The Press Box - The Nation's Editorial Pages vs. Trump, The Return of "The Swami," and ... Is New York Magazine For Sale? | The Press Box (Ep. 514)

Episode Date: August 21, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss local news outlets across the country renouncing Trump's attacks on the media (02:30), New York magazine's owners exploring a sale (20:15), and Chris Berman's potential return to ESPN (34:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, today's episode of the press box is brought to you by the Ringer podcast network, where you can check out you, David, on the Bill Simmons podcast today, talking about all the fallout from SummerSlam. You could also hear the Mass Man show, The Watch, Ringer MLB show, binge mode, we've got Dave Chang, we've got House of Carbs, we've got Larry Wilmore, black on the air, we've got one shining podcast, we've got the Ringer NFL show and more. And now the Press Box. David, on Friday, Donald Trump canceled a $95 million military parade.

What I want to know is, what parade would you like to cancel? Of all the parades? Yeah. Oh, man, I can't, listen, I'm not going to, there's a lot of parades I would like to see go. I'm going to be a curmudgeon about this, but I'm just going to stake out the most curmudgeonly, recently returned to New York, New Yorker point of view. We just need a separate street specifically for parades in the city. Get them off the big avenues.

We just like make the parades go down the high line or something. Some place we're like, you're not going to mess up traffic for an entire day. I understand the premise of the parades. They're very important. I don't know. Do you have any, before I go to any further down this terrible parade route, do you have any parades you want to see canceled? Can we cancel Parade magazine?

Does that count us? That's count us one? Is it still there? Does this parade magazine still exists? Yeah, I don't really want to cancel them because that put people out of work but just when they have those questions in the opener that says, what's the latest with Justin Timberlake?

You know, and then they answer just coincidentally he has a movie coming out that very week. Wait, this just occurred to me. Is the front of the magazine section of parade that's in step with featuring greats? I'm just Googled right now, In Step with Angie Harmon is the first one that came up? Is that a parade joke?

Is that why it's called In Step With? Oh, that's a good question. My entire life, this never occurred to me. This is incredible. By the way, tell me you knew the Sir Walter Scott from the personality parade before you knew there was an actual Sir Walter Scott because that was me as a child. I learned about everyone I know about from Parade Magazine, so I shouldn't say anything bad. We are the Maryland Vosavant and Howard Huge of podcasting. This is the Pressbox, a part of the Ringer podcast network.

The Pressbox is a media podcast where truth is truth. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer class. Your Ringer syllabus today includes Michael Bowman on how he became fake news with the baseball injury report. That was a great moment in sports media. You should also read Donnie Kwok on Crazy Rich Asians, the number one movie in America. Kevin Clark is back from his NFL training camp tour. If you haven't, go right to his author page and check out his pieces on Aaron Rogers, Josh Norman and a bunch of other stuff. You want to read us.

David wrote about SummerSlam and I wrote about Joe Tessler. The New Voice of Monday Night Football. But David, there are three topics we must talk about today. First, the nation's editorial pages in an I.M. Spartacus moment stand together against Donald Trump's criticism of the media. Was that a good thing? Second, we'll talk about the report that the owners of New York Magazine are exploring a sale, how New York became a unique success story in the age of too much content. And finally, Chris Berman, aka Boomer, may be headed back to ESPN, the network he helped create.

Why do you leave in the first place? We discuss. Plus, as always, the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But, David, we've got to start with the nation's editorial pages versus Trump. Am I the only one, by the way, who thought of the anchorman thing, like of all the the nation's editorial page editors getting together in some alley, kind of dressed, kind of, you know, dressed a little, a little sloppily kind of looking at each other like, yeah, you're ready to go in?

Yeah, no, I don't think you're the only one that thought about this. And I think that for better or worse, this is the outcome here is. has some of the similar comedic overtones. So this is via CNN's Brian Stelter. About 350 newspapers all had one thing in common last Thursday, a statement supporting the free press and decrying Donald Trump's attacks against the media. The Martha's Vineyard Times was in on this, David, the Dallas Morning News, the Yankton County Observer in South Dakota, the Bangor Daily News in Maine.

Papers all ran editorials as part of an effort first proposed by the Boston Globe this month. All right, we're going to talk about the case for it against. But what was, what good did this do? Everyone, every newspaper, every editorial page sort of roaring to life to stand together against the Trump administration. I mean, I think it makes some difference along the margins, you know? I mean, if there's if there are, if there are smaller outlets, you know, local papers that that may not have been seen as, you know, didn't have the same reputation in the national sphere as the New York time, the failing New York Times. the failing New York Times or the Amazon Washington Post that, you know, for it to be said that like we're all on the same page

when it comes to this, no pun intended. But I guess my bigger question is like, what is the, what do you think their best case scenario for what it could have accomplished was? That's a great question. I mean, is there any best case beyond symbolism here? Beyond we're all standing. I mean, nope, it's always been a joke, right? nobody reads staff editorials.

You know, whenever those endorsements come out, we're always like, is anybody reading this? Is this like, is this moving anybody? But now the idea is that Ma and Paw at home in Yankton, counting, South Dakota, or Bangor, Maine are going to be like, you know what? These people have a point. You know, this press criticism has gone too far. And my newspaper. I mean, I guess that's the best case scenario, right? That you would look anew at Trump's criticism of the media.

Sure. I mean, if anybody's reading that stuff, it probably is an audience that would do well to be reached by this message, you know, a more institutional kind of older, older audience. But yeah, I mean, I'm kind of two minds about this. I don't, I don't, I'm not mad at a symbolic display such as this. I mean, this is a, I mean, worthwhile might be a little bit of a stretch, but it seems like a worthy, a worthy endeavor to sort of. formally get everybody on the same page about this. By the way, as a journalist, doesn't your skin crawl when you hear the word worthy, worthy endeavor? I mean, that's when I get suspicious, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, the flip side for me is that, and this is, we've talked about this before, is that sort of my, the most skin crawling feeling I've gotten since, you know, during the Trump presidency is the weird sort of insistence upon the merits of journalism by journalists.

it's sort of you know and I understand why Trump is putting is putting the the whole you know field in this state of of red alert uh by all means it's I mean it's I understand why people are reacting this way but you know at its best journalism is a if not invisible sort of you know um near invisible uh social good you know I mean it it's a it's a form of of documentary and and it's a form of persuasion in some ways. But this thing about, I mean, no, I just don't, I said it before, I just don't think anybody's getting compelled by the necessity and the, and the, and the good, you know, the positive merits of journalism during this debate, if it's a debate, you know, I don't think, I don't think

this is reflecting particularly positively on anyone. A sort of related question is how, if not publishing editorials the same day, how do newspapers counteract and the media generally counteract this criticism. Because I think it's a good idea to counteract it in some way, right? That you should have a message you take to the public and say, this is good, this is important, this is not evil. This is something you use in your daily life or should use in your daily life. And this is something that shouldn't, you know,

this is being caricatured by this administration. But then it's like, how do we do that? You know, the New York Times example we talked about was them doing that reality show. So you could see who reporters are. You could literally put a face to them and be like, I like that person or that person is working really hard on my behalf, right, or on the behalf of some notion of truth, right? Right. Whatever. Not Rudy Giuliani's notion of truth, but actual truth.

And that kind of personalizes it in a way. That's one idea. Obviously, like a local newspaper is not going to do that. But it just seems to me that there's a more direct way to say this is who we are. These are who these are the journalists working in your town and your city. these are real people that's not this. By the way, the case against this,

this brought out, I figured this was one of those things where everyone in journalism would do the golf clap and then we'd move on to the next Trump tweet. But there were actually a lot of pretty persuasive cases

against newspapers all standing up at the same time Jack Schaefer over Politico, my old boss said, it will provide Trump with circumstantial evidence of the existence of a national press cabal that has been convened solely

to oppose him. And guess what? Trump tweeted immediately about collusion. Trump, once again, using the thing he is being accused of very explicitly with the Russian investigation. And accusing the press of colluding with themselves to smash him with an editorial. That was pretty amazing. Yeah. Brief aside to say, in this, the outline that we've been passing back and forth, just the opener for that segment is just Jack Schaefer also demur's.

And I think Jack Schaefer Demur's is just a great thing. that should just be on a t-shirt somewhere. But yeah, no, I mean, I think the collusion thing, this is such a minor point. But I immediately asked myself whether Trump was accusing them of collusion to deliberately water down the word or to deliberately assign the same charge as he's being accused of to someone else. Or if that's just the word that was most recently on his mind. And so that's why he used it. Answered yes, yes, yes. Yeah, but yes, exactly.

And I think in some way that speaks to just the journalistic problem of the Trump administration. Is that, you know, they, Sarah Huckabee Sanders will get out there and complain that, you know, that the media is not covering the good things that the administration is doing or the laws or whatever, everything, everything that they are accomplishing in a positive light. But the entire atmosphere, the entire news atmosphere is just totally swallowed up by these bizarre tweets or by this like, deliberate or accidental misdirection that happens time and time again. Every time there's every, I mean, it's not for, it's not necessarily all, you know, an accident or an attempt to, to redirect the media.

But, you know, we've talked about this. Every time something's going bad for Trump, they seem to find a way to make a different bad thing swallow the first bad thing in a way that just sort of, you know, clouds the issue. I don't know what else they would be reporting, you know? I mean, I'm sure George W. Bush had his good days in the New York Times. But he certainly just didn't have, he certainly just wasn't hand-feeding the paper, a barrage of things they had to cover that just there's no way to reflect them positively. One to your point about the tweets swallowing everything up. If we made decisions on if we do this, Trump will tweet about it, we would never do anything. And that's we, the media and just we the American people. He will tweet about anything, right? So there's not that that criticism was slightly less persuasive. to me, more persuasive was Jack's related point, which is that journalists are independent

creatures. And the idea of journalists banding together to do anything is kind of against the whole nature of the profession. You want to, if you're a journalist or if you're a newspaper, you may oppose Trump in this particular way, but you want to find your own way to do it. Maybe it's the New York Times, you know, with those amazing scoops over the weekend about the White House counsel cooperating with Robert Mueller, right? That's one way to do this.

Maybe it's another way. Maybe it's just ignoring the case altogether and, you know, super serving your local community at the risk of using a terrible word. But I just think like there's just there getting journalists to do the same thing at the same time, Schaefer argues, and I agree, is very unnatural. And it feels weird. And as a journalist, if somebody told me, yeah, my guy at Sports Illustrated at the athletic, we're all going to tweet something at the same time. Are you in? I'd be like no on principle no matter what it is because I don't want to be on this team. Exactly.

I mean, and maybe this is such a, I mean, it's, it's, maybe this is just such a, a, a, a, a, a God-given truth to, you know, to, to journalists far and wide that, that it seems, that, see, there's no reason to say no. I mean, there is an element that it feels like signing a ringer petition for functioning toilets in the office or something like that, but, you know, once we get to, but I totally agree that that's going to be the perception. And back to what you said earlier, by the way, about tweeting, you know, writing certain things

so that Trump will tweet about it. You just said this. The Times put out that big piece about Don McGahn working with the Mueller investigation. Trump went on a tweet storm about it and the New York Times PR Twitter account retweeted it and said, The New York Times stands behind the reporting

of our Pulitzer Prize winning reporters. Read the article that President Trump has been tweeting about this morning. I was amazed by that. I mean, what a snake biting its tail situation? No, but it's like, that's something. unimaginable that the Times would have done in the past. Read the story the president is tweeting about.

You know, the way that paper just, you know, keeps every, has kept historically everything in arm's length to tell you that we're in a new age of media and a new age of Trump. All you need to know is in that tweet. By the way, another argument against this that I liked. David Huberti, writing the Columbia Journalism Review. He says essentially that these local newspapers are extremely vulnerable to going out of business, right, forget Trump, just pure newspaper economics, right? Lots of newspapers are struggling right now. And what the big national papers, this was originally proposed by the

Boston Globe, are doing big national papers that are more flush than their local counterparts are drawing local papers into combat with Trump, where in fact, what these local newspapers need to do is just focus on being solvent for another year or two years, five years, 10 years. that is also that is also again it's not that the belin new mexico paper and the main and the south dakota paper shouldn't be in on this case because if they want to write about editorials about trump then why not but that there are bigger things and that the times is going to be okay right the washington post is now going to be okay with amazon money but these papers may not and if you know 30% of the people in the community are something like way this paper's anti-trump

they may they may bail out and it's an interesting it's an it's an it's an It's an interesting thought anyway. Yeah, I think it's a bigger, it's a bigger conundrum, I think, than, you know, than one op-ed will, you know, can really speak to. I think that, you know, for the vast majority of local papers, they don't need a show time reality show or whatever because they are people who work there or known in the community. You know, they're already humanized to a large extent. And I think that there's probably the vast majority of people who have a negative opinion

of the press are thinking of the times in the post and not of their local papers. But you're right. I mean, it's not a, it is, it is an interesting, it is interesting to see these, you know, the big papers taking the lead and drawing the line like that. And, and, you know, I guess we'll see what happens for the, for the people that can actually get hurt by it. Now it's time for the overwork Twitter joke of the week, David, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. You saw the news about Chris Berman potentially returning to ESPN, which we're going to talk about here in a bit. Berman, you remember, was reduced to emeritus status last year. And according to the New York Post, Andrew Marshon, ESPN is in talks to bring Berman back to the network on a limited basis.

Okay, it was an overworked Twitter joke to say that Chris Berman was coming back, back, back, back, back, back, back to ESPN. That is the lowest hanging fruit, ladies and gentlemen. Marshawn, to his credit, varied it up later by saying that Chris Berman could go all the way back to ESPN. That's thanks to Brent Axe. a Darren Ravel tweet from last week. Settle down, David. I know you're excited. Starting today at Bud Light, because we've got to get the brands in here.

At Bud Light is installing, quote, victory fridges that will be full of beer in 10 Cleveland bars. When the Browns win their first regular season game, the fridges will unlock. These fridges are locked with these, like, chains that look like, you know, like a grave. in some pulp novel. When the Browns win their first regular season game, the fridges will unlock and the beer inside is free to Browns fans. It was an overworked Twitter joke to say that the victory fridges will never, in fact, open. That's thanks to Henry Thornton.

And David, I'm sure you saw the giant, glaring Fox News mistake from last week. The passing of music legend, Aretha Franklin. The show America's Newsroom. By the way, I love that title. We definitely need a show on TV called Football Night in America's Newsroom. room, America's Newsroom, put a graphic

of Aretha Franklin up, 1942 to 2018, and then included a photo of Patty LaBelle in what a tribute.

As the Daily Beast notes, Franklin and Patty LaBelle were actually feuding up to the time of her death,

making this a particularly unfortunate mistake. It was an overwork Twitter joke to redo the Fox graphic with

another person that Fox might have mistaken for Aretha Franklin. I saw Amorosa, Rachel Dolazzo

and Tyler Perry's Medea. So if you clown Fox News for not recognizing Aretha Franklin in the midst of honoring her, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David. We're going to talk about New York Magazine right after this quick break. Today's episode of the press box is brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk.

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The press box is also brought to you by Burrow. Is there anything harder to move than a sofa, David? I know you've recently moved, moved across the country, carried a sofa. Yes. May have carried it up a few floors of a walk-up. Out there in Brooklyn, all those pre-war buildings. Well, Burrow is changing the game with a fully customizable sofa that's easy to move and built to last. modular design means you can grow your love seat into a chase sectional by adding sections.

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Get $75 off your borough sofa at borough.com slash press box. That's B-U-R-R-O-W.com slash pressbox, borough, furniture that's fit for modern life at home. David, topic number two, there was a report by Benjamin Mullen in the Wall Street Journal that the owners of New York Magazine, which owns, of course, New York and several websites, which we'll talk about, or exploring a possible sale, then CNBC's Alex Sherman followed up on this by publishing an internal email from New York Media CEO, Pam Wasserstein, which said, we very much believe in this exceptional institution. We are proud owners and would be happy to continue owning it for years to come. It's not exactly we're going to own it for years to come. And then she talked about some of the things they've done. And it says, the point is that I'm trying to make our company the best version of itself,

as I know all of you are. We don't know yet what's going to happen to New York. But I thought we should talk for a few minutes about what makes New York. unique in this media world we live in. What, I've got my reason. So you want me to go first? Do you want to go first? Wait, I just want to take one more beat to talk about that Pam Wasterstein,

MMO to her staff. Please. I was just trying to just do the Madlibs version of this, everyone listening, and try to imagine if your boss sent out this email. Um, I, like, I could just, I could only imagine. I mean, first of all, I kind of at first, at first blush, it sort of sounds like our boss Bill trying to explain why he's doing. a lot of other podcasts besides it, besides his own. You know, it's fairly standard that everyone

talks to everyone in media, but I've stepped up participation a bit this year. But yeah, I mean, there's nothing about that for a magazine that is more than anything else known from its inception for just the quality of writing. And I know that sounds like reductive or it sounds too obvious because we're talking about a magazine, but New York Magazine has had some of the greatest stables of writers over the years of anywhere. This is either a high point or a low point, I'm not sure which, in the, in the genre of, of PR mumbo-jumbo, because this is, it's just magical double speak. And when you're, anyway, when you're in that moment of existential terror as a journalist,

as you and I have been at various points in our lives, and you are scrutinizing every official utterance and every Keith J. Kelly media report in the New York Post or Gawker in the old days about like what is happening inside your company. these are the hardest ones, right? Because you look at that and you're like, should I be, you know, happy about this? Should I be utterly terrified? Yeah.

I don't know what to feel. And the existential angst, I mean, that's not, you know, anytime that you're potentially, you know, your jobs potentially on the chopping block, you're going to feel some version of that. But it's definitely a very modern thing. Like, it's not that long ago, this type of it. It's not that long ago where the worst thing,

the worst fear of New York Magazine staff would be that like Rupert Murph. Burdock would buy it and continue publishing it, but have like a different editorial vision than the people in charge. Right. By the way, that actually happened a couple of decades ago. F why I... Yeah, but like, you're worried about ideology. I mean, and in 2018, the fear is that like, you know, Bain Capital is going to buy it and just literally burn it to the ground. So, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a totally different sort of existential angst that we're dealing with. There'll be a vulture branded product somewhere in the universe that doesn't have nothing to do with actual vulture.

all of that said new york magazine has meant more to me as a new yorker than the new yorker or the new york times certainly the new yorker and probably the times had a bigger impact on my on my early days in new york as i was just trying to acclimate myself as a reader and writer and just general uh denizen of of uh the new york metropolitan area. But definitely as time has gone by, like I said before, I mean, the level of writing month in and month out in the print edition. And then really early on, I mean, 2000, when did they, when did they do their massive redesign when Adam Osse's hybr was at 2005, somewhere in that range, they adapted to the web, and not just the web, to the modern era with the creation of the strategist and everything else in such a kind of lovely, seamless way that, you know, I mean, I know there

a lot of complaints about it at the time as there always will be with any sort of like journalistic redesign. But just the way that they've, I don't even say this as a journalist. It's just a human being who lives in New York and who reads things online and, you know, in magazine form. They've definitely just had a more consistent effect on what I read and how I view things than probably just about anybody else. It's a really, really incredible publication. To the point about their design, we've, we've joked before about how everybody, every magazine editor, it's down to a cliche that you have a clean design. That's like, everyone's like, I want a clean design.

Oh, really? You didn't want a messy, unreadable design? New York Mag's website actually has a clean design. It's actually a triumph of clean design. I love your point about it being our guide to New York because we moved to New York, each of us in the early odds. And I remember when we got there, I was like, we're supposed to read the village voice, right?

We're New Yorkers now. This is our guide. And you kind of looked at it. You're like, yeah, that's not so great anymore. And then it was a couple years. later when Moss becomes the other of New York. And it's like that became that and I would say Gawker, right, being the two sort of twin guides to New York, sort of working on very different frequencies.

And I think like, I mean, to me when I look at it, he's the guy. This is at the, this is, we're moving at that point, circa 2005, as you say, to the end of the high magazine era, right? These, these books aren't going to exist in the same way anymore. And he cracked the code of how to translate your general interest magazine into a website. And I think, and I was thinking about this today. I was like, what's second place in that, in that category? No, no, I don't know.

We've talked about, the New York has come up. New Yorkmag.com has come up before in terms of this conversation. It's like, who are, you know, print magazines that have transitioned successfully onto the web, and they've done it really well. And I think it's like, to borrow a phrase from my boss, Sean Fennacy, our boss, Sean Fennacy. I think that's like New York being a sort of high-minded tabloid made it in a way easier to transition to the web. You saw the New Yorker when it's like the New Yorker. When it's like the New Yorker's like, okay, we've got to have scale on the web.

Well, reproducing what we think of as a New Yorker story on the web was tough. So with the New Yorker, essentially, we got like slate pieces for a lot of years, right? Here's a thousand word take on the news by John Cassidy or whatever, right? New York, in a way, sort of figured out like, okay, there'll be this thing called vulture. And then they started the cut, and then they started Max Reed's a little corner of the universe. And what's amazing? They got Grub Street. and they got, yeah, exactly. And it's like, what amazed me, though, is that there's like a kind of a voice through all of that. It's all very different people. And I'm sure, you know, in in the magazine era of modern life, like, you know, Adam Moss would not have assigned a movie trailer review. But somehow there's just enough sort of voice infused through all that so that unlike the other content farms out in the world, which is like, we'll just publish anything under the shingle. It all feels of a piece.

It does. I mean, I think of, uh, I mean, I'll say this. One of the things that surprised me in reading, you know, all of the coverage of this potential sale was that, and part of this is just industry speak, you know, like just the sort of way we talk about things. But I was surprised by the way that the different subsites were identified sort of as separate entities because I agree with what you're, I believe the point that you're making that there is a sort of unifying voice, you know, and there's a unifying ethos despite there

being these, you know, different tabs on the side of the website. And maybe, and if you're coming in through social media, you might not realize immediately that you're reading a part of New York magazine. But they all do seem of a very, you know, coherent, you know, cloth to me. Yeah. And despite being about very, very different topics and about people who are, you know, just very, very different people. I think it's also like they've also at the same time that like the difficulty of modern media is fighting the two front war. Like for a place like that, how do we succeed online and succeed in print? And we should note that at the same time they're doing this, they're still running things like their Bill Cosby cover from 2015.

Or, you know, their piece on the New York Gryfter from May or Rebecca Traster, you know, writing about Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren. So actually doing these things at the same time, which is kind of amazing. I also think of just like the magazine editor, the 80s, 90s magazine editor seems like this like incredibly hopelessly anachronistic character. And like, great, we just bid farewell. Walter Graydon Carter and, you know, Anna Wintour had a, had a rumor that she was stepping down the other day. But it's like, Moss is the one of that generation, maybe besides Evan Smith, formerly of Texas Monthly, I think, who has translated his DNA to the digital space and figured that out. Like, that is such, like, gone from, you know, the sort of realm of town cars dropping you off and, you know, perfume ads and cigarette ads into vulture. and into the cut and stuff like that.

And that's an incredibly hard barrier to cross. It really is. And they figured it out. Yeah, they did. I mean, I think that volume, I think part of it's just management, right? I mean, to be able to find the people who are going to make the right decisions because certainly Adam Moss is not making all of these decisions. But you mentioned earlier that, like, you know, he might not have done every single

vulture post he would have done. And he certainly wouldn't have had the space, you know, in the print magazine to do some of the really exhaustive, like, I guess like a friend of the pod, Gilbert Cruz back when he was there, ranked all the Stephen King books and I'm Googling it now. It was 2014, but like that is a worthy endeavor, you know, and it's, but it's something that would have never found, you know, that might have been a sidebar, just numerical ranking without any text in a sort of gag, you know, back of the book, you know, setting in a, in a print magazine. But no, but it's, it's, it is, it's being able to, produce it, you know, to scale the volume for, you know, a limitless space online. And,

and, you know, like we've been saying over and over again. I mean, the content speaks for itself. I like, I think that, that particular Stephen King example, too, speaks to how you can sort of like take some of the DNA from Entertainment Weekly. Right. That feels like an Entertainment Weekly ranking in the old days, again, without like long explanations, but like a list somewhere in the, in the, in the magazine. And then you can also take some of the DNA of Jezebel. directly to make your own version of that. And then you can take various little parts of it. And so you're taking

you're not, it's not, it's sort of in a way, it's like the sort of classic front of the quote unquote front of the book magazine matter material. But it's also mixed with this like something that just seems like from a lot of different places and kind of shoved under this one banner

and again in a way that feels like it's all of a piece and not, you know, a Frankenstein's monster of magazine content. Totally true. Do you think it's the quality and the, I mean, you know, there's many, there are many magazines, there are many websites that are beloved, right? There are many, there's a million different places that if we heard that they were going up for sale, you know, the journalist, the, the journalism world, you know, would sort of gasp or

would, you know, sob or whatever else. What is it about New York Magazine? Is it the institution, the quality? What makes this feel like a bigger potential deal than some other ones? I'm not sure even I'd use the word beloved, though, because I think it's almost more more like highly, highly admired, right? Yeah. Beloved is more like, you know, the kind of primal connection to deadspin if we found out tomorrow that that was going out of business. I'm knocking rapidly on wood here.

Or Jezebel, right? Things that are more like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I know these people. Like, these are my friends online. Whereas New York still has a little bit of that magazine distance. I think it's more admired in a way. And it's all, I think it's because it's, I don't know, I think it's, because I think, you know, and this is like, this is sort of indicative of every Moss publication ever. But I think it's just like there's like a high degree of professionalism when you're publishing that much stuff. You know, there's not like that they've certainly had their screw ups and stuff like that. There's not, there just feels like, again, I think one of the, I don't miss the magazine era all that much. I miss like certain like parts of it, but I don't miss the fact that you just ran out of stories to read pretty quickly. And but what was cool about it was that you could read something and you could feel like a whole publication was infused with the same sensibility and voice. Yeah.

An old word, right? We barely use that anymore. Sure. And also there was like a high degree of professionalism. You felt like everything was really edited and looked over, right? That just doesn't exist in the web in the same way, even in a, even in a high quality publication like The Ringer. But I think with New York's website, it feels like they got as much of that onto a website as they could. Absolutely.

It's reader confidence, consumer confidence, right? It's picking up the magazine knowing that despite the fact that this is, it's not a monthly glossy, right? I mean, this is a, this is a, in some ways, it's a transactional New York magazine, but in every issue there would be one or two, like, long pieces that you would be very happy. You were going to be very happy when you were reading them, right? I mean, there's, there's great writing and all of them, and there's useful stuff too. But you're right. It's the confidence in the professionalism. Should we talk about a decidedly shabbier presence in American media?

Chris Berman. ESPN's very own. We talked a minute ago, Andrew Marshall in the New York Post, reports that Berman it's going to come back to ESPN, perhaps in some limited basis. He would do like sports center pieces, maybe some interviews on his old pregame show Sunday NFL countdown. They actually wanted him to come back and do more per Marshawn, but Boomer's life in retirement is apparently pretty pretty,

booked. I don't know if it's golf, it's tea times. He's busy. He can't just get him back that easy. He actually, he didn't, he didn't quite leave ESPN. He was never ex-E-SPN, but he was kind of reduced to funny, highlight guy emeritus back in January 2017, after the

2016-17 football season. He got this big, slickly produced farewell special. His old job now on Sunday NFL Canada is occupied by Samantha Ponder, as Marchand points out, the ratings were down 12% last year. Do you feel he, Berman got shoved out the door too soon and that's what it counts for this move?

I mean, it all felt very strange when it happened, right? I mean, it felt like Berman, you kind of expected there to be more fireworks from one side or the other. It reminded me for whatever reason. I mean, I guess this probably isn't for whatever reason. It reminded me of the Conan O'Brien Jay Leno moment at NBC when they were kind of shuffling Conan out or Jay out the door, because they had made the promise to Conan, but then Jay got, I mean, this, I guess it would have, this would have made more sense

if Berman got the, you know, got a juicier spot and let, you know, Sam Ponder keep countdown or something. But it felt like a decision that was made that everybody sort of acknowledged was the wrong decision at the time that it finally went into effect, right?

I mean, so by the time that he left, he was sort of being very wistful about leaving. ESPN was, seemed very sad to see him go. And I think by that point, or shortly thereafter, they must have come to the realization that, like, modernizing Sunday NFL countdown is a fool's errand, right? I mean, that polishing it up as, as, you know, TV subscriptions start or dropping is not,

is not necessarily the best move. And, you know, I don't, I mean, maybe you know more about the, about the inside scoop than I do, but it doesn't surprise me that they were never able to fully, you know, to fully, to fully, stop using him, you know, to distance themselves from him, not that they would want to, but they would kind of say goodbye, but not really goodbye. And it doesn't surprise me that he's, that they're talking about him coming back. Leno is a great metaphor because he was in the J. Leno zone, which is that he was picked on and by sports media critics and journalists more than I think he was by the American public, right? There was this great reservoir of goodwill for him that I think

people in the media didn't share because he was doing the same jokes he was 20 years ago and 10 years ago and 30 years ago and whatever. But that wasn't necessarily the way just like actual viewers of ESPN felt clearly. And I do that I just think, I mean, there's probably like the idea of Sunday countdown's ratings going down is like probably pretty complicated and maybe more complicated than just him leaving because we've seen lots of things happen with NFL ratings last couple years. But I just do think there was this larger issue of ESPN. sort of losing control of its nostalgia. They've just built up, ESPN's almost 40 years old. They've built up so much goodwill. And if you were 35 or 40 years old, there was a period within the last couple of years where you saw almost everyone you remembered

from the old days, quote unquote, walk out the door. They just left. It was Berman, Oberman came back, and then left again. Dan Patrick was gone. Stu Scott passed away. You had Mike Tariko leaving, Rich Eisen, Brian Kennedy.

He could keep going on and on. And it was suddenly you looked over at ESPN and it's like, all the new people are really good. Some of them, in fact, are better than the people they replace than the legends. But there was that connection and all that goodwill, again, that the network had built up, was just had left. And I think he was kind of the final straw of that. And then I think, you know, now you get people in, you got a new regime in there, John Skipper's gone, Jimmy Petaro's a new president and I think there's a sense of like, and Norby Williamson, who's an executive over there

who's apparently instrumental, it's like don't we want the guys that everybody like from the old days back? Oberman has just come back in a limited capacity. Don't we want Berman back to? And that makes a lot of sense to me on that level. Yeah, I mean, and even just talking, speaking in broadstrokes about the specific audiences for the sport. I mean, it would be one thing if Berman were doing NBA,

you know, I mean, and as the audience and the and the just overall vibe of the sport is getting younger. But, I mean, football, even if the audience gets younger, it's still an institution, right? I mean, that's what we love about it. And old voice, I mean, listen, there's a reason why network, I mean, where the local news anchors hang on for, you know, for years and years and years beyond their, maybe their peak usefulness. And even on the, you know, even younger comment, I mean, I've said before, I love Joe Buck, even though he gets a lot of, you know, shit online too. but I think one of Joe Buck's greatest traits is that like he's very comfortable

he sounds like a football game you know and I think that there is a comfort to the way that we there's an aspect of comfort to the way that we interact with football with NFL media and I and Berman was sort of the icon of that it is funny though because like

I don't maybe it's being in the being inside you know the journalism world or whatever but like I I never took people kind of, you know, talking trash about Berman that seriously? You know, I mean, like, I, like, you know, our boss bill would make, would joke about Berman all the time in his podcast, but then he was, like, sad the second he was gone, but, like, those things, those two things don't seem irreconcilable to me. I think that, yeah, we, we make jokes about our institutions, you know, that's just sort of the way it works. And for ESPN to have, I mean, if that's indeed, if that indeed was a reason why they

decided to, to push them aside, you know, I think that's just a, just, just, just that's a terrible misreading of the way we feel about our about broadcasters. There's probably a lot of things because they were also, they were and are in a period of cost cutting and

Berman I'm sure had a big salary so I'm sure that was mixed into the decision for him to sort of stand down. But yeah, it's like I just thought he's one of those cases where the criticism went was just, it went from remember it started like the Will Leach

stuff on dead spin on like early deadspin. That was like the first kind of official printed wave of Berman criticism like 10 years ago a little bit more than that. It went from that to Chris Berman has no right to do the first day of the NFL draft or Chris Berman has no right to announce the home run derby. I'm like the home run derby. We're worried that the home run derby has this inherent gravitas that Chris Berman is

ruining. I remember the first like last year, the first year he was off the home run derby. It was people just like Jessica Mendoza going, Oh, my goodness, look at that home run. I was like, I don't quite see the difference between Chris Berman going back, back, back, back, back, back. And someone just yelling with a home run. I don't see how Chris Bermen was besmirching this event. So it went from, and Berman and Buck is a good example because Berman hating on Twitter carried with this cachet, right?

You were signaling to other people that you were a hip consumer of sports media by taking a whack at Chris Berman. Like that was just like, and it didn't necessarily mean you were totally wrong. It just meant that that became way beyond like, I am mad at Chris Berman. It became a signal to your pals online that you were, you know, you were one of the cool kids. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure part of it's cyclical, right? I mean, we can only, like Will Leach, the Will Leach writing about Berman as you, that you mentioned. Like, that only works on someone like Chris Berman, right? I mean, it's someone of that who's been around for that long.

Like, you could write a column or have like a probably more effective. is like, you know, a Twitter storm or a tweet storm, um, making fun of like Marv Albert's tendencies, right? But if you spent 2,000 words using the exact same effect on like I and Eagle, it would just feel like a mean hatchet job, right? I mean, it's only, it's only if there's someone, yeah, exactly. Um, and then, you know, generationally, like people that are who are, people who are weaned on, uh, Chris Berman hate probably think that that's like, you know, that don't quite get the joke in the same way, you know, and then, and then, and then, and then the effect sort of snowballs. Yeah, I always found that. I just found like, again,

it's like, if you were mad at him for making the same jokes, that was totally, that was totally fair. I remember reading somewhere, and I have to find this. I'll tweet it on the press box account if I find it. But someone once said somewhere, it's like, I like college game day because it doesn't have any of that back, back, back, back, back stuff to go back to our overwork Twitter joke this week. And I'm like, do you realize that when Chris Berman was doing that, he was imitating a classic red barber call of Val John Frito from 1947? It's a long one. Deep into left center. Back to Jean-Frito.

Back, back, back, back, back, back. He makes a one-handed catch against the bullpen. So, wait, that's somehow lowbrow to imitate Red Barber from 1947. Seems like sports media's equivalent of a classical illusion, right? Yeah. And college game day ends with Lee Corso putting a mascot head on. Like, that's some... So to borrow the New York Magazine Index, right?

That's high, bro. But somehow Chris Berman doing Red Barber. is Lobra. I never quite got that. Here's the thing we have to mention with Chris Burman, which was not mentioned in some of the pieces today. In 2015, the big lead reported that ESPN settled a sexual harassment suit, which had been brought against the company

by a woman who did the makeup on Sunday NFL countdown. The woman whose name was Sue Bauman alleged that Berman had harassed her. She hired Gloria Alred as an attorney. ESPN settled the suit at the time, though they said, a spokesman said that the claim was meritless and they only settled to, quote, save a considerable amount of time

and litigation costs. That was reported by the big lead and followed up by deadspin at the time. But as we know, a settled lawsuit then meant something very different than a settled lawsuit does now. Yeah. And I have to think that's in the background of, you know, of the Berman thing. Look, it's got this, this is, this is out public information out in the world and that certainly figures into this at some level. Yeah. And it's, you know, not a stretch to imagine that that was part of the consideration when they sort of parachuted him away a couple years ago. But it also speaks to, I mean, it's an interesting, I mean, not to, not to diminish that

situation at all, but it also is an interesting view into the way that ESPN and Jimmy Pataro were making decisions now, where, I mean, surely, I mean, it could very conceivably be that Jimmy Petaro is comfortable that that, in fact, did not happen and that he stands by the company line and there's no reason not to move forward. But it's all, you know, but it, but it is interesting. that they're, you know, talking about bringing him back in the face of that, knowing that that's certainly going to come back up. Well, I'll say this too. Another thing to think about here is ESPN is in the midst of repairing its relationship with the NFL, getting back on solid footing at the

NFL, which is a pair of the relationship, which sort of hit its low point earlier this year. Chris Berman was a guy who was absolutely instrumental, as the NFL would tell you, maybe second or third to NFL films in selling the NFL on television. You know, NFL prime time, which was destroyed, incidentally, in a TV negotiation because NBC got the late game. And ESP could no longer air a highlight show in that period. But NFL primetime did so much for the NFL for such a long period of making it cool, of making it a week's worth of highlights, of making it a big stop so that you consume not just your local game that was airing then on, you know, rabid ears television, but you consume. the whole league like we do now. And so all the highlights, all the catchphrases, all the stuff he did with Tom Jackson, like, that was huge.

So if you're ESPN and you are looking to, you know, figure out ways to make certain parts of your broadcast more NFL friendly, boy, Chris Berman sure fits that bill, you know, that to me has got to be part of the background noise here, too. Before we get away from this, I want to go back, circle back to the very beginning of the segment. Andrew Marshand from the New York Post broke this story I believe and has returned back to it at least once since then and and and he is the he is the source not just at the news but of the but of the

notion that Chris Berman has weekend plans that make it impossible for him to come back this is I don't know if this quite counts as burying the lead but certainly this is a this is a part of the inquiry that I really want that I need to know more about the direct quote is ESPN would want Berman back for even more shows,

but he already has set weekend plans for part of the fall, so it may only be possible to nail him down for a limited amount of Sundays. I understand people have important things in their life. There are family weddings or whatever else. But if someone came and offered anyone in the world a chance to appear on ESPN for millions of dollars, presumably, for NFL football pregame shows, I want to know what the plans are that make it impossible. to show up for that job.

You know, isn't that an interesting question? Can we start the podcast next week? David, what do you think Chris Berman's weekend plans are? Let's spend a minute and a half at the top of the show next week speculating on what Chris Berman's weekend plans are. I'd start just love to know. I guarantee, I just almost 100% golf is involved. Traveling. Judging by the insistence, he might be playing golf with Marshand. I don't know.

I mean, this is a very important, this is a very important passage in both pieces that he wrote about this. Well, I think it's, I mean, it just feels like, you know, we couldn't get him on. So what's the reason, right? Why is it coming back in a limited? Well, he was busy. You know, he just, I hope my retirement's like that, by the way. When I finally walk away, I hope that I'm booked. I hope it's not somebody just calls.

Hey, Brian King of Baggs. Yeah, I don't have anything else to do. I'm just looking at my schedule here. Nothing for the next six to nine months. So I'm all yours again, Ringer. There was on. 40-year-old ringer. There was also a nice passage in the Sports Illustrated piece.

about this that said interestingly Berman who is not on Twitter and told me he'd never be on Twitter is very aware of all the specific criticism he gets on social media and I would just like to I don't know if you're ready to wrap this up but I would like for my part to close by saying

by wishing everyone who listens to this the serenity of Chris Berman to ignore Twitter and to not engage with the hate Let me just let me just a little secret about sports announcers. None of very few of them are on Twitter but they all know. They all search. They all say they don't, but they know.

Trust me, they know. They can, they can quote very specific criticisms for people who are not on social media. That is just my, that's just my general observation after studying this part of our society. That's the press box for this week. Thanks to our producer, Jim Cunningham. Thanks to Chris Almeida for helping us with research and moral support and all kinds, achieving the Zen that Chris Berman has attained. Next week, David Shoemaker and I will be back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back.

With more takes about the media. See you next week, David. See you later, Brian. What I want to know is, is there anything harder to move than a sofa, David? I'm going to be a curmudgeon about this, but I'm just going to stake out the most curmudgeonly, recently returned to New York, New Yorker point of view. Should I be, you know, happy about this? Should I be utterly terrified? Yeah.

So I'm knocking rapidly on wood here. I don't even say this is a journalist. It's just a human being who lives in New York and who reads things online and, you know, in magazine form. All of that said, is there anything harder to move than a sofa, David? Yeah. Functioning toilets. Nailed it. Thank you. Thanks to get to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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