The Press Box - The NRA's Media Presence, the Troubles of Covering the Olympics, and Deconstructing The Player's Tribune | The Press Box (Ep. 434)

Episode Date: February 28, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker talk about how the NRA became a media entity (03:00), the messy Winter Olympics coverage (17:45), and Amos Barshad's article about The Player's Tribune (34:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Download Birch. B-I-R-C-H in the App Store today, and sign up for free. David, we're going to talk about the Players Tribune and its effect on sports writing, but first, I wanted to ask you, if you could ghostwrite for anybody, who would you ghost write for? So many good choices out there. This is a controversial one, but I think my answer has to be Kyrie Irving of the Boston Celtics. What?

I'd either get to be inside the mind of an actual forward-thinking. genius who has figured out how to totally work the entire media establishment by pretending to believe in conspiracy theories, or I would get to write 300 pages of conspiracy theory fan fiction. So one way or the other, I think I'd have a lot of fun doing that. And get promoted at the ringer for your efforts, yeah, by writing that beloved member of the Boston Celtics. I was going to say on my end, just about any member of the 1990s Dallas Cowboys, but I don't think I could do it for anybody except Michael Irvin, right? I mean, nobody would be really that interesting to sustain any kind of ghostwriting exercise.

for more than like two minutes. And number two choice, Brent Musburger. I don't know why, but I think that'd be a hell of a beboard to ghost break. I can only imagine the stories you get out of Brent. Yeah, the whole key to ghostwriting too is like spending boozy hours with the subject.

So in terms of just the lifestyle, I think I'll have to go with Brent. We will talk more about this ghostwriting experiment on the press box, which is part of the ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast. We are not allowed to tweet a link to your most recent piece and also tweet a screenshot of your lead because that's the first thing we're going to read anyway. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer.

If you want recent content by us, check out the latest edition of the Bill Simmons podcast where David talks about All Matters WWE and the upcoming HBO Andre the Giant documentary. And speaking of giants, you can check out my profile of Chicago Bulls legend Luke Longley and also our friend Katie Baker, Ontario. Lipinski and the Olympics. Read that too, please. But for today, David, first in the wake of the Parkland Florida shooting and more importantly in the wake of Donald Trump, we talk about how the NRA transformed into a full-blown media entity. Second, some hot takes about the way the Winter Olympics were covered. And finally, what does Derek Jeter have against sports writers who did nothing but butter him up for 20 seasons he was in the bigs? We talk about the threat to our noble profession posed by the Players Tribune. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter

joke of the week. But first, David, let's start with a segment. I'd like to call, I'll give you this piping hot content when you pry it from my cold dead hands. As the New York Times as Jeremy Peters explained the other day, when there was a mass shooting, the NRA used to go silent for a while. But after the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that wasn't actually the case at all. Probably the most blogged about bit was the spokesperson Dana Locha's thing about the media-loving mass shootings. But there's also been a steady stream of content. from the NRA's multimedia arms like NRA TV, which has opinions not just about gun rights,

but also about kneeling football players and immigration and the liberal media and the deep state, quote unquote. David, what do you make of the way the NRA has transformed into kind of an auxiliary Fox News channel? Well, I mean, the degree to which they are coming out, well, I don't want to say guns blazing, they're coming out swinging in the, you know, aftermath of the Parkland shooting,

you know, obviously, as you pointed out, there's no, there's no, you know, quiet time. There's no pause for reflection. There's no, you know, tasteful silence anymore. And certainly the NRA TV, I mean, the literal media aspect, I mean, the literal media outlet aspect of their messaging is a sort of stunning step when you kind of zoom out and look at it. but that said there's a lot that the inter i mean the the nRA has been you know sort of form over

substance for a long time i mean Wayne lapierre i mean maybe this is a personal bias but you know when when when wayne lapierre speaks at the republican convention or gives any speech there's no part of me that believes that he believes what he's saying on any sort of intrinsic level right i mean he's he's PR and um and you know i think that's been the case for a while Yeah, well, I mean, it's like when I was making light there, Charlton Heston, right, talking about my cold dead hands, right? You know, it's a great, you know, famous piece of NRA stagecraft, right? From my cold dead hands. And something that became sort of a motto and a rallying cry.

I mean, it's funny because I think part of this new transformation, the first thing they did was actually get LaPier off camera as much as possible, right? He's still around, of course, but they hire Dana Loche, right? who comes from the world of Breitbart and the Blaze and who's, you know, a skilled public speaker. I don't know. Is that, is that, is it, is that, that's a quote. I read a piece. I'm not sure that that's fine. I would totally agree with that, but she's, right.

She's good at Twitter videos, right? Yeah. She's good at, she's good at talk radio. So anyway, she becomes a spokesman. And then what she does and in our ATV around her does is sort of take it from this sort of narrow gun rights focus into this kind of larger like, well, if you're for gun rights, you may also be against kneeling football players. You may also be, you know, against any liberal media criticism of Donald Trump.

So I think there's sort of two interesting things working. One is the way that Donald Trump has transformed the conservative media, you know, where we always talk about, look how Sean Hannity's show and look how various Fox News shows changed because of Trump. They just took on his issue positions and kind of mutated. But the other is that if you're something like a guns rights organization, you also change. And you're like, we're just going to kind of go over this whole buffet of issue positions

that the president cares about and make that part of the message we're transmitting to the world. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I'm surprised that there's not a 10,000 word, you know, Franklin 4 essay on this already. there may be that I just missed, but there is, you can make the kind of larger case that a lot of what the NRA has been doing over the years sort of presage the Trump era, right? I mean, the sort of post-fact reality, the combat standing in lieu of substance, you know, talking points that kind of exist only to be talking points. And I think that, you know, what we see in the very, in the modern media world that we live in is that you can't take time off. You know, you can't have a

taste, you can't have, you know, a respectful week of silence after a tragedy because, you know, so, and so many people on social media are awaiting your word to whether to fight it or to, or to parrot it. And that goes for all sides, you know, I mean, you have to have a statement out there. You have to have a mission statement out there, not just a, not just a formal statement. And I think that, you know, Dana Loche is a really interesting touchstone because it's, you know, people listening to this podcast may have only encountered Dana Loche, you know, from the liberal end of Twitter with tweets and articles talking about how she got destroyed at the CNN Town Hall or

on subsequent media appearances. But there's other people that only, you know, encounter her as from the other point of view. These same appearances are being spun in her favor. And I think, you know, we've talked about this before. But what, I mean, for better or worse, one of her real positive attributes for the NRA is that, you know, the sort of the sort of TV sparring that she does is fodder for these like, you know, X destroys Y headlines. And those sorts of, you know, headlines are just proxy fights in the culture war at large, sort of.

I think that's exactly right, right? They've learned to speak the language of Twitter and of, you know, conservative blogosphere, right? Yeah. Watch, watch Dana Loche destroy the New York Times. And, you know, it's funny. I was thinking like if the NRA, if you could come out 15 years ago, and by the way, or any, you know, we could pick the Sierra Club too, right?

And he said, we're starting a media arm. We're going to, in that tender age of 2002, let's say, publish some articles on our website. Nobody would read that, right? Yeah. You'd just never find yourself on those websites. But when it comes up in your Twitter feed and when people can kind of retweet it and you can kind of follow a personality as much as an organization, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think you're right about the whole, it's a really good point about kind of waiting for the word because this exists on both right and the left, which is something happens. And you've got a few so-called thought leaders out there, right?

And then you've got a whole bunch of people on Twitter who are waiting for, you know, how do I own my enemies, right? you give me the line, give me the line of attack here, right? I think in the NRA's case, in the specific, it's been to criticize the sheriff there, right, for ignoring or the FBI, right, for ignoring previous phone calls and tips about the Parkland shooter. And that's been kind of the thing that you've seen kind of bubble up. But yeah, you know, everybody's, everybody's just sort of waiting for the word.

Yeah, it's absolutely true. I mean, you see that all the time. When people, when, you know, the quote unquote mainstream media will, you know, point out that Trump, that President Trump hasn't tweeted or commented on some substance of great, I mean, some subject of great significance. You know, there's a legitimate, there's a legitimate argument there that it's his responsibility to comment. But also it's the sort of inverse of what we're talking about.

You're waiting for him or the NRA or wherever it is to set the terms of engagement, sort of. You know, I mean, you want to know what these people say so that you understand what conversation you're about to have. The other quote, of course, that made a ton of news this week, which is what she said at CPAC, Dana Loche, that is. Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it. Now, I'm not saying that you love the tragedy,

but I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you, and many in the legacy. media in the back. I assume that you do not agree with that statement, but what did you make of that whole bit? Wow. To me, and, you know, with respect to everything I've already said in the segment,

it's sort of, if you, to any extent that you were willing to give Dana Los or the NRA the benefit of the doubt that they were, you know, fighting in good faith or arguing in good faith, I mean, that sort of just deflates that whole thing. right? I mean, this is, that's, that's, you know, combat, like I said before, it's combat in lieu of substance, you know, talking points for their own sake. She's trying to make, she's, she's just trying to get attention and, you know, deliberately offending is, is one way to do that. And like I said, I don't even think for, for her audience and they know, that's obviously like NRA members, but I think as you mentioned earlier, they've turned, the sort of the, you know, guns rights activism into an identity, but it's a much bigger identity than guns now, right? I mean, the guns are almost secondary to this sort of identity that they've built and that

they're catering to. I think for that, for that audience, it doesn't, it's very similar to Trump in a lot of ways. It's easy to dismiss the substance. What you want to see is someone fighting on your behalf, you know, going toe to toe with the mainstream media or whoever the adversary is. And on that count, as just despicable as her comments were, I think that she probably counted it as a success. Oh, sure, because it's like one of those things where everybody takes a bait. I think I've said this on the podcast before. I'm just amazed at how much salience media criticism has within this world, you know, and I don't want to do the both sides to do it.

But there is a lot of it on the left, too, right? that in this kind of political world we do, part of it is driven on the right by Donald Trump, right? He's always talking about the failing New York Times and CNN and all that stuff. But I'm just amazed at how much the media becomes a thing. I mean, one of Losh's famous early NRA things, right, which was going to light the New York Times on fire, like a physical copy of the New York Times on fire and said something like, we're coming for you, right? That that has just become part and parcel of all this, right? It's not about Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and before that Barack Obama who was going to take all your guns away. You know, it's not about these boogeymen.

It's about stuff like the New York Times. And that's just, again, it's not, it's not especially new thing. But I'm just amazed in this very strange world we live in. It's very strange podcast. We're recording now how big a deal media criticism has become. All right, David, it's time to move on to our overwork Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly. at the same time. A lot of great nominees this week. David, did you see that CPAC, speaking of which

Ted Cruz said, I think Democrats of the party of Lisa Simpson and Republicans are happy to be the party of Homer and Bart and Maggie and Marge. A lot of people, yeah, a lot of people including Obama's 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina noted that in the 2000 episode, Bart to the

future, Lisa, in fact, does become president, placing President Donald Trump. As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump. How bad is it, Secretary Van Houten? We're broke. That was like actually an episode of the Simpsons. Weirdly, Ted Cruz, alleged Simpson's fan did not know about it.

That's courtesy of Nick Field. Thank you for that, Nick. Another very overused Twitter joke this week was Arizona basketball coach Sean Miller was snared in the FBI investigation of the NCAA. Yeah. And a friend of the podcast, Mitch. Northern points out that everybody used that semi-famous photo of Miller

sweating through his dress shirt on the sidelines. So it looked like he was nervous that the feds were coming for him. That's funny. David, are you familiar with what's going on with the governor Missouri? This would be Eric Greitens. Please let me. Please fill me in.

Republican Governor Greg Gritens. A woman who he had an affair with, he has admitted to the affair, said, She came to his home, quoting Wikipedia here, consented to being blindfolded naked with her hands taped to exercise rings above her head. She made a recording where she said that Gritens took pictures of her without her consent when she was in this position and threatened to share the photos if she ever revealed the affair to anyone. Gritens denied the charges.

All right. So if you reference that strange and sickening turn of events along with a line like, well, I guess that's why they call it the show me state. You use an overword Twitter joke of the week. Even Good Morning America's Twitter account, by the way, got it on that one. Show me state governor Eric Gritens. All right, we got it. And finally, this is David from Chris Fitzpatrick. Black Panther is notable for its terrific, mostly black cast.

The exceptions being Lord of the Rings and Hobbit veterans, Andy Circus and Martin Freeman. Yes. Did you see this joke? Yes, I'm ready for it. I know exactly where you're going. The Tolkien white guys, they were called. It was one of the runaway. winner of the overwork.

Twitter joke, I saw another tweet that said, if someone else tweets Tolkien White guys in a Black Panther joke, I will flip a table. So anyway, congratulations. That is one of those, by the way, that is both overworked and actually funny. Yeah, yeah. But congratulations, everyone,

Tolkien White guys for winning this week's Overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David. Before we talk about the Olympics, let's take a quick break. Hey, guys. This is Sean Fennacy, the editor-in-chief of the ringer. And I want to tell you about a podcast I host called The Big Picture.

Each week, I welcome a different filmmaker to talk about their latest movie and how it was made. I've talked to the directors of some of my favorite movies, including Jordan Peel, Greta Gerwig, Ryan Johnson, Barry Jenkins, and dozens more. You can find new episodes on the Channel 33 feed every Friday by going to the ringer.com backslash podcasts or by subscribing to Channel 33 wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you'll check it out. Our second topic, David, let's call it, do they give out medals for best Olympics media criticism? I was struck by this quote that Mike Tariko, who hosted the Gaster, NBC, gave our pal Richard Dyche.

He said, here is what I have understood the most in this role. Everybody cares. Meaning everybody cares about what he says. Everybody cares about the specific way NBC covers the Olympics. And even as an alleged sports media critic, I guess I'm kind of surprised by that. I'm amazed that we have this media criticism Paloosa. And I guess by theory, this with the Olympics, is that we don't know much about the sports, right? It's very hard to come in with takes about the half pipe or whatever.

And so we turn to the media thing. You know, if it's a Super Bowl, of course we have a ton to say about Alan Chris. But we also have, you know, takes about what the Patriots should have done differently. Here, we don't know anything about the sports. So we go after NBC. What do you think of that? Yeah, I mean, I think you hit on one of the, one of the, one of the, most interesting parts of this is that, I mean, the Super Bowl, you know, even if you're not a football

fan, you generally go in with an idea of what a football game looks like, what it's shaped like, right? Or, you know, you know, with the commercial break, commercials are a thing you're familiar with, you know? The Winter Olympics, or the Olympics in general, but specifically this year, are a very just intrinsically confusing, nonlinear, subject matter, right? I mean, there's events going on overlapping, multiple things happening at the same time. Some things are being aired live. Some things are being aired on tape. You know, NBC and its various channels, it's airing the stuff, is competing with Twitter and Facebook, social media at large. And it's, I think that the source of a lot of the media

criticism is, you know, it sort of spins out from the, just like I said, the inherent confusion in the end, and just trying to understand what's going on. And the, you know, the attack on NBC is that they're not doing a good enough job at appeasing us, you know, or at sort of like quelling that confusion. Yeah, I think that's right. I think these, I mean, these things are such, first of all, the single worst thing about every Olympics media way, is the opening ceremonies, right? Yeah. That is where somebody

embarrasses themselves every time. And this time it was NBC's Joshua Cooper Romo, who was hired as an Asia expert and said of Japan, a country which occupied Korea, he noted from 1910 to 1945,

he added, but every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, technological, an economic example that has been so important to their own transformation. That's,

according to the BBC. And many South Koreans were very offended by this. And NBC wound up sending him home. That was it. You know, like you got one shot, buddy. Yeah. That was all. That was, I think, maybe our, that was kind of the opening, opening blooper of the whole thing.

The other thing I'm struck about, struck by about the Olympics is we now live in this sports writing world for for three plus years before the game start. we're talking about corruption, right? Yeah. We're talking about the cost, the waste, how it displaces people. And yet, as soon as the game start, it's like, all right, here's some funny curling gifts. Here we go, baby. It was like the moment it starts, all that three and a half years of very good journalism

just shuts down. And the sports are still so appealing. And it sounds like so much fun to sit there for a couple of weeks and watch this stuff that we just turn into sports fans again. Yeah. And I think the inverse is true as well. I mean, setting the, setting corruption aside for a moment that, you know, we don't care about the Olympic sports themselves until the Olympics roll around, right? So we spend, we spend, you know, four, three years and 11 months talking about, you know, corruption and drug testing and, and, and various other controversies. And then, you know, not about the sports at all. And then it flips. We stop talking about the controversies. And we only talk about these sports. And, uh, we. We're all sort of just like, you know,

googly-eyed trying to figure out what the point of half of these sports are. Yeah, it's like a great, it's a great time for explainers. What is curling? How is curling scored? You know, and you just kind of bring them out every four years. We have talked about coverage of sexual harassment and sexual violence on this podcast before.

The Sean White story was really interesting in this Olympics as an example of that, right? He was, you know, that was not getting a ton of coverage on NBC. I think maybe in a world where websites like The Cut and writers like Christine Brennan, our pal Josh Levine, didn't kind of push on that. That story may have kind of evaporated. Story being that a drummer in his band, which is called Bad Things, accused him of sending all these inappropriate videos to her and also said he threatened a hit her and all these things.

And they wound up settling out of court. but that became a story. And I think that and the fact that it did become a story and then he eventually had to address it to some level anyway is really due to this moment we're in, right? I think that's the sign of the new world we find ourselves in. Yeah, I mean, certainly we're in a world now where, where, you know, reaching a settlement with somebody

does not mean that the story's over, right? I mean, that was the case for a long time. That will no longer be the case. I think that, you know, the sort of interesting thing about it, about the story, if it's, you know, not totally disrespectful to take a sort of meta look at it is that it didn't come up at all until it was raised in the press conference. And a lot of the reaction from people at NBC, you know, people who are, I mean, sort of Sean White's vague, you know, his defenders vaguely defined. And then, you know, media on the other side, the people that you mentioned before who were sort of pursuing this story. But it has. been whether or not it was appropriate to bring it up at that point. You know, there's, I think that, I think that though, you know, if you want to just take a PR perspective, the lesson, you know, for Sean White and, and those that come after him, hopefully there won't be any more is that, you know, you have to deal with this stuff head on.

If you don't want to get, if you don't want to have to deal with it at the most, you know, the most embarrassing possible moment or the least advantageous moment or whatever, if, to take it crassly. But, you know, Richard Deich had an interview with Mark Lazarus, who's the chairman of NBC Sports. And he was in his response to the question about it was basically just like, hey, listen, we had Sean White featured prominently in our Super Bowl ads. You know, we've been using him as a PR presence for a long time.

And nobody mentioned it until that moment. And the implication is like, well, if you did, didn't say anything up until now, then why are you saying it now? And, you know, there's been a lot of, there was a lot of people insinuating or saying outright that, that, you know, there was a reporter trying to, trying to get attention for bringing it up or whatever. But I think that, you know, trying to, trying to, you know, referee the appropriate time to bring something like that up. It just makes everybody look bad. Oh, absolutely. And by the way, that's that would, what that Lazarus thing and what Sean White is

also is assuming as that we're under the old world, right? Where this is old news, right? This was already settled, as you said. And I don't have to talk about this anymore. And no, by the way, and he was also under the impression that he was such a great comeback story, right? He won two gold medals. He didn't meddle four years ago.

Then he comes back this year and medals. And so that, you know, all that, all those old charges and accusations are going to be swept aside by this, you know, by this comeback story, by this great, made for TV Olympic comeback story. And that's not the way it works anymore. A couple interesting things about that press conference you mentioned. This was after White won the gold and the men's half pipe, right? He said, first of all, he blew it off in an answer by saying, you know, honestly,

I'm here to talk about the Olympics, not, you know, gossip. And then goes on and there, you know, reducing all these very serious accusations to gossip, right? Which you eventually had to apologize for. The other thing that was amazing about that press conference is several women, female reporters raised their hands and were not and no women were called on in that press conference. Oh, wow. Which the media handler said was merely a coincidence, but was certainly striking, right, that nobody who was trying to get a question and he did answer that one or sort of answer

that one question about it. But that was fascinating too. By the way, you mentioned NBC using him in their ads. The ad was, Sean White is the best of us. you but us was you period S period you and I appreciate bad puns so um shone white is the best of us it's a very bad pun what about the coverage of kim jong un's sister kim yo jong a khaa north korea's avonka as some people put her what did you make of all that business it was really weird i remember the first time i saw her on on the NBC coverage

I was, I guess, more confused than anything else because I think I was probably watching without, with the volume down and close captioning on, I wasn't quite sure if I was unclear on who exactly she was, that she would be sort of treated as just, you know, an Ivanka Trump-like figure. And I think more than anything else, I was, after that moment,

the tidal wave of meta-criticism of how NBC and just media in general were covering her became the story. Yeah. I think from both sides of the police, political spectrum, there was a lot of finger pointing about giving her a pass or giving North Korea a pass. Tell me what you think. I think it all sort of ties together. I think this, the lack of coverage of the other controversies we talked about. And frankly, you know, NBC and Sean White's

assumption that that, you know, sexual harassment allegations wouldn't be covered. It's like the Olympics broadcast sort of is a single purpose event. It's only for laudatory celebration. It's not a place for this sort of introspection. And it's not. And I don't believe historically it has been. You know, I think there's certainly a lot of that, but I think the Olympics is one of those rare kind of places in sports television anyway where there's time to talk about geopolitics.

Yeah. Right. I mean, you're almost always in an interesting place. You know, maybe, you know, Sydney in 2000 doesn't have quite the resonance that, you know, being 50 miles away from the DMZ has this time. But, you know, there's that. There's, you know, you look back. You see looks back at other Olympic sites like Sarajevo, you know, that have changed over the years or been, you know, gone through war and stuff like that.

So I think there's often, you know, Bob Kostas did a lot of stuff about Russia in, in Sochi and, you know, and talked in China, you know, and all that kind of stuff. And I think it's actually broadcast that has accommodated quite a bit of this amidst all the flag waving and stuff. Yeah. On Kim Jong, yeah, I mean, it's like when when the first thing. when the first stuff came out about, you know, oh, she's, she's North Korea's Ivanka, I had the flashback to like, you know, my daily beast days, you know,

when any, any random international thing like that would happen, everybody would get excited. How can we turn this into content? How can we put this glamorous person on, on the front of our website? But it was interesting because it, it was an active stagecraft, right, of geopolitical stagecraft, right?

Yeah. She, you know, it was very significant that she was walking around South Korea. And equally, by the way, in terms of stagecraft was Mike Pence, you know, not standing when the, when the, when the, when the, when the, when the, when the, when the Korean team walked through the Olympic stadium, also not attending a dinner, I believe that Kimio Jong was at, you know, so he was, you know, he was working on his sort of stagecraft too. And I think that was the only,

the only way to think about those kinds of gestures, right, is in those terms. Like, what are, what are these people, these people are doing this. They're doing it on television. They're doing it very self-consciously and, you know, what is the message they're trying to put out there and how can we sort of understand it in those terms? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure from NBC's point of view, I guess investigating any of that stuff, any of the stuff that we've talked about, frankly, is just sort of derails the whole, the whole presentation. But I think it's impossible to ignore that stuff now.

And listen, you know, for all the NBC execs who are listening to this podcast right now, the answer is not to take one of your, you know, multiple cable stations in four years or in two years and make it the sort of like, you know, the woke Olympics viewing option, you know, I mean, let's integrate these, these conversations into the substance. I, you know, I don't want to get away from the meaty or part of this conversation, but I do, you said something, you know, you mentioned Bob Costas earlier and I do want to get your take more than anyone else's in the world. did you miss Bob Costas this year? Did Mike Tariko fill the void in your soul that Bob Costas left when he left the Olympic broadcast? So I was watching this mostly on Australian television, which was very, very jingoism-free and also very Mike Dorico-free. Which is an interesting experience in and of itself. I think I think Costas, that was one of his, that was one of his best gigs, you know, especially. at the end, last several years of his career when he was just kind of doing that and among other things

and the like the Sunday night half times and stuff like that. I think he actually had, I guess a reporter called me and was kind of we're talking about the idea of, you know, what NBC's coverage was like. And I thought he had his best moments at the Olympics, you know, when he was talking about Russia or when he was interviewing George W. Bush and things like that. I think that was, I think that was him and his best, right? Because he could sort of handle the, you know, hosting duties. and being, you know, Mr. Olympics for every night. And then he could, he could switch gears and do something like that. I really thought he, I thought he was his best like that.

I have not seen, I said, did not see much of Toreco, but yeah, one more thing on the, one more thing on Olympics coverage. I was kind of amazed at how many people, how many print journalists,

I am not criticizing this because employers, please send your, send your, uh, writers across the globe. But I was kind of amazed at how many people covered it. here in 2018 in the era of the shrinking budget, how many people went?

I just thought there were a ton of reporters there, that places like Yahoo and the LA Times and stuff like that. I mean, I just thought they were just pumping out a tremendous amount of content from there. I did love the fact that I noticed this year that a piece of content, if you were a reporter in South Korea, was taking a picture of like your luggage or something. Yeah.

And like, I'm leaving the Olympics was content. You know, we've had the, I'm in the stadium. Here's a picture of the empty field. Now it's like I've packed my bags. You know, the kind of sports writer's public diary. Yes. Time to go. Thank you.

You know, we've read all your coverage for two. We know we knew you were there. Thank you for telling us that you're now leaving the Olympics. So we can be apprised of all your movements. All of us, Boenutche from Brazil. All right, David. topic number three. This week in the New York Times Magazine, our old Grantland teammate, Amos Barshard,

wrote about the Players Tribune, the Derek Jeter founded site where players push aside those pesky sports writers and write the piece just the way they want to. Players Tribune has been around since 2014, so we've been three plus years. Now with it, can I give you my meta theory of the Players Tribune, first of all? Please do. Just start us out. So the idea. of players doing memoirs, right, or as told to newspaper columns is pretty old. I think the way the

Players Tribune kind of burrows into our heads, our souls, whatever you want to call it, is because it is self-consciously mimicking the frequency and the style of long-form journalism, right? And I think you open one of those articles and something about your brain says, ooh, I'm in for an immersive of literary experience, similar to, you know, if you're reading a piece by Lee Jenkins or whatever. So I think, you know, we talked about, we can talk a lot about players recapturing the narrative by Twitter, by those little videos they do and all that stuff. I'll grant whatever you want on that. But I think the specific pull here is that it feels like, it feels like a long read, right?

And that is now has so much currency in our world. So that's number one. The second theory I'd give you is that conversely and sort of alarmingly, long-form sports writing is starting to sound more and more like the Players Tribune. Yes. Right? It's starting to be the, you know, I'm with the athlete and he has a story to tell. And, you know, I might not even have one secondary interview in this whole piece. But this athlete has some stuff to get off his chest and he's been hurt.

He's been, you know, he's been treated poorly. And I feel that weirdly those two forms are now. kind of merging. What do you, what do you think? I think that's exactly right. You know, I,

I kind of feel differently about outlets like the Player Tribune depending on what side of the bed I wake up on, frankly. I don't, I think for the most part,

I think it's pretty innocuous and at some, and, you know, at worst, and at best it's, you know, really enlightening. Even if you're getting

a really, you know, skewed, product-approved, you know, a view of an athlete, you're often getting things that you would not have seen otherwise. Can I stop you right there? Because Jeff Leveck of the Players Tribune, who's the chief executive, said that in bars charts. Do we really think that?

He said that about the Isaiah Thomas article. Do we really think if the Players Tribune didn't exist, that Lee Jenkins, Ramona Shelbourne, Baxter Holmes, wouldn't have just gotten that same piece? And it wouldn't have had all those thoughts. in it? No, I think that that's definitely very likely. I think what you were saying, the point that you made about long form journalism itself becoming more and more like the Players Tribune, I think that's where that's sort of the crux of it for me because if there's not, I don't, I don't know

what the point of a, you know, award winning byline is on one of these stories if they're not going to use the, you know, skills that brought them to that point to make this a better piece. And, and Frank, if that's all we're getting, I think that there's a certain level of, I think it's undeniable that there's a certain level of, you know, comfort that comes with steering the ship yourself, you know, and I guess, I guess maybe this is too, to, you know, post-written word of me, but I'm thinking specifically of the Isaiah Thomas you know, mini documentary that they released

about when he found out that he had been traded from the Celtics to the Cavaliers. And, you know, I just, I watched that and I just thought that there was real human emotion in it, but also just seeing his car, you know, seeing his driveway. That kind of stuff was like,

it was a level of access that I don't want, I would trade in the Players Tribune for great, journalism any day of the week. But if that's what we're getting, I think that there's, you know, that sort of stuff is revealing in its own very small way. Yeah. Now, that in a way, I mean, it's, they're doing it.

That's in a way of the sort of documentary culture that rose, what, five, 10 years ago now, you know, the kind of 2470 kind of mini sports doc, you know, that offered all this was, you know, it's the hard knocks kind of thing, right? It's player approved or league approved, but it winds up being. very revealing and gets you into places you can't go. Yeah, I mean, to your point about if the journalism is just going to be a PR exercise, you're right. I'd rather it'd just be a PR exercise.

I'd just be labeled as such, you know? Amos writes a line. It's not fair to call it, meaning the players should be in PR. I actually think it is fair to call it that. That's what it is, right? It doesn't, it doesn't, it does not, its entire, its entire purpose is for a player to get, a player approved message out. Yeah.

It doesn't seem complicated to me, right? I thought a couple interesting points he makes. One is that Amos says that hockey has been the source of the number of the players tribune's best stories, which is true. I always feel like every 30 minutes, I'm seeing this like heart-wrenching hockey story come down the pike that I don't actually read, by the way, but I just see it on Twitter. And that's kind of interesting because in our, in our, you know, layoff-driven world, where newspapers are shrinking and everything else.

Like hockey has been one of the sports that people just don't cover as much. You know, some teams don't send, some papers don't send their writers on the road. And so you've seen it like, you've seen like teams hiring journalists to write for their website, you know, which is even more important than say like the Dallas Cowboys or Dallas Mavericks doing it because it's like this may be the only content we get. So, and in the end of the like the players tribune, right, all of a sudden has essentially free Pickens, right? I mean, in the NBA, Ramon is going to get some stories. Lee's going to get a bunch of stories. You know, these people are going to get a whole

bunch of stories. But in hockey, it's sort of like, you can just kind of get everything, right? And it doesn't, you know, everybody like, you know, what would be the basketball player who, you know, wouldn't be, a reporter wouldn't be interested in? What would be the level, right? Just about any basketball player who had a heart wrenching story, there'd be a long form piece about, but hockey, there's not, right? Yeah. But you go to the Players Tribune, you sort of write it, you sort of talk it out and it becomes, it becomes kind of thing. I thought that was interesting. Also, Amos brings up that there could, he says theoretically,

there could be a Players Tribune platform for anything. Like TV showrunners could have a Players Tribune. Yeah. You know, I got a bad review in the New York Times. Here's my story. I want to, you know, I want to lay it out, lay it out for you. I thought that was kind of a funny idea. To call it PR, I mean, you're absolutely right. But it is a very modern, I mean, even just mechanically, it's a very modern version of PR, right? I mean, this is, the Players Tribune stories are, you know, a direct spinoff of the Twitter and Instagram profiles for these, you know, you know, for superstar athletes. I mean, they, they have all the tools that they need to get their messaging out, their PR out through all these different platforms. And certainly they all spend a lot of time or, you

know, they have people around them spending a lot of time sort of curating their public appearance and in a lot of ways, you know, the Players Tribune is just is just taking it to a, you know, literally longer form. You know, I think that there's an interesting question as to whether or not there's, you know, if the Players Tribune is, is by its own existence, sort of, you know, giving the athletes, tools, ghost writers, editors, a platform. And that is, you know, doing damage to journalism just by giving them the tools. But I also, I mean, I'm very wrapped by Amos's, I mean, the theory that Amos put forth in the article that Jeter launched the Players Tribune because he was treated so poorly by New York

Media for so. I kind of like the idea of Derek Jeter is like, Derek Jeter is the Peter Thiel of sports journalism. It's a very, very interesting, very interesting theory. Yeah, that's being treated poorly. Captain? Yeah. I mean, that's like,

it's not Barry, it's not Barry Bonds, right? It's Derek Jeter. Like, all you did, all you did was get admiring coverage. I mean,

that's, yeah, I think, you know, I think with Derek Jeter, I think it's not the, it's, you know,

it's just a guy who control, who was so exquisitely controlled his image in New York, right? In the biggest media market in the United States, sought yet another way to help other athletes control their image, right? Right. It's sort of like the B-like mic of, of marketing.

You know, be like Derek, right? Don't say anything that you don't want to say and make sure that, you know, everything is,

you know, sort of packaged and delivered. No, I think that's exactly right. When you said damage to journalism, let me hit that point for a second. Damage maybe is not the right word, right,

or it's not a word I would use to journalism. I just think that, and I think players, at the same time, by the way, I think players should have the right to write to, to say whatever they want to say. I wouldn't want to limit them

and say, You know, you have to go to a journalist if you want to get your, get, you know, want to talk. Of course not. You can do it, do whatever you want. But I think when we specifically talk about profile writing, the more these things appear in the Players Tribune, it just makes profile writing that much harder, right? It's already hard to get time with your subject, to get time from your employer to write the piece to get other people to cooperate. To do all the, you know, there's lots of hoops to jump through already to get the person's age. into now in in in sports to sign off on the people all that stuff is is difficult and now you're

just making it a little more difficult right we talked about podcasting too I told you in the other day it's like if you have if you say you mr. player you can go on a one hour podcast rather than sit for this profile and not quite you know know how it's going to come out of course they're going to pick the podcast but I think this is this is a similar thing I just think makes it harder and it makes it sort of less likely that this form of profile writing about the big athletes

you know the Kevin Durant's of the world will happen quite as frequently but you know that that's what I'd say about it. I think that's right and I think that the question and Amos gets at this and the you know the kicker of his piece is that is that I don't think it

necessarily hurts journalism as journalism you know whatever it's not it doesn't not doing damage to the to the art of journalism, but it does sort of confuse the marketplace a little bit. And I think that, you know, oh, yes. You know, the difference, I think for the average reader, the distinction between a Sports Illustrated profile and a player's tribune profile is pretty minimal, right? I mean, the distinction in their, in the, in the, in the reader's mind.

It may be nothing. Yeah. You know, it's funny because there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a quote in the piece, in Amos' piece, from Katie Nolan, um, uh, who says the Players Tribune isn't for us fans. Um,

it's for the players who want to appear like an open book without the risk of getting themselves in trouble for being an open book. Um, maybe I'm being cynical, but that sucks. And I, you know, what that made me,

when I was reading that, and I heard that quote before, but reading it in print, it made me think that, and, you know, it's, we're talking about it right now,

but it's almost like the, the, the audience. for the Players Tribune is less fans than it is sports media. You know, I mean, it steers the conversation. Because honestly, like, I talked about social media. The vast majority of LeBron James' for Kevin Durant's fans are good with his Twitter and Instagram accounts, you know. And they, you know, we'll see the existence of his, you know, why I decided to go to Golden State article and, you know, maybe gloss it or read the excerpts on hoops hype or something.

but the people who are really the people who are forced to dig into it on a granular level, the people who really try to engage are sports writers and their frustration is understandable. Yeah, and I think, you know what?

I think I would have agreed with Katie at the outset with the idea of it, and especially things like, you know, Tiger Woods rememberably getting mad at Dan Jenkins for writing like a column about a fake Tiger Woods. Remember he wrote a whole player's to be about that? Yeah.

I mean, that was clearly existed only for Tiger Woods. Like no one on earth cared what Tiger thought about a Dan Jenkins column. Otherwise, um, I, I kind of think this for the fans. I mean, I kind of think that Isaiah Thomas stuff is like,

if you're a fan of his or you're just an NBA fan, sure, right? I think, you know, all of us sports writers are like piranhas because it has information and goodies that we didn't know, right?

So, of course, you want to know what Isaiah Thomas thought when Danny Hange called him, told him he was traded all that stuff like that. that's that's all interesting but I kind of think it probably at the end of the day is you know for hockey fans who are interested in you know what hockey players go through and all that stuff I think it's pretty pretty much hit that but I think you're right I think I don't think people I think a lot of readers don't make a distinction between that and journalism and that's why

and that's why I say PR right slick PR is still PR right well done PR is still PR if you go to if you go to the Democratic Republican convention they have that really awesome video that makes you feel so good about the candidate you want to vote for you know and it's really well done and has some shots of their private life and them on the bus that's PR right it's still PR yeah it's not journalism and don't and don't mistake it and by the way I thought one of the funny little side things of this remember remember the old ESP in the magazine yeah remember before right thompson hit you know the the big level and set wickersham you know god as good as they are today and for mina and pablo and you know all these other people showed up when every week every two weeks I guess it seemed like

like it was a wide receiver or a basketball player going, you don't understand this guy, right? It was always like this incredibly player-centric profile of somebody who had, you know, gotten in trouble or something. And it was like that was when Gary Honig, Gary Hainig, I always forget how to pronounce his name, was working at ESPN the magazine. He's now running the Players Tribune.

And there's a certain stylistic similarity between early ESPN magazine and current Players Tribune, right? People don't understand me. like that Dion Waiter's piece that got so much attention, that could have run an ESPN the magazine under a byline 15 years ago, 10 years ago. And so I think that's funny too because I remember reading those ESPN magazine

and being like, oh, brother, not this. We've read this story like 18 times about 100 different athletes, right? But that has also been, you don't really read those in ESPN anymore, you guess you occasionally do. But I feel that brand of journalism has also migrated over to the Players Tribune.

Yeah, I think that's really right. And one thing that, I mean, we should probably get out of here before too long, but one thing that occurred to me as you were saying that is that, you know, ESPN, I mean, there's a certain sense in which ESPN has ceded ground to the Players Tribune, right? And not just ESPN, but sort of national sports media overall with, you know, all these outlets that are firing writers or pivoting the video. And, you know, the athletic is becoming a, you know, is this new title wave of sports. journalism, but it's on this very granular, localized level.

You know, the space that something like the Players Tribune fills up as being a sort of national sports media outlet is just growing and growing. Absolutely. All right, David. That's it for the press box. If you have enjoyed me doing this podcast for the last two months over an overseas phone line, bad news, I'm back in L.A. next week, David. I can't wait to see you and have media hot takes in person.

Oh, my gosh. This is going to be amazing. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next week. If you're not using the right credit cards, you could be missing out on $300 a year in rewards. Luckily, there's Birch,

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