The Press Box - The Future of Deadspin, Halperin’s Attempted Comeback, and Jay-Z and the NFL | The Press Box

Episode Date: August 20, 2019

Megan Greenwell’s exit from Deadspin (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week  (19:30), Mark Halperin publishing a comeback book (22:30), the Roger Goodell–Jay-Z partnership (34:15), and Stephen Colbert's interview with Anderson Cooper (48:45). 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. NFL preseason is in full swing and the Ringer NFL show is now airing four shows each week covering the latest news stories, training camp updates, fantasy football advice, and more. On the site, Robert Mays, Kevin Clark, and Danny Kelly offer up their insight on the 2019 season as we inch closer to kickoff. You can read their pieces on the ringer.com and you can listen and subscribe to the Ringer NFL show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. David, one of the many indignities inflicted on the site Deadspin this week was a proposed dress code. What I want to know is what media dress code would nab you and me. Oh, man.

Well, I manage to wear pants most of the time. I mean, that as opposed to shorts. I'm not talking about anything. I was going to say, wow. I mean, as much as I like to imagine myself as a Tom Wants. Wolf style. I mean, I would love to work in an era where I was wearing like the same white suit every day or different white suits that all look the same, I guess. It's a pretty casual shop over here. The New York office here is in a we work. It's sort of shocking how many

people are wandering around and like ill-fitting sweatshirts and shorts and, you know, shower shoes and stuff. Yeah, and you really haven't had the wallet chain since college at least. Okay. Enough there. Enough to, yeah. Any like baseball cap dress code I think would probably get me. I just like, it's weird. We're in a world now where I just forget to take my hat off about 99% of the time. And then I get invited to something where I have to wear a suit. And I'm really confused about what goes on my head. Yeah, if the ringer dress code said you can't wear baseball caps of teams you don't actually root for. David would be in big trouble. Take that Brooklyn Nets cap off, mister. That's not allowed in here. I think it would only get me if it were, you know,

ironic t-shirts that should be worn by somebody who should be 10 years younger. You know, I mean, that'd be a big one. I don't know, generic polos. That'd probably nab me. Anything and kind of just that looked like it couldn't have been bought at Mervyn's in 1990. It sounds like it would have been my downfall.

We are the spary top siders of media podcasts. Maybe the crocs of media podcasts. This is the press box. A part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Tons to get to today. We'll talk about the attempted comeback via campaign book of Barf Mark Halperin. We've got Jay-Z and Roger Goodell.

An update from the world of peak newsletter plus Michelle Beatle, honest obituaries, and much, much more. But David, I want to start by talking to you about what's going on over at Deadspin. on Friday, Megan Greenwell, editor of Deadspin, left the company. She tells the Daily Beast, Max Tanny,

I have been repeatedly undermined, lied to, and gaslit in my job. Tanny writes that the guys over a GEO Media, which is the

retitled former Gizmodo Media after the former Gawker sites were bought by the private equity firm, Great Hill, refused to guarantee editorial independence

for Deadspin and asked for the site to stick to sports Geo Media Editorial Director Paul Maidman says, quote, we are laser focused on serving Deadspin readers sports and everything related to sports. David, can we pause right here and just talk about the idea of taking

the non-sports stuff out of deadspin? Or the dumb idea of doing that. Or the impossibility of doing that. Go ahead, please. I have no doubt that Megan Greenwell has been undermined Light to in Gaslit since Geo Media took over, but I do wish there was a little bit more

of an explication about which it means by Gaslit specifically. That's just a minor aside. All of this stuff sounds so bizarre. If you take the politics, if you take the non-sports out of dead spin, I think that, frankly, what you're left with is any of the other hundreds of sports blogs circa the same era

that didn't survive to be discussed on podcasts like this today or to be read at all. You know, I mean, it's, they had an incredible stable of writers pretty consistently over the years, but certainly in the heyday, I mean, just a murderer's row of top-notch

thinkers and writers. And the... But all of that would have been... I mean, who knows if it would have been possible to accumulate that sort of talent with the hard strictures like they're trying to go for today if it's, you know, stick to sports, et cetera.

But even if it had been possible, the site wouldn't have been nearly what it was, nearly what garnered its reputation if it hadn't have been, you know, free, both freewheeling and free thinking. I feel like this is going to the staff of ramparts in the 60s and saying, could we make this more like a men's lifestyle magazine? Could we get rid of Eldridge Cleaver and put in some grooming tips and an article

called How to Properly Scramble Eggs? Do a little bit of a refit here. Right. It's part and parcel. And the tanny piece says the Deadspin had a record 17 million unique visitors in June. Don't we think that some, a lot? I don't know if most, but a lot of those visitors come because it's not just sports. Isn't that the reason they come?

I mean, Deadspin's traffic has always been a little bit mind-boggling, you know, when you look at the numbers only because of the amount of competition. And, you know, the perception that they're not always, that they're not as in it for the SEO is some other sites or they're not, you know, they have, you know, they feel like more of a niche or a boutique sort of site, but they clearly have an audience that seeks them out, a very broad, very wide audience that seeks them out deliberately. It just, it's like he's, it's like these guys who are running geo media, who will talk about a little more in detail in a second, are trying to pull the full Jimmy Pitaro and say,

if you want to work here, that's fine, but you can't talk about politics. But this is an ESPN. It's not. It's not. It's here have come to do this, right? Yeah. I mean, it's like, it would be like if Jimmy Patero, it's just such a different formulation, I don't even know how to put it. It's not like, they're trying, they think they're being Jimmy Patero, but what it'd

be like if Jimmy Patero had been hired to be like Bill Simmons editor 10 years ago and pulled this, right? And it's like, oh, no, we just want straight recaps. Like, it makes so, it, it, it, it, as, as. much as I disagree with some of the stuff that Bataro is doing at ESPN, the line, I mean, there's more of a straight line with what he's doing. It makes, it makes more sense, right? I mean, it is a reversion to at least a theoretical point in the past. At this point, I mean, what they're doing at GeoMedia is taking the thing that made deadspin, deadspin,

and totally misunderstanding that, totally misinterpreting it, and seemingly going, bending over backwards to try to, the craziest thing is the, is the justification. right? I mean, we'll get into all the details, but the, what's the craziest thing to me is that is the way that they are trying to establish that this is the right move instead of just having the guts to say, this is what we want to do. That's what, that's what's so funny to me is the sneakiness of it. And they tried to sneakily do it through this reader survey in July where you visit Deadspin and you got this pop up that said, what do you least like about Deadspin? And the first choice was uncompromising commentary. Well, I don't know. I can't pick that. Sports stories I can't find anywhere else.

That sounds good. Knowledgeable writers. And it goes on and on. And then it goes political coverage and strong political points of view. You can see that person going, yeah, you're right. That does kind of get under my skin. The last one is criticism and coverage of other media companies. So just this, you know, sneaky side door.

way of trying to neuter the whole site is what gets me. I, you know, if you don't, if you don't want it to be deadspin, then go get rid of all the people and put in some other schmucks and try to do it that way. But this idea that we're just going to sort of do it in this kind of roundabout fashion, I don't get it all. And it's stupid. It's really, really stupid. And I think your point is right, because there are actually eras of deadspin.

And when we talk about the political stuff, that is implanted, I would say, mainly during the crags and marchment eras. Yeah. And it comes in. And the reason what happened, whether this was by design or not, or just kind of one of those things that went on is that the stuff that happened earlier in Deadspins history, like the Leach era, has been filched by other sites, including sites like bars stool, the like wacky stuff, if in a very, very different way in the barstool universe.

So that stuff is now all over the place. That's like, I'm pretty sure like Sports Illustrated's Twitter feed does that stuff now. So what makes Deadspin stand out in sports blog universe is the political stuff, is the edge, is the willingness to go all over the place. And by the way, if we interpret this edict that has been handed down sports and everything related to sports strictly, does that mean the food stories are gone? I know. What is Deadspin without food spin? So we can't have recipes anymore, how to cook for your family? That's not sports.

That's not related to sports. No. I mean, you can't have the, I mean, if you want to interpret it really strictly, you can't have the bulk of what Drew McGarry writes, right? I mean, you can't have, no parenting. You can't have any of what our buddy Rob Harvilla used to do over there. You know, I mean, there's so many, they got into the sort of cultural overlap and just sort of the lifestyle aspect of sports blogging, you know,

earlier than just about anybody else. And that was, and, you know, I think that in the modern era, the kind of evolution in the political sphere was, I mean, that was, that was sort of a natural, not just because, uh, everything is political now, but because any site of a certain, I mean, that's above a certain scale and below probably, you know, below whatever the ESPN scale, you know, is, is, as an identity, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, they're, at least implicitly ideological. And I think trying to separate out, you know, politics from the rest of the lifestyle is just, it's a fool's errand. I mean, it's all you're going to do is water it down and turn people away. This friction has been building since Geo Media took over and kind of came to a head. This last month when Laura Wagner published a big piece on debt spent about Geo's hiring

and management practices, she reports in there and I encourage you to read the whole thing that Gio failed to do a public recruiting process and that Jim Spanfeller, who is GEO CEO, hired his old male ex-colleagues in many cases overqualified women, despite saying a lot of stuff about diversity and inclusion. And here's another part I'd like to stop at. Jim Spanfeller was CEO of Forbes.com from 2001 to 2009. Forbes.com, which we talked about on this podcast the other day was one of the places that published the pro-Jephry Epstein stuff.

Who are the dumb rich people? who think that veterans of Forbes Content Farm are the media pros. Remember the LA Times, one editor ago? They needed a new editor to run the paper. They picked a Forbes guy who lasted like 10 minutes and was clueless. Surprise!

Surprise, Forbes.com. Even if you were under the impression that this guy, that this is your guy, right? I mean, Forbes's resume aside, or not, I mean, whatever. If you're intent, if you believe that Spanfeller is the man for this job. How on earth could you hire a guy and when you're interviewing him

if he's like, oh, and I have the and my like five best friends or the perfect guy, or I have the perfect five guys for these openings. We're really going to take this place over. If anybody came in with the assurance that the five people they worked with at their last job were the best people

for this new job, I think that's all I need to know to not hire them, right? I mean, to be so just like transparently stuck in the past. I mean, literally, It's just, it's, it's crazy. But you can imagine the song and dance to the money guys. I know just the people who can do this.

They're veterans of digital media. Forbes.com. Like, I don't know. We're all available to work for go media. Like, it's like, what? It's just, it's just crazy. While Laura Wagner was reporting the afford mentioned story, Spanfeller sent a company-wide email

and which he questioned the quote, objectivity and core intentions of Wagner story, which eventually came out on August 2nd. Megan Greenwell tells Maxwell Taney over at the Daily Beast, I tried over the course of a week to get somebody to say there will be no retribution from this. That is the story. Your team will continue to have the independence that it has done so well with

when I was unable to, over a period of many days, I decided that that was putting the team at too big a risk to not leave. So that's one of the reasons she left. The kicker to this story, David, also from Maxwell Tanny, reports that the staff over there got a draft of a employee handbook last week. Among the highlights, the company can search employees' personal vehicles, parcels, purses, handbags, backpacks, briefcases, and lunchboxes.

Review all electronic communications made on company property. The new rules also strangely allow, Tannie writes, the company to access reporters' tweets to access their tweets, and bars employees from using encrypted email programs, is a common tool. Journalists often used to protect highly confidential sources. Tanny continues, the handbook also establishes an attendance policy and a dress code.

Employees must arrive between 9.30 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. Dot, dot, dot. They must wear smart, casual attire, offensive logos or sweatpants, pants, exercise pants, Bermuda shorts, shorts, short shorts, biker shorts, miniskirts, beach dresses, midrift tops,

and halter tops are all banned. So this is a dress code. Mm-hmm. Now, uh, Jalopniks, Patrick George, responded, hi. despite reports to the contrary, we at Jolobnik are very much still using secure messaging services for our reporting.

That will never change. But that seems, and you know what? From the sounds of the emails and the strictures, maybe they don't want that kind of reporting. Maybe they don't. Maybe they want funny blog about sports.

Maybe that is their platonic ideal of what deadspin should be in which the other assorted site should be. Well, and it's not specific to deadspin. It's all these sites. I mean, as far as the employee handbook goes. But which raises that, which, which, you know, makes the question even bigger. It's like, sure, if this is, if you want a different sort of site, then you can, you

should just say you want a different sort of site. I mean, what's the fear that if you do it, I mean, I mean, maybe there's employment issues, maybe there's union issues. I don't, I don't know what the deal is, but it seems like it would be much easier to be straightforward about it. Maybe they're worried that everyone was quitting mass and they won't have a site. won't have any, you know, content for two months until they replenish or something. Maybe they feel like it'll make them a place, make it into a place and nobody will want to work. Well, then maybe that

should be a sign. You know, I mean, it's, I mean, I'm kind of less offended by the, I'm less offended by the work hours and the, and the, the dress code, you know, just from a principal standpoint, but it does feel an awful like this employee handbook was. And maybe this goes back to, you know, the theories from earlier. But, I mean, it feels like this employee handbook situation is sort of like they just cut and pasted pieces of existing HR documents from previous jobs into one thing. You know, I mean, you- Biker shorts. What era was that from?

I don't know what they're searching lunchboxes for. But yeah, yeah, that's my elementary school. I had that policy, too. It was we had a lot of resistance to that one. No, I think you're right. And I think their fear is that everybody leaves at once or they get rid of everybody. and then rightly, as you say, the Deadspin brand, the Deadspin mojo disappears. And people don't want to read it anymore because people would realize, oh, this is a rump site that is not the site I knew.

So maybe if we do this quietly and drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, that we can trick readers into thinking this is going to be, you know, everything's going to be okay and it's a deadspin, you know, in love. It's not going to be. If these are the rules, it's not going to be. Yeah, it's interesting because I think, you know, since the, since Gawker disappeared, um, and we've discussed it before in the show, but I think that as someone who read, has, you know, read lots of Gawker, lots of deadspend, lots of the affiliated sites, uh, since their beginning, it was still a little bit surprising to me the degree to which people kind of pledge loyalty to just the, the URL, the ideas of the sites, you know, um, because,

by and large we follow, I mean, at least we have the liberty, you know, we have the freedom sort of in the field that we're in to kind of follow writers, you know, to keep track of these things, to have, you know, some, and just in general, different sites will capture your imagination for six months for a couple years, whatever, and you'll move on to another site to fill that time of your day, but it does seem here like Geomedia really does have that same opinion, like the URLs are what's the most valuable. The idea of the site is what's, is most valuable, and and the move is to trick readers into accepting a evolutionary change or de-evolutionary change to just, you know, the internet mean, I guess.

I mean, it's just, it's sort of sad, but that does seem to be the idea. That's what's happening at Zombie Gocker. Uh-huh. And we've seen how well that's gone. I almost want to make a list of sports writers like, which sports writers do you think would take would take the job if there were a zombie deadspin. Yeah. If God forbid it, we were reduced to zombie deadsman, which sports writer would take that job.

I've got my own list. I don't know if I'm going to share it, but I'm coming up with the list. I'm going to see if we're right. Yeah, I mean, you should email me that. I mean, send it to me through some encrypted app, actually. I don't want to see it. But I do feel like there's never a shortage of people who are willing to take the top job at, you know, at a zombie publication. Right?

So you see these publications where people, you know, the, leadership quits and there's somebody in line who's like, you know what, I know the rep, the rap we've gotten, but I am committed to making this site everything it used to be or everything it could be or blah, blah, blah, blah. The difficulty I think is filling out the rest. You know, if you still want to publish the volume that a site like Deadspin does, then you need a team of skilled writers, even if you're not publishing incisive political or sociological commentary, and it's just kind of filling out the rest of the roster. Tom Lee, long time writer-netter of their tweets. The good news is that we're extremely hard to kill. We hope so, especially

killing the site in its current form. All right, David, time for 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. Please send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Speaking of zombie publications, a tweet from the Hill is always good for a laugh. In this case, Stephen Miller, the Trump immigration guy who got a lot of press over the weekend, says he, quote,

experienced a jolt of electricity in my soul when the Trump campaign launched. A jolt of electricity to my soul. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write breaking. Stephen Miller claims he has a soul. Thanks to Duran for that one. A tweet from Mashable,

David, shows video of a terrifyingly human-like robot. I don't if you saw this. Running through a field, jumping over logs, etc., etc. It was an overworked. Twitter joke to write.

Mid-second round grade, excellent explosiveness, hips a little tight, pro comparison, Jason Witten. Thanks to Heartland Henry. When you snare both Mina Kimes and PFT commenter,

you have really achieved peak overwork. Good job. And finally, this comes from Jack. This was a tweet actually today from WNYC. Former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie,

is starting a think tank centered on something unexpected. Civility in politics. Civility and politics. I seem to remember the 2016 GOP convention sitting there in the auditorium while Christie was doing a kangaroo court for Hillary Clinton.

Everybody was chaining a locker up. Maybe that was a weird dream. Anyway, it was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Christy will do what few have been able to do bridge the partisan divide. Oh gosh, that's fantastic. If you made Bridgegate jokes to mock Chris Christie's new job, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

Fantastic work. All right, David, before we move on, let's take a quick break. Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get into a crash, people could get hurt or killed. But here's some surprising statistics. Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That's one person every 50 minutes.

Even though drunk driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives every year. Drunk driving can have a big impact on your wallet too. You could get arrested and incur huge legal expenses. You could possibly even lose your job. So what can you do to prevent drunk driving? Plan a safe ride home before you start drinking. Designate a sober driver or call a taxi.

If someone you know has been drinking, take their keys and arrange for them to get a sober ride home. we all know the consequences of driving drunk, but there's one thing for sure. You're wrong if you think it's no big deal. Drive sober or get pulled over. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And I have here's my first item, the comeback book, a new literary form. The news was broken by Politico's Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer over the weekend that accused serial me-to violator Mark Halperin is publishing a book.

Halpern, who you may know from the note newsletter in the game change books, will publish How to Beat Trump, America's top political strategists on what it will take in November. I almost sent you the cover to this book, which would have been rejected even as the first draft of a ringer illustration. It was that bad. Sherman and Palmer write that Halpern interviewed top Democratic strategists, aka the most interviewable people on the planet earth behind Lerner.

Larry Sabato, including David Axelrod, Bob Shrum, Donna Brazil, and James Carvel. And before we get to the backlash, David, and Halperin's return to polite society, just stick that over in the corner for a second because did you chuckle at how incredibly lame this book concept sound? Yep. I am calling the Democratic strategist, the Twitter account, By Your Logic, writes, Mark Halpern had like two years to plan his comeback. And the best he could come up with was, I asked James Carvel if Demiard,

need to take Trump on tweet by tweet or if it's the economy stupid. And David Axelrod in the process of apologizing for participating in this book says, Halpert emailed me three questions about the 2020 race for a book he was writing and I replied in a few sentences. So this sounds really deep. You got a short email from David Axelrod, which is the key to beat Trump. I guess what stood out for me about this before we even get to the Halpern comeback part of it, What stood out is the absolute hackiness of the dilaphoot class of Democratic consultants. These people exist to answer the phone and fill in spaces between actual information and a reporter's story.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it can be anybody who calls. It doesn't matter. It could be somebody from the ringer. It could be somebody calls and says, hi, I'm working on parole for the surviving members of the Manson family. And the consultant would say, great, let me tell you how to win back the white working class in the rest of. belt. Let me just give you a few quotes. Need some quotes? Let's do it.

Right. They'll do anything. But they'll even do it for Mark Halpern's book. Well, I think that's the genius of this book project is that you only need the hacks to get it done, right? You don't need anybody with a moral compass to answer the phone. You know, you don't need anybody who has anything to lose to respond to an email or anything to gain for that matter. You just need the people who survive merely by like the you know, the incantation of their name on a regular basis is all they need to keep the, you know, to keep the lifeblood flowing.

It was sort of genius in that respect. Because if he went to the Democrats that are actually trying to be Trump and said, I want to embed with you, they would be like, eh, I don't think so. Hell no. And if he went to Trump, even Trump, you know, it's like, I don't know, we pardon Joe Arpaio, but I don't know, you know, this is, do we really want Halpern hanging around the White House? Absolutely not. No, I think, just calling people or emailing them in the Axelrod case, you know,

It's a book. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of a candy move on Hoppern's part, too, because it kind of, it removes all the aspect of his personality from the project, right? This isn't a, this isn't a, you know, reported sort of behind the scenes of a campaign that would make his inclusion sort of necessary, at least on, you know, some authorial level. This is a, this is just sort of, you know, he's, his names on the front. I'm sure there'll be some, you know, editorial, president. without throughout the book, but he's more of, he, he can present himself as just sort of like

conveying found information and not putting forth a personal argument. That's right. If it's indeed possible to remove Mark Halpern's personality from any Mark Halpern joint, which I'm not really sure is, is actually humanly possible. I love the, the excuses the consultants made when, of course, people started calling. One was to sort of say, look, I'm all about beating Trump, no matter who calls. This is former Clinton senior advisor, Adrian Elrod told the Daily Beast that her, quote, singular professional focus is defeating Donald Trump in 2020. So that apparently achieved by giving quotes to somebody about how to defeat Trump, not actually working to defeat Trump. spokesman for Anita Donne, former Obama official, quote, Anita cares about beating Donald Trump.

That is the only reason she participated. There's no way to beat Donald Trump unless you talk for the book. Amanda Rinteria, who worked for Hillary Clinton in 2016, quote, as my record, shows, I have no sympathy for people with a history of sexual harassment in the workplace. And I'm not interested in rehabilitating anyone's career. At the same time, women and people of color are worse off when our voices and experiences are left out of campaign histories like this. First of all, this is not a history. This is not a history of the campaign. And second of all, think of the logic of that statement. I don't want to rehabilitate an accused Me Too offender,

but I'm worried for women if I leave my voice out of the offender's book. Like women as a class are not served if we do that? I don't follow that. I'm sorry. Not a shock, by the way, that Donna Brazell talked for the book at all. She says, tells the Daily Beast after lots of emails to help her in tough times for sure, I wanted to go on the record with my answers about how to defeat Trump. Many of my friends today are disappointed that I answered Mark's call, but I did so after he understood where I was coming from.

So her kind of rationale is I got really mad at Mark Halpern and then I answered his questions. In the Reliable Sources newsletter, Oliver Darcy reminds us of some of these specific accusations against Halpern back in 2017. And these are always, I think, important to recall when we talk about this, because Me Too becomes this nebulous term. And, you know, all of us have seen so many of these. We're like, what did that person do again? Well, according to Darcy, here's what allegedly happened. Quote, three women who spoke to me described Halpern as without consent pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed.

One woman told me Halpern masturbated in front of her in his office. One another told me he violently threw her against a restaurant window before attempting to kiss her and that when she rebuffed him, he called her and told her she would never work in politics or media. So that's a reminder. Publisher of this book is Judith Regan, David, whom you knew well. It's not correct. Sorry, you know whose reputation you know.

Yeah, David. David dining with her at Michael's the other day. No, whose reputation you know well? She, of course, the mandatory reference here is to remind everyone that she almost published OJ's If I Did It. Yeah. She published a lot of, in, you know, the glory days of Reagan books and even before that, she published a lot of the kind of most incendiary stuff around.

And she published like Howard Stern's first book. She published a lot of... Juiced. Yeah. She published, you know, a lot of that stuff. That's to her credit. That was sort of deemed untouchable, you know, a little bit too. you kind of publish it for the people.

You know, she published a lot of stuff that a lot of the kind of hoity-toity New York publishing scene would turn their noses up at and she would put it out and make a billion dollars. And then, you know, obviously, part of her move in the modern era has been towards some conservative publishing and just sort of, again, stuff that's a little bit off. Dangerous, a little bit, yeah. But she's very much just like a mass media publisher. And I wouldn't say this was necessarily in her wheelhouse except for the, and certainly the book, it doesn't seem like it would be in the Reagan Books Wheelhouse, except for, or Reagan Arts Wheelhouse,

except for the uncomfortable of it. So maybe she got it, you know, for a song and thought, you know, there's no way I can say no to this. Her statement was a little bit, you know, I mean, sounded a lot like some of the other statements you were just reading from the contributors, where she says, I do not in any way, shape, or form condone any harm done by one human being to another. I have also lived long enough to believe in the power of forgiveness, second chances, and offering a human being a path to redemption. And then, of course, How to Beat Trump is an important, thoughtful book. And I hope everyone has a chance to read it. Please buy it. Yeah. I mean, this is a thing that we'll come upon, you know, we'll come to more and more. You know, I mean, and we've been over it a million times, the idea of redemption and what exactly that means. Because I think we all agree with that platitude and just sort of a very general way. But I'm not sure that it means, uh, that even if you agree with that the second sentence of her statement, I don't know that that necessarily, it necessarily follows that Mark Halpern gets to, you know, necessarily gets to publish a book with a major publisher less than a year after all of these allegations came out and he didn't really respond to them. You know, I think it's what, I think it's what you said where it's a cold calculation that he is a distressed asset. He's a former bestselling author. who can't get a book by conventional means and can't get on television. And I can get this cheaply.

It's about Trump. So maybe it'll ignite people who either don't know or hate Trump so much they don't care. Yeah. And we'll give it a whirl. I think that's what it is. And by the way, the selling of this book is going to be fascinating. One, how many helper and friends are going to come out with that tweet by my friend's book? We know the morning Joe crew has tried to, has worked with him on his rehabilitation.

That was actually an earlier Daily Beast story. Several networks tell Oliver Darcy, including his old home, Halpern's old homes of ABC and MSNBC that he won't be allowed to appear on the air and sell the book. So I am really looking forward to seeing how dismal that book tour is. Yeah, I mean, listen, we can talk about the PR campaign, all the marketing they're going to do. we can, you know, go in on Judith Reagan and Mark Halpern. I mean, this really, I think, maybe this is too inside book publishing, but I think it all comes down to one person, and that's the politics buyer at Barnes & Noble,

because that's how this book is going to get out in mass quantities to people. And Amazon, too, I guess. I mean, maybe that's maybe that's two people, but I think that the, that if it is a coal, if it is a, you know, a strictly just like a crass calculation, like you said, the entire sales, PR, marketing money, whatever, all that aside, it all comes down to the title how to beat Trump and the words beneath in Mark Halperin's name with the words author of game change or co-author of game change underneath

and the idea that that's enough to get somebody who hasn't really been paying a lot of attention to the Me Too stuff, which is probably a huge percentage of the book buying public to pick up the book and take it home. And what's going to matter to get to make that happen is whether or not the book is sitting on tables in Barnes & Noble and whether or not it's an automatic, it's like a intuitive link on Amazon.com. and anywhere else you would buy books. That's what's going to matter. So it will be interesting to see if his fellow travelers give him blurbs or invite him on their radio shows or whatever else. But, you know, it's it's whether or not there's a, you know, is there a soul in the bookstore?

I mean, does the bookstore have a soul, I guess? It's the question. Again, I guess we'll find out by how high the stack is at your local airport or Barnes & Noble. That sounds like one of those, you know, self-improvement books in the, in the bookstore. The Dow of the bookstore. Does the bookstore have a soul? Yeah. Kevin Costner is the voice of the soul. A hardcover publishing in the art of motorcycle maintenance.

I have a topic down here, David, a rare moment of journalistic unanimity. As a press corps, we are unanimous about almost nothing except Mark Halper. But I was struck this last week by how everyone got mad at the Roger Goodell, JZ partnership. Yeah. As the New York Times had it, Goodell and Jay Z have, quote, teamed up for a music and social justice campaign.

Rock Nation will become the NFL's live music entertainment strategist, the NYT reports, and contribute to the league's activism campaign, which is called Inspired Change. So here come the editorials, Jamel Hill and the Atlantic. Jay Z is an accomplice in the league's hypocrisy. Kevin Blackistone in the Washington Post,

Jay Z can't stand up for Colin Kaepernick while tucking himself into bed with the NFL. Now, I kept reading these. I kept reading these. We were like a hundred, we were like a zero percent rotten tomatoes here of think pieces, zero percent. But I knew we were truly going to get close to zero.

When I read a column in the AP, you've lost the AP by Paul Newberry, who writes a Jay-Z may have 99 problems, but a conscious certainly ain't one. kind of the AP's idea of a big line. I know, but, but it's a thought that counts. It's a thought that counts. Were you, I mean, I don't, I don't know.

It feels like the way the journalism marketplace works, that eventually you kind of come around. There's like so much gets said one way that it's in someone's interest, whether they believe it or not to go the other way. Well, just get attention. Well, if you're, I mean, I think, that is born itself out because the National Review.com has published at least two pieces on the

in defense of Jay-Z by David French. Yeah, yeah, yeah, or just like the hypocrisy of the people yelling hypocrisy. I mean, that's, that's, that's their, that is their favorite, their favorite stance to take and they have ardently taken it in this case. I mean, it should be said that a lot of the, lot of these pieces, the majority of these pieces that were getting passed around are really sort of melancholy, really thoughtful, really, I mean, really well considered. I mean, this, This is not reactionary bloggy fair. I mean, Jamel Hill's piece was just incredibly smart and well done.

Even Dave Ziren, he's usually, you know, has the volume turned up in these cases. I mean, just the headline of his piece was Jay Z is Nassau. He's a capitalist, which, you know, you realize is a very, like, finger-pointy sort of take. But the construction is a little bit is a little bit more somber than one might expect. David Dennis, a writer I know and I like a great deal. David Dennis Jr., I guess the byline wrote for Playboy, about how he called it the gut punch of Jay-Z's new deal. And he wrote at the end, he was like, you know,

I've been wrong about stuff that I've written before and I hope to God that I'm wrong about this take because he just felt so disappointed by the entire thing. I mean, wow, this is a big subject. We've dealt with, you know, Kaepernick, we've dealt with the NFL many times before. This feels like one that we could, we could spend a whole lot longer getting into, but I will say that, and I know this is mentioned,

but for me, and I think probably for a lot of people, the photos are really, we're really like the biggest part of the gut punch. And we talked about this recently with, um, with Al Franken, how, you know, there was that one photo of him that turned out to be sort of beside the point, but that's really what sort of consolidated public opinion against him. You know, I mean, that's sort of what made real a lot of the, the allegations in people's minds. And, and you see that all it takes is one perfect picture, one perfect piece of video to sort of make something seem very real.

And man, I mean, there was just an un... It seemed like just a never-ending stream of photos all at once of Jay-Z, like, high-fiving Roger Goodell, of them, like, chuckling together at a... laughing. At a board table. I mean, like...

Yep. I think there's ways that Jay's... I mean, Jay-Z also, when I felt like just was not prepared to discuss this. Like, he had, like, a catchphrase about, we're done with kneeling, but didn't really have much thought, and had much thought.

There are two phases. There are protests, and then you go inside, something like that. And even if you, I mean, I think that there's an argument for that, you know,

I mean, I understand that. I don't think that, I don't agree with it, but I think that that's like, I think that there's a, like the somberest way that you can read the Dave Zarin headline.

It's like, yeah, this is capitalism. Like, let's move on. You know, I mean, like, I don't, but I don't think, on the one hand, as much of a disappointment is for this to be

JZ, the cultural figure. JZ, the historical figure. I think that it would have been a whole different thing. I mean, no, you know, you can, you can defend the capitalist move. It's really hard to defend him sitting for this photo op trying to literally use his face to redeem all the ills of the NFL. I mean, it just seemed, it just seems so, and Roger Goodell in particular, it just seemed so misguided.

I just, I can't even imagine, I can't even imagine what the dollar figure would be to make someone to make someone think that was the right move. Yeah. And then there was that whole controversy about whether he called Kaepernick or not beforehand. Yeah. Capernick's girlfriend said he didn't. Apparently there was a later a phone conversation that was extremely awkward, as you can imagine. It would be Jay Z wore Kaepernick jersey on Saturday Night Live. Jamel Hill pointed out in her column. I had talked about Kaepernick and now here we are. But I agree with you. That photo was amazing. There was also the weird story. There was also the weird story about Jayze a rumor about Jay Z calling

Germain Dupre last season to tell him to not take the deal that Jay Z eventually got. I mean that he's basically just like out there like cutting off the legs of competitors because he had been eyeballing this for a while. I mean, it's just nothing, it doesn't look good.

It doesn't look good. And I know that's the least important, probably the least important aspect of this. But, yeah. I mean, I guess the other rumor that I guess the root was the first to publish was that Jay Z. he's got a, that there's a potential, like, foot team ownership stake in it for Jay-Z if everything

goes, goes well, that they would let him buy any be the first black, you know, majority owner of an NFL team, or at least owner of some significant chunk of a team. I don't know what the number was. Um, which, you know, I mean, again, this goes to motivation, but it also just, everything looks worse and worse. Every, in every story just, it makes, it's just more depressing. Department of Honest Obituaries, David. The magazine Pacific standard is closing after Sage publications. It's been a factor abruptly cut off its funding,

which sucks. And it sucks for everybody there. When these things happen, we often get a lot of really nice tributes to the magazine, which in this case I saw including from its editor, Nicholas Jackson, other people who worked there about the work they had done, the no doubt good

work. I was, however, amused by this one from William Detloff, who is a writer, boxing writer, and podcaster. And this was his send-off to the magazine on Twitter. Sorry to hear Pacific Standard is going out of business. They did me a great honor by running my essay about my son a few years ago, parenthesis, even if they did chop it to pieces.

Wow. But no, no, no hissing on this because I like this. This is what I want. It can be true that Pacific Standard did tons and tons and tons of quality work and also hack this guy's story to pieces. Why do we have to cover that up now? I'm all four honest obituaries. I like this could run in a British newspaper.

It's fantastic. The Department of Studio shows, David, on Friday, the athletics, Richard Deich, reported that ESPN is planning to name Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor as the new hosts of NBA Countdown for the upcoming season. Formal announcement should come in coming weeks, he writes, the expectation via sources is that both will host. the show they'll split the assignment in some manner. As for Michelle Beatle, who was of course the existing host of that show, she's well liked by the talent she works with and she'll be working on air somewhere. The question is whether that will be for ESPN or elsewhere to be determined. Sports by Brooks, by the way, was on this story back in June. Wow. It's interesting. I had a couple of thoughts about this. One is to watch Rachel Nichols and Michelle Beatle work at ESPN over the last

couple of years. And Rachel Nichols hosting the jump on a daily basis, but then also shuttling out to Minneapolis to do the Jimmy Butler interview. Yeah. And go deal with LeBron's team to get LeBron once a year or however often she gets him, go to Akron to do the LeBron school interview. She was doing the studio host job in a totally different way, which was as a reporter and as someone who's engaged in that world.

And I was trying to think and I was sitting here going, who else has done a pregame, post-game, halftime studio thing in remotely that way? You know, it's not like Kurt Menofy or James Brown or, you know, all the people you think of. Yeah. Maybe Rob Stone like knows more about soccer than your average person who kind of does that job.

But I'm just like, to me, she was sort of putting forth this option. of hiring her by saying, I'm going and getting all these interviews. I'm doing this. And, you know, in a way, it feels like that's a little more, that feels like the kind of modern way to do this job, as opposed to, you know, nice affable traffic cop,

somebody who actually knows about the sport and is engaged in the sport, and more than that, that it's basketball. And we've talked about before the basketball audience on television and elsewhere, likes people who are, you know, more, I think nerdy may be a word, but just more like, you know, deeper into the sport. And I don't know. She hits both of those notes in an interesting way. And beyond just the personnel move, it just seems to me that it changes something about, it's potentially interesting in the way it changes something about the nature of the job. I think it's a, and, you know, I owe a great deal to our boss Bill Simmons and his, his experience on, and, be a countdown and his kind of takes on the on the on on what the show means but it's a it's sort of a no-in situation that show i mean they're all their time their air time is so minuscule uh but the platform is so big it's in some ways it feels like the sort of the sort of i mean hosting the show

feels like sort of the kind of position that like means a lot more to the person with the job than it could ever mean to anybody else in the universe right i mean it's a it's a it's a it's a totally i mean it's it's something you aspire to but it's not something that really particularly matters. And I think that the show is really difficult. I mean, they come on for 30 seconds at a time. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, only, it's, it's, it's, it's a, uh, it's hosting NBA game, uh, it mean, unless it's a gimmick one-off sort of situation. Nobody's tuning in for the people on that show. But maybe they'll tune in because they like the jump already. You know, maybe they'll tune in or maybe they'll keep watching because

it's a continuation of another property that they're familiar with and that they're fans of. I'm not sure that there's any, that just the personalities on their own of Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor, who has a one million percent approval rating at the ringer.com, apparently. So does Rachel. But Maria, I was surprised with a fuse of response to, a Maria Taylor's announcement. I'm not sure that either of them have the wattage to really make that seat matter in a way that

Beatle didn't. But I do think that there's a chance that there's a carryover from the jump that makes that that gives a little bit more weight to the proceedings. I think I agree mostly with everything you said except I would look at a slightly different way. I almost look at it as a no lose proposition. You're on before the freaking NBA finals.

Everybody has to watch you whether they want to watch you or not. And then you come on after. I know like Barclay and those guys have sort of reset the template over on Turner. And they have, they can seemingly talk for like nine hours after a game where ESPN actually has to cut to other programming. But you don't,

it's not like, I think what that show put on in the last couple of years was like this is the minimum acceptable show for this time slot. Like this is just, This is just not interesting at all. I'm not sitting there waiting for, for, you know,

halftime shows and postgame shows to tell me what to think. I really don't watch a ton of them at all. But I just think like that, that was pretty much, that was pretty much like the Mendoza line of, of the, of a studio. So it has to get better.

I don't, and I, and I don't think anybody's going to watch a show because Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor on there because somebody else. They're watching because of like LeBron James, right? Nobody watches anybody because of the announcers of anything. But I just think that it's got to be better.

And that show to me did not feel like it was engaged in day-to-day NBA stuff. It does not. It just did not. Rachel and company feel like they're engaged in day-to-day NBA stuff. Like here are the big stories of the thing. And ESPNs, by the way, this is the other thing. Those shows are so geared around ex-players and have been since you and I were born that then you watch a jump and there's maybe an ex player or two on there but then there's

like Zach Lowe and Winhorse and those guys and we're like why aren't the big star ESPN reporters who know stuff about basketball who knows stuff about the NBA right now I won't say basketball because the ex players know stuff about basketball but no behind the scene stuff why aren't they on the show ever because that makes a lot of people perk up right oh okay you can have you can have an ex player on there, but I also want the guy who's going to tell me something. Yeah, for sure. So to me, sort of building it, building more of that into it would be, could make it better. I've got a heading here, David, TV clip that raises a larger question.

Let us listen to a snippet from Anderson Cooper's CNN interview with Stephen Colbert. Colbert here is talking about the death of his father and two brothers when he was 10 years old. You told an interviewer that you have learned to, in your words, love the thing that I most wish had not happened. I remember. You went on, say, what punishments of God are not gifts? Do you really believe that? Yes. It's a gift to a guest.

It's a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that. And I guess I'm either a Catholic or a Buddhist when I said. things because I've heard those from both traditions. But I didn't learn it that I was grateful for the thing I most wish hadn't happened is that I realized it. Is that, and it's an odd, oddly guilty feeling.

It doesn't mean you are happy. I don't want it to have happened. I want it to not have happened. But if you are grateful for your life, which I think is a positive thing to do, not everybody is, and I'm not always, but it's the most positive thing to do, then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can't pick and choose what you're grateful for. And then, so what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people's loss. Well, that's true. Which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it's

like to be a human being, if it's true that all human suffer. And so at a young age, I suffered something, so that by the time I was in serious relationships in my life with friends or with my wife or with my children is that I have some understanding that everybody is suffering and however imperfectly acknowledge their suffering and to connect with them and to love them in a deep way that not only accepts that all of us suffer but also then makes you grateful for the fact that you have suffered

so that you can know that about other people and that's what I mean it's it's about the fullness of your humanity. What's the point of being here and being human if you can't be the most human you can be? I'm not saying best because you're going to be a bad person and a most human. I want to be the most human I can be. And that involves acknowledging and ultimately being grateful for the things that I wish didn't happen because they gave me a gift. Now, ran a long clip there because it was so good. With the proviso that not every episode of NBA countdown can ponder the very nature of existence, David. Why isn't stuff like that on TV more? Why is not, why is there not a vehicle?

Why is there not something in the Tom Snyder zone of old or, or somewhere? I hate to say the name Charlie Rose because I'm not sure Charlie was really going to that metaphysical place, even before he got yanked off the air. But why isn't there a vehicle on TV for discussions like that. Wouldn't people watch that? Even even a small enough number of people to float a show somewhere on the cable dial? Well, okay. I think that one, there are vanishingly few guests as kind of intelligent and cogent as Stephen Colbert was in that interview. For all the, For all the sort of joking that, you know, we people do about Anderson Cooper, his central gift, which is sort of his, you know, he was sort of the every man when he first started and has evolved way beyond that,

but he still does have a sort of transparent humanity that was really on display in this clip that I don't, that I think most people in his chair have been, have been schooled to not do. And, but I think that more than anything else, it's just, this is, on both the part of Cooper and of Colbert, there was this, this showed, this, this was risky. You know, this was, this, this had an element of risk that I think 99.9% of journalists and, and public figures are not willing to take. Right. Risk for both. Yeah. Because you heard Cooper getting emotional there. Mm-hmm. Talking about the losses he suffered in his life and, and thinking about it. those. You know, I agree. And, you know, it makes me, but it makes me want that place to be reestablished. Totally. You know, there were notes of it in the old Roy Firestone ESPN thing. And sometimes those

things can be just like, let's, let's have the guest cry. Right. You know, but, but there is, there are moments where you can really get to an interesting place. There, I mean, the fear is, is that, I was thinking of Roy Firestein, also thinking of Barbara Walters, right? I mean, The worry is not that you get to those emotional moments because those can, you know, obviously be very gratifying and helpful in a lot of ways, but that they, but that you become the parody of those moments, right? Sure. That you get that you get laughed at in the way that S&L or ever was laughing at Barbara Walters at some point, you know, and that's, you know, that's the risk. It's about having a good cry as opposed to talking about something. You hear they're talking about something.

Yeah. They're not just, they're not just trying to pull, pull tears. Anyway, I thought that was fascinating. Pete newsletter, watch, David. It is a contention of this podcast that you're not a player in Washington, D.C. journalism, or maybe journalism anywhere, unless you write a newsletter. And I have been informed of a new one. David Serota, former Jerno, who joined Bernie Sanders' campaign, is writing a newsletter.

And it's called, wait for it, burn notice. Burn notice. And the subhead below that reads, burn after reading worked in a little Cohen brothers there burn after reading so anyway burn notice the newest edition to the newsletter family

talking head of the week David found this in the Twitter feed of my old pal Chris Beam remember last month when we had that collective freak out for that in and out burger that was photographed on the sidewalk in Queens that whole just internet moment I purposely skipped the New York

Times article about it because life is way too short. But I'm sad I did. In retrospect, I am sad I did because there appeared a magnificent talking head commenting on in and out hysteria. Quote, I've been to in and out just like millions of other people. I don't get it. I think it,

meaning the freak out, just because there's a little bit of scarcity to it. There's something special to that. All right, pretty generic quote, right? The guy who said it, the president of the publication Franchise Times, is named John Hamburger. Oh my gosh.

You needed a quote about it and out you called John Hamburger. Free will does not exist. This is a credible. Speaking of comfort food, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. Oh, no. Should we take a moment, David, to pay our respects to the New York Daily News.

A lot of stuff going on over the Daily News, but the front page is still functioning. You remember back in 1976, the Daily News, had the famous headline, Ford to City, drop dead. well, after Trump's bonkers idea to buy Greenland, Fjord de Trump, drop dead. That's so good.

I love it. Fantastic. This week's headline was sent in by J. Garcia, Tim Bovine. I don't think that's Bovine, Bovine, Bovine, Joseph B.N. Khan and Jacob DeVries. We've got a lot of people send it in. It comes to us from the Minneapolis Star Tribune,

which reports that in downtown Minneapolis, the restaurant, the old spaghetti factory, is closing down after 25 years of serving pasta. I'm not sure the old spaghetti factory was great, but it was around and it was consistent, and damn it, people like going there. I could give you more details, David, but I won't distract you.

How did the Star Tribune say farewell to a beloved Italian restaurant? God, it's a goodbye to the old spaghetti factory. This wasn't the only old spaghetti factory, right? No, this is a chain. This was kind of a weepy goodbye for Ed Shane, yeah. Right. I've seen these around.

If the Olive Garden was busy, you went to the old spaghetti factory. God, I'm just not, my head's not in the game today. Okay, spaghetti. I'll give you a word. Spaghetti Western noodle. Okay, pasta. Pasta la vista? Pasta.

Was that it? Oh, yeah. Pasta LeVista. That's not, that is too irreverent for a eulogy. I feel like they really could have done better. Just tonally, something was a little wrong there. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis, researched by Chris Almeida, production magic by Jim Cunningham.

The official band of the press box is Jim Blossoms. We're back Friday. Bright and early with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. David? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hi.

Surprise. Oh, man. Surprise. Yeah, heart, yeah. This is just not interesting at all. Yep. Well, I manage to wear pants most of the time. I mean, that as opposed to sweatpants, exercise, pants,

Bermuda shorts, short shorts, biker shorts, miniskirts, beach dresses, midrift tops, and halter tops are all banned. And I'm really confused about what goes on my head. Old spaghetti. Free will does not. not exist. Despite reports to the contrary. Yeah, this is capitalism. Let's move on.

Barf. Ha! Who are the dumb, rich people? Mm-hmm. Just like the hypocrisy of the people yelling hypocrisy. John Hamburger.

Maybe that was a weird dream. Anyway. If you think drunk driving is no big deal, you couldn't be more wrong. You could get into a crash, people get hurt, or killed. And you who get arrested, incur huge legal expenses, or even lose your job. So next time you plan on drinking, make sure you plan ahead. Designate a sober driver or use the ride service to get home safely.

Drive sober or get pulled over.