The Press Box - The Media Slips Into a Warm Bloodbath, the Craziest Scoops of NFL Free Agency, and the Twilight of Investigative Journalism.

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Bryan and David kick off the show discussing a think piece in the Semafor from Max Tani on how hard it is to get a tough story out there (0:52), plus some good news about ‘Sports Illustrated’ (14:12). Then they discuss Donald Trump using the word “bloodbath” while campaigning in Dayton, Ohio (15:50). In the Notebook Dump, they discuss some of the funny tweets surrounding NFL free agency (27:45), as well as ‘New York Times’ obituaries and who meets the bar to get one (31:53), followed by this week’s media test (0:00) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. This is David Shoemaker. The pro wrestling world is currently on fire. And so we've got you covered five days a week on the ringer wrestling show. Every Monday and Thursday, hang out with me and Kaz on The Masked Man Show. And this is Peter Rosenberg, the host of Cheap Heat. Join me and my guys, Stack Guy Greg and Dipperstein on Tuesdays and Fridays. We talk wrestling. We have bagel breakdowns, mage interviews, and so much more. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal and Brian on Wednesday. Worldwide, where we hit the most interesting headlines and even react to some of mass mans, cheap heats, or even your hottest tics. Don't tap out. Tap in to the Ringer Wrestling Show feed. Now on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. And stay Mage, everyone.

Worldwide. I would like to start today's show by talking about a think piece. Great. Tell me all about it. A trend story, you might say. It's one that Max Taney published in Semaphore. I'll give you his argument. In 2024, Tanny writes,

it's harder than ever to get a tough story out in the United States of America. Always like anyone who uses the full name of the country here in the United States of America. Second only to US of A, right? Which is very rarely see in headlines. He continues a landscape of gleefully revelatory magazine exposés, aggressive newspaper investigations,

feral online confrontations, and painstaking television investigations has been eroded by a confluence of factors, dot, dot, dot. Quote, very few owners have balls anymore, says Tina Brown, former editor of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Now, this piece, David, exists somewhere in the think-piece wilderness

where it feels right. We probably need a to be sure paragraph where you mention that it is easier than ever to publish a tough story about the president of the United States or now former president of the United States. It has been for quite a while. Also funny seeing Tina Brown

summoned as the dial a quote for the story, Tina Brown, who was criticized during her career in magazines, are probably not publishing enough tough pieces. But Tanny has some interesting reasons why he argues that it's hard to get a tough story into print, which I'll give you. Number one, the darkening legal climate, he says.

This, of course, begins with Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel doing the doomsday device on Gawker. Kind of an aside, but Hulk Hogan's obituary, and I say this to a man, who knows something about dead wrestlers is going to be one of the most complicated documents of our time. You're not wrong. I mean,

press freedom portion of the obit, a whole very terrible comments portion of the obit. Yeah, reality show star component, part of the Ovid. I mean, that's weirdly how a lot of people know him now. It's a lot of,

a lot of, just a lot of odd stuff, man. Tanny mentions emboldened billionaires standing in the way of tough journalism. There was that whole episode between Bill Ackman and Business Insider. Elon Musk, we know, not only has lots of money, but now has his hand on our speech app. Another aside, don't you think Don Lemon, while being disappointed that whatever monetary deal he had but had not signed with X was canceled? was pretty delighted by all the free press

that Elon Musk gave his new digital talk show. You mean by canceling it? Yeah, by canceling it and saying in not so many words that the questions were too tough and too interesting. Yeah, Don Lemon's a little bit hard to read. But I kind of get the impression he was, yes, I'm sure happy for the press and also legitimately offended

at the same time, which is a little bit irrational, but, you know, journalists will always take offense at such things. Well, you'd kind of have to, right? Yeah. You know, I was just asking questions. These are things that were in the public record. Yeah. And it's sort of in your interest to feel a little bit of grieved, a little bit, I was just

doing my job. If you're not aggrieved like that, you're probably not going to make it in the business. So, yeah. But what a gift to a show that was just going to. a sail out into, from cable news into the ether. And all of a sudden, at least one episode is a must watch.

Tanny's other reasons for the twilight, if you will, of investigative journalism, of tough pieces. He cites the end of internet journalism. Gawker, Huffpo, BuzzFeed News, Daily Beast, Vice.

These were companies that were not only hiring lots of people, but what do you do when you're a startup to make noise? You're more aggressive about investigations. As Deadspin used to say, you're not getting the access so you are willing to publish tougher pieces. Yeah.

That has dried up quite a lot. Collapse of the news business, he says. We've talked a lot about that. Celebrity control over the media. We've also talked about that. Yeah. And the collapse of the news business piece, I think, is relevant for all the reasons we've discussed before.

but also, I mean, it bears mention that sometimes a lot of the people who are running, the owners of legacy in print media, outlets, even online media, the ownership groups, some of which have been seen as sort of saviors of traditional journalism, they're not necessarily like journalism ideologues, right? They don't, they're not necessarily just the, the TV, you know, or the newspaper publisher from old movies who's just like waving a rolled up newspaper at the sky and demanding truth at all costs. You know, I mean, they have other motivations, but that, you know, they're, but they're owning these places now. Yeah. And in those in those movies, too,

I seem to remember the publisher also not being an ideologue, but it's the journalist they hired that were. Sure. They were the ones who had these ideas about investigative reporting and holding the powerful to account. Right. And as we've seen, like you point out, these proprietors were like, I would like to hire people like that and give them elbow room as long as it's making me money. And as we've seen with some of those online publishers you mentioned, they're happy to hire those kinds of journalists. They're happy to give them elbow room as long as it's advancing whatever goals they have. And as soon as it's not advancing the goal or as soon as they decide it's not, then eh, not so into the whole journalism tough piece part of the equation. final thing tanny cites

which I thought was an interesting dimension of this entire argument is the fall of magazines and there are a couple of recent examples of this there was a big piece in the Guardian about Jay Shetty who is a podcaster podcaster I mostly know because

Joe Biden picked his podcast is one of his rare media appearances a writer did a whole piece about him. Esquire wasn't interested in it, so the piece wound up running in the Guardian. Wrote in track, which is another Hearst magazine, ran a story by Kate Wagner on Formula One.

She went and wrote about all the money just dripping off everything in the sport of Formula One. They published the piece and then unpublished. So Tanny is saying if you take magazines, which again, let's not golden age it up too much, right? Pick up a magazine even at its height how much of it was going to be a tough piece, an investigative piece, about anything,

celebrity, business, whatever it is. But it was a place where that could happen. And it seems like with a few very notable examples, which he mentions here, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, etc., that is not likely to be a place where you're going to get that type of story anymore. So the argument is basically that the places where these sorts of things would have once had a home and potentially would have gotten a lot of traction just don't really exist in the same way anymore. Maybe you could amend that to say the places that were powerful enough to put stuff like this into print don't exist in the same way anymore.

So power is an interesting question here because you're right. I mean, some of the pieces that I mean, the historical examples of pieces that we're talking about. about were not necessarily the page one or the you know the cover stories of whatever magazines were talking about though right i mean it's it's that they were they were investigative well-thought-out pieces that probably rose to prominence because brad pit was on the cover of the magazine or you know or in part right or because they were because they come from a magazine with an editorial tradition from which because that leads us to trust these these types of stories and and you know from from a place like this and and

that sort of bookending pieces like this within the small ecosystem of a magazine is something that really doesn't exist to a large degree anymore because people read almost everything a la carte and it and sure i mean coming with the impermiter of the new yorker or whatever is going to help the legitimacy of a piece but i don't think there's any outlet there's very very few outlets i mean it's the it's the existing magazines like his you know magazine that have been around for a long time, those legacy groups and those legacy outlets are probably the only places that are seeking balance

in any sort of way. And balance was the way a lot of pieces like this would probably make it into publication. Yeah, the mix is what we called it? The mix, yeah, that's right. That's a Tina term if there ever was one, right? Yeah, for sure. And that mix isn't really there anymore.

I mean, it's weird. You think about, you know, I'm going to reference just like the fake old journalism movies that only exist in the imagination again, but when you think about investigative reporting, you almost think of like British tabloids, of like newspapers that are like competing with each other to such a degree that you would want,

that that sort of earth-shattering news wins you a news cycle, wins you maybe, you know, a significant number of subscribers or, you know, of the newspaper purchasers amongst the crowd of people who will only buy one a day or whatever, you know? and that's not the battle that modern journalism that's not where modern journalism has chosen to wage its battle. It's an SEO battle over who can get you to the same Anodyne stories most quickly

or, you know, in the straightest line. Yeah. It's, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's because the battle lines have been redrawn to torture that same metaphor that we're not, you're not in a one-on-one competition or even a one, you know, a three, four, five, you know, a three, four, five, you know, New York newspaper competition anymore. You're in competition with every tweet, right, that you can, that you could possibly, you know, every, every, every social media link. And so maybe there's, it's perceived that there's less value in, in winning at the expense of someone else. And the only real value is just in, in, you know, scraping.

out a minor victory over everyone else, if that makes any sense. It's such a good point. And I think you can, you can really broaden that to lots of different parts of the media where you're not competing against an obvious opponent. Like I think about this with modern ESPN all the time. Their job for the last decade was competing against cable channels like FS1. We can't let this happen on FS1 because that would get more ratings than we have it 9 a.m. or at 1 p.m. And think about the men's magazines, which used to publish this. Like,

so Esquire wants to make sure it has tough pieces because that way, if you have a choice between GQ and Esquire, you know that Esquire is going to give you the great celebrity profile, but it's also going to give you something that makes you smarter, makes you more aware, that tells you something new, right? That makes sense. You know, and then you can look at the competition and be like, I'm going to do what they're not doing. I'm going to do something different or do something better than they're doing. But as soon as you're competing against everything, yeah,

those decisions become very, very different, as you say, and you're just trying to like survive to, you know, come up and search and yeah, it's a very, very different world. I was thinking of, you know, remember Chris Jones came on the podcast last year to talk about his great story about the soldier who died in Iraq. Yep.

And that was a cover that had Jessica Simpson, you remember on it, shaving her face. And around this picture of Jessica Simpson, here's the old magazine mix in action was, okay, now that we have your attention, please read this deeply reported, very, very serious story. Yeah. Within our pages. Speaking of Legacy magazines, Dave, we've got some happy news about Sports Illustrated.

I've ignored the last four or five Sports Illustrated news cycles on this podcast because they're all like the 13th and 14th paragraph of a terrible story. here's something that at least seems not terrible on its face. We know there was a little bit of a ticking clock because SI had laid off a lot of its writers and was going to lay off a lot more if they did not find a new company to publish SI. There is a new company. Ben Mullen reports in New York Times. Minute Media, which is the company that owns the Players Tribune. Minute Media CEO tells the Times they're going to hire some people back that got laid off.

We'll see if that happens. I mean, compared to the arena group, which was the previous publisher of SI, just about any company would seem like time life in its prime. I don't know if this counts, again, is totally happy news because it's a big we'll see with anything named Sports Illustrated or anything that was once what we would know as a magazine company. But not bad news this morning, we thank for Sports Illustrated. All right. Coming up on today's show, we consider Bloodbathgate. Bloodbath and beyond? What's the right way to cover the former president's campaign speeches?

Plus, our NFL insiders are at it again. What the death of a Star Wars villain says about the New York Times and a vaunted. And I mean vaunted list of only in journalism words. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Hello! You media consumer you.

Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and our vaunted producer, Brian Waters. Some campaign news over the weekend, David. Donald Trump was speaking in Dayton, Ohio. He was talking about the auto industry, and then he said these very sanguinary words. We're going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line,

and you're not going to be able to sell those guys. If I get elected, now if I don't get elected, It's going to be a bloodbath for the whole. That's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That'll be the least of it. So the B word became, as they say in journalism, a cause celebrate.

Trump's skeptics were saying, look, he's promising January 6th on steroids. Trump's defenders came out and said, no, no, no, he was talking about the auto industry. It's auto bloodbath. he was speaking about, you're taking Trump out of context. Which raises an interesting question. Can you take somebody out of context whose mode of speaking is out of context?

Like he was talking about cars and then he pivoted to a thought that seemed divorced from cars, but maybe wasn't divorced from cars. What is the right way to put that in context? Yeah, context is not always key with Donald Trump. He sort of scattershoots his way through speeches a lot. I mean, listen, I heard this quote in real time, actually, and was not appalled by it. I think I followed the train of thought that his defenders assumed on his behalf. Actually, listening back to it, it feels a little bit more. I mean, I think Trump is sort of meant to be listened to absent-mindedly, right? If you listen to Trump while you're doing some work or washing some dishes, then it holds together a little bit more than if you actually bear down on the script.

But, I mean, I mean, I don't really know what the lesson is here. I've heard, you know, Joe Scarborough rant against it and then defend his rant for not having missed the point. Sure. I mean, if this were anybody else, you would say, can we just agree that maybe Donald Trump, of all people, should not be using, just throwing the term bloodbath around to describe economic trends. Or what happens after he doesn't

get elected president. Yeah, exactly. But I think that's sort of the that's kind of the point though, right? Like if you ask him to not do it, he's just going to do it more. So I'm not, I don't really know what to make of this. And I, and honestly,

like, I don't think that January 6th and Trump's complete just disregard for the mechanisms of government are off limits. I don't think, I actually think they could, they could be very helpful in the presidential campaign from, for the Biden team. But I do think that there's probably a

pretty slim, if maybe, and possibly non-existent number of people who are going to be swayed by the argument like Trump needs to, Trump, given what he's done, needs to watch the words that he uses, right? I don't, I'm not really sure that there's a, there is a campaign argument that comes out of this. The dude's reckless. That's sort of, that's, that's part what people, what some people really love about him. And, you know, the last thing you want to do is to give him, put more spotlight on, on an actual substantive policy argument of Donald Trump's because, you know, that, that might actually end up

helping him. What this illustrates for me is how. Seven years later, eight years later, if we date back to him starting his run for president the first time in 2015, is how we have not figured out how to cover a Donald Trump rally. Yeah. That this remains completely unresolved. John Alsup has a great piece in the Columbia journalism review about this. And he outlines these distinct many eras of how to cover a Trump speech. Mm-hmm.

2015, 2016, you'll remember CNN and other networks were taking the speech in full. Because to use that notorious Darren Reveld term, it was tremendous content. And then Donald Trump would insult everybody and say lies. We all agreed, right, that that was not the way to do it. There was a certain, you know, ratings, hunger, and complete lack of journalistic responsibility. Okay, so we cross that off. Then we got to era number two when Trump became president and certainly after he was president where the networks would take the speech live, but Daniel Dale was doing mystery science theater 3,000 fact checking while he was doing the speech. Yeah. Or maybe they would tape the speech and then just show you portions that they could vouch for or at least immediately correct.

That was era number two. what's funny dude is we've come almost all the way back around and there's a whole new genre of peace and I saw McKay Coppins write the first one of these I think Susan Glasser the New Yorker wrote another one where it argues that we almost need to see the Trump speech in full again because the stuff Trump says has become normalized abstracted to use a word McKay used half forgotten and that only by absorbing the whole enchilada can you be reminded what is its stake in this election? Yeah. But then that just returns us to the fact-checking an operational nightmare of era number one.

No, I think that's exactly right. I think that that, but that is the conundrum because Trump speeches have to sort of be appreciated in full, right? They even have to be appreciated on video, you know, in the entire context. I'm sure it'd be even different watching them live than, you know, whatever. You really have to absorb the whole thing because I'm sure it'd be instructional to be amongst the Trump supporters live at the rally, right, and to see how his message was getting received. To really appreciate how galling some of these speeches are, you really have to give yourself over to it.

But that's, this is the issue is that people, a lot of people don't want to listen, don't have time to listen and Trump knows that he can just sort of, you know, just shuffle his way over the finish line just by saying as much stuff as he can possibly say. And sure, people, it's like the old, you know, Pat Riley Nick strategy. It's like we're going to commit five fouls every time we go down the court and they can only call one, right? I mean, it's, it's, and I think that when you catch, when you have him defending a quote, he's, he's, he's probably, that campaign is probably sent around laughing about the other 10 quotes that you're not bothering with. Well, and let's say that we agreed that good citizens should watch Trump's speech is in full.

How many should they watch? Just be one? Should it be more than one? Can we rely on the idea that if they watch it, they will be so shocked and horrified that they will do a certain thing and that it will not become more normalized to them after watching it a few times or after hearing Trump drone? on for an hour and a half because he does tend to go long. It's really, it's really a conundrum. Also notes that in this speech, the same speech in Dayton, Ohio, whatever you think of bloodbath, there were many, many other things worth pointing out.

It says, also writes, before Trump began an announcer instructed the crowd to rise in tribute to the insurrectionists who stormed the capital. During his speech, Trump promised to help the insurrectionist if he wins re-electionist, referring to them as patriots and hostages. He referred to some immigrants as, quote, animals, adding, quote, I don't know if you call them people in some cases. They're not people in my opinion. So all that was in the speech, separate from the one remark that has turned into a big source of debate on Twitter and elsewhere. Also, B also made this a really interesting point that I think goes to how campaigns are covered, which is when reporters

sit through all these speeches, they're often hearing candidates say the same words over and over again, candidates who are disciplined. And what they're looking for, he points out, is novelty, saying something that they didn't hear four times before in three other swing states. So when Trump said the word bloodbath, right, that triggers novelty. That's different. Now, of course, he said things like that before, but he hadn't used that particular words. So we go, uh-oh, drudge siren,

bloodbath if Trump loses the election. And it goes to that broader points. Like, what if the things he's saying over and over again about please rise and tribute to the insurrectionists are so shocking that it hardly matters what's new in the speech? But then I feel you go straight to that same spin cycle. wait what was the exact wording it was they really say please rise

into the more of the insurrectionist or is that I'm inserting a little ballpark announcer this is getting dangerously close to please rise while nikolai volkov sings the Russian national anthem oh my god only people were cheering and not booing this particular heel please rise invocation happened I guess that's true yeah All right, coming up what the death of a Star Wars villain says about the New York Times. But first, David, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to At the Press Box Pod where they are always gratefully received.

This week's runner up, David, we finally got some happy news from Kensington Palace. Oh, really? quoting here, Princess Kate on track for Easter return. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, You know who else was on track for an Easter return? Thanks to Unirut, Shreve, Shreve, Rungham, Tim C, Zachary Marconi, and many others for that one. But this week's winner, David, from listener Bob Gassell.

It is the collection of Aaron Rogers for Vice President jokes. Would you like to hear a few of those? Please. RFK Jr. has hired Nathaniel Hackett in hopes that Aaron Rogers will sign on as his running mate. Aaron Rogers, election on Tuesday is questionable for week nine against the Chargers. And finally, if Aaron Rogers runs for VP,

that puts Zach Wilson third in line for the presidency. You did your own research for this feature. Congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, the notebook dump. Have you been enjoying NFL free agency? Oh, yeah. All the various tweets.

We got a Justin Fields. Think Peace Paloza going on right now at the ringer and elsewhere. Oh, yeah. I have been monitoring Twitter because this is the funniest time for me every year in sports Twitter. Because it's a huge content window. There are scoops to be had. There are Twitter followers to be gained. but this also means that some of the funniest stuff I have ever seen is put out there as a scoop.

I got three examples for you. By the way, NFL free agency more so than NBA free agency, it's closest competitor because there's just a lot more players. It's a lot more the, you know, you know in the NBA that Woj and Shams are going to have all the scoops, right? But in the NFL, you could be a relatively new reporter on the, you know, on the, you know, Chargers beat and get some scoop about a, about a defensive back they signed. Totally.

Totally. I'd also argue just more insiders in the NFL world. For sure. You know, you look at just at the NFL network, there's this really deep bench of people that are trying to punch up into that upper tier. All right,

tweet number one for you. The news had broken that the New York Giants had traded for Panthers linebacker, Brian Burns. What a weird run the Panthers have had over the last few years. Josina Anderson tweeted this, New Giants Edge Brian Burns is in town today, and the team is currently planning to have a presser for him later today via Zoom per sources.

Now, I know that just about anything counts as a scoop in insider world, but are we sure that the news that they're going to have a press conference today? I mean, this was after they signed him, they're just announced or Yes. Yes. Okay. This was after the trade had been made.

Okay. The trade had been reported. The scoop here was that they were going to have a press conference. Yeah. Not exactly a scoop. Not exactly a scoop. Number two here, this is off the news that Eric Armstead, the 49ers defensive lineman, was going to sign with the Jaguars.

End of an era. Eric Armstead is the longest tenured 49er having joined in 2015. Now, we've gotten really used to the idea of end of an era being used in the maximally ironic sense of the term. Yeah. The end of the Zach Wilson era in New York. Yes. Eric Armstead has indeed been a 49er for a long time. He's never made a Pro Bowl during that period.

He's never made an all pro team. Are we sure that's the right way to use the word era seriously? Eric Armstead era. Final tweet, David, came on March 10th, and it read like this, report Patriots to trade Mac Jones. Okay, interesting story.

Report. Patriots to trade Mac Jones. Only weird thing about this tweet is it came from the official Patriots Twitter account. So the Patriots were saying that reportedly they had traded Mac Jones. If only they knew somebody to Carly confirm that story.

There's a lot of funny things about the in-house media operations these teams have, but nothing is funnier than when something is broken by another insider and they must report on it, or at least their team account must report on it like they don't know the answer to the question. we have reportedly traded Mac Jones so good David I want to talk to you a little bit about New York Times obituaries

great the death of the New York Times obituary now I'm just kidding not doing that thing at least not everybody David gets a Times obituary right the Times picks its subjects based on

what would you say fame importance and then also just need for variety in the obituary pages? Yeah. Contemporary relevance. I'm sure there's some that are more important now or historical relevance, obviously, if they were, you know, huge players, huge the significant in any walk of life in their heyday.

But yeah, it seems like there's, I think that the mix is a big one too. There's that word again. Well, two obits popped out to me this month. The first one was for, and stop me if you've heard this name before, Mark. Dodson. Do you know who Mark Dodson is? It sounds familiar, but I don't, I'm not placing it. Who is it? Mark Dodson is the actor who provided the voice of salacious crumb, salacious bee crumb, using the Times' penchant for middle initials in Return of the Jedi.

Wow. Yes. He also provided the voice of a gremlin in the movie grimlins. Just watched that recently. In fact, several of the Maguai in Gremlins. So does Mark Dodson meet the bar for New York Times obituary for you? I would assume no.

And so because you brought it up, I'm going to assume yes, but what did they explain? He's in the paper. Okay. Do we file this under variety? Okay, we've done the politicians and the captains of industry and the academics, so we also want to do the voice of salacious bee crumb.

Is it just, did he do anything else? Or is this just like a, you know, wink and a nudge at the rise of nerd culture? Okay, hold that thought while we get to obit number two from March. Michael Culver, you might have heard, has passed away. Michael Culver was the actor who played Captain Nida in The Empire Strikes Back. Captain Nita, you might remember, was the otherwise, what shall we say, fairly interchangeable imperial leader who lost track of Han Solo and then was killed by Darth Vader. Michael Culver also got a New York Times obituary this month.

Oh, come. Michael Culver must have had a great stage career in London or whatever, right? I mean, is there anything else there? He almost certainly did. I mean, he was in a passage to India. He was in a couple of Bond films, but the obit is about him being Captain Nita. Like the title is Michael Culver, Star Wars actor and victim of Darth of Darth Vader

dies at 85. Oh, it's so great. So I felt a little bit like Sean felt on the big picture after watching the Oscars and seeing how all the presenters were delivering warm pop culture memories that were directed directly to Sean.

You know, he had this moment where he's like, oh my God, the Oscars are for me now. Yeah. David, the New York Times obituaries are for us. So bad. Remember when your grandparents you say I hate to read the paper

because all my friends are dying? Yeah. All of our pop culture friends are dying. Oh my gosh. This isn't somebody who had like a 60s rock and roll record and you and I are looking at each other like who was that again? No, this is salacious crumb.

This is salacious bee crumb, my friend. He got a New York Times open. Oh, man. Can I read you this? the deathless New York Times prose describing Captain Nita's big scene and the Empire Strikes Back? Oh God, please do.

Nida, comma, after losing track of Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, apologizes to Darth Vader who promptly chokes him to death telepathically. Apology accepted, Captain Nita, Vader says,

walking around the captain's body and motioning for others to take him away. Oh my God. I love the New York Times open page becoming ain't it cool news circa 1998. Wait, what is the precedent for I mean, who would have been a

I mean, I can't even think what a parallel what would be a legitimate, like a legitimate actor or performer who would have gotten an obituary prior to this conversation. Like, who's somebody that's just really obvious? Like, Judy Garland. Yeah, would they just...

Sean Connery. Would Judy Garland have... Did Judy Garland's obituary just receive like a paragraph rewrite of what happened during the climax of the Wizard of Oz? She clicked her heels together. Not about the performance, but just about literally the plot point. of it. She clicked together the heels of some shoes that were as red as a Kansas sunset and said,

there's no place like home. I don't know. I really don't. I find it hard to imagine that like a, like, I mean, Beresnikov's still with us, right? I find it hard to imagine that his obituary will just recount the, the sequence of dance steps that made him famous even. And that would have relevance, right?

I don't know. That's really incredible stuff. Congratulations in the New York Times for finally finding its voice. And farewell Michael Culver and Mark Dodson. Our thoughts are with you as you cross the veil. All right, David, some running departments here. Man, we got a lot of input on these this week. Media Piss Test, where we catalog reporters and journalists saying that certain things are, quote, on steroids. This comes from Cooper Cartel.

He found this headline in the Atlantic. Love Lies Bleeding, the new movie, is a Cohen Brothers thriller on steroids. On steroids. A long-time listener, Andy Mosley, who I see tweet at us a lot. Appreciate you listening, Andy, always. Directs us to a tweet by George Conway.

Quote, I think Biden's stay of the union address last week, and Robert Herr's emulation today will go down in political history as Reagan's. I am not going to exploit my opponent's youth and inexperience moment. only on steroids. Kind of a tortured way to get there, but we got there. We had a lot of breakings of silence over the last week.

Oh, yeah. The New York Post reported that Lily Gladstone broke her silence after Emma Stone's Oscar's best actress upset. What was so funny about that is, you know, the Oscars is not like a game where the losing nominee is standing at a podium answering questions and saying you got to give credit to Emma Stone. You don't normally talk to reporters afterwards. Anyway, thanks to Dovey, Craigerson, Adam Wren, and Dan Hedge Ducky for that one.

Also, the New York Times homepage right next to each other. A couple of people sent me this. Had Vladimir Putin breaking his silence about the death of Alexei Navalny and Phoebe Philo, the designer, breaking her silence. So New York Times homepage, same day and in the same real estate. Multiple breakings of silence. Anyway, thank you very much to Jacob Geiger and Aaron Cooley for pointing that one out. Elsewhere, David, we got some only in journalism.

Great. We might have had this one, but Jason Rowley sent the word vaunted. Vaunted is an excellent only in journalism word. For sure. That has never escaped your mouth, but, might have been written into a piece at some point. Steven Scovran since cutting his teeth, Alabama coach Kalin DeBoer cut his teeth

in the lower rungs of college football. Cut his teeth. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's, anyone's going to use that outside of journalism. You can imagine someone saying the sentence you just said, but it would be on like sports talk radio.

Is that like a subgenre of only in journalism where it's old-timey words that nonetheless or old-timey phrases that nonetheless survive because they are handy journalistic phrases. Oh, yeah, 100%. He cut his teeth in the lower rungs of college football. Yeah. And then Kevin Fishbane, who covers the Bears for the Athletics,

sends along a great one, presumptive. Caleb Williams right now from USC is the presumptive number one pick in the NFL draft. And I don't know if you saw that weird night in cable news, about a week and a half ago where Biden and Trump got enough delegates that they were declared the presumptive nominees. Yeah. And like Steve Kornacki had to come on and we had to play the little NBC news fanfare, even though it was a foregone conclusion because Nikki Haley had already dropped out. There would be nobody else would be the Republican nominee. I thought that was

yeah. Presumptive is a good one, although I think it, my hesitation with that is that it's an incredibly useful term and I don't know what we say in real life. There's no way you use that in real life too. Presumptive. If your mom called and said, oh, is Trump the Republican nominee? You'd be like, well, he's the presumptive nominee. But you would just be quoting the journalism. But how would you describe that other?

I mean, I don't, I don't know. I think you would say he's all but assured to be the nominee, but he hasn't got enough. Yeah, you just talk around it. You have more time and more space. That's kind of the point. Okay. But did I just use another one in All But Assured? Yeah.

But sure. Whoopsie. It's easy to fall into these things. All right. It's all but assured. Apparently, apparently lots of journalists and me to my mom on the phone. All right.

It's time for a feature where we never presume anything. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Thursday's headline about the jailing of a suspected spy pigeon was flight risk. Today's headline comes to us from Coach Brackett. It's from the AP. I'll read you the rest of the headline here, David. Yarmir Yager is missing.

Well, the bobbleheads of the former NHL star are anyway. The Pittsburgh Penguins say a shipment carrying bobbleheads of the franchise icon was stolen. So we are looking for a headline about bobbleheads, a headline about the act itself. and a headline that may involve what bobbleheads do. What was the AP's strain pun headline? Nod? What are they nod? Nodding, nodding off, nodding, nodding.

Doing well. I like this. Not, is it nod that? It's nod. So. How about we just think about like what it would, what it would mean, what kind of acted is to take away all those bobbleheads from

deserving fans. The nerve of somebody taking away all those bobble things in those pinnardtains. Oh, I was about to go grand theft Notto. That wasn't it? The nerve, gall, gall, the, uh,

well, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just nod. What? It's not, it's not, it's just, it's just, I'll put you out of your misery. It's not. very nice. Oh.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Nod. Very nice. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production magic by Brian Waters. All right. Coming up on the press box podcast,

Friday, not Thursday, Friday. You know I'm from the New Yorker from the New York Times magazine. He was David and I's old teammate at Grantland.com. He is Jay Caspian Kang. Cannot wait to talk to him. on this podcast.

Also, in the archives, if you'd like to listen or relisten, Kara Vote from the Washington Post was on Thursday. She did a fantastic job. We broke down the new Macs series, The Girls on the Bus, about campaign reporters, which speaking of Star Wars and the legendary Michael Culver featured a Force Ghost Hunter S. Thompson who looked over the main character's shoulder

while she was writing stories. I'm not making that up. Never seen Hunter Thompson forced to force. ghost in my life. All right, Kang on Friday. And then the following week, March 28th, the show about Evan Gershkovich on the one-year anniversary of his arrest and imprisonment in Russia

with the Wall Street Journal's editor-in-chief Emma Tucker, you're going to want to listen to all those shows. You're going to want to tune in Monday when Shoemaker and I come back with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.