The Press Box - The College Football Media Machine, Jezebel Resurrected, and More on SI and AI

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Bryan and David start the show by discussing George Santos being kicked out of Congress and the gift he was to political reports. (00:30) Then, in weekend audio, they discuss the College Football Playoff selection and ESPN’s Booger McFarland’s reaction to Florida State missing the tournament despite being undefeated (7:57). Next, they discuss the scuffle on the sidelines where Chad Greenlaw suplexed Eagles security guard Dom DiSandro. Later, they revisit Sports Illustrated AI reporter (30:49). 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

Learn more about the albums you love with Dissect, a music analysis podcast hosted by me, Cole Kushna, a lifelong musician. Each season of Dysk dives deep into one album, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. We've covered albums by Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the creator, Frank Ocean, just to name a few, and our brand new season just launched all about Radiohead's 2007 masterpiece in rainbows. Listen to Dissect on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, because a great art deserves more than a swipe. David? Yes. We've got some news from Washington, D.C.

We won't have George Santos to aggregate around anymore. New York representative has been expelled by Congress. Now, I don't want us to fall prey to the Darren Ravel. This is tremendous content thing. But how much of a gift to political reporters was George Santos? Well, I mean, as far as an insignificant congressman, he was, you know, he was the gift that kept on giving and, and his, yeah, I mean, listen, you could have fun with them and he was also a functional window into the total brokenness of our national government, right? Someone could be that much of a crook. And then not only be in a position where the mechanisms of government making it possible for,

nearly impossible to get rid of him, but also just the, the sort of metaphorical mechanisms of our, of our current politics make it so likely distasteful to, for his own party to want to do anything with him. It's, it's just a, what a bizarre situation. And of course, he's just the craziest character you could possibly put in that seat. So, um, it's kind of unbelievable. So he's effectively the outlier who was also the perfect character for our political moment. Yeah. Yeah. It was like being there, that movie and also that Jersey Kazinsky novel of the same name.

It was like being there without like the, you know, ideological uplift, right? It was just like the real version of it, just an completely empty, just, just mean, spirited, shallow person at the heart of it all. Someone totally in it for themselves, which I guess is, you know, all you can really say about our current political system. We know a bit about the scandals that went into the George Santos era, but Politico did us all a service by just listing the moments that now may have been forgotten from his time in Congress.

I'll give you a few of these. Respond however you want. This is March 30th. George Santos claims he was oblivious. to the existence of only fans until quote about three weeks ago. The November House Ethics Report showed that Santos spent campaign money

on the platform in the months before his comments. That's March. This was October, October 13th, and I saw this on Twitter at the time and I have never forgotten it. George Santos walks out of Representative Tim Burch's office holding an unidentified

baby like an actual baby. When asked if it was his baby, he replies, quote, not yet. Right. Not yet. And this is November 24th. George Santos describes himself as the Republican It Girl and quote, the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress. Wow. That's some pretty impressive stuff. Mitch McConnell was not offering up any quotes like that, just to be clear. What was the more recent one where he was just like storming through the walls of the halls of Congress, just saying, if he was just yelling about somebody who tried to talk to him in a certain way, you remember that one? Kind of runs together for me, but sure, vaguely. What about the time he was walking through the airport, just staring at the

ceiling saying, Hercules, Hercules. Oh, wait, that was Hulk Hogan when you were a kid. Yeah, that was Hulk Hogan, actually. But close. You could have believed that with George Santos. one of the funny things about this is if you remember the initial George Santos media criticism news cycle, it was blaming the media for not vetting him during the 2022 Congressional. Oh, yeah, people were mad that he had even gotten to the point of being elected because no one had really done the due diligence, yeah.

Where was the New York Times? It was a classic, why isn't the media covering that happened to be with some very notable exceptions, actually true? Yeah. but then because the media didn't adequately vet him, he gets elected and becomes one of the great content gifts the political media has ever gotten. Also, this is true.

He has joined cameo. We are told as one of his first gigs after Congress. Right. I mean, it's sad and, well, insert whatever word you want here. And again, it's also perfect. Right. Yeah, no, but it's emblematic of the whole of our whole system that at some point he had, presumably he pivoted and from, and presumably very quickly from trying to hold onto my seat

to trying to model the exit strategy, right? Trying to pivot to the next thing and making sure that my exit leads me there. Cameo is a little bit surprising. Well, it doesn't rule out anything else. No, I guess it can. You can still write a substack. right, still found a

sports and pop culture website if he wants to do that. You can still run for president, right? Well, maybe a little late

for that. Coming up on today's pod, weekend audio on the college football playoff committee, a Santos-like

content machine in and of itself, and a security guy that nearly became a Philadelphia icon. Plus some more thoughts on SI and AI.

Jezebel has been resurrected and a biblical question for David about something other than Mary Magdalain. All that, much more on the press box, a part of the ringer,

podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and a new member of the press box team. Producer Brian Waters is here. Now, David, if you look in the background of Brian Waters' Riverside slash Zoom camera, you see replica wrestling title belts. Do you think he would loan us one

when we do our next think piece championship belt segment? I bet he would. We should get in touch with WWE. See if they'll just, you know, they send those things out to the Big 12. I mean, I think we're certainly the Big 12 tier of, of hype that could help them out, right?

Let's go for it. You think we could get a presentation like The Undertaker made to Quinn Ewers, but we're giving it to a reporter who just wrote the next why is politics like professional wrestling piece? Yeah. Maybe, yeah, who've been,

who've been the good, have they been good politician wrestlers or there's, there's not been any journalist wrestlers over the years. Not yet. Not yet. Genius was a poet.

Right. Do you think the editorial writer would hold the think piece championship belt on his shoulder when he came to the office every day? Do you think he'd drag it behind him like some of the giants in wrestling history? See, I can keep up with you guys.

All right, Dan, let's do weekend audio. Dateline Bristol, Connecticut. ESPN was doing its college football playoff selection show for hours and hours on Sunday morning. For those who are not into college football, Friday and Saturday, that's when we played all the big conference championship games. And then Sunday, we reconvene for one of these things that is sort of like the old

basketball selection show to pick four teams for the playoff. Now, David, you're a watcher of college football. There's some buy-in. There's some Baylor fandom there, but you are not chest deep. in this like the rest of us are? What do you make of the whole picking the playoff, Michigan? Oh, man. I was following this mostly on Twitter. Not that anything better to do. Obviously, I was on Twitter, but I, but, you know, it was not going to settle down for four hours of selection programming, although I think it's sort of brilliant, right? Just to make this as

excruciating as possible, knowing that the reaction you're going to get is going to be one of excruciating pain from the vast majority of people watching. They're just, it's just water torture and it's sort of brilliant. In ESPN's mild defense, by the way, they did at least put the selections toward the front of the show. Oh, yeah. It was not just so people don't, it's not like three and a half hours and then, okay, now we'll tell you the teams.

That was nice. They let him go up front, but it's just so much programming, right? And it just drags, it drags out the experience and it drags out the conversation. conversation at the end of the day is what's the most excruciated. I'm only watching this from afar, right? I mean, for the most part, but it's every year we have the exact same debate over this, about over the worthiness or lack thereof of the current playoff system. And then it's the loudest voices are generally those who are newly aggrieved. And this, you know, this year there are a couple of teams, but Florida State, obviously, the Florida State fandom

had had kind of an outsized place in it. And, and then there's so everybody's online arguing about how bad broken the system is given, and by the way, the system's changing next year. So your arguments are incredibly more moot than they could possibly be. Next year is going to be 12 teams. So there's just going to be probably even more teams that are, you know, left out in the cold. They, you know, have a reasonable argument for having a playoff system. But they'll just be outweighed, presumably, by the, by the voices of the 12 teams that made it in,

and you know, tell you to sit down and shut up. But they'll just, but every year new teams, new fandoms discover how ridiculous or how, you know, just how the system works. And there's all these voices of reason out there. And I'm not saying that sarcastically, but people who have, mostly people who have come to grips with how silly the system is and a lot of writers and journalists who are, who would have told you two days ago that this system is ridiculous. And they're out there trying to talk everybody off the ledge saying like, this is

system we all bought into. This is the system we've been doing forever. There's nothing new. There's nothing more outrageous this year. But it seems like the more the years go by, the more that those voices of reason just end up screaming louder and louder, and they end up seeming like the ones that are unhinged because they're the only ones who've actually been watching the whole time, right?

It's like the one person who can, who could, who remembers the past is going to be, is being treated like they're the town crier. I'll take that one step further. What if part of the point of all this was to generate anger and rage and talk so that even if you're the voice of reason and you're complaining about the committee and about how the playoff is chosen, you are delivering the good that the playoff committee wanted you to deliver. Yeah. You see what I mean? We want this thing that's going to be get everybody talking, make people mad, make people happy. so if I'm reasonable guy above the fray,

I'm doing what they want. I'm adding to the cacophony. I may be mad at the actual playoff rather than mad at Alabama. But hey, you know, it worked. That's part of what this is. They have to keep it within like the vaguely within the realm of reason though, right? I mean, you could, you could have done a lot of chat. You could have created even more angst and chatter and online attention

if they had like put in you know Colorado State or whatever you know I mean like it's there's a million play but keep it within the realm of of plausibility and then just wait for people to go go crazy I was thinking about this when I was finishing off that oral history of college game day because college football for most of its existence was a regional sport and it's still in many ways even in the age of the super conference is a regional sport but what happened is a happens around 1998 as the BCS comes along and says, okay, we're going to match numbers one and two in the country, which didn't happen on an annual basis before that.

So all of a sudden, a regional sport, which is like, hey, man, I'm a TCU fan, and damn it, I hope we get to the Blue Bonnet Bowl this year. Yeah, exactly. By beating teams that are a couple of hours away from us, becomes a national sport. And what you see with the playoff, and as you point out, the 12th team playoff that's going to kick in next year,

you've a nationalized a regional thing. And not only is there a giant argument featuring people in Tuscaloosa and Tallahassee and Seattle and everywhere else, but there are no great solutions to this at all. And if you looked at Twitter Sunday morning before the teams were picked, you had all those classic arguments you just mentioned. Who's most deserving? Who is the best team?

Yeah. Which team will make the most compelling? TV matchup when matched up with number one Michigan, which I suspect had a lot to do with why Alabama was chosen. Yeah. I mean, again, there's there's very little data to make decisions like that because this is a giant sport with a hundred plus teams. Yeah. In the FBS that are playing all different teams. There's only like two teams that are, you know, have, have an argument to be included that people are listening to. Now, again, the more that you expand the bracket, the more teams there will be. And if those, you know, if it were six teams and Florida and Georgia got

in, there'd still be two or two three other teams that would be complaining then that they were the ones left out. Yeah. ESPN, by the way, tried to get us to six instead of five deserving teams because they sent a correspondent to Georgia. Yeah. There was kind of no way Georgia was getting into the playoff. But, you know, a little more drama, right? Well, they had lost the night before, right? I mean, that's it. College football can be forgiving in strange ways, but that's, you know,

maybe if there had been like a two or three week waiting period, that would have felt a little bit more reasonable. So I'm so glad you said this because I don't like to use the term recency bias because I just learned what it meant a few years ago. But as a media event, it is so funny, like college football is hard to follow. it's hard to watch all these games every week and really get an idea of how these teams are playing. Even the Sickos committee and the kind of non-official members of the Sickos committee that cover college football and just glory in those late West Coast games. Oh, I'm watching our Air Force, right? They're watching

everything, right? That's part of the ethic of being a college football writer now is you watch everything. They can't physically watch everything. Sure. There's just no way. way to do that. But on this one weekend, when it's conference championship games, you can watch everything. So those games become this absolutely crazy and meaningful referendum on an entire season. And to add another part to that, I thought the order of the games was very interesting this year. Washington won on Friday nights. They're in. But guess what? Texas won Saturday morning starting at 9 a.m. Pacific time. And they won. really quickly. They scored 21 points in the first quarter. So they're like, oh, wow. So people

could go, okay, they're one of the top four teams. Next, Alabama played, beat Georgia, controlled much of the game. Ah, they're one of the top 14th. Well, guess when Florida State played? They played Saturday or Saturday night. So all of a sudden, it was almost like the bracket was full. Yeah. And they had to prove retroactively that they were better than the other four teams rather than us saying, which would have been perfectly reasonable, oh, they're 13 and 0. They've got a spot. Texas and Bama have to prove to us that they're better than Florida State. Just because of the timing of the games, it almost like it changed the psychology of the whole selection process, if that makes sense. Yeah. It was a very, very weird thing. Anyway, as you

point out, David, Florida State gets, Florida State got screwed and here is Booger McFarlane reacting on ESPN. The undefeated Power 5 5 champion. Well, I'm going to completely disagree with you. To me, this is a travesty to the sport because we go out there on the field and we play the game. And regardless of whether it looks good at the quarterback position, regardless whether we win with offense, whether we win with defense,

the name of the game is to win. And that's a reason never before has this not been done, winning a Power 5 conference, going undefeated, and not getting into the playoffs. So I understand we want to look at style points and who are we going to get for the best matchups. But that's not what this is about.

It was fascinating, partly because Booger was the only guy there on the ESPN panel who was really, really upset about Florida State not getting in. Everybody else was pretty much okay with Alabama. Yeah. Kirk Herb Street, when he first came on the show before they announced the picks and said, you know, I think Alabama should get the four spot. I was like Alabama's getting the first spot. Yeah. It just felt like from the tone of voice, I don't know if he knew anything or not, but just it felt like at that moment, like, okay. Yeah.

Alabama's going to get the four seed here. Yeah. I mean, it's so, I mean, so Booger's argument is basically like, it's just the undefeated argument, right?

Just the record. That's the entire thing. That's part of it. And he's like, look, they, they lost their quarterback. So they're not as good as they were at other points

during the season, but they went out and won all their games. Like we went 13 and 0. Yeah. What are we supposed to do? And you're telling him because of, the lost quarterback became an incredibly interesting little sub argument, right?

I mean, if it was just like, if you were at an undefeated team and then, you know, everybody on your offensive line caught cholera right before the selection was made and wasn't going to be able to play again, it's just like, well, does that affect your ability to compete? Yeah. I mean, that's meaningful, right? I mean, if we can decide whether or not a loss is meaningful. And I guess that counts.

I mean, it's a very strange thing. The funny thing to me is when people keep saying, I think Booger did it in that clip. But when you're talking about, when it's just about the record, and you're like, how can you be a Power 5 conference school with an undefeated record and not make the playoff? And it's just so inherently funny to me because of the framing of it being Power 5. Like, we're talking about five conferences in four spots, right?

Yes. It's totally conceivable there would be five undefeated teams in the Power 5 conferences. And you would have to make a judgment call at some point. One of those teams is not going to be good enough. Riscilla pointed this on Twitter. They set up the system that way. Yeah.

Five power conferences, four slots. So we were going to leave somebody out every year, undefeated or not. We were going to have to pick four conferences and at least, you know, at most, right? We could do three. Sometimes you have multiple big 10 teams in or SEC teams in. I am interested in this whole idea of picking a college football playoff

based on what makes a great television show. Because sports is a television show, lest we forget. And I believe the selection committee, once you slotted Texas in at number three, he said, okay, we have Michigan on January 1st playing in the Rose Bowl. Afternoon sunshine out here in beautiful Pasadena. It's going to look incredible on TV. Do we want them playing a wounded Florida state team? in a game that could be absolutely excruciating to watch,

or do we want them playing freaking Alabama? Jim Harbaugh versus Nick Sabin. I mean, you know, the sign stealing thing versus the Bama dynasty. I mean, as a college football fan, what game do I want to watch? Of course I want to watch Alabama versus Michigan. Oh, yeah.

Of course, just as a viewer of football, I was so happy that that was the decision. and not Florida State. They want to watch that. And I can't believe the committee, again, which they are playoff bracket filler routers, and they are television programmers. I cannot believe they weren't thinking the same thing.

Oh, they definitely. They're trying to make good tell. The aftermath of all this dude was straight out of a college football message board, and I have been there with the University of Texas. Did I not do that, by the way up front? Did I not confess that I went to the University of Texas in case anybody didn't know?

Congratulations. Brian. I'm extra. Oh, I wasn't taking a victory lap. I just said it's a media podcast day. We want to make sure that, you know, any conflicts of interest are up there right at the top. I've been there when Texas got screwed and what happens is your college football message board becomes as what can we do now thing. Like if the Cowboys got screwed for a bad call, there'd be nothing people would mobilize to do. But since college football is people just picking who plays through the championship, people, people, People are like, here is the number of your U.S. Senator. Call him right now. I'm not kidding. That really happens in college football. And Rick Scott from Florida was getting involved in this. I was joking with one of our pals about when Trump would inevitably get involved in this.

He is involved now. He posts on true social. Florida State was treated very badly by the committee, which is in quotes and uppercase. They became the first Power 5 team to be left out of the college football. football playoffs. Really bad lobbying effort. Dot, dot, dot, let's blame DeSantamonius. So not only did he get involved, he blamed Ron DeSantis for not lobbying effectively enough for Florida State. Well, I guess it's one place to take it. I mean, this is a, this is just gift wrapped, and it is the Christmas season for basically every Republican politician, right?

And Trump is a big tent for small grievances, right? And this is just a, this is a very, significant grievance of the day or of the moment. So we'll, you know, if you take issue with the college football playoff system, Trump can steer that. That's where you just marvel at the way Trump approaches these issues. This school is in the state where Rhonda Santis is governor, but it's, therefore, it is Rhonda Santis's fault that they did not get into the college

football playoff. All right, let me take you to Dateline Philadelphia. Very near you, David. Huge NFC matchup on Sunday afternoon. Eagles versus 49ers, but the story for a time became about Dom Desandro, the Eagle security guy. This was unbelievable. And speaking of gift-wrapped content, you could see Kevin Burkart and Greg Olson on the Fox telecast being like, this is the funniest thing we have ever seen.

And this is so Philly. I mean, just unbelievably Philly. like if Angelo Cotaldi had been, you know, holding for the Eagles field goals during the game, it wouldn't have been as Philly as this was. Oh, yeah. There's a play near the Eagles sidelines that people didn't see it. 49ers linebacker Drake Greenlaw did a wrestling suplex correctly identified by Burkhart, by the way, on the broadcast, kind of more of a side suplex, but definitely a suplex,

which is a personal foul and was called as such. things got a little pushy shovey on the sidelines. Dom, the security guy, put his hands on Dre Greenlaw, flags fly, and here's what happens, starting with the penalty call itself. He was over 57 of San Francisco, who has also been disqualified. They could do that after looking at it, and he has been thrown out. That's enormous. Dom is going to continue to just raise the ladder of local heroes here in Philadelphia.

There might be a statue of them. win this game. Wow. Now it's a heavyweight fight. Wow. Now you, he's going to sell a lot of sweatshirts. He's going to sell a lot of sweatshirts. This is unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. And you hear Burkhart and Olson just pouncing all over it, both New Jersey guys, by the way. So probably a regional appreciation here of what is, in fact, going on. There was a clip that was being passed around last night on Chris Long's show. He's talking to, Andy Reid and he said, who's your favorite, who's your favorite employee in the Eagles organization? And why was it Dom? You know, and you just team up and, and Andy Reed just sort of laughed and just

said, yeah, Big Dom's the man like five times in a row. And it was just, it was like so strangely loving and yet empty, you know, it was like the way that you would talk about your friends lovable dog or something, you know, just like, oh, yeah, f, Brian's got the best cats, the best cat. didn't you love it that Dom was being referred to in first name only by like Rinaldi? It's like here Greenlaw pushes Dom. It's like, well, I was like, who? It's like the character, talk about being there.

It's like the main character of the story, but none of us have been told about it, none of us have been informed of his existence up till this point. I guess that's more Forrest Gump, right? The Big Dom is just the Forrest Gump of the NFL. Everybody that's been watching closely knows that he's the main character, but for all of us at home,

We were just seeing him for the first time. Eagles had not been playing particularly well up to that point. Oh, yeah. And of course, Burkhart and Olson are selling this. Like, what if this is the moment the Eagles wake up? Oh, my God,

we're going to build a statue of Dom next to Rocky. This is going to be unbelievable. It's, you know, a new local hero. Well, guess what happened? The Eagles played like absolute crap after that drive. And I mean,

absolutely crap on the sideline. That was more important than Greenlaw. being out there for the Niners. Well, what if, what if, and this is, this might be nuts, but what if Dom fired up the other team by laying his hands on a player and getting him thrown out? Yeah, that could be the case too, I guess. Yeah, that's, that's not nothing.

Eagles lose. I do want to know what he, I know that, by, I know that his, his official listing says that he's like a special assistant to the GM and head of security. At some point, you just get promoted. He's been with the team for 24 years. And we just get promoted to special assistant to the GM. and then they find you another job to do or whatever. But who was it with the announcing?

I don't remember which one of them in the booth. It just was, but they said he provides security and so much else to the Eagles organization. Yeah, that's the end. And so much else. I can't tell that's the way you would talk about like a mobster. Or the way you would talk about,

you know, just like a mascot, like literally someone who just hangs around that you're too embarrassed to tell them to go home or something. It's such a, bizarre character. It popped out to me too. Also, being

involved with team security, that is obviously a very big job given fans, you know, people are crazy, just getting to and from a bus and things like that and even on the sidelines,

but I don't typically define security as protecting your team from players on the other team. That's not security. No, I feel like they're specific people for that. Yeah. You know, that, yeah,

your own players. You're not settling disputes between the 49ers and Eagles. That would be great, though. If teams basically just had like a team bouncer, right? I mean, they'd probably have to wear, I think putting them in just like, you know, black warm-up clothes is probably not the best look, even though you do look kind of like a bouncer. You probably have to give them like fluorescent yellow outfits just so you could tell who they were. It'd be rough if they got mixed in.

But I'd like the idea of a team bouncer that, you know, you could hire like former giant wrestlers who just come out on this sideline and yank people apart, you know? Yeah, just kind of intimidate. We don't want to go over to that sideline make a play over there because, you know, you never know. Because El-Higante is there. All right, coming up, some more thoughts on

S-I's AI, 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, always gratefully receiving. after the screw jobs in the college football playoff, David, it was an overwork Twitter joke to write Georgia could still make the playoffs. If Mike Pence has the courage to do the right thing,

the joke is still rolling thanks to that's funny. Gibran Chavez Godino for that one. And this week's winner, David, jokes involving the aforementioned George Santos, specifically puns involving the aforementioned George Santos. It was an overwork Twitter joke to call him George Santost or George Santost. George Santos. Funs that can be appreciated on this podcast.

If you long for the days when Santos compared himself to Mary Magdalene, congrats you, made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, we talked about SI's AI issue last week because that Futurism article by Maggie Harrison landed on our doorstep right before we recorded the pub, but I thought we could spend five more minutes talking a little bit about it. For people who didn't see it,

Harrison reported that over at Sports Illustrated, there was a writer called Drew Ortiz, and she says, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history, and even more strangely,

his profile photo on Sports Illustrate is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots where he's described as a neutral white young adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes. Which is just absolutely wonderful on like 900 levels. The Arena Group, which is the owner of Sports Illustrated, then said this, I'm going to read from the CBS News report here.

The arena group said in a statement posted on social media on Tuesday that the company's initial investigation found that Futurism's report is, not accurate. The articles highlighted by Futurism were produced by human writers for AdVon Commerce, which the Arena Group said formerly had a licensing deal with Sports Illustrate to write product reviews and other e-commerce content. Now, before we move on from there, think of how much you are allowing when you say, we gave this firm, Advon Commerce, a deal to write product reviews and e-commerce content for our website. Think of how you've already dunked the name of Sports Illustrated in the toilet.

By doing that. Like, that's the defense. We didn't do it. We let some people write Sports Illustrated articles. And they did this. Also a little bit confusing here. Quote, Advon has assured us that all the articles in question were written and edited by humans. spokesperson for the arena group said in its statement. However,

we have learned that Advon had writers use a pen or pseudonym, also not as a pseudonym, in certain articles to protect author privacy actions we strongly condemn. So their explanation here is that this was not AI content. It was somebody who just didn't want their name on the story. So there was an AI generated person writing it. Yeah, even if you take that at face value, It's what the writers don't want their name on it because they know they're churning out trash

for a writing free quote unquote journalism sweatshop operation and they're embarrassed to be associated with it or it's being done by groups of people. That would, you know, too many bylines who'd look kind of strange on that. I don't know what the logic is. I frankly am more, I may be off base here, but I'm more put off by the outsourcing issue

than the AI issue. I think the outsourcing should be seen as bad as the AI issue, because it's exactly the same, it's exactly the same thing. It's people, it's choosing not to employ people because you can find a cheaper and easier way to do it, right? Even if there are humans that are doing, that things are being outsourced to, you know, the people who are,

they're still the same people losing their jobs on the front end, you know? And what's being done by these sweatshop operations is not journalism of the same tier, right? This is not like, I don't even know what example is. This is not like Marvel Comics, like combing the world to find a great, the next great illustrator in Italy or the Philippines or something like that,

and realizing they can pay them less than an American. It's problematic in its own way. This is just finding somebody who's, you know, this is like an old-fashioned salesman coming to town and saying, like, oh, I can do all your content for you for a quarter of the price, you know? It's so, it's just, it's just, it's just, It's ridiculous. I mean, it's, it's, it's so sad. I think that the bigger point is like,

I guess we've none of us should, we shouldn't be shocked, right? I mean, this is, this, as I called this shot a long time ago. They did. And they just said it was going to be a lot of content, a lot of very, very low calorie content written by humans, or at least humans using presumably their own names. And this is an escalation of the bad thing as I was already doing. I feel all this just sabotages media criticism to a point because you and I can look at this and just talk about how stupid it is and I'm happy to keep doing that if you want to. But at the same time, it's like when you criticize another publication, you're usually

criticizing the way they approach things. They're aesthetic, if you will. Like, how do you choose to cover sports? What kind of articles? you know, what did you put on your cover? Who did you choose as your sportsman of the year to name a non-A.I. Sports Illustrated controversy this week. This is not an aesthetic.

This is just nothing. You know, this is like doing media criticism of a robot where you're essentially saying, oh, you just wanted a bunch of things called SI articles and they went Haywire, predictably. Yeah. And that sucks. Okay.

I don't know. I feel it takes away. some of what we do on a podcast like this because it's not even trying to be anything other than just be stuff. You're right. It doesn't fit into the rubric of what we're trying to talk about. The strange thing about the situation is how many rubrics

they bent over backwards to fit into though, right? I mean, this whole thing just beggars belief because it's like, like, outsource content is not novel, right? But you're still trying to make it seem like it's not, right? even AI content, at least, man, I mean, there's even an argument that you could, like, figure out a way to do AI content and still keep people employed to make it better, you know, and you'd be doing something more forward-looking than what you're doing here.

But the suit-and, and listen, I don't have any issue with pseudonyms. Don't get me wrong. I have a long history with them myself, but there's a lot to be said for it. But, no, no, I mean, pseudonyms are, but the, put the, what, key, I keep coming back to the fake photo, right? It's just the fake photo and the fake author bio, it's like literally no one is ever going to notice if there's not a photo next to the author's name. No one's going to click through and be like, but where's the author bio and take an issue of it? It's because it's false. The only reason it became an issue is because it was a publicly available stock photo and a completely fallacious biography, right? It's the, it's like the effort to try to make it past muster is what stunk. And that's, and that just as,

I don't know, man. I mean, Sports Illustrated is what? What is Sports Illustrated? I swear to God, I'm not saying it ironically. Like, Sports Illustrated to me is a brand that I see on hoodies at Marshalls. Like, it's not a magazine anymore. So does it like, I don't know.

I mean, how upset should we be? I'm not at all upset that it's Sports Illustrated. A little bit wistful. But just that the fact that anybody's doing it is just wild. I want to thank you for being like Dom the security guy and performing the service of setting up my next point here, which is the same point I made with the New York Times Sports section

when that was getting shut down. We don't have to do the Golden Age thing here again, folks. What David just said about what is Sports Illustrated? Every freaking article written about this of the magazine once inhabited by Dan Jenkins and Frank DeFord, the magazine that John Updike wrote, for folks that has been that has not happened in a long long long time i know that makes the a i story seem bigger and seem worse that you're doing that to the magazine of dan jenkins

that is not sports illustrated it has not been that was not sports illustrated when david and i were freaking kids man no that i mean that is ridiculous this is the and you know what dan jenkins made his money at s i frank devord made they they they they got out of this great right yeah it is the magazine of or website magazine of emma botulary and richard johnson and all those people those are the people getting screwed over by this yeah not some dead sports writer so stop with the golden age stuff which just i cannot tell you remember the times the time sports section where it's like how could this happen to the sports section of red smith like most Red Smith's been dead for 40 years.

He was not filing copy when the section was shut down. We do not have to do this every time. I love that it still gets attention, though. It's sort of inspiring. I think you and I, could we just buy the domain for the New York Herald Tribune

and just publish one dick or fart joke on it every day just so there will be somebody like, the hallowed halls. Did it one? Dick shop. Yeah, exactly. Look what you've done. Red Smith, Gay Talese,

Tom Wolfe, and you, Curtis and Shoemaker, treated this to fart jokes. Oh, man. Yeah, just so we could get that one sentence, the hallowed,

the hallowed public. I'm just so tired of the hallowed public. Get out of here with that stuff. Speaking of brands, David, coming back from the dead, Jezebel is back. Mm-hmm. We didn't even get to cover the death of Jezebel,

but I'm going to read here from Katie Robertson's piece in the New York Times. Jezebel, the famed feminist website, is set to return less than a month after it was shuttered. Paste magazine of music and cultural outlet acquired Jezebel on Tuesday

and planned to start publishing on the site again as soon as Wednesday. Dot, dot, dot, dot. The idea of there not being a Jezebel right now just didn't seem to make sense, excuse me, said Josh Jackson, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Paste. So this is a happy story.

It's always, when I saw the Jezebel thing shutting down, I did have this weird thought, which is when you have these new owners of beloved brands and they throw up their hands and say, we don't know what to do with this anymore. Maybe we never knew what to do with this. Maybe our intentions were not great to begin with. Shouldn't somebody else get a chance? like isn't it the idea that it would just then go to sleep or exist in some zomboified state when somebody else could be like I I like Jezebel I would like to be Jezebel 4.0 it's like someone buying a regional food franchise right I got like five burger joints in the central New Jersey area and you realize quickly no matter what my hopes and dreams for this were there's a

ceiling on how much you're going to make right it's like oh we're going to make like 50 grand a year on each of these things and there's no upside beyond that and then saying, well, I can sell it to somebody else who's going to realize the financial realities of this, or I could just shudder them all and use it for like tax purposes. It just, you know, and that's going to be more beneficial to me, right? And just like, and just nobody ever get, none of these people ever get to work again and nobody ever gets to eat a hamburger around here again. Mm-hmm.

It's ridiculous. You, something, if you, if you, I mean, look, when people go out, and they say they make all their proclamations about the future of the company when they buy it, yeah, they're going to be full of shit more often than not. You'd say those things, you'd think those things, and there is a value to these things, and even if there's no

value and there's not some like hedge fund value that it's going to you know, multiply by 10x over the next two years or something, it's a profitable enterprise. It's a worthwhile, more importantly, it's a worthwhile enterprise. It's a worthwhile enterprise.

Yes. And I'm people are willing to work for it and pay the money that the thing's making, then, you know, somebody should be keeping that afloat. This is a good story. I'm, and I'm sort of of the, you know, of two minds. I'm almost like, look, if you were inspired by prime Jezebel, high period Jezebel, maybe it's worth just going off and starting your own thing that's completely different that has a name.

You know, publications just don't last forever. I don't want anybody to lose their job, but they just don't. In fact, I saw somebody say, well, SI is 70 years after SI's launch, I'm like, you know how long 70 years is? Yeah. It's like, that's publications like dog years, like 500 years. So on the one hand, I think that. But on the other hand, I'm like, I'd much rather see this, somebody making a real effort to do it,

provided that's what happens here, then the zombo-fied state that these publications go into. We're like, oh, wait, there's something called Newsweek now. But look at it. Yeah. there's something called deadspin. Look what's happening over there. You know, it's not, it's like, oh, we want to try to make this good. Cool.

If you don't want to make a good, give it to somebody else. Sell it to somebody else. Somebody probably will buy it because they were inspired by it when it was good. We didn't get to talk about the Henry Kissinger, Obitz. Henry Kissinger died on November 29th at age 100. This is how Rolling Stone bade a wistful goodbye. Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America's ruling class finally dies. Yeah.

And we're talking about usually there's the one day as with Bob Knight where you have a moment, even if you're not overpraising, we just kind of take a breath if you're going to be on the negative side of the equation. Henry Kissinger did not get the one day. No. At least for Molling still. We were all in right away. And Christopher Hitch is.

just think about this. Henry Kissinger outlived a lot of his critics. Oh, yeah. People were talking about how he outlived a lot of the obit writers whose names were still on the newspaper. I guarantee. Yeah, of course. But he outlived his critics too.

It's always interesting. Joseph or A.J. Liebling wrote a story about people's obit dates and how they get praised in different ways based on the time they die. Henry Kissinger is an absolutely fascinating example of that. because he's 100. So not only has he just been alive for a long time since the criticism started in force of Henry Kissinger and his legacy,

but he's just also been out of the spotlight for kind of a long time too. All that plays into the way people are remembered in a very fascinating way. I've got a biblical question, David. I've always wanted to ask you. Oh, God. Okay. Usually we would do this at a bar after like, five drinks. But let's do it here on the press box. Our friend Peter Kafka, who was on this podcast recently.

Uh-huh. And you, by the way, wrote me immediately, it was like, that was so good. We were almost thrown because we'd ask Peter a question. Instead of doing two minutes of padding like you and I and every other podcaster does, he just answered the question in 15 seconds. Yeah. He just actually answered the questions. So then we were looking at each other in the Zoom like, oh, crap, what's our next question?

Peter, Kafka, what a pro? this was a report from CNN's Oliver Darcy. Peter Kafka is headed back to Business Insider. Back in 2007, Kafka was the first hire at Silicon Valley Insider, which later morphed. Hey, Brian, you just froze up for me. Sorry. Am I back now? Yeah.

Okay, sorry. Let me just read that again. Peter Kafka is heading back to Business Insider. Back in 2007, Kafka was the first hire at Silicon Valley Insider, which later morphed into BI. now the prodigal son will return. So I turn to official biblical correspondent David Shoemaker. I feel like the term prodigal son is used in media to just mean the guy who came back.

Yes. Is that the meaning of the parable of the prodigal son? Yeah, unless they mean he's a, he's a, you know, brilliant but troubled criminal psychologists. That would be a prodigal son the TV show. So the prodigal son, the guy has two. sons. He's, you know, got a lot of money. And one of them's just like, give me my inheritance now. I, you know, I just, and then you don't have to worry about paying me out later. And then he goes

and waste all the money. And then he comes back and he's like, you know, maybe dad'll just make me a servant. That's my only option here. But his dad welcomes him back, throws a big party, puts him in fancy clothes. And it's just like, you're, you know, so happy to see you. And then the other son who was always there is like, what the heck? That guy took off. But his dad was just like, yeah, but you're, I mean, you don't, what you get doesn't change. You still, all this is yours, but we lost him and now we got him back. Um, that's slightly different than what Peter Kafka is doing at business insight. I don't know what Peter Kafka did for the past. He might have squandered a great deal. You see what happened, what it often is it defined as in media is somebody who

was somewhere went off and did really successful things and then just got hired back. Right. By the old place. Drove up their asking, Breiser. whatever, like, you know, old company saw the value in them. Yeah, that's not exactly what the parable of the prodigal son is, unless you squandered or wasted a great deal in your absence of what the original company gave you. I don't think it really fits. This is our very tortured way of saying congratulations to Peter on the new gig. Come on the press box soon. All right, David, it's time for David Chewmaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about a controversy involving a town Christmas tree was

fur flies, as in fur tree. Love it. Today's headline comes to us from alert listeners, James W. and Brian Rice. It's from semaphore. Those boys and girls always do fantastic work on the headline front. It's about defenestrated congressman George Santos. I want you to think about puns and also classic Saturday morning cartoons or perhaps weekday afternoon cartoons,

as you ponder, what was semaphores, strained pun headline. Is it something like Georgia the jungle related? George? Not quite. Keep going to other Georges. George cartoons.

Do do do do do. George Jetson. George Jets? George Jettison. George Jettison. George Jettison is correct. George Jettison. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Brian Waters. Shoemaker and I return soon with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.