The Press Box - 'The Press Box': 'The Last Jedi,' Francesa's Farewell, and the Twitter Quitter (Ep. 398)

Episode Date: December 16, 2017

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker examine how the media covers 'Star Wars' (02:00), Mike Francesa and the last segment of sports radio (22:30), and Wright Thompson's departure from Twitter (34:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Brian Curtis here. As everybody who listened to this podcast probably knows, there was a story in Bloomberg on Monday that included some allegations about Eric Weinberger, who is the president of the Bill Simmons Media Group. As a media reporter, I'm obviously interested in that story. I want to know more. But as I record this on Friday morning, I'm told by people at the ringer that the statement we put out on Monday is still in effect. In fact, Eric is on a definite leave and that the ringer is conducting an investigation. So when I know more, you'll know more, that's all I know at this point. Anyway, on with this week's episode of the press box.

David, I'm going to have a spoiler-free conversation about the Last Jedi today. But I want to ask, what's your personal spoiler policy? Oh, you've asked the right guy. I am a spoiler's nihilist. Really? Yeah. I think if, I think civilization existed for hundreds and hundreds of years without any worries. about people spoiling the end of Oliver Twist

for someone they were recommending it to. I think TrueR. Was that written hundreds and hundreds of years? No, things like Oliver Twist. Oral tradition. Exactly. I think that TrueR. can stand up to spoilers being released.

But that said, malicious spoiler release is a different category. And I think people who do that sort of thing should be banned from social media and the planet. I saw kind of a different variant of malicious spoilers this week, which was right before I walked into the Last Jedi, last night. Somebody tweeted,

I haven't seen the movie, but here are my guesses about the shocking things that happen. So it just got all this shit into my head that I didn't want to be thinking about. All of them turned out to be wrong. What if that person had actually seen the movie? I would have been really, really pissed off. This is the press box on the Ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast where you are not allowed to use the phrase, journalism is the first rough draft of history.

We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. David, on today's spot, I got three topics. Let's do it. For your amusement and inspection. Number one, how we, and by we, I mean critics and fanboys alike, talk about Star Wars. Second, Mike Francesa and the last segment of sports radio. And finally, Wright Thompson left Twitter. Should we follow him out the door?

Ooh, good question. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. And by the way, thanks to all listeners for your submissions, which have been just amazing. We had dozens of overworked Twitter jokes of the week every week. It's my favorite part of my mentions. Yeah, you know, remember Bill and Sal did like a standalone parent corner? We could have a standalone overworked Twitter joke. Problem was it would just look like your actual Twitter joke.

I know, it would just be your timeline. Yeah, anyway. David, let's start with our spoiler-free conversation about Star Wars and The Last Jedi, shall we? And you and I are both, Star Wars fan boys. Sure. It's a safe space. Can I tell you something I've been thinking about Star Wars-related media? Please.

So when the Phantom Menace came out in 1999, there were two groups of media professionals. I used the term very loosely talking about Star Wars. Right. Group number one is Anthony Lane, film critic at the New Yorker, elegantly sneering about Star Wars from on high. Yes. Group number two is the now disgraced Harry Knowles telling you how much he loves Star Wars from the confines of Ain't at Cool News.com. Right? Oh, yeah.

I sort of figured that here we are 18 years later that those two groups would sort of collapse on one another, that the fanboys would become the professional critics. And in certain ways they have, but also in certain ways they have it. Because in reading all the Last Jedi reviews this week, I'm amazed that there are sort of two classes of people. There are regular people, shall we say, who are not Star Wars nerds. And then there's this whole nerd class. Yes. How do you see the divide in the media at this moment? It's really strange.

I mean, it's not new to digital media that, you know, you have blown out just like feature coverage, the sort of the mainstream appeal stuff that subsidizes the more serious stuff. But you certainly see that in digital media a lot where you have, you know, not to point fingers, but BuzzFeed is an obvious example where they do some like branded marketing and that kind of stuff. And that subsidizes the new, the more serious wing that's BuzzFeed news. it's funny when you look at like the New York Times and you see these two things existing literally on the same page where they can do this like a visual guide to all of the aliens

in the Star Wars universe and then in the sidebar is the you know Mandola Dargis review or whoever reviewed it it's it's um and they and those two things don't I mean they interact literally right in front of your eyes but they still don't interact

um on the page in any sort of our text way. They seem to be written for two different audiences. Absolutely. One of this, part of this is the old problem of the film critic. Was there a very few film critics who could speak to fanboy culture? My old pal, David Edelstein, I thought, was one of the exceptions to that rule.

Yeah. But they seem, those two things just, the film critic just never, Roger Ebert, of course, being the classic one. Yeah. He seemed to be it. But very few people seem to get that world of filmmaking. And this goes back to the 80s. Sure. And 90s.

Well, yeah. And even people like Ebert and. And Edelstein would, would, I mean, I think that a gift that they shared was a sort of awareness and an empathy for the nerd culture. But certainly wasn't, certainly neither of them could be counted on to, you know, go into the histories of the films. I mean, in the deep dive way that we're used to seeing on blogs around the internet and websites like derringer.com. Blogs around the internet should be the new name of this podcast. But, you know, and the interesting thing now is that Edelstein has ranked all of the Star Wars movies for Vulture. I thought that was Will Leach's job.

I thought that was like Abraham Reisman's job. Oh, yeah, there you go. I mean, there's many younger, you know, many younger pure fanboy types that write for that website and many others that are normally tasked with doing those sort of like the real deep dive. Here's a moment. It's like one of the few examples of monoculture in 2017 We all we all care about Star Wars Let's blow it out Let's like you know

Let's investigate every aspect of it You would expect that Edelstein would be Just doing the straight review of the film Yeah that surprised me Yeah That he was ranking him And I mostly agreed with this rankings I have to say few notable exceptions

One funny thing I found If we're talking about these two different worlds of criticism Is and again We're very early in this process as we saw with the Force Awakens, what people think the moment they see the movie is not always what they think two minutes after they see the movie.

Critics really like this movie so far. To read Twitter last night, there are a lot of Star Wars fans that really don't like this movie or feel much more mixed about this movie. And I steal a couple of thoughts from my friend Chris Sellenrop. He and I always have an hour-long conversation

the day after every Star Wars movie comes out, which we've already had this morning. Anyway, that's the most of, most old media thing you've ever said. It really is. It really is. Our shortwave radio and talk about the new movie that we saw in the theater. But one thing he said was it was so clear from reading the mainstream critics that they just missed a lot of things.

Like one thing they said, again, I'm keeping this completely spoiler-free. They said, oh, well, JJ's movie was a remake. But this is like a totally new work of art. Well, that is, you could certainly read it that way. But this movie is absolutely, as Chris put it in conversation. with all the other old Star Wars movies that is inescapable. And really you're not sort of picking up

on a lot of obvious references if you don't think that. But I thought it was funny because I thought when the Force Awakens came out, it was also really critically liked. Fanboys also liked it, but then there was a big turn on it, right? I think if I had to come up with the fanboy take

at this moment in time, it's that it maybe rescued the franchise, it got things back on the track, but we didn't like it because it was just a real, make of the New Hope. Well, there's a lot of things you could say. And I should have stipulated early on, I have not seen The Last Jedi yet. So for everyone listening to this who are living in fear that one of us are going to spoil

something, not only can I not spoil anything, but Brian is staring across the table at someone who he has a vested interest in not spoiling the movie for. You are a stand-in for the people who have not seen the movie. As always. Yeah, it's funny because the Force Awakens was, you know, it's flaw. It's the greatest flaw if you want to make it a single thing was that it, you know, it fell victim to what so many other movies and TV shows do and they try to be everything to everyone, right? They try it.

If your goal is to sort of, you know, cast a wide net and not offend anyone in the process, then what you end up with is, you know, has the risk of being sort of like, you know, junk food. You're really excited when you eat it. You're really excited, you know, for five minutes after and then your stomach starts hurting. You know, then you start coming to grips with, you know, the problems with it. And listen, I love the Force Awakens. I'm not trying to, I'm certainly not. I'm sorry to hear that.

Yeah, I'm certainly, you know, I count myself on the side of the force on that one. But sure, I mean, it was a, you know, the backlash was sort of inevitable because it's impossible to be everything to everyone. Can I sketch out a rough history of Star Wars and critics? Go for it. I think the early, the first Lucas original trilogy, beloved by fans. Mm-hmm. Liked by a lot of critics, certainly. Yeah.

But also people like Paul and Kale, I tweet that a little bit of... You tweeted out a great quote from her. Return of the Jedi review. She pointed out that Hans Solo actually regained his site on screen, which may be a movie making... Offscreen. Offscreen. Yeah. Which may be a movie making first.

Yeah. A certain brand of elite critic really hated it and also hated what it did, what they thought it did to the movies, which was push us toward this more blockbustery direction. The prequels come out. Criticdom hated it. There was this part of fanboy, and I should also add fan girl. I don't want to exclude anybody here, who defended the idea of Star Wars and felt like they were defending the idea of Star Wars against the critics, even if they could not exactly

defend the films. And then you get around to the new movies, as we've talked about, which I think I've been mostly liked by critics. and that the real Star Wars fans, the hardcore Star Wars fans have had mixed feelings about. So it's been this interesting journey. Also, I think something you see in the new reviews

is people are just really happy George Lucas didn't have anything to do with it. So I think they were often more positive about it because they were free of the burden of the prequels or so they thought. This is sort of going off in another direction, but I definitely think that one of the things, one of the pluses in the column of the new Star Wars movies

is that we exist now in a literal universe of expanded universe. Right? Like everything is getting everything gets 10 movies now and all and and TV properties and everything else and I think that there was you know the question the desire for more Star Wars movies as the years went on had a lot to do with that if we're gonna get 200 Marvel movies Please like can't we please get another Star Wars movie and and this and and and and not just because we love the characters in the previous movies, but because you know there is a certain substance to the to the films. Yeah. Also, it's like we're making, we haven't been inundated yet with Star Wars movies. This is our third movie in this new rebooted phase.

Yeah. So like when you're 12 Marvel movies in, right? It's easy to just roll your eyes and go, oh my God, we're in the Infinity War, so to speak, that will never, ever, ever end. And we're still at the sort of early stage of Star Wars. I'm glad that you brought that up because this is another element of how the media cover Star Wars that we should talk about. we've talked about this in other context before, but the way that, you know,

a lot of the cover, a lot of what we read about online when it comes to the Star Wars movies are Hollywood Reporter's style articles about the relationships between the directors and the producers, but also about movies to come. Now we've already announced, I mean, in the run-up to this movie,

it feels like they've announced five more Star Wars movies, right? And it's a sort of interesting tension because, yes, there's the fear of oversaturation, but there's also the comfort that comes in, again, in this media era, there's the comfort of knowing that they're not going to, it's not going to fall by the wayside. This is a permanent fixture in our lives. And so, yes, fanboy out.

Like, engage in this. Give yourself entirely over to Star Wars because you will have a lifetime of more Star Wars content to come. That's a really good point. I also feel fanboy has just become the dominant mode of writing about movies. Oh, yeah. And what's really interesting is,

remember, I don't know, remember it so predates us that it was big with the autour theory where we're supposed to read every movie, right, as a collection of flourishes and techniques of a particular director. Those two things that weirdly, I think, kind of fused. Yeah. That you write about it's like, this is what this Star Wars story is trying to tell us. This is what it adds to the world, right? And you're not really writing about it as this movie sucks or this movie's awesome. so much as trying to understand it as a piece of a larger thing. Sure. I saw a little altruism sneaking into, you know, Ryan Johnson's The Last Jedi, which is really funny.

And probably a first for a Star Wars movie. Sure. Since JJ, whatever you want to say about him is more of a let me make the movie people want to see. Yeah, he's a manager. Yeah. Whereas this one, there's a lot of, a lot of the criticism is read. I read a couple of reviews that said, even though Johnson was saddled with, you know, several different plots in the movie, I was like, well, you know, he wrote the movie.

So I think he probably got to decide how many plots he was saddled with. That's kind of new for this, too. Yeah, no, it absolutely is. And I think that there's been a lot. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of tension in the critical or the, you know, the review world when the sort of superfan takes on something outside of nerddom. You know, I mean, the sort of the sort of pearl clutching when Matt Zoller cites will, like, co-write the book with Wes Anderson.

about, you know, West Anderson's movies, that sort of, like, but, but, but, you know, there's no misdirection going on. And it is someone who's that deeply invested in the product that is maybe not the, the best person to review the movie from some sort of platonic standard, but they can certainly give you an insight in the movie if you're, if, if you're interested in that point of view, you know, if you're, if you're similarly infatuated with it. And I think that it's, it's undeniable that that's sort of where we are with media consumption. We see the things that we're infatuated with. We see the things that we are nerds about. And when you read a review, I mean, what would you rather have? Like the voice of God booming down from, you know,

the New York Times arts page? Or would you rather have somebody who's like you, but who maybe has more time to investigate or, you know, a slightly better view about it and really engage with it if you were on an hour-long phone call with your best friend talking about these films? Generally, I would pick door number two, but I do like Voice of God here and there. As long as Voice of God has to be really good. Oh, yeah. I don't want to open up my neighborhood newspaper, and here's a random movie review. Who cares, right?

Right. But if it's a really, you know, if it's Tony Scott in the New York Times or something like that, like, yeah. Sides is a good example. Like, I care what they think. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And they could potentially change my mind about something. Well, I mean, yeah, there are two important halves, I think. I think there are certainly some,

you're talking about Harry Knowles back in the day is a great example. Because there's sites like that would get excited, overly excited about certain movies because they were fans of the property. And there would be very little criticism. You know, very little, there would be enough.

He liked every Star Wars movie. Yeah, and not just Star Wars, you know. People that, I mean, you remember how, I mean, how excited people would get over like, you know, the first X-Men movie because finally we saw the X-Men giving some legitimacy on TV and like every nerd website was just like losing their mind. In retrospect, that was not a very good movie.

Like we've seen now what a better superhero movie can look like. Sure. And if you don't have, you know, if you haven't stipulated that that wasn't good, then you don't really have any grounds for comparing them going forward. But I think that you make the right point, which is that they're two sides. I mean, they balance each other out. And in the modern media landscape...

Kind of like the force, David. And in the modern media landscape, those two... those two things coexist, sometimes uneasily, but they're both really important parts. It's a little like

sports writing where sports writing was so Olympian for a long time that there was this big opening for, I'm not naming any names here, people to come in

and speak directly to the fan and say, I'm a fan just like you. That's kind of what happened to movies. And then slowly the people who were saying

I'm a fan just like you became the sports writers. And in this case, I think it's probably still evolving. You know, we're probably sort of halfway

there. Yeah. Because there still is this, there's still are, it's weird. There's still young people in the world, I think, who want to be Roger Ebert.

Sure. And who want to be Pauline Kale. Probably more than there are young people in the world who say, I want to be Mike Lupica. Sure.

I want to be that Olympian. I want to be Bill Plashky. I want to be that Olympian columnist, right? I think there are more, there are more young, young, young would be Kales in the world than that.

So that's, that's kind of carving that out a little bit. But the process is still the same. The evolution is still the same of those two different. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Genres of journalism. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, there are a lot of, there are a lot of people that want to be Pauline Kale.

But there's still, but a lot of those people, if, you know, given the opportunity, would love to be ranking, you know, the 10, all the Star Wars movies from worst to best online too. I want to be Rex Reed when I grow up. So get yourself to Last Jedi, David, so we can have that spoiler for phone call. I'm going to see it tonight tomorrow. I want to call you. Time now for our overwork Twitter joke of the week. week. We're speaking of monoculture. We celebrate the fact that the American culture is splintered into a billion pieces. We can all come together to make the same jokes on Twitter. By the way,

can we do some overworked Star Wars headlines of the week while we're at it? Tour to Force. All right. For your, for you, also, the force is strong with this one for a positive review. I got really tired of that. So great stuff again from our readers for overworked Twitter jokes. Remember that Bill's Colts game, David, that was played Sunday in a giant snowstorm? Mm-hmm. If you put any of the 18th. T-A-T's from Empire Strikes Back, superimposed them on a picture from the game or anything from beyond the wall in Game of Thrones. I think I saw a mammoth, too. That was a great overworked Twitter joke.

A lot of Roy Moore humor this week. Roy Moore, of course, lost the Senate race to Doug Jones. One is that it was Roy Moore's wife who was defending the Moors against accusations of anti-Semitism. She said, you know, we have a Jewish lawyer, right? A lot of variations of happy first. night of Hanukkah to Roy Moore's attorney when I celebrate. That was actually from Ellen DeGeneres made the joke. A listener

named Drew sent that in. Of course, somebody else said when we should probably not read this one, but when Moore refused to concede the election Tuesday night, our listener, John S. Cleary points out that an easy joke to make was Roy Moore is refusing to take no for an answer again.

Yeah, gross. Greg Menty says that anyone who is making the variation of the joke, quote, you have to pay X dollars and X cents to see this tweet joke regarding the repeal of net neutrality. Oof. Yeah. I love net neutrality humor.

But this week's winner, he really wasn't runaway. Did you see the story which I believe originated in an MSNBC doc that George Clooney gave each of his 14 best friends $1 million? Did you see that? Yes, I did. I mean, this was dad humor, right? Yeah. Bad day to be George Clooney's 15th best friend. Or variation.

I am George. George Clooney's 15th best friend. Wow. So I didn't get the... That was kind of like, what am I going to wear to the royal wedding? Remember we had that a couple of weeks ago? How much money would you have to have in your bank account

to just cavalierly give me a million dollars? Um, I think the $50 million mark is probably... Am I giving you one-fifth of my bank account? I'm trying to think of what my bank account is now. I'd give you one... I certainly would now, yeah. Yeah, like 50?

All right. Would you do it for me? Oh, sure. 25? Sure. 25 million, you'd be fine. I think 25 million is where the question gets interesting. Is it a loan or is it just like I love you?

You're my friend and podcast partner for life. If you gave me a million dollar loan, is there any difference between that and just giving me a million dollars? Do you have any hope of recouping it? No, I do. But am I going to invest in Bitcoin? If you haven't already, David, you better check out some of the great podcast. We have here at The Ringer. Absolutely.

There's the Bill Simmons podcast, which everybody knows. It's a must listen. That's a good one. How about the Ringer NBA show? I listen to it all the time. I mean, that's not even hyperboly. I really do. How about one shining podcast,

a.k.a. Pardon my Tate. With Mark Titus and Tate Frazier. One of my favorite shows. Both I'd love those guys to death. The Ringer FC. The Watch with Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. I was actually thinking about The Watch when I was watching Mark Hamill act this week.

Binge Mode is a good one. And binge moxed. The new weekly show is absolutely like just out of the ballpark. I love Mallory and Jason are just the best. So if you haven't already, check all that great stuff we have here at the Ringer Podcast Network. But not until you finish listening to the press box. Topic number two, let's call this Sports Radio's last segment. We're taping this here, David, at the very moment that Mike Francesa is doing his last sports radio show,

ending an amazing 30-year run on WFA and in New York. Do you hear his Eli Manning rant? This is how the Giants are going to circle the wagons. They're going to throw their champion quarterback who has been there every day through beating, through everything, since 2004, and they're going to throw him under the bus with five games to play in this decaying, decrepit, disgusting season. That's what the Giants are all on the same page. So I'm to believe that Jerry Reese stamped this, John Maris stamped this, John Mara stamped. the Tish family stamp this.

This is what you guys all decide to do to Eli Manning. In game number 12 of this disgusting season, shame on all of you. Isn't that amazing? Really great stuff. Here's what I think about this, the Francesa Nostalgia Fest that we're all experiencing, especially people, those of us who grew up in New York, which does not include us, by the way, is because people love Francesa. But they're also seeing in the end of the road, maybe, for a particular kind of sports.

Yeah. Sports media figure, which is the local sports radio host. Mm-hmm. Do you see that? Do you see shades of that in this moment we're having together? Absolutely. I mean, this is, it cannot be overstated, the degree to which, you know, Frances's exit is the end of an era in many different ways.

Yeah. Because it just feels like, I mean, it feels like a couple of things here. One is with the Manning rant. Bill brought this up on the pot the other day. Who would have the standing to just do that in New York? Lots of people could just rant about Eli Manning, but who would care if they were saying it? And people still care, even if it's sort of slightly ironically tweeting it. People care when Francesa says it.

Absolutely. And it's funny that you said ironically tweeting it. I mean, the only comparison to something like that now would be the, you know, when a Twitter thread gets massively retweeted or something like that. But that's a sort of democratic version of it where whoever, you know, someone makes. makes a really good thread and then it rises to the top of social media for a day. But you're right. No one has the platform to do what Francesa does on a more or less on a daily basis. Yeah.

By the way, there's this Twitter account, which is called Funhouse. It's back after this, which just like comically tweets Francesa rants. And Neil Best, who's the sports media guy at Newsday, New York Newsday, said he's like, tried to get in touch with this guy for like months, if not years. and the guy has just never done an interview. Kind of like the horse e-books of sports media. Right. He's just like, I'm just taking this bit to the grave.

Never going to reveal himself. I think part of the Francesa fascination is we live in this world where everybody is a national writer or a national personality of some sort. Yeah. And Mike Francesa is local. Yeah. And there's this fascination with like, oh, my God, that guy sounds like New York. That guy is New York. Yeah.

There's two different things that I want to touch on from what you said. One is that, I mean, just in the radio world, how much of America has gone from local sports radio to national radio in the past 10 years? You know, I mean. Via Sirius. By ESPN radio. Like everything. Podcast. Podcast, yeah.

I mean, there's so much. There's still a lot of local radio. But there's, I mean, even like, like widespread regional radio when you talk about, you know, talk about. I like regional radio. I think of like Paul Harvey or something like that. Yeah, well, some, Paul, but, but, you know, I mean, there's, there's very widespread, you know, SEC radio shows, that sort of thing. You know, it doesn't have to, fine bomb's a perfect example. It doesn't have to be that specific.

But to your point about the New York, the New Yorkness of Francesa, there's a, you know, there is a fetishization. And I mean that in the most positive possible way of radio in New York that we, seen for a long time. You know, Howard Stern is how, you know, is, is a New York. And, like, if you were to describe him, you would say New York with, well, maybe not within the first five, five descriptors, but you would get there pretty quickly, you know. Francesa is, as, you know, is, is more inherently New York than, than anyone else. You know, I mean, he is much more so than Chris Russo, you know, much more, he, he is the,

he is the voice of the New Yorker, like, purely distilled. Yeah, Russo is pretty close. No, he is. I mean, for sure. And he talks, he speaks about New York a whole lot. One irony of this, too, is that local sports radio is almost a bigger deal than national sports radio. Even in our current world, like national sports radio shows are really hard to do because they're really hard to get cleared in all these markets. So even when there's like a big thing like Mike and Mike, oftentimes it's finishing like number three in all these markets and it just adds up enough number threes to be kind of a national colossus. Right. And I remember talking to one of my pals at the ticket in Dallas.

And he was like, every time we have a job open, a bunch of national guys apply for it. Like they want to go to Dallas because you're just so much, it's just a bigger deal. The medium just works locally so much better because it's so much easier to narrow cast and just kind of like become the obsession of a city. Here's my other theory about Francesa and sports radio is that we're in the last couple of innings of this thing of the job as we know it. Like, and it's very similar to the sports columnist, like Dan Shaughnessy, let's say. Somebody's going to get Dan Shaughnessy's job when he leaves. But it's not going to be Dan Shaughnessy's job. It's not going to be paid like it.

It's not going to have that reach. It's not going to have the influence and all that stuff. And that sports radio is like 15 years behind the sports columnist. Somebody's going to get Francesa's job. But they're not going to be, they're not going to have the same job. And this group of guys, and they're mostly guys that have it right now, is the last group. that will have that kind of influence. Yeah, I mean, that's probably true.

I think that, you know, my only, I mean, the only thing I would say about that is, newspapers are still, you know, fighting for survival. We talk about that a lot. But you can take away Dan Shaughnessy and replace it with, you know, a celebrity column. They're fighting for space and it's not, I mean, it's on the sports page, but you can take that away.

I mean, pages are shrinking. Pages are being reduced, you know? I mean, that square, those square inches could be something else. Now, certainly, you know, a New York radio station can change from sports talk to country music. But, you know, there's still, when Francesa leaves, at least for the time being, there's still a giant multi-hour block that is staked out for New York sports talk. And, you know, it's, but you're right.

I mean, it won't, these might be the last generation of people to have it. It might be the, but, you know, they're still clinging on to a, you know, as much as we love radio, it's not, it's, it's old media. Sure. You know? But that's what I mean. But it became old media later the newspapers became old media. Oh, yeah.

that's totally true I mean if you're right that this is the last generation of people that are going to be doing it it says a lot about the state of radio you know more so than our thirst for for sports talk yeah and I also think to the point about localism there's a sense that you could understand a city through its media yes so you go to New York and you pick up the paper in the very old days

Dick Young's column or Lupica when we were there when we live there and then you'd listen to the radio, right? It'd be kind of special in the days before we could just listen to anything we wanted to. And sports radio, I think, is the kind of last bastion of that, right? Go to New York, you pick up the post in the Daily News. I mean, the covers definitely would tell you something about New York, but very little inside any more would. That's still alive in sports radio.

Yeah. You could still, even now, like after Francesa shuffles off, you know, you can listen to Michael Kay. And it would still sound New Yorkie. It would still be weirdly obsessed with Yankees and all these very provincial kinds of of things that just other people in say Clearwater Florida wouldn't care about. So that's kind of interesting. But part of what we're dealing with right now

is that people in Clearwater, Florida do care about the Yankees. I mean, all... That example with Florida. Well, I'm not just talking about... Mesa, Arizona. No, but all sports are national now. And that's why there is the sort of mystique of the hyper-local radio figure or a writer, you know,

for the same, in the same way. That's true, because we also care about fantasy and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. How much do you even care about the local team? You could grow up in, you know, Louisville, Kentucky, and your favorite player could be DeAngelo Russell, you know, the NBA. Like, it could be anybody.

You know, everybody has access to all these things. And that's part of, you know, just the Internet era. Everybody, you know, it used to be that sports team expansion was a means of, like, attracting new fans, right? You had like, so that the people who lived in Charlotte, North Carolina could have a personal relationship with players or a team. Sure. And extend the league.

the leagues reach into that city. Yeah. And now, you know, sports team expansion is about selling sweets to businesses. I interviewed Francesa this year. That's right. I got an audience with the Pope, as it were. So you spent some time with him. Yeah.

What did you think? A couple of hours. Yeah. He was, you know, in a weird way, this sounds so weird, he was smaller than I expected. Yeah. Just because his personality is so large and sort of fearsome on the radio. I don't know why I expected this just like towering. ring figure like the Supreme

Leader Snoke, you know, like when he had the big hologram, like, whoa, you know. In fact, he was like a regular sized human. That was the first surprise. You always see him standing next to Mad Dog. I think that probably has some effect on your visualization of him. Yeah, and he, I mean, he was one of those guys. So I find this different sports media

guys do come at this different ways, but he talked exactly like he does on the radio. There was no off-air Mike. Yeah. You know, it's like I would ask a question, and he would give a very long, very complete answer to the question, just like if I called and asked a question about the Yankees starting rotation next year, or where Jean-Cololo Stanton was going to hit in the lineup

or something. Yeah. It's like a very good, but he was very friendly. He laughed a lot, you know, which I probably don't think that comes through on the radio so much. It had a very kind of old-school politeness and civility about him. Sure. Which you might not expect if you just heard him on the radio.

He also told me he was thinking about doing a podcast. This is now publicly he has thinking. thinking about joining Bill's podcast on Fridays, which I think is still up in the air. But he told me he had never listened to a podcast, but he had figured out how to monetize podcasts. And he wouldn't tell me the idea because it was like his big idea. But he was thinking about acting on it.

That's great. I hope that he, yeah, that would be wonderful. You get him on the record where he just like independently comes up with the idea for pre-roll. Is that, do you think that's the idea? Every, each of his NFL picks is sponsored by someone else. Yeah, but it was that kind of fascinating, like old media guy who's an incredibly successful, thinks he can solve the riddle of monetizing new media. I want to see that happen.

I don't, I mean, he might have the answer. Top of number three, David. We're going to call it the right reasons. And that's right with a capital W. because this week on the Sunday Long Reads podcast, Wright Thompson, ESPN Longform writer, extraordinary, talked about his decision to leave Twitter, which was apparently some months ago,

maybe years ago at this point. Should I just read portions of this? Should I do that Jason? You got to do it. The Jason Concepci. Can you do it in Wright's voice? Twitter is stupid, and I will never get back on. one as Seth says all the time

Seth being Seth Wicker champion's friend and ESPN co-writer What is the value of being right on the internet He also goes on to say A couple of interesting thoughts in here I don't get why I have to give people access to my pocket

I don't understand why anyone in the world Just gets to motherfucker me And I get to read it on my own phone Why would you do that? It's insane That sounds like me reading Dan Jenkins at your wedding I don't think your accent was quite as thick.

We love right. A couple notes about this. What is, I just go with the basis that anybody who leaves Twitter for any, for, with a mission statement about leaving Twitter, basically at some level just doesn't want to be criticized or doesn't like to read criticism of themselves. Is that so nuts? No. I mean, I'm all over. Right. I mean, I'm inferring here.

You're inferring a lot. I don't like to read, I don't like to read people criticizing my work or me. Yeah, I mean, I certainly think that he was, that there was some honesty and, you know, the worst part of ourselves part, you know, it's not just reading bad things about yourself. It's realizing that you're part of, you know, you're part of that sickness too, you know? Yes. And that's a fascinating question because we could make fun of right. We could have some fun with right. But I do want to get, and we will. But I do want to get to that question because journalism in a way dresses you up, right? journalism, you know, you put your suit on, right? You notch your tie. You get cleaned up by an editor. You get to write it two or three times if you're lucky.

An editor goes over it. Fact checkers go over it. They put some nice artwork for it if you have David Shoemaker at the ringer doing your artwork for you. Appreciate it. It's a very dressed up version of yourself. Whereas Twitter is, you know, your id, your quick, silly reactions to things. You dunking on other journalists, which you mostly probably don't spend your form. all time on. And there is, I think, this kind of revulsion if you're like, right, or probably

you and me, too, if you've worked behind the curtain a lot to then suddenly see yourself, go, oh, my God. Well, I mean, it's also a forum where, you know, I mean, part of the appeal of Twitter is the fact that Twitter is, frankly, difficult, right? I mean, to fit the amount, I mean, now we have, we're up to 280 characters, but in the 140 character era, you could have the best joke, but not know how to frame it for Twitter, right? It's a difficult form, and seeing people fail at Twitter is part of the joy of Twitter, you know? But when you're someone like, right, who is undeniably reached the absolute pinnacle of his field, to then be, at least to either be on Twitter, have the expectation of being on Twitter when you're surrounded by younger writers who are discernibly better at the craft of Twitter than you are?

And I deal with this. You deal with them. We all deal with this. Sure. The interns at the ringer are a hundred times better at Twitter than you or I are. Maybe a billion times better. And it's a weird, there is a sort of interesting, it is interesting to think about the expectation that as a writer you would be on Twitter because it's a written form. But it's a totally different craft.

Yeah, but it gets in writers who are competitive and no one has ever accused right Thompson of not being competitive. Then you see that and go, uh-oh. Yeah. Or maybe, uh-oh. And it's weird, right? Yeah. But that, you know, I mean, part of his larger point was that you don't get, you know, he said you don't get followers from, or you're not, that the Twitter is not driving engagement

for writers, which seemed really bizarre. That was weird. And to that larger point, I think I tweeted this as it were. But, you know, wake me up when somebody quits Twitter before they get the big job, before they have the machinery of ESPN. I mean, you and I could say, oh, I'm quitting Twitter today. I'm just going to have Bill Simmons tweet out my pieces. Oh, well, what a sacrifice.

What a moral statement you've made, right? Sure. Or ESPN tweet your piece out. Yeah. I mean, it's like I'm going to, put me on the air and tweet out my stories and put me on the homepage. I mean, that's not much of a moral walk away.

Sure. The other thing I thought was interesting is, so this came up this week at ESPN's social media summit. Kevin Merritt, who's one of their executive, says, audience is not looking for our opinions on the general news of the day. You talk about politics and all this stuff. And that's actually not true, I think, with a lot of ESPN personalities, right?

We care about Mina Kimes and Palatores and Jamels and, you know, opinions on stuff. Yeah. They're not their worst selves on Twitter. They're pretty recognizably themselves on Twitter. And, you know, what Wright is doing is deciding to put every ounce of his life force into long-form journalism. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. But you sit out a lot of things when you do that.

You don't only sit out your opinions on the last Jedi. You sit out on, say, the stuff that's going on in politics right now. Yeah. Donald Trump. And you don't weigh in on that. Now, maybe you don't care. But that's pretty unlikely to come out in any SPN piece or at least in any kind of sustained way. Yeah.

And that's funny. And that's a choice. Yeah. I mean, and think about the things that when you or I write long form, the things that get left on the cutting room floor, you know, I'm sure that Wright has a million of those that he would have loved to have tweeted in real time, you know, just to get him out into the world. But it's funny, you mentioned your B-sides, yeah.

Yeah. You mentioned Mina Kimes. I think she was one of the people that responded to his tweet saying that she would never have gotten her job at ESPN if it weren't for Twitter. And I think that going back to your point is true of a lot of people, that Twitter is a platform to get exposure. And, you know, the political tweets are. the non-specific sports-related tweets.

That's how you grow an audience. That's how you get a platform because we want to relate to writers as human beings. And if you don't have, you know, if Jamel Hill's Twitter account was just, you know, retweets of ESPN's Twitter account, then like, then she would have never gotten a sports in her job. You know, it's the personality that gets you to that point that gives you the opportunity, that gives you the recognition and build your fan base. Yeah. And that doesn't come out in your day, Joe.

Yeah. And to say that, you know, Twitter doesn't drive engagement if Facebook does. I mean, this is like, it's voodoo economics, you know? I mean, to think that you, to think that there's an answer to this question. I mean, it's kind of secondary to his, to leaving Twitter, but that was sort of strange. And what's the argument to be on Facebook but not on Twitter that's not traffic driven, that it's just my, it's more of my actual friends on Facebook that I get to choose? I mean, I think he's talking about fans on Twitter.

I mean, fans on Facebook too. I mean, followers that aren't your actual friends. Yeah. But what's the moral argument for Facebook over Twitter? I don't think it's a moral one so much. I'm sure there are statistics that back it up, but we've seen stuff like this. But just that people are interested in in tweeting jokes about headlines, whereas on Facebook they might actually click through and read. Yeah. Kevin Van Valkenberg also quit Twitter in the past a couple of months. Also weirdly, Jonah Carrier, old Palleland, pal.

Yeah, you just told me this. I was informed during the right thing. has quit Twitter. That surprises me. Yeah. Jonah's like a, Jonah seemed to have mastered Twitter. Yeah. In a way. Uh-huh.

In a Luke Skywalker kind of way. I'm just going to make Star Wars references throughout this podcast. Is it true that you kind of semi-ditch Twitter this year for a spell? Why? Well, the reason is not, the reason is the opposite of interest tag. I mean, I literally forgot my past, like, somehow got locked out of my phone, couldn't remember my password. And rather than go through, rather than go through the effort of changing it, I just sort of let it.

Like, I had Twitter on my laptop but not on my phone for a long time. And not on my desktop computer either. So it was my access. This is the most old man. It is possible. My access to Twitter was limited, you know, was physically limited because of that. But fairly quickly, I realized I was happier without Twitter on my phone. It reduced the need to, I mean, the feeling that I needed to be constantly keeping myself updated.

And then, you know, certainly. there is the aspect of when you write something people have said this before I didn't come up at this but like when you publish an article you know getting positive reaction on Twitter feels really good but one negative thing just destroys

everything positive you've ever heard about yourself in your entire life just one half-ass tweet that's just like pretty much more trash from Brian Curtis and your week is ruined you know that's just based on reading the headline So, I mean, it's, I'm not trying to like, to, I wasn't specifically trying to get away from criticism or even, I mean, not that I even saw that much, but it's, but there is just something about being freed from the shackles of, of checking the reactions. And even, not just reactions of things you wrote, reactions to tweets, you just tweeted, you know, just to like, I want to see if that joke landed, you know? I mean, that's, there's, there's, there's so much of that. And to be fair, to a large extent, Twitter was replaced in my life by starting, by, because we work at the ring, by ring or slack. Because so everything that I needed,

everything that I needed to know was being funneled to me via my coworkers. I didn't need to, you know, I didn't need Twitter in the way that a lot of people like urgently need Twitter just to keep abreast of what's happening. You had a more focused happier version of Twitter. Yeah, exactly.

...fingertips that you couldn't get away from. But now, but I'm back on. I mean, I still don't tweet a whole lot, but I, you know, I have the Twitter's on my phone and I engage, you know, I'm reading it constantly. You're engaging with it. Is that what you're about to say? I'm going to be engaging with it.

Your engagement is high with Twitter. I engage more on Facebook. Yeah, no, it's not. I was about to say I've never known you to do anything on Facebook. It's fun. The one worry I have, when I ever have the strange worry about Twitter, it is just time, you know,

and that if you're spending time mastering that, you're not spending time doing something else. Yeah. And when you have only so much time in the day, you're not spending time working on your stories and doing all those kind of things that, you know, might be a higher calling or something you just want to do more or at the end of the day that you're prouder of than Twitter.

There are some people that amazingly do all these things, and I can't imagine, but I think they probably pay for it in volume of the things, and they still write the great long-form story. They probably could have squeezed out one or two more of the year if they had just not, you know, been on Twitter as much, something like that. Absolutely. It's funny. But it's a huge, that's the, that's the,

the only thing that bothers me about it is it's just an enormous trade-off. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of time. That's the price of, that's, I mean, we're joking about engagement. That's the price of being engaged in the modern world, you know? I mean, if you want to fully, if you want to be, if you want to be fully a part of, you know, the culture, you kind of have to give yourself over to it full time. Yeah. Because there's all, we were talking about fan boys earlier.

I mean, there's a lot of Star Wars, there's a lot of parallels to our first segment in this and that a lot of the writers we were talking about before, the people that are actually, the people that benefit most from Twitter are in some sense the sort of, you know, super fans that have taken over movie writing. Those are the sports fans that we have today. They come up through Twitter. But yeah, I mean, it's a necessary, I mean, it's just every, for every, every joke that you have, every thought that you have, every time that you read an article and want to engage with it, there's somebody on Twitter who's doing a better job of it, you know. And, and, and, you know, and, you know, and, you have to you have to really invest yourself to sort of keep up with the Twitter Joneses. It was the biggest revelation of Twitter to me

was how funny people are. How everybody's really funny. It was like Sid Sears old writer's room, but everybody's got jokes. Yeah. You know, it's like, oh my gosh,

everybody in the world is incredibly funny. A lot of not funny people too. There's a lot of not funny people, but you're... But just like the quality of humor is really, really, really high. It is probably shaped

humor we watch in some way that it's just that you know just logging on is a lot funnier than most things on television. Absolutely true. It's really funny. I think it's opened up the doors to you know I mean there's there's a lot more humor in online writing or in modern writing that there was in the past

we're talking about the difference between the voice of God and the voice of the fan or whatever I mean the you know people like our boss or you know blaze that trail but yeah I think just that just that one of the things about, one of the things about how funny Twitter is

is that it's kind of opened up the, it's kind of opened up the door for people to be their true selves, not just on Twitter, but then also when the things they write outside of Twitter. That's right, because you hire the person that you saw on Twitter. Yeah. And you're like, no, no, no, don't change. Right? Don't then start writing like, you know,

this august media personality. I mean, we work with people who were hired based on Twitter. Yeah. You know, we, who started their live, their writer, their writerly lives as Twitter accounts. And, you know, it's almost more surprising that that transition is so, has been relatively seamless for so many writers because it is, like we were saying before, a totally different form.

You started yours at our high school's literary magazine. We're going to have a live reading next week if you don't treat me well this week. Please don't. Oh, my God. I got some poems, folks. Anybody wants to know something about the masked man just write me. That's the press box this week, David Schumacher, Brian Curtis. David's going to go see The Last Jedi so we can have a spoiler-filled conversation.

But until then, we'll see you. See you later. More trash from Brian Curtis and your week is ruined.