's true, the legal moral question of Trump's impeachment is a settled question. Now the only hurdle is procedural. And number two, if it's not true, BuzzFeed may not survive this. Well, we got to experience both one and two because on Friday morning, various newspapers and CNN tried to match BuzzFeed story, which in journalism terms means they tried to confirm it. They couldn't. And then on Friday evening, the special counsel's office, which never says anything publicly

about anything, issued a statement saying BuzzFeed's description of these specific statements to the special counsel's office and the characterization of documents and testimony of by this office regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate. That's from Peter Carr, a spokesman for Robert Mueller. So, David, we are in standoff territory now. Journalism standoff territory. Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier and BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith are having their Ben Bradley-Woodward and Bernstein moment. We stand by our story. The specials counsel's office has gone back to not saying anything. And we don't quite know who's right.

Where are we, how would you make sense of the state of play at this moment? In some ways, this is the perfect media story for the age that we live in now. Because when all the dust settled, or at least when the dust that has, you know, gone up has come down and settled so far, everybody gets to believe exactly what they want to believe, right? you know, if you are pro-Trump or anti-BuzzFeed or whatever you want to, however you want to delineate that side of things, the Mueller investigation has, you know, dumped up, poured all the cold water on this story that you could want. BuzzFeed is fake news as they have been forever, particularly since they published the Russia dossier. And this story is just more evidence that the news media is out to get Donald Trump. I guess there was a

The one oddity in that in the narrative is the Is the Insistent Reliance on the Mueller investigation as the arbiter of truth in the situation But you know we'll set that aside for right now And then if you're on the other side of things Or and you know I would say there's a there's a huge portion of people who Who were nominally unbiased who are not necessarily pro-Trump or anti-Buzzfeed

And you see this all over the news media on you if you watch if you watch CNN or MSNBC You'll see people who, you know, you'll see a segment about whether or not BuzzFeed, you know, about the problems with the BuzzFeed story, bookended by segments that sort of take its content credulously, right? I mean, that assume, that are conducting interviews under the assumption that there is some level of merit to the story that was reported. And I think that weirdly, that Charles, as perfectly, as concise and perfect as that Charles Em Blow tweet was, it seems like we're sort of, settling into a middle ground where, you know, I mean, presumably there'll be further information to come at some point. But in the meantime, you just sort of, you know, BuzzFeed is able to say, listen, the Mueller team didn't say specifically what they took, you know, objection to. And we're going to stand by our reporting. And everybody else is just sort of left to make up their own mind.

I think that's exactly where we should start with this, because this was like the quote, if true moment of. of American journalism where everybody spent a day talking about the story prefaced by the statement, if true. Yes. Yet the weird part was CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post could not match the story. So they're either left with not talking about what everybody is talking about or talking about it and potentially lending credence to a story that may not turn out to be true, which is just such a weird. position to be in. And I think Ben Smith

and all of his various, he is the BuzzFeed editor, and all his various appearances has said these guys have broken lots of stuff. They deserve to get the benefit of the doubt or at least deserve, you know, to have a lack of skepticism here. But it was just a, it was

after this wheel turned on Friday night and the special counsel's office came out and, you know, denied at least some of the story. It was such a weird position to be in. to have that kind of hedged way of reality. But I guess in a way, what you're saying is that does actually make it the perfect Trump story too, right? Because it's this dire, absolutely dire scenario that the president of the United States told his personal attorney to lie to Congress, instructed.

But we are not quite sure if that is the case yet. Right. Or absolutely sure. Yeah. I mean, and I mean, I think that there's, you know, I think that when you look at the way that, I mean, the reactions. have rolled in, there is a very sort of, you know, everything in the Trump era is sort of meta, the way that he interacts with the media. And I think that this is, this reflects that as well. You know, I think that it was, it was accepted at face value. I mean, honestly, I mean,

BuzzFeed, I mean, the BuzzFeed News has, has, I mean, it hasn't given us, you know, many, many reasons to, to not trust their reporting, you know, in their, in this, in this, in this sort of in this genre. So I understand why, but also just that, you know, this is, compared to the things that we know or that we or that we have great confidence to believe or true about Trump and about, you know, the Mueller investigation, this didn't seem, this did not seem unlikely, right? I mean, this didn't see, it was, I don't know how to exactly had to phrase this without saying like without

sounding like overly partisan but I don't know that it's necessarily just go for it I think I don't know that it's necessarily an insult to the president to say if he did not tell Cohen what to say in front

of Congress it was only because he I mean it was only incidental right I mean it's I find it hard to believe he didn't give him some sort of coaching you know and I mean unless they just hadn't seen each other for some great long period of time which might be the case.

I don't know. I mean, it's, I think that, I think that it's going to be, you know, it's going to be interesting to sort of see what comes out of this. Now, there's, there have been some theories floated about how the story, you know, about what the, where the story was actually sourced from. And I, and I, I'm not sure how much of that really matters right now. I mean, what's, what is your take on, on, you know, the sourcing and the veracity? And then also, I guess, you know, we should talk about the fact that it's not just that other major outlets weren't able to to back this up.

But there was, you know, Ronan Farrow was out there early on saying, implying that he actually got the same tip, but he couldn't get the corroboration or whatever else. Yeah. He almost put it that he didn't run it, right? That was the, that was the uh-oh tweet to me, even more than the special counsel's office was Ronan Farrow saying I was in that zone, but I didn't run this. Yeah. Well, that could have been as simple as I had one source, but not two. Yeah. I mean, he just, he, he seemed to, he seemed to, he seemed to, whatever. He seemed to write it that somebody was warning, somebody that he put enough credence in was, was warning him off of it. Or, you know, was saying this, don't, don't go there now.

There is nothing, uh, you know, less trustworthy than a journalist who didn't get a scoop, right? Uh, and that's, you know, and, and shitting all over someone else's reporting after the fact, or in Ronan's case, you know, politely disputing it is a great age-old tradition in journalism, because this is when the shot in Florida comes out, right? Everyone's a hero, except when journalists actually go to bars and then they talk about their competition, like they're the worst people on earth. So I don't know how much stock to put on that, but that was the first dollar-in-mom for me. I, you know, actually, I think the most interesting thing we can say at this point was kind of

the procedural part of it of journalism, because then all this, this is what happens, right? is all the sausage making then comes out. Which was, so one thing that came out was this email that Jason Leopold, one of the reporters sent to Peter Carr, who is the spokesman for the special counsel on Thursday afternoon, right? This is a couple of hours before the story runs. He says, Peter, hope all as well. Anthony and I have a story coming, stating that Michael Cohen was directed by President Trump to lie to Congress about his negotiations related to the Trump-Moscow project. assume no comment from you, but just wanted to check back.

Anthony Cormier and then Ben Smith were on CNN's Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter, and this is what they said about that email. Mr. Carr is a lovely spokesperson. We know him. We've dealt with him in the past in numbers of occasions. It has never been my experience to get any kind of signal, wave off, go ahead from the special counsel's office through that spokesperson. It's not the first time we've dealt with them.

It certainly probably will not be the last. And then you should realize he's speaking as one of the reporters who's broken. Yeah. And there hasn't been a lot of breaks out of the special counsel's investigation. And we have been on the outside breaking these huge stories that have subsequently been confirmed in the black letter of court filings. That's absolutely true. What is interesting about that email is that it doesn't say, it says Michael Cohen is directed by President Trump to lie to Congress, right? What it doesn't say is that Michael Cohen told Robert Mueller about that.

And these specific things are going to be reported. in this BuzzFeed article, right? Is that Michael Cohen told Robert Mueller about that and that Robert Mueller got corroboration of that story through various documents in interview with Cohen, et cetera, et cetera, right? So Stelter came out on his show and criticized the email saying it just seems very casual to me if you're about to report this giant story. And not, again, not just that Trump directed Cohen to lie, but that Robert Mueller, which is kind of like one of those, it's going to turn into he said he said no matter what, right? But that Robert Mueller knows this, that, you know, there is something discoverable here, right? Then what happened was that this one of these great, weird, passive aggressive moments in journalism is Carr did, in fact, refuse to comment on it. But he sent a clip of Cohen's testimony or Cohen, excuse me, Cohen's plea hearing back to the reporter.

And it was one of these statements that, in which Cohen did not say in the statement that Trump, had explicitly directed him to lie, as the Washington Post piece later put it, right? Right. But apparently he expected the reporter to read this and understand that he was kind of passively warning him off the story or directing him off the story, at which point the reporter Jason Leopold writes back and says,

I am not reading into what you sent and have interpreted it as an FYI, to which car responds, correct, just an FYI. Now, if you're a little confused right now, please be confused because this is just one of those passive moments where no one is just coming out and saying hey don't write that or by the way here is explicitly what I am about to report do you have any comment on that or is

this right or do you want to try to tell me this is absolutely wrong right and it just seems like and then now there are all these theories that the reporters are the BuzzFeed reporters are right but they're just but the the special counsel's office is making a very specific and partial push, you know, offering partial pushback to what they wrote. Right. But it does seem that a lot of this could have been avoided had either party been more explicit in what they were talking about before publication.

Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's right. As Ben Smith is continuing to ask the special counsel's office to clarify what they're taking objection to, it does sort of just underscore that. like we're all sort of talking past each other and this is not you know this is not a light conversation you know this isn't yeah and he's right to push back on that i just thought when stelter asked him specifically about the wording of that request to the special counsel's office

his response was these guys have broken a lot of scoops and leopold's co-author's response was this guy never gives us any information anyway so we weren't expecting any kind of guidance from him on this story, both of which are probably true. Yeah. But they don't exactly answer the question here. Is that, you know, if he, he didn't exactly get a chance to deny a very specific allegation. So it seems, from anyway, from the emails we've seen. Right.

This is where we are. I mean, this is the kind of stuff we can argue about. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I mean, going back to the sort of zoom out, I mean, the BuzzFeed's argument was, I mean, argument, BuzzFeed's story was certainly, certainly the Mueller team seems to be the only people who are actually pushing back on this story, right? I mean, at least in their public statement, Cohen's lawyer elided the question in a way that in a very, you know, a very juicy sidestep, right? I mean, in a way as if to imply that like we're not

going to answer this because all this will come out in due time, but it's probably true. Correct. Right. Nobody from the White House took any exception of this except for some just like folksy statement by Rudy Giuliani who can't seem to say anything true anymore. Late in the day, he finally came out and seemingly specifically pushed back on this idea. But they spent the day issuing non-denial denials, yes.

Yeah. I mean, which is just wild, right? I mean, which either means that they know it to be true or maybe even worse, they just all assumed it to be true. They're just wildly disorganized. I'm actually not sure what. I mean, it's just who knows in their case.

Yeah, so I mean, but like I said, if you want to assume that, you know, this BuzzFeed story is complete bunk, you have all the ammunition you need to do so. I will say this in partial defense of BuzzFeed. There was a Jim Rutenberg column in New York Times today, which sort of implied that this is, it didn't exactly say it, but it quoted Bob Woodward, sort of implying that this is an internet problem, a problem of internet journalism. Woodward says, I say to you on the record, I am thankful I don't have to cover this story on a daily basis, meaning Trump and Russia. The hydraulic pressure in the system is just so great. The impatience of the internet, give it to us immediately, drive so much. It's hard to sort something like this out. And then also, you know, there's the mandatory reference to BuzzFeed's listicles, which they run in tandem with their political journalism. This just strikes me as an old journalism standoff. There's just, there's nothing internety about this at all. These guys, seemingly reported a story in a very deliberate and old-fashioned way. We are having, as I said, the whole, do you care to comment on this thing? Could have happened at any point in history. It's not abnormal for them to be putting that, you know, sending that out hours before

the story published. People do that all the time or minutes before a story is published. And the pushback from the special counsel's office also seems very normal. It's just, I mean, the stakes are obviously incredibly high. the charge is incredibly big and the potential impact on BuzzFeed is incredibly big, whether this all holds together or not and on the individual reporters. But this just seems like an regular journalism thing to me. This seems to have nothing to do with the internet,

nothing to do with BuzzFeed's position in anything. This could just as easily be a newspaper, old-fashioned newspaper in the same position. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, it's funny that the joke about Listicles was also the, the Saturday Night Live take from Weekend Update. I mean, it's an obvious joke to make, and I think that, you know, as two people who work for, you know, an online magazine, it's easy to be sympathetic to BuzzFeed's journalistic cause, right?

I mean, it's, you know, there's, we, you, I mean, I remember you in the various places you've worked in the past, trying, you know, having moments where you had to insist upon the legitimacy of whatever outlet you were writing for to whoever you were trying to get an interview with. You know, I mean, it's not, it hasn't always been an easy case. And especially for someone like BuzzFeed who made their name, it's not just explaining what the website is, is explaining that it's explicitly not what you think the website is, you know? Yeah. Insisting on the legitimacy, it's usually just in the email. You say, a reporter with a ringer comma, a sports website in Los Angeles. Yeah, but it's, I mean, but, you know, to, I mean, for BuzzFeed, that is sort of, that, that, that, that perception is sort of baked in, you know, and so you have to work, I mean, I'm not saying they didn't, but you do, you do have to kind of like, bear in mind that you're going to have to work doubly hard, you know, to make sure that you get, you get everything right, you know, because, because they dismiss it, because people will be dismissive immediately if there's any implication that you're less than correct.

Right. They just go to the old BuzzFeed jokes. By the way, can we confer a special award on Jeffrey Tubin? We talk about people maybe jumping the gun to say impeach Trump. It's over the Trump presidency. You know, if true, the Trump presidency is toast kind of thing. Can we give a special award to Jeffrey Tubin? And this is the actual Jeffrey Tubin to people who listened to last week's pot.

Not the guy on CNN who kind of looks like Jeffrey Tubin, but he's also on the air all the time. You know what I'm talking about David. Anyway, Jeffrey Tubin goes on CNN Friday after the special counsel's statement, and he says this. I just think this is a bad day for us. And, you know, there's no, I mean, I don't know, Ryan, you seem to disagree a little bit. But I just think, you know, it reinforces every bad stereotype about the news media. Can we, can we just wait a little bit on that? Can we just wait until if, if and when the story is false to bail on a fellow journalist?

We don't, he doesn't know that this is wrong. Yeah. I mean, government pushback and this is a bad day for journalism? Really? I mean, that just feels. That felt awfully soon to make a big statement. We've cataloged a bunch of his CNN statements on here, but that felt like that felt like jumping out of the window pretty fast.

Yeah, I mean, certainly if you took it to him in the abstract, he would disagree with the notion that, like, you need to preemptively make sure that none of your, that none of the subjects that you discuss in your piece are going to publicly take exception to the piece after publication, or else you should just never publish it. Right. I mean, that's happening to him all the time, surely, in his career. Absolutely, yeah. I don't know. By the way, I also loved all the people who went to Twitter or elsewhere to remind us that there had been pushed back to Woodward and Bernstein's scoop about Hugh Sloan testimony of the grand jury during Watergate. Yeah, we all saw all the president's men. So we've all seen that. So that's like one of those like Shakespeare or de Tocqueville. You don't need it quoted anymore. We're all good. We got it. So thank you. Thank you for, thank you for, for citing.

everyone's favorite journalism movie and book. We're all, we all, we know those references. Thank you very much. No need for the reminder. All right, David, it's time of 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. I got a ton during yesterday's incredibly exciting conference championship game.

One about Tony Romo's predictive powers. If Tony Romo ever tells you tomorrow is your last day on earth, you best get your affairs in order. our pal Isaac Chipp sent that along. Another one that had a good run. What if they tie? This was an overtime, I guess, the second game. Joey Canadae since that ends,

says that was probably a two-minute overwork joke on Twitter. There was a big ball don't lie moment, which Tony Romo says, did you hear that? There's this phrase in the NBA, The ball doesn't lie. That was one of my favorite great

Romo quotes of the weekend. Also is Casey. March down the field for the game-tying field goal at the end of regulation yesterday. It was an award Twitter joke to say, I smell OT if Belichick doesn't have Gromk playing deep safety. Thanks to Cupa Fantasy for that one. In other sports news, Jordan Brunel points us to the Golden State Warriors, Boogie Cousins, Thanos memes. That was a thing. Yes.

Very funny. I don't know how to characterize it other than that, but that was a big deal. But David, did you see my favorite news of the week of last. week, Chris Hansen of To Catch a Predator Entrapment Fame was arrested for writing $13,000 worth of bad checks. Kind of an interesting mugshot, by the way, for Chris Hansen. He kind of looked like the guy, you know, in the half-zip that you see really early in the morning at a Starbucks or maybe your favorite team's fired offensive coordinator.

That's those are the two images that came to my, I'm not sure which. Anyway, it was an overworked Twitter joke to say Chris Hansen needs to have a seat. and think about his finances. Thanks to the ringer's own Alan Siegel for that. All right, you want to talk about some Tony Romo? Yes, please. And some blown calls. All right, here's this.

Even better, yeah. Here's a scenario. Fourth quarter of the NFC championship game yesterday. This is a comparatively happy and easy press story to talk about, right? Merely a blown call that affects the team's ability to go to the Super Bowl. Instead of some journalism mud war that BuzzFeed and the special counsel's all's Friday. Anyway, 2020 is a score. As Saints are driving for the go-ahead,

field goal and trying to milk the clock to keep the ball away from the Rams. Third and ten, Rams cornerback, Nikkel Roby Coleman, and everyone who has heard of that guy before that play, raise your hand, please. I see no hands in the audience. Runs into Saints wide receiver Tommy Lee Lewis and now listen to the replay as it was called by Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. There's no flag right on the Saints sideline. Well, if Nekyll Roby Coleman plays the ball, it's an interception.

It's probably going the other way with it. I mean, the ball's on the other side of Roby. Aitman's kind of doing the analysis on there if it had been a penalty, but in fact, it was not a penalty. The Saints went on to lose in overtime. I think there's a blown call story here, which is getting a great work at on sports radio, but there's also kind of a,

this is the media age we live in story here, between that and the incredible slow-mo of the ball maybe or maybe not touching Julian Edelman's thumb. Oh, yeah. On that punt return. Yeah. just feel, here's my source semi-hot take.

The refs haven't gotten bad. TV has just gotten good. And instant replay has gotten incredibly good. And Twitter has gotten really good at getting angry people all together at the same time. So when it feels like

refereeing is just hit this NADIR in the NFL, I'm not sure that that's true. And I'm not really sure that's based on anything other than just we have a better vehicle to see the ref screwing up and a better vehicle to all get mad together.

What do you think? Yeah, I think that's true. I don't know, I mean, certainly that, I mean, you could make that a more broad argument, right? I mean, the internet has just given us a place to complain together. Yes.

And to sort of make it feel like we're all part of, the confirmation bias of like being in a chat room with 30 people who agree something is terrible, I mean, it's easy to make yourself feel like the entire world has gone insane. right? I mean, if you just have your same grievances reinforced over and over again. But in this case, I think, you know, we had two, the two, these two instances, I think, were neat sort of parallels because I think the Edelman call was actually like, and this is more about the technology, I mean,

more about the referees, the refereeing technology, the instant replay than about the, you know, the, you know, Twitter reaction. But the Edelman call was like the great. vindication, I feel like, of all of this instant replay nonsense we've been living through for a decade or however long it's been. Because that, you know, with the benefit of slow motion cameras at multiple angles, we were able to see that this like, you know, the ball that came within a, you know, millimeter of his arm did not in fact touch him. And, and then, you know, the Saints, you know, the blown call in the Saints game, I think goes to exactly what you were saying. I mean, just like a really obvious call that was missed, a really obvious miss call, that was, it's not just the problem.

It's not just the error in the referee's judgment. It's an error in the refereeing system that they couldn't review that, right? I mean, whatever, that they said the ball was tipped. Who knows when that decision was made, and that's why it wasn't called. But also because it was a helmet-the-helmet hit, and we've been conditioned for the past five years or longer to see that as, you know, one of the great evils of the sport. Totally. And so, yeah, I just think it was a perfect storm of just sort of madness on that call.

And, you know, there's very few times, I mean, you know, there's, you often hear about the referees sort of, you know, not wanting to make any call in the closing moments of a game that's going to affect the outcome, you know, you just kind of got to let them play. This was the, this was the proof where that's, I mean, the instance where that was exactly the opposite

of what you need to do because the absence of a call, I mean literally change the outcome of the game and you know it's not that frequent that as many blown calls as long as refereeing has been bad you're right it has been or been in the same place that it's in now and as long as many blown calls as we've seen in our lifetimes you know it's a special moment when a blown call actually prevents a team from going to the Super Bowl

it's pretty spectacular no question and that's the kind of thing that that makes and it shouldn't happen it shouldn't happen then and it's the kind of thing that makes change. I just wonder if it's just if the whole thing is like, I mean, you could look at that Edelman play and if we're convinced it didn't touch his thumb

and I don't think it did that the miracle of replay and the miracle of the system worked perfectly, right? Yeah. Because that would have been impossible to overturn in the old days. And it would have just been so hard to see. No, I think there would have been a riot

if it had been overturned in the old days, right? I mean, it was just, it was so, I mean, it seemed on the first through fifth, watches, it seems so clear that it must have, that it brushed up against him, right? I mean, there's no way without slow motion that you would even have, that any referee, regardless of his level of conviction, would have had the balls to overturn it. It just wouldn't have happened. Yeah. I just think it's so fun, because I've heard that this year, including from immediate family, that the referees have never been worse in the NFL than they have this year. And, you know,

when you make spectacular mistakes, that happens and that you leave yourself vulnerable to that. but I just wonder if that's true. And I just, again, I just wonder, I don't know what that's based on. And I just sort of wonder if that's not one of these things that we just say because it's, you know, because again, it's just so easy to know if the referees are bad. By the way, can I tell how much I love this?

The reporters got a pool interview with Bill Venevich, who was the head referee last night. Right, right. It lasted three questions. Jason and Gay last week in your absence, David and I talked about a little about one of our favorite subjects, which is how sports writing and political writing are alike. Yes. Amy Just of the New Orleans Times-Picayune asked, what was the reason there was no penalty flag on the play?

And Bill Venevich, the referee says it was a judgment call by the covering official. I personally have not seen the play. That was the moment that political writing and political writing and sports writing came together. Because how many times we heard Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan say, you know, I haven't seen, I'd love to comment. I just unfortunately have not seen Trump's tweet. You know, I just couldn't possibly offer a comment because I have not seen what. the president said, and here it's the person saying, I didn't see the play. You were on the field. This is the biggest story in sports. And also I saw Robert Klimko, I think our very own Kevin

Clark also suggested this. Could the reporter not pull out her phone and just show him the play right there? I mean, we're talking about the miracles of technology, right? Yeah. Can't we just call the bluff on that and be like, here is the play. I would like to show you the play right now. And you can tell me about that. Yeah. Well, you know, if you take, if you take him at his word, just like with Paul Ryan reacting, you know, non-reactions as Trump tweets, then you have to believe in this reality in which Paul Ryan has, like, rushed out of his office as someone was showing him the tweet so he could get in front of a camera before he had to read it, right? And in this, in this situation, it's a similar thing,

or the, you know, whoever was running PR that night was like, are there any referees who have not seen the play because you're the one we'd like to send out in front of the media right now? At that point, if you're interviewing this guy, yeah, you could whip out your phone and show him, or you could just be like, well, I feel sorry for this dude who's clearly been just put in front of the firing squad, despite the fact that he hasn't actually seen the, specifically because he hasn't seen the play, I guess. I don't know. It's just, it's nuts. It's nuts.

And then subsequently, there was, and again, I don't know if this is specifically a parallel to political reporting, but this is definitely a level of NFL reporting that, you know, did not exist in years past. we got the news that the NFL would be publicly acknowledging that it was a bad call. And then that was walked back at some point, all before any sort of public statement was made, that they had changed their mind and would not be acknowledging that it was a blown call. But they told Sean Payton. Right. The NFL told Sean Payton have blown the call.

And he was able to get in front of a camera and say that. And then that clip went out on Twitter. Trust rating, you know, just getting off the phone with the league office. they blew the call and there are a lot of opportunities though but that call puts it first in 10 we're on an e3 plays and it's a game-changing call so we know everything and and also by the way one of my favorite moments is when they were able to talk to nekel roby coleman and he said yeah that was PI like the past interference like he he was all in the other by the way incredible meta media moment of this peter king in his column on it on uh in

NBC this morning says that Al Riveron, who is the guy who was ahead of the officials, he got emails saying that the NFL might dump him, that this is it, like after the whole year and after this particular call, he may lose his job. And one of Peter King's suggestions was that the NFL go get Dean Blandino, the former head of officials from Fox, to come back and be the new head refs. So think of how this works. You leave NFL refereeing. You go to Fox and with these super slow motion replays show how

bad the current NFL referees are. They fire that guy and put you back in the job. I mean, that's kind of an amazing trick, isn't it? I mean, your whole job is essentially to show how badly the referees are doing, and then you get to go run them after you've done that job so effective. I love that. That's amazing to me. I do think, by the way, we always talk about negative NFL news. Two kinds, right? There's bad NFL news that's going to get people to stop watching the NFL, and then there's bad NFL news that just makes us talk about the NFL for another 48 hours, 72 hours.

This is number two. Is it not? This is not going to be a crisis. I mean, maybe they'll change the rule, but this is not going to be a good. This is just one of those things that makes people like the NFL even more. Oh, sure.

I mean, like, you know, Stephen A. Smith did not have to dig for material the next morning. You know, I mean, it was not, this was a, this is like the platonic ideal of a morning after sports argument. Or sports rant. It doesn't, it's not even an argument, I guess. But, I mean, it's, it's, it's, I got to imagine the NFL wishes the call had gone correctly, but this is not, you know, they're not unhappy that we're all talking about it.

A couple of the notes from the, uh, an amazing, really an amazing Sunday of action. The call aside, those are two like incredibly fun games to watch. Oh, yeah. Um, one was the moment in the early game, Saints Rams, where Johnny Hecker was punting to Tommy Lee Lewis. Now, did that sound to you like a football game from 2019 or a hair metal show? from 1986. Johnny Hecker and Tommy Lee Lewis. Yes. Tommy Lee was one word. It was kind of amazing.

Tommy Lee Lewis plays the guitar left-handed. Most people don't. He had to change the strings when he was a kid to reverse order to play correctly. Tom Brady's smirking Instagram post with Gronk after the game. Yes. Incredible.

I'm not a Patriot today. I'm not a Tom Brady fan. I thought that was just absolutely incredible. And I like it. I just would rather we smirk in public than smirk privately. Let's just go ahead and do it. And then there's Tony Romo, David,

who was as wizardly as he's ever been last night. The last Pat's drive in regulation and then the drive and the game winning drive in OT, he was calling the plays. He was saying if Gronks, you know, in here toward the line, he's going to have to stay in a chip and Brady's going to hit Edelman, Julian Edelman, over the middle.

And then it would happen. And it kept happening. I kept hearing, seeing on Twitter that he's the best, analyst ever. And I am official tap the brakes guy on any such proclamations. And not because I hate Tony Rome, just because I feel a lot of that's performative. And, you know, I actually think about this question sometimes in my, in my, in my, in my, in my quiet moments. But last night was pretty amazing. You know, I'm not sure there's ever been on anyone on sports television, on any kind of sports television better than John Madden ever. Sure. At everything. But that was pretty incredible.

and I've never seen anything like that in my life. I really have. Yeah. Yeah. It felt a little bit like, like, you know, I could see Tom Brady and Tony Romo sort of mirroring each other a little bit during the game. They both sort of seem to have a, to sort of have a lull during the second half of the season, but they were just saving it for the playoffs, I guess, you know? I mean, Tony Romo, and we've talked about Tony Romo before,

and, you know, just because his, you know, he came out, he started, his announcing career, you know, with the course of Hosanna's behind him. Everybody thought he was the greatest thing ever. And then this season has been a little bit of a little bit of a downturn as far as public perception goes for him. That's just the nature of the beast. But my goodness, he was on. And the way that people were reacting to it in real time, you know, made it even better.

It was pretty incredible. I will say the one difference or the one thing that separates a guy like Madden from a guy like Tony Romo is that Madden was an entertainer. Yeah. beyond the football stuff. Tony Romo is not really funny. He is filled with joy and enthusiasm. He makes you want to watch the game

because he is so watching it with such childlike wonder, which is a quality John Madden had. But John Madden was actually just funny beyond the game. And if the game was a real stinker, John Madden could just start riffing. Yeah. And could be incredibly entertaining and make a terrible game watchable. I'm not sure Tony Romo has that.

year yet, but he might. But I think you almost want Tony Romo for a great game. And last night, you know, with an incredible fourth quarter scoring output, OT, all that stuff. That to me is when you want Tony Romo. Again, at this point. I will, I agree with you. And I think it's, you know, it's a little bit overdone to call the great commentators storytellers, you know, I mean, because it's not like they're just creating the narratives of the game out of, you know, from whole cloth or whatever, but there is a degree to which Romo is, you know, kind of the best in, best in the show at telling you, like, precisely what's happening and making that entertaining and not, but, but not exact, but not, you know, creating, you know, creating narrative or, or, or kind of taking it on a,

on a, on a more whimsical level, you're right, like Madden or could. Yeah, I think Jim Nance is the story, the self-styled storyteller in that booth. I think that's right. He wants to be that guy. All right, David, topic number three, Adam Moss. On Wednesday, the New York Times is Michael Grinbaum reported that Moss, the 61-year-old editor of New York Magazine, is stepping down after 15 years at the helm. His run at New York was notable for lots and lots of journalism awards, covers of Elliot Spitzer and Bernie Madoff and Bill Cosby's victims. Covers that are, by the way, way, way better than the New Yorker's topical covers. Someone should say that.

We should just say that, right? Oh, yeah. Much better. he left he told his staff in a note because magazine editors ought to have term limits. He also talked to Grinbaum about being older than his staff and his readers, perhaps feeling like his moment being an editor past. We've also talked on the show about the rumors that New York was for sale or potentially the future of New York was uncertain. And I think though everyone says Moss leaving is not about this,

I think it's safe to say that at some level in some way it is about this or at least about the magazine business not being the magazine business anymore, right? Because I think if it, we're going to talk about him Adam Austin, the internet in a second, but I just think like he does feel

to me, it's Anna Wintour is now the last one, right? That feels fully of that era of the swashbuckling big time magazine editor type who's walking the earth, right? I mean, who else? No offense to Jay

Silverstein or anybody else out there who are really, really good magazine editors, but who comes from that 90s era when that was such a huge job? And when those people had such, oh, you know, outsized power and influence, is there anybody else on the earth, again, outside of Winterer, who really is of that group? I mean, outside of Winter and Bill Simmons, I think, is what you meant to say. You're talking about print magazines here. Okay, just print. Sorry, sorry. I just wanted to make that clear. All of our bosses here are in the pantheon, as it were.

Yeah, no, there's nobody else. I mean, it's, and I think it's just a product of, you know, the age. It's not, it would be, I mean, listen, I come from the world of book publishing and the same thing happened about, you know, a decade or two earlier in that, in that world. With the guy running the house or the great editor, that kind of thing? Yeah, I mean, there's like sunny meta's still around, but there's not that many from that era of the people who were just, you know, just, you know, parting at the Odeon in the 80s and now and publishing the, you know, front page New York Time book review books, you know,

during their work days. And, you know, there's a lot of reasons why that changes. I think that, you know, certainly the sorts of companies that are, or the varieties of ownership of these media companies has changed a great deal. And that has shifted, you know, the considerations as far as profitability and everything else. And certainly just profitability has changed. I mean, the way that these kind of the way that they make money, the necessity of print magazines in the modern era. Yep. That's a big thing.

Obviously there's a, there's a, there's a, we talked about this before, um, but there's the, the brass tax part of it, which is all of these great editors who we've, you know, who have been around forever are making incredible salaries based on their, you know, greatest moment of, of sales and acclaim and presumably have been getting like significant raises in the intervening period. even as sales, you know, sales trend downward. But then, you know, there's also just, it's a different era now, you know,

and you, and my, you know, if Greg and Carter came along today, he would probably be, you know, hosting a variety show on HBO or something before he, it would, it would be Andy Cohen or something like that. Yeah, I mean, he would, listen, I mean, they were, I don't think that he would, he wouldn't find his final calling behind a desk, you know, in the, in the, in the, in the,

NASPelt. And by the way, I want nowhere implicit in my argument is they don't make them like they used to. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying a period of time has passed or is passing from this earth. It's not a bad thing. It's just different and it's cool. It was a cool period of American life, by the way.

Oh, God, yes. I mean, that's what, and we all, you and I and so many of our peers came to New York with those, you know, with that Bright Lights Big City sort of era in our in our minds and, you know, And look what happened. Times immediately were changing. I want to do, I do want to touch on the notion, I mean, that just specifically the idea of New York Magazine kind of being up for sale. That wasn't mentioned a lot. Or at least, you know, or at least it was, you know, pushed way down into the reports about, about Adamos leaving. But the fact that it wasn't, that it wasn't contradicted more directly, I think kind of tells you all you need to know. I mean, the, the, he, it said that he told, you know, he announced that.

that he was departing in September, and the first stories about New York Magazine potentially being for sale were early August. So, you know, if that had been, you know, a germ of, you know, in his head that he might be ready to move on to something else. That must have been a huge contributing factors. I think so. I mean, without knowing, I just, it seems like this is the time.

Well, if not you, if not you would stick around specifically because of that, right? I mean, you would say, well, I'm going to see us through or, you know, what I mean, there's, there's, and without addressing it at all directly, I think, that to me, like I said, tells you what you need to know. Amazing things about Adamostomy or interesting things to me. One is a lot of these other guys, you mentioned Graydon Carter, Anna Winter or Tina Brown, they're most larger than life, right? Personality-wise.

A-a-wise. His aura was almost smaller than life. It was like, you know, he was not a off-the-wall personality. You cannot imagine him hosting a talk show on HBO if he'd been born in a different period in his life. Sure. It was like he poured all of his personality into the book itself instead of carrying on as this rangan tour. I interviewed him with him for a job one time.

And I remember somebody warned me, it's going to be like one of those Socratic seminars like you do in a college philosophy class. Right. And indeed it was. I had drawn up this list of story ideas. And he said, you know, and I mentioned one of them. He said, that's interesting. Now, who would write that story? And I offered some names.

and why would you pick that person to write that story? And I mentioned why I picked that person. He said, now, what would the discovery be in that story? And why would that be interesting? And it was just pulling out of me. You know, he did not tell tales about, you know, editing, you know, Michael Lewis at the New York Times Magazine. He wasn't sloughing off stories. He wasn't trying to impress me at all.

He was just yanking the idea bodily out of me. It was almost like a horror movie, but in a good way. You know, it was just he was pulling. it out. And, you know, I think that was, you know, people who worked for him talked about that a lot. I think he could drive editors and writers nuts by insisting on lots of late in the game changes and edits and striving for a kind of perfection. Yeah. But that was him. And that to me is like, it's, it's amazing. And he's, you know, talked about in this, in this New York Times piece, like he, he can, he, his hobby was the magazine. Like, that was his lot. You know, that was every, you know, that was every, you know,

You know, he woke up thinking about it. He went to bed thinking about it. That's what he liked to do. But it's funny. He was just very, very, very different personality type than a lot of the people we talk about in that role. The other thing I drove up, you know, we've been hearing a lot about coaching trees like in the NFL, the Andy Reed coaching tree and the Bill Belichick coaching tree. Would you like the Adam Moss coaching tree? Yes, please.

I sent a few emails. Here's the list. These are people who worked for Moss and then went on to edit something or edit part of something. Are you ready? David Haskell, new editor of New York Magazine, obviously. Hugo Lingren, Times Magazine. Lauren Kern over at Apple News. Megan Lieberman, formerly of Yahoo News. Gilbert Cruz, our pal, Volture alum, now arts editor at New York Times. Dan Coise over at Slate. David Marchese, New York Times Magazine interviewer. John Homan's, Ariel Kaminer. Amanda Dobbins, our very own. Some of the deepest cuts I got, James Ledbet. who worked with Moss at seven days and then went on to run reuters.com. By the way, and also Jonathan Van Meter from seven days, that's almost too auturi for me, and I'm interested in this stuff. That's like when you meet a Robert Altman fan and they say,

have you seen Secret Honor? Have you seen health? He said, no, I haven't, and I have not read seven days. So I'm sorry. But anyway, that's that. I also think we said this on this podcast before, but he is the only guy from that, you know, pantheon of magazine editors to me who really took the DNA of a magazine and translated it to the web. Yeah.

You know, Graydon Carter didn't do that. Tina Brown didn't do that. Anna Wintour hasn't done that in the way that he did, which is to make a great magazine into a great website. And that was, that's amazing to me. And that's, that's, that was his kind of, you know, final. act and kind of final bit of magic was to was to do that and it's not easy no but um but he really did no i mean i think that um well two things one i mean to to to do more you know armchair psychoanalyzing you have to imagine that the move that new york magazines moved to the paywall had to be just crushing for someone who who achieved that you know who who who almost solely

achieved that, right? I mean, that you would create a website, you would be able to turn a print magazine into an incredibly vital website and then to have that sort of quarantined off all of a sudden. I mean, that seems to be totally, you know, to just kind of tear down everything that you've built up. But, you know, I think that there's also the fact that as much as they were publishing online, as much, you know, kind of important stuff they were publishing online. And then there was also the stuff that they were publishing sort of simultaneously or in conjunction, with the print magazine. It always felt it always felt comfortable on the on the on the on the on the on the, you know, on a web page as it as comfortable as it did in a printed page, which is not a small

thing. And that and that the success of the website never seemed to hurt the the print magazine. I mean, they're what they did go to a, you know, go from a weekly, you know, a weekly magazine to biweekly in 2014, I believe. But, you know, this is at a time when monthly magazines are going bi-monthly or, you know, everybody's, everybody's printing, publishing less and less in the print world. And, I mean, even in its bi-weekly, even in its bi-weekly years, it has been, it's consistently stunning to me the amount of content that that magazine drops off at your doorstep every two weeks, you know, I mean, it's just the highest quality journalism and the smartest front of the book stuff and the, the, the, the, the consistency, um,

And the identity of the magazine, I think, is really, I mean, really the great, I mean, obviously to Moss's, you know, never-ending credit. Here, here. Do we have time for quick notebook dump, David? Yeah, let's do it. We called the segment The Kicker before, and I was informed that the Columbia Journalism Review has a podcast named The Kicker. So, screw that. It's now the notebook dump. Our 2020 update, Kirst and Gillibrand, Democratic Center from New York, was campaigning in Iowa this week.

Mm-hmm. I wrote down that she told the New York, the New York Times described her talking about her love of RVs and her family vacation last summer to see a NASCAR race. Now, you don't think she's trying to appeal to rural voters, do you, David? Somebody tweeted at me and said,

you know, now you pick NASCAR when it's sort of like, you know, lost all its luster, now you pick NASCAR? Yeah. Yeah, wow. Wow, I don't know that NASCAR is the place I would go with that.

But anyway, know. I do like the hierarchy of where you get to announce. Jilla Brand got Colbert. That was big. That was unusual, right? Tulsi Gabbard got the A Van Jones show on CNN that I had never heard of. That one that's didn't know. That's on you if we're not watching Van Jones. I know. I know. I like Van Jones. I just didn't know he had a show. I didn't know. In other 2020 news, I saw this tweet from New York magazines, Josh Barrow, as it were. My main wish for presidential debates. And by the way, I will remind you that presidential debates are starting the summer with the Democrats. I know. It's already here. My main wish for presidential debates is no live audience. The audience disrupts. The candidates pander to it. It eats time and makes the debates less substantive and serious. That's his thing. What do we think about a debate without an audience? I mean, I find it kind of hard to fathom that any network or, I mean, whoever is going to be hosting the debates would have the, guts to actually like dramatically change format, you know, diverge from the, from the expected format. But I, you know, I think that's, I don't disagree with anything that he says. Yeah, what's the point of an audience at a debate? Like, what's the best case scenario?

Yeah. People get to watch the debate in person. I mean, I guess, I guess without a debate, it does have a little bit of a exclusionary feel, right? I mean, it doesn't change who's debating up on stage, but, you know, performing to a live audience does have a degree of difficulty. It's not that they don't go out and give speeches all the time,

but a potentially adversarial audience is, you know, is something to contend with, I guess. Like people, like you're at a comedy club or something. Yeah, exactly. You got to be willing to get heckled, man. If there's no audience, I feel it'll be like those local political debates you sometimes catch on C-SPAN.

You know, it's like, you know, it's in this kind of airless TV affiliate studio. Yeah. I think I would. would like that. Yeah. Maybe they should just do a very limited audience. Just like some names get drawn out of a hat and the, and it's like there's just like three people in the room and the politicians have to go, have to have to really specifically appeal to each person, just find out things about them and just sort of interviewing them and it's like, what can I do for you?

Yes, it's more of a one on one. It's more of a transactional sort of, you know, this is how we're going to, you know, let me, let me appeal to you average Mike out there. That seems like what Carson Gillibrand Gillibrand was trying to do in Iowa so I think she'd be

really good at that. Do you like NASCAR? Do you like RVs? Because I do like NASCAR.

I happen to like NASCAR, yes. I like RVs quite a lot. I've got a Winnebago right in the back. All right,

David, that's the press box for this week. Chris Alameda helps us with research. Jim Cunningham is our producer. David Schumaker is back.

And so am I next week from the Super Bowl, by the way. At least I'll be. Yeah. More hot takes on the media.

See you then. See you later, man. Enough to catch a predator in trapment fame. All right, you want to talk about the swashbuckling, big time? Tony Romo? Yes, please. I do want to touch on the notion, I mean, just specifically the idea of... Can we just wait a little bit on that?

We talked about this before, but there's the... And why would that be interesting? If Tony Romo ever tells you tomorrow is your last day on Earth... Yes, please. Incredible. Yeah. Well, there's nothing internet-y about this at all. That felt like jumping out out of the window pretty fast.

Yeah, I mean, certainly if you took it to him in the abstract. Oh, yeah, totally. It is so fun.