The Press Box - The Houston Astros vs. the Media, Trump vs. Anonymous, and the New Sports Media Free Agents | The Press Box

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker look at the growing feud between reporters and the Astros (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (18:15), the Donald Trump tell-all by an anonymous writer (21:00), free agency in sports media (29:30), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, welcome to the Ringer podcast network. Coming this Tuesday is the Ringer's third annual NBA Palooza celebrating the tip-off of the 2019-2020 NBA season. Make sure you're subscribed to the Ringer's YouTube channel so you don't miss our day-long live stream, including the premiere of the new season of NBA Desktop, the fourth installment of our Take Hunter series with a surprise twist, the unveiling of the Bill Simmons's Lakers wine bottle team, and a live Ryan Rusillo podcast to go along with so much more. Again, you can check all that out at YouTube.com slash the ringer. David, Donald Trump told Sean Hannity a few nights ago that he was thinking of terminating his subscription to the New York Times and the Washington Post. What I want to know is, what analog newspapers does the White House still intend to receive, aka the Epic Times, and what else?

I've never been to the White House. I presume they get a... I assume they get a lot of different subscriptions. I mean, do you... If you're like... Do you think it's thrown over the fence and lands on the front steps and somebody gets to Kellyanne Conway

comes out of the morning or something? If you're sitting in like a 150-year-old chair that, you know, that Lady Bird Johnson once sat in to do her daily sewing or whatever, or is there a side table next to you with like the latest issue of highlights magazine? in case there's a kid sitting in there?

Or is it like, is that the print issues of the sporting news from 1985 just sitting around? Yeah, so it's like a doctor's waiting office. And if you're waiting to get to the Oval Office to see Trump, is there like a nice selection of David magazines there? That he just hasn't managed to cancel. If you were in the waiting room of the White House of all places and you were just like, hey, can I, you have a copy of Today's Times. I just want to do a little reading.

And they're like, no, we only subscribe to the Washington, free beacon now. I feel like that would be a huge disappointment. It feels like a dereliction of duty, although I guess, you know, I wonder, I mean, there must be like a White House archivist or like White House librarian that's really upset that they're not, that they're like, they're going to there's going to be a missing volume of the New York Times and Washington Post in their archives now, right? He or she was just taking that print edition unread and just carefully filing it every day somewhere. We are the five-year-old U.S. News and World Report of Media podcast. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network.

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. We've got lots and lots of stuff to get to today. We'll talk about the new Donald Trump tell all from the anonymous author of that notorious New York Times op-ed. We have a bumper crop of coveted sports media-free agents. Yes, they do exist, sort of. We'll also talk about the moment a writer becomes a parody of himself or herself, plus some of your listener mail. But David, we've got to start with this World Series thing, particularly the strange battle between reporters and the Houston Astros. After the Astros won game six of the American League Championship series, clinching that series against the New York Yankees, a Houston assistant general manager named Brandon Tobman

was in the Astros Clubhouse. Tobman repeatedly shouted at three female reporters, thank God we got Osuna. I'm so fucking glad we got Osuna. The Osuna, Tobin was referring to. was Roberto Osuna, a relief pitcher the Astros acquired last year while he was serving a 75 game suspension after being arrested and charged with assaulting the mother of his three-year-old son. So what Tobman was doing according to an NPR report, which was based on the words of three witnesses, was responding to a female reporter who had covered the Osuna story,

who had tweeted the number of domestic violence hotlines while covering the story, and that particular night was wearing a purple rubber bracelet designed to draw attention to the plague of domestic violence. So let's stop right here. There's much more, but let's stop right here to admire the idiocy of what Tobin was doing. He's saying if you sign a guy charge with domestic violence and that guy helps you win a pennant in baseball, then you somehow have defeated the domestic violence charge on the playing field. I'm not sure there's anything dumber than that.

And this has happened in sports before, right? Remember James Winston winning the national championship of Florida State? There is, this is the single dumbest idea that somehow what you do on the field gets you cleared for what you did off the field.

Yeah. I mean, if that was a serious consideration on his part, if that's really what he was trying to say, that is. I mean, that's what he was doing, right? Ha ha, you, you covered this guy's domestic violence charge, but we just won the pennant, so we win. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, yes, I mean, I guess that's, that is the implication. And it's mind-bogglingly stupid. I don't really know, I mean, what there is to say about this guy is clearly a low life. And, I mean, I'm yet to hear anything resembling an excuse that. makes any any kind of human sense. But yeah, I mean, if you want to take him at his like at the basic logic that was underlighting his point, I mean, that that was really, really dumb to. So let us go to the defense.

The incident was initially brought to light by Sports Illustrated Stephanie Epstein, who published a column about the incident on Monday. That night, the Astros tried to fake news their way through by releasing a statement saying the story posted by Sports Illustrated is misleading and completely irresponsible. an Astros player was being asked questions about a difficult outing. Our executive was supporting the player during a difficult time. His comments had everything to do about the game situation that just occurred and nothing else. They were also not directed toward any specific reporters were extremely disappointed in Sports Illustrated attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.

Our colleague Ben Lindberg noted in a column on Wednesday that the difficult time the Astros were referring to in that statement was in fact a champagne party celebrating. their win in the ALCS. Both Hana Kaiser of Yahoo and Hunter Atkins of the Houston Chronicle, who were in that clubhouse tweeted confirming Abstein's report. ESPN's Jeff Passon wrote a scathing column about the Astros' response. The immediacy with which the organization backed Tobman, he writes, comes from the same strain of hubris that fueled Osuna's acquisition in the first place. The absurdity of that statement cannot be overstated. So this happened. And, what they immediately went to was, oh,

no, it didn't happen in a crowded clubhouse full of reporters, right? Yeah. This was not, this was not some, you know,

if you want to get into the weeds on interpretation, go for it. But this happened in front of everybody in a crowded baseball clubhouse after a team qualified for the World Series. Yeah.

So just think about that. Yeah. I mean, oh, man, there's so much here. First of all, I mean, it's, it's fair

to wonder whether or not we'd even be having this talking about this right now if it hadn't been for the Astros bungled response. And I'm not just because this is a media podcast and because you know, Sports Illustrated is now part of the story. But like in general, are we talking about this beyond 24, 48 hours if it hadn't been for the organizational, just flaw at the heart of all this? And what led them to respond that way. But I mean, listen, given there are misunderstandings and miscommunications all day long, uh, in every walk of life. And if that, if, if their response were and it were true, and it's not, let me make this clear, but for the sake of argument, if their response were correct, um, or what the Astros organization said were true, uh, you know, that

certainly wouldn't be the first time that something like that happened in the heat of the moment in the locker room that that wasn't the, you know, that whatever he was going for was grossly misunderstood. But here's the thing. Nobody there misunderstood what happened. No. Right. Nobody who, Nobody who was in the room, I mean, and if that had, I mean, if someone had, if someone had turned around, turned around and said something super, that just came off as super inappropriate, but it was an accident. If they were talking about one, you know, walked into a conversation and said something that just, that just completely, I mean, they just, the only way to read it in the moment was offensive, but that wasn't the point. There would be somebody else in the room that was like, yeah, that sounded terrible, but we all, I mean, but it's fair to say that that wasn't what he was trying to get at. Nobody's saying that. Nobody who is there is defending him. The only people that are defending him or the organization. and they're doing it, they're protesting way too loudly, trying to make this a journalistic ethics issue, which is just like the dumbest, I mean, just like the weakest thing and just so, so petty. And it just shows that you said hubris before, it's exactly right. I mean, all you have to, not all you have to do. There's a lot of systemic problems that are, that underlie, undergird this

whole thing, but like an apology would be a good place to start. You know, I mean, that would be like, That's like the bare minimum. And to argue the point, I mean, just the facts is just so sad. I mean, just ridiculous. I see this with athletes and, you know, teams all the time, usually not with an issue as serious as this one. But whenever there's something they don't like, the first thing they say is the writer is making it up.

And there's the literal words here, Sports Illustrated attempt to fabricate a story. I don't know that they know that that's the most serious charge you can make against a journalist. You were literally calling everything they do into. I know that's just like a knee-jerk response. I know in the age of Trump, it's all fake news, quote, unquote, that's just kind of what you say. But I'm not sure they understand that when you say that about Epstein and her column, you are saying that she's a big liar and a fabulous. And that doesn't work, right? That really doesn't work and all you're going to do is piss everybody else off and as you say make a terrible incident which probably should result in the guys firing anyway into a multi-day story that's

happening while you're playing in the world series by that kind of statement. After the backlash, they retreated a bit releasing statements from Tobman and Astros owner Jim Crane. Let me read you the Tobman one, Tomlin one since he is at the center of this. It's past Saturday during our clubhouse celebration, I used inappropriate language. for which I am deeply sorry and embarrassed. In retrospect, I realized my comments were unprofessional and inappropriate. My over-exuberance and support of a player

has been misinterpreted as a demonstration of a aggressive attitude about an important social issue. Those that know me, here we go, David, know that I am a progressive and a charitable member of the community, a loving and committed husband and father. I hope those who do not know me understand the Sports Illustrated article does not reflect who I am or my values. I am sorry if anyone was offended by my actions.

So yeah, let's count them out, Chris. We got I'm a father, number one. We got still pinning this. I hope the Sports Illustrated article does not reflect why I'm on my values. Not what I fucking did, but this article in Sports Illustrated is no, no, no, we're talking about what you actually did, which you now just admitted to. And number three, classic apology. I'm sorry if anyone was offended by my actions.

And you mentioned it before, Brian, about this. I mean, they're playing in the World Series right now. And maybe after two games, they would be happy for any sort of distraction. But, I mean, this is a person who most diehard baseball fans had never heard of. As near as I can tell is, like, only internet presence prior to this was a couple, I mean, mentions in a couple of stories and, like, a YouTube video in which he discusses, like, analytics and baseball. And this is an organization, by the way, that is covered, like, basketball, like basketball, organizations like the Sixers, right, or the Rockets. This is like an analytics friendly, the original tanking organization that whole books

written about and everything. Anyway, continue. No, and just like now he's, he is the face of the franchise at a moment when they're playing in the World Series. I mean, this is like, this cannot be, this could not have been gone any worse for, I mean, just what I'm talking about from the PR side. They could not have handled this any worse. It makes me wonder just about the state of crisis communications in America.

Now, I don't, I'm on the record saying, I as a reporter, don't want crisis communications to be slick. I'd actually rather their, I'd rather apologies be ham-fisted because then we know what you really think. You didn't, you didn't tell us, you didn't do the, well, he should have said this. I saw people, by the way, saying that after LeBron and China, here's what LeBron should have said. By the way, no need to make a suggestion. Just let them say what they want to say, because that's actually more revealing than anything else. And this is, this is incredibly revealing. Jim Crane, who is the owner of the Astros, says, we've raised $300,000 through our initiatives with various agencies providing support for families with domestic violence.

Lindbergh notes that $300,000, $300,000 is what they pay Osuna every 17 days or so. That's a quote from his column. So thanks for that. That sounds like a generous donation. But I just wonder, like, these are billion plus dollar, you know, billion plus. dollar league organization worth hundreds of millions if not a billion dollars and you just think how how how are you this inept how is how is no how is no one there sitting around going let's not do it this way yeah but maybe maybe we're just 10 years in the past maybe everybody thinks

this is where you can just kind of finesse your way through like it was pre-twitre like it was pre-me-2 or but more of a you know focus on domestic violence and you can just finesse your way through and it'll all go away. I don't know. Yes, all of this is true. And I've obviously been, I mean, just draw on the floor through this entire, entire bizarre situation post the comment. But I think it, we also have to say that like, whatever,

it's not just like the problems in the house, in the PR shop, that allowed this sort of just ridiculous failure of a, you know, whatever apology or message they were trying to send to happen. I mean, I don't think that, I'm guessing it's probably not as shocked to anybody in the Astros organization that somebody who turned around and maliciously

said, I'm so fucking glad we got Osuna at a moment like that. I'm sure it was, that probably didn't come as a complete surprise to most of the people in the organization that that guy who was, who's someone who would say that said that thing, right? And, you know, maybe there's more of a systemic problem there than

just like the reaction. It's the, the employment of such folks. Amen to that. By the way, speaking to that Astros press shop, this is the same team you will remember, David, from an earlier press box episode,

that barred the Detroit free press beatwriter, Anthony Fenwick, from the clubhouse after an Astros Tigers game earlier this year because Justin Verlander didn't like him. This guy was a credentialed

reporter. They literally posted people at the door. Finneck had to call MLB and say, this, this doesn't work, right? So this is the same press shop that did that. After we had that segment, I got a call and said, look, this, this Astros thing goes way deep. The press thing goes way deeper than this. This is, this is not a press friendly organization.

It's not. And, you know, if we didn't think that at the time, now we've got multiple data points for that, right? You literally broke in MLB rules, collective bargaining agreement rules by barring a credentialed report at the door because your pitcher didn't like him. Oh, that's too bad. Then you called reporters liars for something they were not lying about. In fact,

now we have apologized. Not press friendly. Not even press neutral. Congrats to Houston Astros. I'd like to give you a couple of lighter notes before. we get out of here, David, on this subject. One is, one of my little Keebler elves of the World Series sent this along. I will not identify him or her in case he doesn't want me identify.

Whoops. I'm sorry. You know how I love the question, can you talk about? You know, so you're at the World Series podium. Can you talk about this? This was asked after game one. Can you articulate what makes Soto so difficult to pitch against, especially given how young he is. So now the new talk, can you talk about is can you articulate. We just,

we upgraded to like a 10 cent word from a one cent word. So anyway, an important, same stupid question. An important new innovation in baseball journalism. The second was the Houston Chronicle Sports page after game one. This was sent to us by Dino Bravo VT. Thanks, Dino. Bob Party and Jeff Hauser. You know how I usually feel. when people post the next day sports page on Twitter. And I'm all for nostalgia, but often those sports pages aren't very good. And there's kind of a lame-o headline. Actually, this was pretty good because in game one, the Nationals had handed

pitcher Garrett Cole, his first loss in months. And the Chronicles headline was, are you ready? Natsding Cole. Nats ding coal. Pretty good strain pun right there. That's great. it's now 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 send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received David Houston went on to lose the first two games to the nationals and it was a very overworked Twitter joke to write the Astros say reports of them losing the first two games at home are quote

misleading and completely irresponsible thanks to our pal Jonah Baleckis for that one also this very bad joke appeared several times on Twitter Houston you have a problem is yeah exactly there we go thanks to Salaris Prime is Houston we have a problem one of the most amazingly like time-worn pop culture phrases just kind of just kind of low-key yeah I mean I there's probably very few things I mean obviously it's not applicable to most things outside of the city of Houston. But anytime a story involves the city of Houston.

But every time a city involves a city of Houston or someone who's last name is Houston, yeah, I feel like there's like a 75% chance. That's the pun you go with. Wikipedia is saying it is a popular but erroneous quotation from the radio communications between Apollo 13 and NASA mission control. This is like the play it again, Sam, of our time, though. Right? I mean, it's just everywhere.

Anyway, thanks to Solaris Prime for that. What was it? What was the actual line if it wasn't Houston? You have a problem? It was, okay, Houston, we've had a problem here. And after being prompted to repeat the transmission, Jim Lovell, the astronaut responded,

Houston, we've had a problem. Doesn't quite have the same pop, does it? Oh, no. That's very funny. in other news the president of the United States Donald Trump very big quote yesterday

that went all over the place he said we're building a wall in Colorado we're building a beautiful wall a big one that really works so building a beautiful wall in Colorado Colorado is not a border state it was another word Twitter joke to say

Trump Pence 2020 no new Mexicans and just lowercase the than new that's really terrible. Thanks too. Adam Waltonball for that. If you clown Trump thinking that Colorado is a border state,

congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, I want to talk to you about some political book news because next month, the publisher 12 is bringing out a book by the anonymous author

of that New York Times Trump op-ed that appeared last year. By the way, want to feel old? That op-ed was last September. I could have told you, if you'd ask me when that appeared, I would have said any time from like this April through like three years ago. I had just literally no idea. The book is called a warning. We still don't know the name of the anonymous author, obviously. And we don't even know if he's working in the Trump administration. He or she, I suppose, is working in the Trump administration still. The New York Times notes this new book, which is 272 pages long, offers a greater opportunity for, clues to his or her identity, as well as increasingly sophisticated forensic author identification software, which matches prose style to other published works. So I guess the thinking is here.

Maybe you could have gotten away with it with the op-ed, which I'm still kind of shocked, aren't you, that we never found out who it was after the op-ed? That person never got outed. Yeah, as somebody said at the time, I mean, a lot of people made the point that, like, you're much safer being an anonymous contributor to the Times and being a whistleblower inside the government because the Times will track you down if you're a whistleblower. Yeah, just given how many kind of conservative, you know, investigative, and that's an extremely generous word operations around the world, I'm amazed that person never got exposed.

I'm really amazed. But 272 pages, because this is, this kind of software is what they used to get Joe Klein back in the, when he wrote that novel anonymous back in primary colors back in 1996. It was that kind of, now that's, of course, much more sophisticated, but it was back then it was this idea that you cannot hide your literary self. Now,

maybe this person is a government official, so they wrote like two papers for the Heritage Foundation or something like that. They might not have like a giant literary corpus out there, but that's amazing to me if they somehow keep their anonymity through 272 pages because I'm not sure any actual writer could do that. Do you think? No, I mean, remember when the first thing came out, there were all those little like tell,

supposed tells. He used Lodestar, which I think was on Mike Pence-ism. And it seemed like there. And there was something else too. There was something that pointed in a different direction. It kind of felt like whoever wrote it just deliberately through a couple of words in there to get everybody off the scent.

And also, I was reading something about this when they announced the book, and I don't remember if this was in the Times or elsewhere, where they, or no, I think it must have been in a blog post or something where it was discussing potential people who had written it. And there were a couple people at the end. John Huntsman was sort of the most compelling to my conspiracy theorist mind, but like, you know, the couple people who seem like pretty plausible choices, and the list was not that long, you know, I mean, I don't think it's that, I think if you have any sort of determination to find out who this is, my guess is you'd find it. I'm not sure that we need to know,

although if it is someone like Huntsman who has in fact since left the administration, I can't imagine that they'd be anonymous either by choice or not for that long. But yeah, I mean, it's clearly this is not a Joe Klein situation. Depending on the content of it, I don't know that it even amounts to really a whistleblower situation, and not to diminish what it says, but it was more of a, I mean, the op-ed was sort of a statement of faith, or, you know, it's more of a mission statement than a, you know, than a report of things that are going wrong, you know, or, you know, crimes that are being committed. So it'll be interesting to see what the 272 pages are. You know, that can mean a lot of, that, you know, it could be a lot of different things in there.

So, I mean, I guess we should all be excited to see, uh, what happens, but I do think this is probably going to devolve into another story about, you know, who the, who the mole is, right? I think that's right. So if we're looking for the mole, the idea is we should be searching for someone with literary pretensions or literary ambitions, I guess, to put it nicely, because not every Republican apparatchik. That would not describe a lot of people, I don't think. I think it would describe a lot of people in the Obama White House. In fact, you may describe everybody in the Obama White House. in the Trump White House.

Right. Like, I understand, like, I want, we wanted to write this op-ed that's kind of a cry for help and also this kind of weird defense that, in fact, those of us who are here are really stopping Trump, right? That was part of the, right? Part of the idea. But 272-page book, you want to be a writer at that point. You really, you really want to own the bit.

You want to kind of be like Michael Gerson was in the, in the Bush administration, the speech writer who's now in op-ed columnist at the, at the post. you want, I just think there's a, in a Republican administration, there's only a handful of people that usually fit. David from, right? There's another one. Like in from Bush, from Bush two. They're not that many people in that category. So yeah, I think we could probably like, like, that's why Huntsman makes, makes some sense to me. But I think, I think that's kind of interesting. If it's somebody that is still somehow employed by the Trump administration, me still a part of the Trump administration, it would be pretty incredible if they eventually got brought down for, you know, using, I mean, for like writing a nonfiction book on their, on their work computer or like during, during business hours, like the minor, the minor infraction that we all, that all of us

typing away to screenplay at our desk, you're secretly worried about. Or there, you know, had been using like thesaurus.com. You know, that's one way you could check it out because they're just like fitting words in there so that their, their prose sounds different. That's fantastic. This person is repped by Javelin which is that interesting media group in Washington, D.C.

that has sort of shepherded a lot of these anti-Trump projects along. Were you surprised at all by the reception this got from lefty Twitter? Here's Matthew Miller, former Obamaite. At a time when State Department employees are risking their careers to testify about wrongdoing

in this administration, I can't think of anyone I want to hear from less than this person. I guess that's that surprising but I sort of think there's room for both I mean I don't I don't know why I'm not I'm not I don't know I'm going to go actually read this this is this feels like the ultimate book to be consumed through aggregated articles about it but I just don't I don't know that I'm I don't know that I'm mad at this person

there's a little bit something self-pitying quality to the op-ed but I don't know you know it's not like I don't like I'll get out of here with your anonymous tell-all about the Trump administration. I kind of think we need more anonymous tell-alls about the Trump administration, not fewer. Yeah, the more the better, yeah. I was reminded of the whole Joe Klein bit back in 1996 when he wrote primary colors. Remember how big that was? Number one New York Times bestseller.

It came out at the beginning of Bill Clinton's reelection campaign. And if you're not old enough to remember, was a very, you know, thinly disguised book about Clinton. and the reporters covering Clinton. It was actually a great stunt too from Harold Evans, who was running Random House at that point to really gin up the guessing game. Joe Klein, who was at the time was writing for Newsweek, wrote the book and denied it.

The New York Times reported vehemently and repeatedly. Even at one point yelling at Jacob Weisberg, who'd helped with the New York Magazine story about the book, in full view of colleagues in a New Hampshire bar, his denial was so angry that I was at least momentarily shaken Mr. Weisberg said. During the Iowa caucus is in 96, I'm still quoted the Times here.

Mr. Klein approached a group of reporters and unprompted protested his treatment in the book because there was a character in the book that resembled Joe Klein. So he went up to a group of reports. Have you read that? Have you read that primary colors? Sure were rough on me, weren't they?

So bizarre. What a strange moment in American letters. Next up, David. Let's talk about sports. media free agents. Apparently they do exist. We learned from front office sports as Ed Moran. The news that Omar Raja, who founded House of Highlights, is leaving Bleacher

report. House of highlights, which Raja created when he was in college is a monster of a sports highlights themed Instagram account with 14 million followers later expanded into YouTube and TikTok sources tell Moran he could be, Raja could be pursued by ESPN, the athletic, or DeZone, aka the three sports media entities doling out big contracts now.

Yeah. What is the usefulness of, so he has to leave House of Highlights behind. He cannot take that with him. That is owned by Bleacher Report. What's the use do you think in our modern media world of somebody like that?

To a new employer, right? Yeah, to ESPN, for instance. I mean, I think the answer is a little bit easier for DeZone and maybe even for the athletic, and it's just sort of, you know, building the masthead out right i mean just having a big name um someone you can like pitch to when you're trying to get funding and all that kind of stuff um for espna you're right it's a little bit there's and i guess either of those on a deeper level there's i mean there it is it is an interesting

question um you know in 2019 in current year there is a i mean there's always a market for um for this sort of tech disruptor, I guess. You could use that term pretty broadly. I mean, he started an Instagram account that took off, which doesn't seem like a lot. But in the sports media world, that was a huge sort of paradigm shift. There's a reason why he got paid all that money for it. And there's a reason why literally everybody we know who's on Instagram is subscribed to it

and not just Instagram, all the other platforms too. You know, I think that there's a more than passing chance that he is a brilliant guy, even outside of the strictures that he set for himself and will come up with many other ideas, but how to sort of like use social media and new media to, to, you know, further the brand. There's also, you know, a lot of, I mean, there's a potential that there's a lot of stuff that he could, you know, have more, having more access to actual, like, usage rights will allow him to expand his, his, his, uh, palette a little bit and do some more interesting things. Um, but I think for a company like ESPN, more than anything else, it's more of, he's sort of an indicator.

I mean, he's sort of a, he's a symbol, right? You hire him. You know, you can, you can have company-wide meetings where you say we got to get serious about social only so many times. And until finally, like, you actually have to make a big hire and say, like, look, we're allocating a ton of money in this guy's salary. And we're going to allocate X number of dollars to help, you know, reconfigure our whole, you know, our social media division. And then, and maybe that'll make a big, or whatever division it is, just new media division. And, and hope that that actually signals a change. Does that sound like anything?

Yeah, especially that we got us get serious about social cliche. That's not, but that, no, but that all, that all makes perfect sense. And it'd be interesting in a place like ESPN,

which I think is sort of subtly evolving to be post words in a way. You know, it's, it's not to say, not to say that they're giving up on reporting, exactly, but they're not a literary

property in the same way that their old president John Skipper envisioned them being literary property. That's clear. And, you know, the magazine's away. O'TL is diminished, all these kind of things. And I think somebody like that who, you know, lives on social, who lives on new

projects, who maybe helps with the streaming service. Like that, that kind of person makes sense in the new ESPN world. If that fits very snugly in that world, you know, even more so maybe than in the athletic world, which me the athletic is about words still about words and you know they've been slow to even to

do podcasts and stuff like that and that's a good transition because there are other free agent signing was the basketball podcasters and tv stars the starters who are non-renewed by nba tv are now at the athletic their new pod is called no dunks and the athletic tells the washington post ben strouse that the pod will serve as a home for them to do their usual stuff but then also to interview athletic reporters about basketball stuff. I don't know what your thoughts on here. I guess there's a couple of things. One is that,

and this goes to ESPN's pod that just launched the ESPN daily. It's like that model has now, literally everybody is reverse engineering the daily right now. And I know the starters new pot isn't exactly that. It is that like, hey, you've got a big basketball story. come on and talk to us about it. And the athletic even has another pod that is more like the daily kind of story of the day kind of thing.

But the success of that idea, no matter what you think about the daily, whether you like it or not, whether Michael Bobaro irritates you or whatever it is about that, you have to admit that that is like the idea that everybody is trying to clone. ESPN has cloned it to such an extent that their pod is called the ESPN daily. Like they didn't even change the name. It just has did the same, like the same name about the same length and the same concept. It's just that is, it's amazing to me that that turned out to be one of the bazillion dollar ideas of podcast. That show. And I, and I say that kind of semi respectfully. Like, wow.

That's what turned out to be the big thing. yeah the thing that we kind of already had it was like you know your daily like it was like npr news or you know just the news however you want to put it um but yeah i i i think that that's right um to to borrow a phrase for myself um the buzzfeed just launched uh i was saying this to chris in the office but buzzfeed just announced they're launching a podcast called impeachment today, which is a daily Trump podcast about the impeachment inquiry where it seems

yeah, where it seems like you know, and I am not familiar with the previous audio ventures of Hayes Brown, although he's in a fantastic writer, he's going to be hosting the show. But for the life of me, it sounds like they put his voice through a Michael Bobaro audio filter. I mean, they're just like actually trying

to match that daily just beat for beat. But anyway, yeah, I mean, listen, whatever, I'm a big fan of the starters guys, now the No Dunks guys, have been since before their time with the Turner Empire.

They were always kind of an interesting fit there because they were very much like a sort of signifier, right? When they got hired to do the show and they moved them down to Atlanta, it was very much like, hey, look what we're doing. We're investing in the internet as what, you know, as part of our basketball

universe. And they did great stuff. I mean, I mean, listen, I I am an unabashed fan of theirs and surely too biased to be having this conversation right now. But it is kind of like, I mean, it's a group of really talented people doing kind of exactly the show they want to do. And I think that they, I think that in a lot of ways, this is what the athletic could be perfect. I mean, I mean, this is what could really be a huge win for the existence of the athletic, right? is that you take people who are doing a thing really well in the sports world that doesn't

fit neatly into another, you know, existing empire or whatever, and you give them the opportunity to continue doing it. You know, I really hope, I really hope this works out for him because, you know, I don't want, I mean, I still, I want them to be a part of my podcast life for a long time. but yeah I mean it is interesting to see how they're I mean I don't know what the situation was the athletic I'm sure is paying them really well but it was it's interesting that they you know that it didn't last at T&T after some significant investment into that and and that they're going to you know they're continuing to to kind of do the same thing just under a different under a different roof well and and I think that you know that is probably less about them than the new ownership of the of that empire and you know Jeff Zucker coming in and looking at that and saying what are we going to do about NBA TV right more broadly which is which is a whole other subject but you know that I think is like what is this what is this thing going to be about and how do we make this at least roughly comparable to the MLB network if not the NFL network yeah I think that's I think that's I think that's it's also interesting to kind of like take a step back and think that like when the starters guys were hired by the NBA TV and I mean I mean that whole I mean when they were when they were when they were hired. to do their show in Atlanta, they were the sort of new media bad boys just like House of Highlights is now, right? I mean, they, like, that was, that it was, I don't know if there

was like a line of people out there trying to hire them, but that was a, that felt like a pretty big get, at least to people sitting were worse sitting, right? I mean, the, the sports, the sports audience at large probably didn't know who they were, but, um, it was pretty, it was pretty bold to, for that to be the hire and it felt like a really big deal at the time. Now, I mean, podcasts are still enormous and daily, even, television, you know, all this stuff is, you know, still a really big deal, obviously. But it's sort of funny how the dude who created House of Highlights is like, is the top free agent by a mile, you know? I mean, this is, this is the person that every major

sports media company wants. So, you know, are falling over themselves to offer money to. Well, I guess if it's not that, not him, it's Stephen A. Smith, which just goes back to old media. But do you want to talk about him too? Yeah, because according to Ryan Glassbeagle and Bobby Burke over with the big lead, he's about to sign what they call a blockbuster extension. And the New York Post, Andrew Marchand says that price could reach five years, $50 million.

Forget Romo. How about Stephen A. Smith's new deal? And Marciaan points out the year, they're actually signing it a year early, meaning ESPN wanted to get this done before he became a free agent. I mean, I think we already knew that Stephen A. Smith was the biggest, the most kind of,

I don't know biggest, I don't know that's like kind of a fuzzy word. He is the most important on-air talent at ESPN right now and has been for a number of years. I think what's interesting to me about him is at least in contractual, in monetary terms, he has won the argument of, remember in like the 2005, 2006, when he sort of comes to prominence? And everybody says, oh my God, is Stephen A. Smith the future of sports TV? Remember that was like, that was just like everybody throwing up their hands? Guess what? The answer turned out to be yes. He is the future of sports TV. And he has a more singular place in the ESPN universe than I think even people whaling that back in 2005 could have imagined. He completely won the argument for a guy who's on a debate show every day. I mean, this is a guy who is now, we've talked about how Stephen A kind of went into this weird zone where he could be saying stuff about NFL players that doesn't exist and everybody just kind of smiles and moves along.

he's had a New Yorker profile, a fairly admiring New Yorker profile, I think. Very good New Yorker profile, too, by the way. But Stephen A won it. He won the argument at the end of the day. That he is ESPN. He's sports TV. You know, it's funny because we talked about this, but I think, I don't remember if this was on the pod or just the two of us chatting. But I remember when we're, when I probably when Skip signed with Fox Sports, was this it?

Or maybe it was just an earlier conversation about Stephen A, but the conversation was always, just the amount of content he produces. We definitely talked about this in Skip. You know, makes him worth the money. They can, I mean, compared to a NBA writer or, you know, whatever, like any, some of these other, some people with other job descriptions. You can have Skip Bayliss on, you know, for two hours every morning and then replay it on the other channel. And this is, you know, it's constant content. But, I mean, the funny, one of the interesting things about the Stephen A thing is that part of the deal is that he's stopping his radio show.

which I guess you know this says more about radio versus TV than anything else but he's going to be doing more TV hits you think he said he's going to have his own some sort of NBA Sports Center set up

and he's already like we've discussed before been doing lots of stuff on get up and then into obviously first take I mean he's going to be omnipresent on ESPN which for those who are actually paying attention to ESPN probably isn't that much of a change he's been omnipresent for a while

And I guess this is just sort of, you know, formalizing that, that setup, that he's, he's the sort of face of the, of the brand now. I think that's right. I think another thing when we, when you look at, by the way, did I just do my first? I think that that's right in, in, in Press Box history. I'm proud of you. Oh, my God, it's spreading. The, um, I think that that's right, David.

I also think it's interesting. Do you remember on the early end of the Stephen A. angst? It was like, we're going to get a hundred Stephen A. Smith clones all over sports television. That really didn't happen. And I sort of wonder, is that because we only had, we, and I say this collectively as a society, only had the appetite for like one of those shows essentially a day? Or is it that it turned out that you really couldn't clone Stephen A. Smith, that he was so good at that. It's so good at, I remember Bimani Jones telling me one time, like he just thinks Stephen A is, I'm going to butcher this a little bit, but like he,

He is as good at that job as anybody. And he's the best at that job. In fact, as I think what Bumani said. And he just turned out to be really hard to clone, that you couldn't just throw somebody else in there on a different show because they weren't as good. That's sort of an interesting argument to me. I mean, listen, we've watched Get Up since its inception,

which is you're probably going to tell me that show launched four years ago now because everything goes so quickly. But it hasn't been on for that long. And they've already, and they've cycled through, both deliberately and just part of it and kind of accidentally they've cycled through what certainly is approaching high double digits of you know co-hosts or guests and all that kind of stuff on the show um in search and and these are people who've almost all been on television time taking reps before but it's sort of the search for someone who can just like actually do that

day to day you know day in and day out on at a high level and it's been a really really hard task to find people who can pull it off yep that's a that's that's that's in some ways it's an easier job than what Stephen A is doing because Stephen A is working within the same strictures but is, you know, he's monologuing a lot more, you know, he's performing. And it's sort of one-man show sometimes, even though it's not a one-man. Obviously, there's a back-and-forth. But, you know, he is incredibly good at his job. I think that there probably there may be a limit to how much of that, you know, someone would want, but that's presuming people watch ESPN all day long. I think most people watch ESPN for a few

minutes each day and for and and if you tune in for half an hour um i probably behoove zpn to get you know stephen a in front of you for five or ten minutes every half hour you know all day long you know i mean that he's even if there's a limit it's got to be a limit for a different limit for i mean you know a limit for every different every person who's watching every different segment of the of the you know the the the schedule i'd like to transition from stephen a smith to another person with opinions ross doubt it how's that for a segue yeah that was fantastic. I wanted to do this segment because there's an idea, David, that you and I have been cooking up for basically as long as we've known each other.

And I want to lay it out and maybe listeners can help us kind of refine this a little bit. Here's the idea. Several years back, you and I were living together in New York and we used to go bum around bookstores. And I remember John Grisham, bestselling author of The Firm and all these other books, had a new book out. and the book was called the king of torts, the king of torts. And that sounded, it was a real John Grisham book, but it sounded exactly like what you would cook up if you were coming up with a parody of a John Grisham book. Like it was, it was the real thing and it was the parody. And at that moment, real John Grisham and parody John Grisham had become the same thing.

I think there was no, there was no longer any separation. And I was thinking of that this week and you and I were emailing about this because I looked at Twitter and I saw a Ross Douthat column called Watership Down and the crisis of liberalism. And I felt at that point Ross had entered the king of Torts zone where it's like if I was trying to come up with a funny fake Ross Douthat column for like a parody New York Times opinion page, that's I was. would have, I would have, I would have, I would have wanted to write something that good. But it turned out that was his real column. I think the first question is, what is the name? We needed a name for this. That moment when you, when you reach singularity with your parody self, if I'm saying that correctly, do you have an idea what we have, what we should call this? My first, yeah, my first inclination was like, the call it, was calling it like the Hasselhoff zone or something that when you're like fully yourself and the parody of yourself at the same time, um, um, um, But I don't know if that really reflects the moment. I don't know the moment that David Hasselhoff fully became self-aware. Yeah, there's like Hasselhoff and William Shatner, right, is the actor version of that. Oh, yeah.

Where there's no room anymore. But this is almost like the literary version of that. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Where it's like, I mean, like you, and by the way, you and I could, you and I will probably write one of these columns in the next month where everybody's like, that sounds like the parody of something Curtis or Shoemaker would write. So we're not a meet. We're approaching this line.

We're priority there. But I just want a name. So if anybody thinks it can think of it can help us refine this at the press box pod. Can we? King of Taurus is pretty. Are we we saying it's not going to be? Is like the people need to like, like, or are we looking for suggestions that don't include, like, thriller writers?

Like, because I feel like Dick Francis or like Tony Hillerman or just sort of like way too fertile ground for whatever this is. But yeah, okay. Yeah, there's a Tony Hillerman moment you'll remember called Sinister Pig. He wrote a book called Sinister Pig. All right. Can we have a serious discussion about Ross Douthat? Because I actually read this column.

And you know what? It was a good column. I'm just going to go ahead and say it was a good column. And I'm also just going to say a couple of things here about Rust out of that. And I think you feel vaguely the same way. Until that page rebooted itself and hired Michelle Goldberg and Jamel Bowie and other people, he was basically the only writer I read on that page at all. Oh, yeah.

I think he was, and again, power rankings don't interest me that much, but if he wasn't their best writer, he was the best writer of op-eds, or best writer of columns, I should say. He knew how to write a column better than anybody else on that page from imbibing it seemingly since birth. and I disagree with Ross probably 98% of the time, but he figured out very effectively how to be the conservative on the Times op-ed page.

That was the job he was born to do. And he does it better. He does it better than David Brooks. He's basically always to me done it better than David Brooks in that setting. And I wonder how you feel about it. him. Yeah, I think that's, that's about where I am too. I mean, I think he's, he's a very persuasive writer, and I don't mean persuasive, like, I am persuaded to his point of view, but he is like a rhetorician in the classical sense, and it's, you know, when I read him, and I don't,

I can't say that I read everything that he writes, so maybe I'm just getting, I'm just like clicking through when, when something kind of reaches a certain level of acclaim or just noteworthiness, but, yeah, he's, he, he has, he has, he has, he has mastered. the form like you said and like you know it would not um I mean I feel like with it by the time David Brooks by the time we were like

we were old enough to be like you know critics of the of the op-ed page uh David Brooks was already an institution early you know Bobo's in Paradise was already on the bestseller list or whatever so like there you know there was I don't we probably have a different view of doubt that than we would

um any writer from an earlier generation um certainly our generation is more, you know, critical in the moment of every, you know, public-facing figure, too. So he has to weather a different sort of, um, firestorm probably every time he writes something. But he certainly managed to do that. Like he's, he's sort of created, I don't know if he's created a character, but he's, but he certainly, he certainly mastered a voice of, um, that, that isn't grading necessarily. And it isn't, it isn't, uh, I don't know,

ironic. I mean, there's just something like it doesn't, it doesn't seem to like pull the, it doesn't seem to like push the buttons in the same way that, you know, Brett Stevens or Bari Weiss or some of these other, you know, some of the other more conservative voices. It kind of feels like he gets it. I don't know. Well, that's, I think that's what we're getting at. And I've met Ross once, I think, in my life. I know you were there for that, Brian. So you, it was that same party. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I mean, I don't know if you've talked to. Boy, the wild parties we used to go to. Woo. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's, I don't, I don't know Ross at all, but I do

sort of get the impression that he gets it. And maybe it's because I've ever talked to him face to face. And that goes a long way towards humanizing somebody. But it does feel like he gets it. And it also feels like he believes generally, like the politics that he's defending in a way that it doesn't always feel like conservative writers on big platforms or on television or wherever else actually believe those things. It seems almost performative for a lot of people. That's definitely, I mean, that's, I mean, look, if you're, if you're working in the Fox News, Rush Limbaugh world and you actually care about ideas and, and those kinds of things, you start with a leg up. Can I, can I push a little bit for both of you guys on the word on the term gets it gets how to do this job in a universe where you can get dragged on Twitter pretty easily? Is that what we're talking about here? Like gets how to be that guy in the media world that, that he lives in.

in there are some clunkers. I'm thinking about the necessity of Stephen Miller from January 2018. We could list a whole bunch. There's also pros that I think when we talk about putting it through the identification machine, if Ross Douth that was anonymous White House guy, I think we would figure it out immediately. Could anybody else have written this about Watership Down? One anxiety in the Western world right now, palpable on. both the right and left is that the plush end of rabbit history worn is liberalism's

dystopian destination, a sleek and fattened inhumanity, a terrible mix of comfort and cruelty, a loss of basic human goods under the pressure of capitalism or secularism or both. I would know immediately who that was. If there's like a mole in the New York Times, I'd be like, that's Ross. That's not anybody else, right? That's not Brett Stevens. Certainly not. You know, the other thing I'll say about him before we let this topic go is for the last couple of years, he's written about culture, I think, as eagerly as anybody in that paper, or at least on that, on the opinion page.

Like, he wrote about girls, right? He got dragged for it, but he tried, right? And he came in with his own, his own take on that. There aren't many people in that, again, again, partly because of the demographic. of the people writing those columns now who are taking stuff like that on. And I appreciate at least the attempt. You know, this is what people are talking about. I'm going to write a column about it.

That's, that's what Maureen Dowd used to do, right? That's, that's kind of part of the job. All right, David, listener mail. We got this one from Asif Doja,

who was, who was on the pod last week. If David Shoemaker's t-shirt catchphrase for the press box is, I think you're right. His catchphrase for the, the mass man show is I don't disagree. First of all, congratulations on being one of, I believe, six people who listen to both of my podcasts. We have our monthly meeting is at six o'clock tomorrow night.

I'll see you there. But yes, I think this is why I will never be making $10 million a year to spout my ideas to people. Because when confronted with a slightly, with a view that like is a few degrees off of mine, I don't take the Stephen A. Smith route and underline the differences. I guess I try to find common ground too much. So, you know, kind of reminds me of a wrestler that used to wear a different costume when he went and wrestled in a different town, you know, for a different promotion. So over here, you're, I think that's right. And on the other show, you're right.

I don't disagree. I like that. You just varied it up just enough. We did a bit last week, peg to Ronan Farrow proposing to John Lovett in the drafts for catch and kill asking, what is the least romantic book you could propose in. Both Chris Martinez and Dana Constance informed us that the correct answer was OJ. Simpsons, if I did it. So I can't believe we missed it.

Yeah. Time for David Shoemaker guesses a strain pun headline. Last Friday's pun headline. Yes, I like that. Last Friday's pun headline was, You've Got to Be Kidney Me, which Chris Al made it just owned. Today's comes from Joshua Ehrlich. it's from the Guardian.

It's a story by Leland Seco. That's very funny. It turns out that a chef in Canada, David, has created his own fried fish sandwich. And he named it the effing filetal fish. Just buried it up a little. By the way,

it looks really good. When you later look at this guardian piece, it looks, I want to go up to Edmonton and eat me an effing filial fish. Turns out, calling something the effing filial fish was a little too close to the popular fast food item. So the chef got a note from a McDonald's lawyer.

Now this headline is very dada. So I'm going to have to lead you a little bit. But what is the Guardian's strained pun headline? First of all, this is a fantastic. I really want whatever this effing filet fish is, I want it. Oh, is it give me back that effin filet fish? No, that's good. though. That would have worked.

While Chris is guessing, I just want to continue to sing the praise of the flay of fish. The McDonald's version is delicious and every fried fish sandwich is amazing. All right. It's a little bit dada. It's about is it like a getting the F out

joke? It's what's a phrase that's kind of wet fish? What's a phrase that's kind of old and now a little distasteful about someone getting annoyed? you got what? You got

annoyed? Yeah, but someone getting highly annoyed. You pissed off? You got your panties in a bunch? Mm-hmm. Now,

take panties, take panties and go very sweet food. Jim's gonna have fun with that one. Oh, I know. Take panties and go very... This is the most strained one we've ever done. It is, it truly is.

And that's why I picked it. McDonald's gets their what in a bunch? Maybe a red lobster menu item, David. You want a delicious shrimp? Scampy? McDonald's gets their scampy in a bunch. That is the most strange thing I've ever heard in my life. It's like they wrote it for us.

McDonald's gets their scampy in a bunch over burger joint stuffing filial fish. Thank you, Joshua Ehrlich for. pointing out this important headline. He is David Schuemaker. A frustrated David Schuemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Tuesday. Bright and early with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. Guess what? I'm a father. Woo! So just think about that.

Yeah, I mean, oh man, there's so much here. So this happened. Yeah. Oh, no, it didn't happen. Um, yeah. Oh, no. It didn't happen. Um, yeah. Oh, no. It. How are you this inept? Panties in a bunch?

Sure were rough on me, weren't they? The answer turned out to be yes. Boy, the wild parties we used to go to. That was me excited. You really want to own the bit. Yes, I think this is why I will never be making $10 million a year to spout my ideas to people because... So bizarre. Yeah, that was fantastic.

I think that that's right, David. Yeah, I think that's... I think that's right. That's about where I am, too. I mean, I think he's... And I say that kind of semi-respectfully. Like, wow. Yeah.

That's what turned out to be the victim. That's bad. What a strange moment in America. An apology would be a good place to see.