The Press Box - The New York Times Leak Hunt, the Lousy State of NBA Discourse, and the ‘Madame Web’ Anti-Junket With The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

On the Final Edition, Bryan is joined by The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner. They kick off the show by discussin the suggestions that NBA rookie Victor Wembanyama will want to be traded in the future. (1:38). Then they discuss whether or not The New York Times should investigate their own leaks (11:21). Later, they talk about Dakota Johnson trashing her latest movie … while it’s still in theaters (24:31), then talk Super Tuesday coverage on cable news (31:35). Bryan closes out with some rapid fire questions for Isaac about his career (34:15) Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Isaac Chotiner Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, over 25 years ago on September 29, 1998, we watched a brainy girl with curly hair drop everything to follow a guy she only kind of knew to college. My name is Amanda Foreman, though maybe you know me better as Megan Rotundi, the roommate with the mysterious box. I'm teaming up with my Felicity husband, Greg Grunberg, and the ringer's Juliet Litman, to revisit our favorite moments from the show and talk to the people who helped shape it. The rewatch begins on March 13th. Listen to Dear Felicity on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters.

Coming up on today's podcast, we ask, should newspapers like the New York Times investigate their own leaks? We'll rank Victor Wembaughamma's possible trade destinations. I'm just kidding. I mean, talk about how player movement stories swallowed the NBA. plus the Madam Webb anti-junct and the art of interviewing. All of this with today's guest host, Isaac Chotner is a staff writer and staff interviewer at The New Yorker

where he excels at pinning down people who wander into the news cycle and helping us understand complex stories. He learned how to write think pieces on the main streets of Slate and the New Republic. He is my friend for more than a decade. Isaac, welcome to the press box. It's great to be here. I'm honored. All right.

Let's start with the NBA because when you cold call me nine out of ten times, it's with a scalding hot NBA take. And I thought of you this week because Victor Wemnon Yama, aka Wembe, is having a crazy good rookie season with the Spurs. See his game against OKC last week. What better way to appreciate an NBA unicorn than teasing said unicorns hypothetical future unhappiness? Here's ESPN's Ramona Shelton.

Victor is ready to win. And I know they have this idea that they're going to take two, three years and find the right core, and they're all going to be on the same timeline. But I don't know how patient he's going to be because when I watch him play, that man is competitive. He wants to win. And how long do you give him, like a year two? A year max.

Because I don't think he wants to sit here and be at the bottom of the lottery stand. So, Isaac, what do you make of player movement swallowing NBA media? You know, I think I feel a little bit torn about it. I think the critiques of it are, you know, which you've made on the show, which other people have made, obviously have a lot of merit to them. But structurally speaking, if the NBA is going to have the season it does with 82 games, followed by the playoffs it does with, you know, where home court advantage doesn't mean that much because you have Best of Seven Series and so on. And so the regular season is devalued to the degree that it is. I'm not totally sure what else we're supposed to talk about. So, you know, I get tired of it.

That clip was pretty silly. I'm not sure if Ramona Shelburne was reporting this in her official capacity for ESPN or her official capacity working for the Lakers. But I do find that I don't know exactly what else we're supposed to talk about. I mean, these games just don't matter that much. And even as someone who loves watching the games, I sort of get it. Isn't there something depressing if you're a Spurs fan? or a fan of any team and you draft somebody who's good that the shot clock for a first

take is placed above your player's head like right away. We're already talking about what they might do in a year or two. Yeah, I mean, it's probably not as depressing as being put on a team without a point guard that seems unwilling to play basketball in the 21st century. But yes, I think it is depressing. It's fascinating to me why movement stories have swallowed the industry. you mentioned the evaluation of the regular season. There's social media.

They fit nicely in tweets. There's fantasy. There's gambling. There's nationalized sports fandom. But isn't all the, aren't all those trends true with other sports? Yes. But you could also argue that it's happened in the NFL too, right? Shefter tweet moves the markets.

Maybe not quite in the way that an NBA tweet does, but maybe that's just because NBA players are more important player to player than NFL players. Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is the structure of the league where, you know, it's very hard to win a title without a top five player. And so there's increased focus on those guys, although I guess there's increased focus on everyone now being traded. But to make your NFL comparison or to talk about your NFL comparison, I'm a more casual NFL fan than I am an NBA fan, but I don't feel that way about following the NFL. I mean, I feel like I listen to a couple podcasts and I watch some games and I'm not that aware of what the trade buzz is. It would, it's simply important. possible to follow the NBA season in any real way without being confronted with constant trade and player movement talk. You could argue the NFL regular season is more important. You could also argue that if Patrick Mahomes had played for three different teams and four different stents like LeBron James has, maybe be a bigger part of it. I mean, that's part of this too, right? Like famous players move or want to move or want to threaten a move. That's not made up.

or at least not made up most of the time. So it is kind of the story of the modern NBA in a way. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it seems like right now the sort of generation of best players have not demanded trades yet. So maybe this current generation is going to be a little less anxious to move the way Durant and LeBron have been. But just because, you know, Yokic and Janus and Abed and Luca,

these guys are all on, you know, Tatum, so on and so forth, Booker. But yeah, no, it's, it seems like it's, it's not, it's not coming out of nowhere. I mean, the idea that free agency day or whatever else is the biggest day on the NBA calendar is not, it's not absurd if you just follow how the league's been the last few years. Part of this story that's well known is that first take and various NBA talk shows love these kind of rumors and love these kind of stories because they are what draw viewers. They help them program their A block. I think what's sort of less well known is that sports writers, or at least a bunch of them, and including present company here, at some point over the last five to ten years have also become podcasters.

And so instead of needing an idea to get you through the week, you need a podcast rundown. All of us do. And player movement is a podcast rundown for lazy people. Not just first take that's doing it. It's all of us downstream who are like, oh, that thing might happen. So that's my first 10 minutes. And then I just got to program minutes 20 through 40 and I can call it a day.

Yeah, although I definitely have people in my mind that I think of as not lazy podcasters. And I feel like all they talk about is trades until the trade deadline too. And then free agency. I mean, we all have in our minds, maybe the podcasters we're thinking of as more and less lazy. I don't feel like there's a huge distinction between them in terms of the amount of time spent on this stuff. Well, I think it gets to the JJ Reddick thing we saw the other day where there is pressure maybe is the wrong word, but there is a great incentive to commit to the bid. If you're either in the ESPN universe or in the podcast universe below the ESPN universe.

Like that's where the attention is. That's what you've been told or fans have been told are the important stories. So you want to do this, right? You want to hop on board or you can try to not hop on board and then you wind up doing the thing JJ did, which is that you're evaluating the mechanism from inside the mechanism. Yeah, right.

Which just seems kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah, I can never quite tell which of these guys are sincere and which are not. You know, it's like, um, ESPN, you know, first take shows are like this weird cult. It's like Scientology with people asking, you know, did El Ron Hubbard really believe it or was he a con man?

And it's sort of like, I never know with, with, you know, Stephen A. at all, like whether they truly believe. leave these takes or they've been doing it so long that they don't know the difference between believing it and not believing it or they don't believe it and it's all a performance it's it's fun to speculate on but i'm not sure yeah and i think the one thing you can say about that is the people that commit to it that commit to the performance aspect of it are the people that are the most successful yeah absolutely erased whatever that line is in our minds

mike finger who's really good columnist down in san antonio wrote uh something for the express news about this little moment. And what he said is, look, this is one of those things where Spurs fans have for years been saying, hey, you know, why doesn't ESPN talk about us? Why do we get labeled as the boring organization that isn't on a coast? Why don't we get our flowers from ESPN? And he's like, you wanted to be in the ESPNA block? Here's what it's going to be like.

Yeah, exactly. What's the guy's name, Mike Finger? Mike Finger. Yeah. He never watched a Spurs game between. like 2002 and whenever Genobley showed up. My God, that was tough. That was tough watching. But yes, I mean, I see the frustration. I've also noticed, I don't know if you've noticed this in sports media, if you listen to basketball podcasts or whatever. Each one comes with

this huge apology that they're about to talk about the Warriors and the Lakers. And so you kind of have to do this preamble for 30 seconds of, we're really sorry we're talking about the Lakers. But yeah, no, it's part of the business, I guess. That's because we know this is going to be in the A block. This is, whether it's the official A block or the mental A block, we know that this is what we're going to do. Yeah. All right. I want to ask you this, since you're an NBA fan, what are your, what is your NBA media consumption habits?

What are they like? You know, I watch a ton of playoff games. I watch several regular season national games per week or parts of them. Like I'll watch Celtics Nuggets tonight. or most of it. And then I watch, you know, maybe a third to half of Rockets game since I'm a Rockets fan, and then I listen to a few podcasts, and that's it. And I, you know, check out highlights on my phone. Do you read anything? Yeah, I guess. No, I do. I read the athletic. I read Zach Lowe's column. I read, you know,

ESPN stuff. Read good ringer articles when they appear, obviously. I need to get that plug in. But no, I mean, I Yeah, I do, but not as much as I used to, I guess. The podcasting is replaced reading. I feel like more than TV replaced reading for me. I know. I know. And you and I are sitting here being like,

I don't want to be part of the post sports writing generation. I don't want to be a symptom of the post sports writing generation. But if I admit like how much information do I sit down and read and how much do I just inhale from social media and from podcasts, doesn't look great. It really doesn't look great. All right, Isaac, I want to talk to you about two stories from the New York Times. Story number one, last month, if people have not been following this, there was a report in the Intercept about the New York Times.

It involved this New York Times story called Screams Without Words, How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7. The Intercept reported that the Times' own daily podcast had tried to do a pod version of that story. but as they did the scripting and re-reporting process, they had some questions. And the Intercept said of the Daily's draft script that it, quote, offered major caveats allowed for uncertainty and asked open-ended questions that were absent from the original article.

The Daily episode has not yet run. Now, the fact that the Intercept's authors could find out those internal details about an unerered episode of a Times podcast caused the times itself to begin hunting for a leaker, as Vanity Fair's Charlotte Klein reporter. So let's start this broadly. Do you think a newspaper that encourages people to leak to it should investigate its own leaks? Yeah, I think probably not. Putting aside the specifics of this story, which obviously you and I don't know the exact details here. But yeah, I don't think it makes a ton of sense. I mean, I think that you could, I guess what the newspaper would maybe

try and say is that there's in their own reporting that they will talk to people who want to leak, but they don't encourage leaks. And so they don't encourage leaks internally or something. I mean, I'm trying to come up with the most narrow legalistic defense, because frankly, frankly, it just seems pretty hypocritical to me. I think that most people in media would say that they want to talk to leakers and they want to publish the information of leakers because society as a whole benefits in some broad way from having greater understanding of how powerful institutions function. And so I think it's pretty hard to say cracking down on one fits with that broader, what you perceive as your broader mandate. I also just think from a just sort of more

utilitarian perspective, it seems like a very stupid thing for them to do. I mean, they're going to find someone who leaks something to the intercept and then maybe fire that person or something. And they think, what? I just, I don't get it. Yeah. This idea that you're weighing the likelihood of success of this leak hunt with the likelihood of pissing off everybody in the newsroom and screwing up your newsroom culture even further. And we learned from NPR's David Fulkenflick that the Times Guild has accused top news executives of targeted interrogation of journalists of Middle Eastern descent inside of this investigation. I was really interested in where Joe Kahn tried to draw the line here because they're not saying, okay, we, can hunt for leaks about any news that comes from inside the New York Times. We're doing this in a very particular way. He said in a memo, we undertook the inquiry for a simple reason, using

access to our publishing system to reveal pre-publication details of our journalism to people outside the Times crosses a clear red line. It threatens the culture of trust essential to the intensive editing process in every part of the newsroom. Okay. So if it's already been published okay, but if you were leaking pre-publication materials, no, no, that's a big, that's where we have to step in. Yeah, I mean, this seems a little bit almost tautological if the leak was, again, I don't know the veracity of which side is telling the truth, or if everyone's telling the truth and it's just a matter of different values here. All I'm saying is that it feels a little bit tautological

to say it's pre-publication when the leak itself was about the fact that this, this daily program you know, couldn't ear, it couldn't air because of factual concerns. That feels a little bit chicken and egg to me. I was going to say, I mean, I could see a leak hunt happening for something that had nothing to do with the Times journalism. You know, if something was leaked about, you know, I can't think of an example, but if something was leaked sort of having nothing to do with the Times journalism, office politics or whatever else that seemed to have no larger news value, then I could see the Times maybe being on slightly firmer ground by saying they were going to launch a leak hunt. But given this is something that, you know, I think everyone thinks

is important, which is the Times journalism, which whatever you like it or don't like it or whatever else is clearly a very important thing in America throughout the world, to say that a leak about that doesn't have kind of public interest. Not that Con is saying that, but it just seems pretty obvious that this is a, this is something, this is the type of thing that a news organization would want leaks about and would publish them, as the intercept did. Right. And if in the whole, the whole idea of, well, it's still in the internal editing process or it hasn't passed the red line of publishing yet. I mean, that's not a courtesy of the time to give to any of their subjects. If somebody in the Trump campaign prepared a memo that they were going to deliver to Donald Trump but didn't deliver it to Donald Trump, it's got their hands on it, that would be news, right? That would absolutely be news. Yeah, or about the product launch of a business the Times was reporting on. I mean, you should come up with other, yeah.

Apple, an Apple, you know, executive prepared a memo, right, that they were going to deliver about a product or, you know, about Apple's internal culture, didn't wind up delivering the memo. I mean, I still think that would probably be publishable material. I have a friend at Apple who listens to this podcast, and I encourage people to try and leak things from Apple. Oh, you do? Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll put out my signal coordinates. at the end, make sure they can get to me. It is funny, right? Because this is sort of an age-old journalism thing where journalism is at least in part or maybe mostly about challenging powerful people and sort of challenging the fact that powerful people are trying to control information. And then you have journalists who become powerful people, places like the New York Times, they are trying to control information and trying to manage their public image. And you become the kind of person that you use to cover.

and that's sort of what's happening here and I guess at every journalistic institution where something like this would occur. Absolutely. All right, New York Times story number two for you, Isaac. Liberals turning on the New York Times. Kind of a dog bites man headline. But there was a new instance,

there was a poll that the Times commissioned or the Times conducted with Sienna College, Sienna being one of those colleges like Emerson and Quinipiac that I don't think about nearly enough unless they're conducting a poll during an election. Monmouth University. Oh, Monmouth. There we go. Add them to the list. The poll found that, let's see here, 73% of respondents either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed with the idea that Joe Biden is just too old to be an effective president. There was a big backlash led by, wait for it,

Jeff Jarvis, who posted on threads that they even asked this question is evidence of the bias, the agenda in their poll. Who made age an issue? The credulous times... Is there not a rule about quoting Jeff Jarvis on this podcast? Well, there may be after this. Okay. I'm just just asking.

But sometimes you just got to throw red meat out to the guest. Who made age and issue Jarvis continues? And this will be the last time I ever quote him. The credulous times falling into the right wing's projection, this is not journalism. Shameful. So I'm guessing you don't have a great impression of what Jeff Jarvis put on threads. Well, no, I mean, I don't have a great impression of Jeff Jarvis's media criticism. But this aside, I should also just say, as a matter of full disclosure, one of my closest friends runs polling at the New York Times. So I should admit that I'm probably a little biased here. I think the critique that the Times has maybe run too many stories about Biden's age is fair. But that being said, I don't, you know, the anger about this feels pretty much like liberals are frustrated that Joe Biden is trailing in the polls and that the country seems as focused on Joe Biden's age as any issue involving his challenger.

And I share that frustration as someone who is not excited about the possibility of a second Trump term. But, you know, this just feels like people are mad at the polls and, you know, because they're telling them something that they don't like, broadly speaking. And whether the media has some role to play, which I think it does in hyping certain stories and not others, this is just, you know, people are upset. I mean, if Biden had been up four points in this poll and it had also said the same thing about his age, I don't think anybody would care. We should know that the Times also ask the same question about Donald Trump, 42% either strongly agreed or something. somewhat agreed, but he's too old to be an effective president. I totally agree with you. I think a lot of the Times criticism is, A, warranted, but be completely based on how Joe Biden is doing in the polls.

And it comes and goes with that. I am been fascinated. Maybe that's the wrong word. Grimly fascinated to watch people on Twitter that I agree with about many things, trying to explain away polls and polling results. there was one this week. It's like, you know, this is only based on a thousand people. I'm like, well, that's, that's kind of how a poll works.

Yeah, I, I, I, I should say that I like emotionally have a lot of sympathy for this because I feel like I do it in my mind. I stay off. I try and stay off all social media when polls like these drop because I just find it triggering to look at these same numbers over and over again, especially when they reveal what this poll. and I should say multiple other polls from other respected news organizations the same last weekends showed. I mean, look, I do think maybe just to get into some times bashing myself, the way that these polls are sort of drawn out for days and days of news cycles by the Times and even used to kind of do these stories that I've never liked where you kind of interview voters.

And in the case of these stories based on the polls, they like, they will call up. people who spoke to the polls and get them to say what the reporter wanted them to say anyway, you know, about Biden being too old or whatever else. I understand the frustration about all of that, but, and the criticisms of all of it. But fundamentally, the frustration is with the fact that, you know, right now this election for people that are concerned about a second Trump term is not looking good. And that's not a fun prospect. it is kind of a process of of of sort of putting out this poll that's a little bit like a reality show reveal isn't it? Yeah, the age thing was like day two or day three after the Times had published the top line of the poll.

Yep. Yep. Now again, if it was good news, you'd be like, oh, keep the hits coming, right? Tuesday, Wednesday, let's have some more good news about how my candidate's doing. But it's bad news. Yeah. I mean, look, I should say I don't follow the critique that I think a lot of people have of polling and its function in journalism. I mean, I do think there's probably too much focused on it sometimes, but also to take the Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal as examples, you know, I think the coverage based on polls is often superior to the other political coverage that it takes the place of. that's not the case obviously with actual reporting about the candidates and what their policies are

or how candidates raise money. All these things are extremely important. But the sort of more narrativized campaign journalism, which I find pretty much useless now most of the time, polling an analysis of the electorate and why people are offering the voting that they're why people are thinking the way they're thinking and why demographic subgroups are going in one direction or another, I think is really important and really interesting. And so I'm glad it exists. But yes, there is something depressing about, you know, as I was saying about the times that when it then just becomes to support the type of journalism I always disliked, which is interviewing random voters and them giving their thoughts on A, B and C. That is always amazing.

If I found this guy who, as you say, because I want to write the age story, so I'm going to find a guy who's going to say the thing about the age. So I can put that in paragraph five. A new topic for you, Isaac. For the first and hopefully not final time in press box history, I'd like to talk about Dakota Johnson. Because Dakota Johnson is... Better than Jeff Jarvis, I think we agree. Dakota Johnson is allowed.

She is pioneering a new tactic when navigating the movie press junket. And what she's doing is trashing the crappy movie she was in while it is still playing in theaters. I'm going to refer you to a story in bustle, also making its press box debut here, called Dakota Johnson Can't Fake It.

By the way, A-plus celebrity profile headline there. Yeah. Celebrities name first and some kind of generalized, but positive statement about the celebrity. When Bustle comes for you, it's going to be Isaac Chodner just can't stop asking questions. Pieces by Charlotte Owen, and it's about Madam Webb.

I don't know if you've seen this, 12% on Rob. Definitely not. Madam Webb, if that's what you're asking. You've seen the reaction to Madam Webb, perhaps? Yeah, yeah. And Johnson tells Bustle, unfortunately, I'm not surprised that this has gone down the way it has. Dot, dot, dot, dot.

You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart and executives have started to believe that they're not, dot, dot, dot, dot. But sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something and it's one thing. And then as you're making it, it becomes a completely different thing. And you're like, wait, what? but it was a real learning experience and of course it's not nice to be part of something

that's ripped as shreds, but I can't say that I don't understand. The early versions of the script were like Chinatown or Citizen Kane and then it somehow got lost in the production. Is that the implication there? I don't... Yes. And then it became a Sony superhero movie

in the second or third edit. Do we like honest junketeering? Yeah, I like it. What's the counter? The counter is only a business counter. There's no journalism counter here. The business counter is you are out there flogging a $100 million business property. Yeah.

Tell people, hey, that thing I was in, it sucks and you probably shouldn't see it. Yeah. You were damaging other people or other careers, perhaps, in the process. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's possible. maybe uh maybe this people go see a different movie than madam web who are going to go see that and you'll you'll help other people's careers at uh warner brothers are paramount rather than sony i mean i i don't know it's hard for me to uh it's hard for me to get too irritated by this it is funny though well actually i was going to say something it's i don't know where i'm going with it yeah no i don't

have a problem with it it's uh it's not our problem this journalist anyway if they want to trash the movie that there's been some fun god god god bless him uh there's been some fun examples of this Hugh Honka, Hugh Hugh Grant on the Willy Wonka tour. He said, I couldn't have hated the whole thing more and said that he made the movie because he has

lots of children and needs money. Hugh Grant has some great great quotes through the years about movies he's worked on, co-stars he's worked with. Just really, absolutely brutal. I think the move, though, right, is you wait six or 12 months. And then when you're doing publicity for the

next movie. Then you reveal your doubts about the previous movie. This is what's happening here. She's speeding up the process. And I know Dakota Johnson has this whole kind of history or let's say I learned it in the last day about being off message while she's doing junkets. Shaila Buff also tried this out when Indy 4 was released. This is not the most recent crappy Indiana Jones movie, but the crappy Indiana Jones movie

before that. I remember it. I remember. Yeah. He said that they had dropped the ball. and then Harrison Ford replied, I think I told him he was a fucking idiot. As an actor,

I think it's my obligation to support the film without making a complete ass of myself. And Labuff later recounted a conversation with Steven Spielberg about his anti-junketeering and said, he told me there's a time to be a human being and have an opinion and there's a time to sell cars.

Yeah, well, I guess that's true. Spielberg should have spent more time focusing on making Indie 4 or something less than the catastrophe that it was. So I don't know what to tell them. But I think that's what's at issue here, right? And what's so interesting to me is so much of this when you're promoting a movie is about selling cars.

It's not just the actor who's selling your cars. It's the people interviewing the actors that are also selling cars. Yeah. You're granting this thing. Oh, we can't wait to talk to you about your new movie. And I'm not going to put in the article or in the podcast interview what I think about it. I'm not going to dissuade people because I want to talk to you. Yeah.

You know, it's funny. It's funny you bring this up. I was once interviewing someone in entertainment, and I absolutely hated the movie that this person had made. And it was weird because I felt, I felt torn. I sort of feel like as an interviewer, it's one thing to express your opinion if you know,

you're interviewing someone about, you know, racist comments they've made or something, where you sort of feel like you can make kind of a moral objection and part of your journalistic duty is to do that. And in this case, I sort of felt weird, which was that, like, do I just, like, tell this guy, like, I thought your movie was terrible. It just seems, there seemed something almost kind of rude about it, and I wasn't sure that that was, I'm not defending the, like, fawning coverage that celebrities and movies get, but it is

kind of a weird place if you really dislike. I mean, you shouldn't lie, I guess, about whether you liked it or not, but I found that a little difficult. I didn't end up saying anything. I mean, I tried to sort of subtly hint with my questions that I thought the movie didn't handle everything perfectly, but it was. It was, I don't know, it was difficult. It feels like it's possible to do that in two different venues now, to give you a review

with a movie and then to do a profile or an interview with the actor. Sure. I mean, right, but most people who do celebrity profiles or interviews with celebrities don't often get to also write reviews. But yes, I agree. It's true. Or else that kind of weird blue checkmark person that started tweeting the week the movie comes out.

but before the movie's actually in theaters. Like you'll never, I can't wait for you to see this. You're like, oh, yeah, not totally familiar with your work. And I don't know that I trust you in your opinion on this. By the way, also in this bustle interview with Dakota Johnson, she was not only giving the interview, but imagining a headline of an article that would aggregate her bustle interview. And she said, like Dakota Johnson breaks her silence on Madam Webb's fucking box office failure.

It's like, no, I'm not breaking any. silence. I'm just talking. Music to my press box ears. Thank you, Dakota Johnson, for recognizing the ridiculous of breaking silence headlines. I have a friend who does not shut up about when breaking silence being overused in headlines. So I'm going to tell him to listen to this podcast. But it's not me. It's a different friend. No, no. As you can tell, since that's all he goes on about, he doesn't have a very busy job. So he'll be able to listen. Did you watch any Super Tuesday coverage on cable news? No. No, I did not. You will not be surprised

to know that the coverage is weird. Yeah. That the breaking results from all the states, even though they were utterly predictable, were handled like we were in November, and the results were either in question or really actually mattered. And you'll also be not be surprised to learn that cable news personalities really didn't have a ton to say.

And it seems like the next several months is going to be this great challenge where they don't have external events to put on their chiron. They don't have countdown clocks in the way they have, you know, relied on in past elections, and they're going to have to just figure out something to talk about. It's a little bit like the NBA regular season. Yeah. How are they going to do this? Yeah, it's bleak. I'm glad I don't watch cable news. I have no advice for them, and I can't say I feel bad for them either. CNN did the thing where they have like three different teams covering it. It's like Jake Tapper is announcing the results and then we've got panel number one and then somewhere else we've got panel number two. And also this, I don't know the

last time you actually just laid eyes on CNN even as a Twitter clip, but the colors of the CNN set really reminded me of like when you see a cable news network in a movie and it's a made up cable network and you look at it and you're like, you know what? Those those colors just look a little too rich and the way the anchors talk is just a little too on the nose. And I don't actually believe this is a cable network. CNN has kind of become the movie cable network. You're not making me feel bad about not watching Super Tuesday coverage. Semi-related story.

I saw a note, I believe it was in Oliver Darcy's newsletter, that MSNBC is becoming a live events business in addition to a news business, and that Luke Russert is the host and creative director of this effort. So New Yorker Festival, watch out. going to be MSNBC cons for the audience of cable news. And by the way, it seems like a fantastic money-making opportunity for cable news. Yeah. Because the people that watch cable news, we know we'll tend to be a little bit older.

Those are the people that will turn out to hear that nice young man, Chris Hayes, speak at a convention or speaking at an event. Yeah. I think that's, that may be where our industry is going. Yeah, you found the only thing bleaker than cable news itself is MSNBC panels. All right, Isaac, I got some nosy questions about your career. Okay. I'm going to play the role of you, and you play the role of the guy of the conservative think tank

who you are pinning down in the digital pages of the New Yorker. Mention at the top, you came up in Washington media orgs like I did. How did you first get started writing in an interview form? I was doing so. I was at the New Republic. This was back in 2012 or so, and I just, I just started doing interviews for the website. I don't remember exactly whose idea was, probably one of my editors and really enjoyed, I've always liked the form. I've always liked reading the form, and I just really enjoyed doing it. And then did a couple authors, author interviews for the magazine, which I loved. And I think then just sort of took to it. What can you do with an interview

that's different than what you could do with a written piece? You know, I don't know that you can do something different. Like, I wouldn't want to say that you can necessarily do more with an interview. I think that, you know, I sort of think about interviews in two ways. I think about them as them functioning as sort of profiles. So, you know, I'm interviewing, you know, Zadie Smith or VS. Nypaul, and I'm sort of trying to accomplish what a profile writer for the New Republic or the New Yorker would be doing and trying to give a full picture of this person

and their ideas and their careers. And then there's kind of the more informational interview or interview where you're not so much trying to give a profile of a person. You're sort of more interested in what information the person you're interviewing has. So if I'm interviewing someone about a coup in Turkey, people don't care so much or people don't know which historian of Turkey I'm talking to about this. They just want the information that this person has. And so I sort of think of interviews in one of those two ways.

And I think they can function really well in both of them. So either as like a magazine profile or as the way a news story or even an op-ed would of providing information to the reader. And if it's a profile-style interview, do you like the interview itself to have a kind of arc? We're going to go from one place as a reader to a different place? I like them to have arcs no matter what. That's sort of the one thing that I think about the most when I'm doing them.

or planning them is giving them a certain arc, thinking about the endings when I'm thinking about the beginnings because I do really like that. Do you write out your questions, word for word in advance? No. Well, yes and no. Sometimes if I think an interview is going to be more confrontational, yes, if I'm quoting something obviously,

but usually more broad notes. And I sort of change my conversational style, depending on how the interview is going or who I'm talking to. Do you like Zoom's or do you just like to do a phone? Well, for a profile type interview, it's nice to see someone in person, you get some color and detail. For a different kind of interview,

for a more informational one, I prefer the phone, so I don't have to look at the person. Oh, that's interesting. Not for like weird social reasons, just because, you know, it's easier to be looking at your questions or looking at the phone and not have to make eye contact.

I'm always amazed when I see interviewers who do it well on television, you know, that sort of viral interview Jonathan Swan did of Trump a couple years ago. To do that while also making eye contact with him and, you know, I don't mean playing for in a cynical way, but playing for the camera too was amazing. It is, right? Because you're trying to do everything you're talking about and then there's a performance that you're doing at the same time. Totally. You are on camera. And I don't know if that's you, but like I'm always fascinated with interviewers and when I do interviews with people just catching my own reactions. to their responses. Yeah.

If you have like a little tick, but sometimes I'll find myself when I'm listening to an interview back, when somebody says something that's quotable or interesting, I'll just start laughing, sometimes very quietly because I'm, I guess, chuckling to myself,

oh, that's a good line. Do you have anything like that? Well, no, but I do have that on audio, which is that when I'm listening to, you know,

the audio, when I'm transcribing something, I'll notice that I started making, you know, sort of audible noises or I start saying write too much or, you know, just ticks like that that I don't realize that I have at the time. The ultimate podcast tick is you just say right over and over again. Yeah, I mean, I actually think it's hard. It's worse with podcasts because you have to listen to it. You know, I can obviously edit them out of, edit all my rights out of a of a phone

interview. But sometimes I think you kind of want them because you want the person to feel that they're being heard. But yeah, too many of them when you have to listen to them or read them is is irritating. The other great podcast tick is every time somebody answers a question, they begin with the word yeah. Yeah. There you go. I've noticed that too.

No, no, that's right. Well, also, sometimes people will say, yeah, they'll say, yeah, no, which you have to edit because they're answering no to a question you ask. It's like, oh, did you walk on the moon? And they'll say, yeah, no, I didn't do that. And so one reason when people sometimes ask, you know, why do you have to edit transcripts? And we try not to edit very much. But that's one reason you have to edit because verbal text like, yeah, no, which translated

to the page make no sense. So I was going to ask you about that because every time I read a printed interview, it almost always ends with the line. These interviews have been edited and condensed. How much editing and condensing do you do? Well, we have certain rules that we, you know, one of the things, what I should say when I started doing this, one of the things I was sort of shocked by was how few rules there were for interviews, you know, that there are all these sort of rules we have for reporting.

I don't mean rules like legal rules, but, you know, just sort of mores within journalism. And for interviews, I felt like there was much less of that. You know, we do have certain rules that we follow about, you know, for example, if I ask a question, then someone gives an answer and then I ask another question, they give another answer. We don't move people's answers to underneath different questions. So something like that, we would never do. So we, you know, I actually, one of the things when I got started interviewing was, it was a little bit in response to, you know, the New York Times magazine, they now have a

great interview with, longer interview with David Marchese every Sunday or most Sundays, but it used to, it used to be this extremely short one-page interview that they did. And they were really, really, really, really edited down. So much so that they could often be very fun or clever, but they never felt like an actual conversation. And they actually got in trouble for that, for how much those were edited at various times. And I think that with the interviews that we do, we try and do something a little bit different, which is leave in, whether it's awkward pauses or back and forth, and keep them to sort of have the feeling of a real conversation and to edit them less. So that is something that we definitely try and do.

A real conversation as opposed to what a lot of printed interviews have done over the years, which is an imagine conversation. Well, I'm not saying, I'm not saying imagine. I'm saying maybe I should say, not that not not, not, not, has the feel of a real conversation, that it feels to some degree like you're reading something close to a transcript rather than 700 words taken out of 6,000. Yeah, I imagine it's perhaps a wrong word. I mean, edit it into a smoother conversation.

So that questioner and answerer are, you know, boom, boom, boom, here we go. Yes, yes. But I also try and not always successfully, try and sort of, I, I, I often try, I'm often aware of the fact that I don't want to have to edit things. And so when I'm doing the interview, I try and think about that. So, you know, you just, one of the reasons you sometimes have to interrupt people and add something or whatever else is because if you don't do that, then you're going to have to edit this in a certain way because people won't know what a reference is or so on and so forth. And so you try and you try and keep the conversation going in such a way that the editing will have to be less in once you're doing it on the page. You mentioned transcribing. You transcribe your own interviews rather than relying on a service?

Sometimes if I'm rushed, I'll rely on a service, but I do try and transcribe them, yeah. That's got to take a long time. I mean, I just sort of go through the menu. What? That's got to take a long time to sit there and type them out. Yeah, yeah, I've gotten pretty fast at them now, I guess, which I'm not a good typeer, but I'm better at listening to them and typing them. But, you know, if I get them transcribed or someone else does it, you still have to go through it anyway. way, so it doesn't actually do that much good. And you find that if you're typing it out, you hear certain things or notice certain things that you wouldn't if you're just reading a transcript?

Yeah. And I mean, I listened to it more than once. And then, you know, at the New Yorker, there's a fact checker who listens to it and who will, you know, catch my mistakes and stuff. So, yeah, but there's a whole process. And, you know, I do actually like listening to it because, you know, makes you, makes you aware of your ticks and so on, as you were saying. And finally, what's the fact-checking like involved in an interview?

I understand what it is with the piece. But what are we fact-checking? Well, that's interesting. I mean, you know, we were, I was having this conversation with the fact-checked today about an interview that I did this week, which is, you know, obviously you're checking the introduction. You're checking that the audio, you know, that I transcribe the audio accurately. You're, you know, when one person says something about, quote, you know, a date or something,

you're making sure it's accurate. making sure my questions are factually accurate if I state something in them. But one of the things that we talk about a lot and debate is how to sort of deal with an interview subject who's maybe being dishonest. I think that my bias is to let them speak, even if they're saying something that is not 100% accurate because it shows what their opinion is. And so that's something that we talk a lot about with fact checkers. And I think it's an interesting part of how to fact check interviews is if the interview

subject is dishonest, how much to sort of let them say what they want to say and how much to sort of go into the, go into the piece and, you know, do bracketed corrections or whatever else. Which is a version of the larger argument everybody's had about interviewing people, especially during the Trump era. How much to let them want? How much do you go through and correct and say, actually, that's not true? Actually, that's not true. Yeah.

I think my feeling is like, you know, I totally see the case to never interview Kelly Ann Conway. I've never interviewed her. I don't really have any interest in her. But I do think if you're going to interview her, I mean, I think you should try and correct while you're talking her false statements. But I think that giving someone a sense of how she talks and what she says, I think you have to trust readers to a certain extent that they're going to realize when people are saying things that are ridiculous or often will that they are ridiculous and that, you know, I generally think you should give people some space there. But I also, you know, as again, you were saying with the Trump administration, one big

question was how much to give these people a microphone in the first place, which is obviously very complicated. All right. Isaac, read his interviews and read his stories in New Yorker, Isaac. Thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks for much for having me. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic.

As always, by Brian Waters. Let me put a few things on your press box schedule. here. One is I finally tweeted out the March guest post schedule. Isaac was kind enough to do the show today. I give you the rest of the schedule right now, though. March 14th, Kara Vote of the Washington Post is going to be on this show. She is a fantastic writer for the style section at the post, wrote a piece the other day that I really enjoyed about now, never Trumpers. A couple years ago, I did the dumb guy thing of going, why doesn't somebody write a good piece about historian John Meacham in the role he's playing in the Biden administration. Then I was advised that, oh, Kara had written that piece and had done an excellent job of it.

There is a new Mac series coming out called The Girls on the Bus. Premier's next week. I think we're going to get into that show too. So that is coming up March 14th. And then March 22nd, which is a Friday, a day later than we normally do it, my old pal, my old Grantland teammate, Jay Caspian Kang is going to be on this podcast. After Grantland, you read him in magazines like The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine. He is a permanent part of my department of envy, by which I mean that every time I would see his byline, I'd be like, oh, I am going to read this and I'm going to be so mad that I did not write this particular piece or at least something this good.

We're going to be talking during March Madness, so I definitely want to get in to the idea of how we we watch college basketball now. That's Jay Caspian King, March 22nd. And then March 28th, a show that I would love to cancel. Because March 29th, 2023, that is almost a year ago, was the day that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gerskovich was arrested in Russia and charged with espionage. Translation, he was doing journalism.

His detainment is and continues to be an outrage. and I wanted to vote an episode to him. So on March 28th, we're going to have Emma Tucker, who is the Wall Street Journal's editor-in-chief on this show, talking about what's going on inside the paper, and then we're going to have some friends of Evans. Tell us about the guy and the reporter. One year without Evan Gershkovich coming March 28th to the press box.

Not going to want to miss any one of those episodes. All right, that's item one. Item number two, can I interest anybody in the Democratic National Convention? that is August 19th through 22nd in Chicago, I am thinking about doing a live podcast recording and or a meetup with the fine listeners of the press box in Chicago. So if you live in the greater metro area, or if you're a reporter who's going to be down there,

send me a note in my DMs at the press box pod or email me, Brian.curtis at the ringer.com. If you shoot me a DM, please send me your email address too. and I will put together a list of people because I would love to raise a glass to the wonderful listeners of this podcast and or do my Brian Benson impression for you. That is August 19 through 22nd, the DNC in Chicago.

That's all I got. Monday, I'm back with Shoemaker with more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a fantastic movie.