The Press Box - The Takes We Had: 'The Press Box' Year in Media

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

Bryan and David reconvene for the last time this year to discuss their takes on the major media events of 2022. They weigh in on the Times buying The Athletic, the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, and much more! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Peace! We're out of here. David? Yes. This is a pre-tape. podcast. So can we start with some evergreen takes that will still be valid on December 26? Sure. I don't know. Is that your high hopes for this? I mean, I hope that they're not recording this, are we? This is you and me talking here. The stakes are relatively low. Okay, take number one.

Elon Musk has done it again. I see what you're doing here. Yes. Pretty sure. sure that will still be valid on December 26th. Take number two, kind of more of a question. Is Donald Trump losing his grip on the Republican Party? Oh, man. Discuss.

Still valid on December 26th. And finally, I know this is going to be valid. The Cowboys suck. That's it. That's all I got. Coming up on the press box, it's our year in media episode. We journalistically revisit big stories like the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter, and the Democrats not totally screwing up the midterms. Plus, the journalists and publications we lost in 2022. All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Happy holidays, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Servante.

Thank you for hanging out with us on your holiday if you were indeed taking a holiday. David, I thought we'd call our year-in media podcast The Takes We Had. Times Magazine has the lives they live. This is the takes we had. And by the way, we're not going to revisit too many of our takes from 2022. Oh, thank goodness.

I'm still smarting over. The grand old party still got it on election night. How that one turned out. Got a few stories for you from 2022, some big and of world historical importance, some not so much. Let's go through them and remember a little bit about them and also how they were covered. Let's start in January. The New York Times buys the athletic.

How do we look back on that media transaction? Oh, man. With binoculars, for one thing, that seems like so, I mean, it was so long ago, but I can't believe that was this year. I think that there is a lot to be said for the fact that it feels like relatively little has changed. I think regardless of your thoughts on the athletic, I think anybody that's working for any media company that is acquired by another company. The best possible scenario is that things proceed relatively unchanged. Now, who knows what's going to happen in the years to come?

but so far, it's been pretty, you know, the water's been pretty steady. I think that, you know, you and I were both sort of geared up for more integration, you know, more attempts at sort of streamlining the New York Times sports page and comparing it, I mean, and finding its place alongside the athletic. So in terms of grading on the on the you know popcorn scale it's going to it's going to rate pretty low. But like I said, I think it's overall it's pretty good.

They still produce really good content, really necessary content. And you know, as it's been since the start, the vast majority of that, vast, vast, vast majority of that is on the sort of micro level, which is not, you know, which is a dying art in so many ways. So, you know, I think hats off to New York Times for understanding that a, that's where the value is in the company. And be, you know, tamper as little as possible until you figure out, you know, until when and if you figure out what the next phase is. There's definitely some sorting out that's going to happen. We've all heard rumblings, or at least I've heard rumblings that, you know, what the, budget for writers to travel at the athletic,

which is if you're doing old school beat writing of the dying art you talk about is important. How much of that are they going to be able to continue to do? Athletics got a new executive editor, Steve Ginsburg, who came over from the Washington Post. Does the Times' vision of the athletic, which as you say has been fairly stable from the athletic it bought?

Does that change? Is that going to get smaller in terms of the number of beats they're going to cover? are they still going to have this big broad, let's get as much of the world in as we can, vision of sports writing? I am also interested, as you say, to see what happens to the Times' own sports section, which the day before we recorded this pod

and my print issue had three articles. Three articles. I think we see which way the Times is going there, but it'll be interesting to find out. I do think the founders of the athletic. I think we said this at the time. those guys have a certain measure of scoreboard in this whole thing. Because if you listen to people in our industry,

how many people did you hear, say, a version of the athletics going to go out of business? The athletics is going to go bust. It's going to be sold for parts. And if you and I had a dollar for every one of those, we would be lighting cigars with $100 bills right now for every proclamation like that. It didn't, it went into the Times.

again, what is the athletic going to look like? It's totally valid question, but I think those guys do deserve a lot of credit for piloting that website in there, despite a lot, a lot of skepticism within the industry. Let's go to February, David.

Russia invades Ukraine. Still a big story on our plates. There was, remember the initial days after the invasion? When a lot of people thought Kiev might fall, it didn't. It hasn't. Vladimir Zelensky is in Washington, D.C.

right now as we talk. I know. Good timing. Ukrainian army made major gains late in the year. A couple of journalistic notes for you. We were reminded by the bravery about the bravery of war correspondence. Thinking in particular, CNN's Matthew Chance, New York Times as Jeffrey Gettleman had a really good piece the other day about a killing there that was revealed after a Russian retreat.

international federation journalists say 12 media workers died covering the war where is your mind right now on ukraine well this this one doesn't seem like so long ago because obviously it's still ongoing although i did drive past uh you know we i stand with ukraine yard placard the other day and it uh you know was noticeably weathered it did see it seemed like it does feel like that movement is a long time ago. It's, I think the journalistic side that you brought up, I think, is a good one to focus on,

you know, obviously for the intents of this podcast. There was a lot of sort of remembering not just the talents and the sort of valiance of war reporters, but just to sort of, see it in action, I think sort of kind of was energizing in a certain way, you know, it was inspiring.

It's also, I think, you know, without getting to end of the year, you know, retrospective melancholy or whatever, it does, any sort of conflict on this scale seems to have, you feel like there's a different resonance with the older that you get, you know? And it's, and I feel like there's nothing I can say that like, you know, my dad hasn't said at some point in his life, but it does sort of, I don't know,

there's just a deeper reality to this than some of the previous conflicts on the scale. And that's even including some of the ones that America has been more directly involved in, you know, and for me. And a lot of that is my age and my perspective. And some of that's, I mean, I think a huge part of it, though, is the media age that we live in, you know, that we've talked about this some on the show, but, um, Obviously, in the early days, experiencing it live on multiple cable channels, but even since then, you know, experiencing on social media and traditional media and everything else, I think it's, I think it's a testament to the journalistic ability to sort of continue telling a story over a long period of time and to continue to underscore the significance of something. And certainly there's failures to that in that count, too.

I don't know. What's your take? Over a long period of times, that's a really interesting idea. Because I remember you and I talking in the first couple of weeks when all of us seemingly were so transfixed by news from Ukraine. And we're talking about it so much. And you saw the eyes of a lot of Americans on that story. I think we were talking about it in the context of CNN and cable news and scrambling to cover a story like that. It has been interesting to watch it. the way Americans sort of think about it and pay attention to it over the course of many,

many months. The Ukrainian army's gains in the later this year, I think brought a lot of people back to that story maybe because they were sort of able to see a chapter of that story, maybe unfolding in a way that was hard to over the period of months. It's just kind of a mile marker now whether it goes from there we don't know. I also think just in terms of the media stuff, I'm really interested to see what the limits or effectiveness of Russian state media is

because this is Vladimir Putin having lots and lots of setbacks. I saw him admitting some limited version of that today. But how much of that is able to reach the Russian people? What kind of picture are they getting? What kind of message are they hearing? about the war? It's a fascinating question and something that I'll be interested in reading more about in

2023. Let's go to March 2022, David. We had the sports announcer version of the late shift. All these jobs that have been occupied by people seemingly forever suddenly changed. Troy Aikman and Joe Buck, who had done 20 plus years

at Fox, suddenly go from Fox to Monday Night Football on ESPN. They're replaced by Kevin Burkhart and Greg Olson. Al Michaels, who had called the premier night NFL game in this country since 1986, geez. Goes from Sunday night football on NBC to Amazon, where he's calling Thursday night football with Kirk Herbstree. He's replaced by Mike Tariko, who had been patiently waiting for the job of calling Sunday

night football. And then there were all these intriguing almost that happened. Aikman almost went to Amazon. Sean McVeigh thought about going to Amazon and actually leaving the Rams. Al Michaels, one, was thinking about going everywhere before finally going to Amazon.

How do you look back at announcer late shift? It's been, I think it's interesting how, well, for one thing, how I don't know, might be in the minority on this, but how, little it sort of affected my viewing habits or my experience watching games. I think if anything, the sort of like ongoing subplot of, you know, Al Michaels wondering, you know, what he's doing there,

watching some of those games, especially early in the season, is, was more significant than the degree to what, you know, to which we missed him or, you know, anyone else. on any of the other mainstays on other networks who had moved around. It's, I don't know. I think that we'll look back on, I think, I mean, as much money as was handed around, you know, as much as, as, as seismic as some of those shifts seems to be,

I think that we'll probably look back on 2022 as in all of those giant contract offers as just this sort of parting shot that led to YouTube getting Sunday ticket and like just as sort of, of like reinvention of the entire, I mean, I think that will be the landmark, you know, and I think that I think that everything else will be, um, will be kind of pretext for that. Meaning the end of broadcast television, the last blast of broadcast television and the start

of the next thing, which is streaming. I totally agree. And I think that, I think just football being on Amazon. Yeah. At all is a lot more. significant than who's calling a football game. Yeah. And I say this as somebody who thinks about announcers way too much. But it was interesting, right? Because that whole thing when it was like $18 million, $17 million, $35 million for Tom Brady, it started this discussion about how much our announcers really worth.

What are they worth? And the answer, I think after watching a year of football with everybody in different spots is something, there's certainly worth something, but in terms of this like changing your viewing experience, it doesn't all that much. I mean, I still think the, the notion of sort of continuity of stability, well, preexisting stability is so is very important, right? I think that the, the impression that Amazon is a serious football outfit is probably worth whatever they paid for the announcers and certainly for the contract or whatever. Absolutely. But and I think to some extent we're talking about it's not sunk money, but it's, but it's, you know, you sort of pay what you got to pay, you know, these things. It's like the price, the price of an announcer is like the price of a sports team. It's like there's only so many of them that are established and the price is, the price is whatever someone's willing to pay for them. You know, it's not. Yeah, I agree. And all the people we're talking about are really good, right? So it's not like you, they all cleared the bar of this person's really good at their job.

This person deserves a job like this, whether it's on network or Amazon or whatever it is. Yeah. I mean, who knows in a time of sort of like new media expansion and also just like contraction in different ways. Like I'm sure there's somebody somewhere in Amazon who was like, dude, we'd spend a lot of money on them. But my guess is that they, that as like, you know, as an organization, they probably haven't for one second thought, maybe we should have gotten this other person who we could have gotten for $500,000, you know, like that's,

I don't think that's, they probably spent a lot of time worrying about that as opposed to just about everything else. No, but it's just funny. Once you clear that bar, I think of like competence and excellence, then I find myself asking,

and I was asking this in the spring too, is like, what was this about? You know, what, what value was at stake here? Because there is the thing, or it seemed like the thing.

I was having this conversation with somebody the other day that Fox was going to say, okay, announcers, we can create announcers, right? You don't have to pay announcers. So we're going to go, Kevin Burkhardt,

who came up through our system, Greg Olson, who's in his second year calling games, and we're going with that. We're not going to pay $18 million. We have a different idea, a different value. And then they just went and signed Tom Brady for $35 million or $37 million,

whatever it was a year. So it's like, well, that wasn't much of an idea. Yeah. These people are all unique. Broadcasters, Al Michaels is different than Joe Buck is different than Burkhart. But like, you know, aesthetically watching a game, like, you know, it's not like they're like,

I believe a football game should be called like this. No, they just like small, we're talking about small variations in the thing. So it's just one of those cases to me, and I'm a broken record on this, but oftentimes the transaction story is actually more interesting and more shiny in and of itself than what actually results from the transaction. Yeah. I say that about announcing, basketball, politics,

whatever it is. But again, Fox has the, does have the ability to create, right? To build from the inside or to create the next

Joe Buck or whoever for an upstart, especially someone on the streaming side. And we say this stuff, like it's not, these two things are becoming the same thing. You know, I mean,

it's not like there's a huge, I mean, I think that the hope of YouTube or Amazon is that people are engaging within the exact same way they engage with broadcast television through the same Apple TV or smart TV or whatever else. But all that's to say, I think from the streaming side, it's almost like a tech support conversation, right? It's like we know when we roll out the new operating system, there's going to be complaints, you know, it's like, or, you know,

when we debut the new design of our web page, you know, at the ringer.com, which is not happening. As an example, We know that people are going to whine and complain that it's not like it used to be. That's, you know, whatever. The most important thing is to be able to, like, get a handle on, have an expected number of complaints, have a manageable number of complaints, be able to have some sort of like grasp on the situation and not be caught off guard. And the way that you do that and this in a, when you're launching a sports broadcast is to, you know, we know that people complain about every single football play by play and color commentator in the. in existence. Yes. But that's sort of the beauty of it.

We know what we can predict the complaints about these guys that were giving $50 million to, you know? We know exactly. And maybe those that'll take a little bit of the, of the, you know, if they're complaining about the broadcaster and not complaining about the lag time or whatever in the stream, then that's a positive, you know, that works. Next moment, let's go to March. Will Smith slaps Chris Rock at the Oscars. You know what my abiding memory of this is?

What? In a very narrow TV production kind of way. The American broadcast completely missed it. They had the wrong angle when Will Smith went up to the stage. So you really couldn't tell whether you actually hit Chris Rock or not. And then they bleeped everything out because heaven forbid, we can't let celebrities talk on a celebrity award show. And all of us who are watching TV, one of the most amazing moments of live television that we'll ever see in our lifetimes, we had to go to the foreign broadcast on Twitter to find out what happened.

It didn't make any sense if you were watching it on television. That's just, that's phenomenal to me. That somehow, and again, I understand, you know, sensors and you push the button and you're like, wow, this is we don't. There could be nothing more shocking than that if you are in the production truck. I mean, there's just no, there's almost nothing that could possibly happen that would blow your mind like Will Smith hitting somebody on stage for real at the Oscars. Yeah. But it didn't get on American television. It never made it.

We had to reconstruct it through Twitter and other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really important point. I mean, I think that sort of, but as a course, from that. I mean, you as someone who saw Chris Rock do is stand up but discussing this. It's interesting that you go to that because I think from where I'm sitting, it's shocking how little sort of there we've dealt with that moment since it happened. Like what, I mean, that says a lot

about our modern, modern media structure. I mean, I don't know that we needed like a more public maya culpa from Will Smith or we didn't need them to shake hands on national television or like, whatever, but what a wild moment that like, it seems like we just were totally obsessed with for such a short period of time. And now, I don't know, I mean, if you, if, I mean, now it's, people are trying to draw a line between that and the failure of the new Will Smith movie emancipation at the box office, but I don't think there's, those two things are necessarily connected. I don't think, you know, I think if this was men in black three, I think we would all just be happy to forget that any of that ever happened, you know, it is sort of just, I mean, a justifiable,

obsession for such a short period of time and now it's it just sort of gets swallowed up by by the timeline or something you know and and it just seems like it feels like a meme that happened at some point and less like a real thing it's a really good point i mean did i guess it came up a little bit because when will smith was on the publicity tour that kind of turned into an apology tour and he started talking about it more but you're right there is a question of like the media is going to cover things or continue to cover things when there are when there's new information and will smith didn't really talk about it for a long time there was that kind of limited apology i don't quite remember what forum that occurred in but there was like

that limited apology sort of right after it happened and chris rock addressed it mostly in stand-up as opposed to sitting down for a big interview which he could certainly push the button and do at any time with anybody he wanted. And so what happens is like there aren't there isn't stuff for all of us to grasp on to. Yeah. And then by the time Will Smith starts talking about it again, a lot of time has passed and we've been thinking about the midterms and we've been thinking about Musk and all this other stuff.

So that's just the answer. You're right. It's like it's so interesting because it's like what has to happen for a story like that to continue to be that in the front of everybody's mind for. six months after it happens. I think it's impossible for anything to be to some extent, which I think, yeah, I mean, if anything hangs around that long, we're talking about Ukraine, a totally different scale of just concept.

So, I mean, I think for anything in the sort of pop cultural sphere, even something that wild to be there, it's almost impossible now. All right. The next moment from June, the Supreme Court overturns Roe versus Wade. I don't think we can do significant justice to just how meaningful that was, just how horrific that was for lots and lots of people in this country. I guess one way I'd put it, David, is we seem to have a lot of moments during Trump's time in office where you and I collectively said, wow, that's a thing, a horrifying thing. I would never, I never thought I'd see happen. This felt like maybe the last of those happened after he was out of office.

The last in 2022? Or, I mean, like the last. Well, maybe there's more, maybe there's more to come. I think there probably will be. But let's say the one that happened after he was out of office by the hand of justices he put on the bench. How do you think about the end of Roe v. Wade? Yeah, I mean, it's, um, uh, well i mean it's hard to imagine anything that is more that would be more sort of terrifying

uh you know confidence shattering um uh embarrassing you know difficult problematic you can you can just you know so many words could be applied um it's a um uh honestly an endpoint to this sort of political movement that's absorbed, I mean, that's taken place over much of our lives that I didn't think, I honestly don't,

didn't think we'd ever get to. And you know, you're right, Trump put the people on the Supreme Court that made it happen. I think probably any Republican in that seat would have done, would have put the same

or similar people on the Supreme Court. But I do think there's, and there's a parallel to Trump is that it's a sort of, it's that sort of, it's that, um, the sort of almost farcical endpoint to this movement,

you know, that it's, I mean, I'm embarrassed to say that I thought that there is part of me that thought this would never happen. But also, I don't think that the people that like, you know, I don't think Mitch McConnell 15 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago would have thought it would have ever happened. I don't think that was the point. You know, I think the point was just getting votes. And, and, you know, here we are. Thankfully, it seems like, well, thankfully, I mean, I think that it's a, it's a such a significant issue.

I mean, such a real, like, it just matters so fucking much that, that, uh, I, I think that it will continue, obviously, to have a ton of political and social relevance. And I think that we'll be telling the story of how this thing gets fixed over the next, hopefully a couple of years, but probably more, you know, I think that that's, um, I think you're probably able to sort of plot the course of, like, American history on that a little bit, you know? It's just that we got to the point. where that happened and then hopefully we'll get to a point where where reason and humanity and everything else prevail let's go to august you'll remember then that brian stelter host of reliable sources media writer newsletter writer at cnn was ousted by the new regime and you and i got

our first peek at what the future of that network might look like jeff suckered running for a long time Chris Lickt is now in. CNN was pursuing this new, more unpartisan, is that a word? Identity. Which felt like they were renouncing some of their old identity, the one they had developed over the Trump years. This is a weird one for me in a lot of ways because, look, CNN will see how that shakes out, willing to give it a chance.

etc, et cetera, but it was just so funny to hold up Brian Stelter of all people is as if he were this writer for the nation or this liberal bomb thrower. And when they did that, it was like, wait a second, you know, are you looking back at what this network did during the later Trump years with embarrassment? Is that what this is? Because you and I had 100 conversations at the beginning. Trump, that CNN seemed like it got caught really flat-footed. They were showing all those Trump speeches.

They put Jeffrey Lord on TV. But I felt by the end of his presidency, when you listen to Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper and the panelists that would come on, it was like, we're doing what we think we need to do. This guy's lying. This guy's being a racist. This guy is doing a thousand other terrible things. We need to come on TV and say that.

Yeah. that is what is required of this moment, not trying to be like, well, on the one hand and on the other hand. And I just felt what bugs me about this is them looking back at that and saying like, wow, that was wrong in some way or another. You did the wrong thing there. And I don't care about the ratings perspective. I just, I don't think that was the wrong thing. And I think CNN, again, you and I love to make fun of cable news and we'll do it again. But I think CNN got a lot about that right.

Yeah, I mean, and I think that it's I mean, I think one of the things that Trump years did, and it's not just Donald Trump, although he was, you know, a great adversary of the press, but I think one of the things we've seen over the past decade or so is that calling out journalists, lying about them, slandering them, libeling them, whatever else, is an incredibly effective technique because journalists, by and large,

can't and won't fight back, or at least not get in the mud and fighting the terms that they're, they're having stuff flung at them and that stuff sticks i mean does anybody that trump went after did anybody for the trump went after really emerge as some sort of valiant hero i mean jim accostom maybe but like it's not like he's you know i can tv bcnebc news or anything like that you know i mean it's it's it's not like he's like a celebrity um yeah i mean it's you can you can you know, insult and shame journalists and get away with that. And I think that's why, because to a large degree, perception is reality, right?

I mean, this is the media. This is show business. And Brian Seltter was, you know, perceived as a liberal, you know, automaton just because he, like, said things that were factually true. Well, then if you're CNN, you have to decide whether or not you are going to stick with somebody that is. perceived to be that even if you think that they did the right thing, right? I mean, we don't know what they think. But like the best case scenario is maybe it wasn't worth it even if they stood by them.

But that's where that's where the sort of rubber meets the road, right? You have to choose to stick by the people that are doing good jobs and doing right by the country and by your company because, you know, the next thing you know, it's going to be somebody else, right? And it's going to be somebody else that who's whoever you know who half of twitter is insisting gets fired or whatever so anyway yes i mean when you when you give into the perception created by dishonest people you've lost you know and as you say there's no way to stop it because it will continue a couple more for you October Elon Musk takes control of Twitter we could almost just put a bookmark right there because we've talked so much about it and we'll be talking about it the

next time we're here yeah uh somebody on reddit wanted us to see this guard and headline from the other day. Elon Musk breaks silence after 10 million Twitter users vote for him to step down. Did Elon Musk ever have a significant period of silence since he has been running Twitter? I don't think that's quite a breaking of silence.

Thank you Reddit user for pointing that one out. And finally from November, David, the Democrats didn't totally screw up the midterms. Yeah. Big wins for John Federman, Kelly, Catherine Cortez Mastow, Katie Hobbs in Arizona. There's been some immediate political effects like the Democrats holding the Senate and Joe the Kobe Stopper Biden getting ready to run again in 2024.

I guess we'll get the final word in the new year on that one. And then also on the other side, Donald Trump. Yeah. Seemingly, maybe, sort of kind of. in a weakened state where everybody in the party feels like they can take shots at him now. Any final thoughts on the 22 midterms? Yeah, I mean, not much more than what you said and what we've already said. It was a narrow victory that in historical context looks like a pretty significant one,

although, you know, Gerson Cinema and Joe Manchin looks like they're doing about everything they can to sort of dampen the mood. Amazing that would happen with the Democrats. Who would have guessed? The triumph could be followed immediately by disarray, as they like to say on Twitter. You know, I think that the Trump candidates losing is kind of overblown in terms of what that means for Trump. because obviously this was an election that was about more than one person's endorsements. But I do think there's some sort of bell weather stuff in there.

And I do think that I don't think it means Trump is eminently weak, beatable, whatever else, by someone in the party or outside of it. But I don't know. I really hesitate after everything we've been through over the past. five, ten years to oversimplify to make any broad proclamations. I don't want to be too expansive even at the end of the year.

But man, when you announce your presidential run and then the next big announcement is that you're like putting out a line of NFTs. That was so awesome. Yeah, if you want to do, if you want to draw, if you want to draw a corollary between the midterms and between Trump's

announcement, it's, it's sort of it's like the lack of seriousness is even more severe than it was before. And I don't know I don't know if that matters for the next presidential election though. I don't know that seriousness really has any bearing on anything but it does just seem like

it does sort of seem like it's like you know Trump, the candidate and sort of the party in general like a, you know, he's like a dude who like who like, you know, did a did a, did a, did a, did a, did a,

stand and then hit a half court shot. And now he thinks that he can hit every half court shot. You know, like it's just it's not, it's, it just seems like, I don't know. That was a terrible analogy. But it's, but it's, it just, it's, it just seems so deeply unsurious, you know. Nate Silver asked on Twitter, um, whether or not Trump was actually running and he was trying to kind of come up with some sort of semi serious metric, like based on like rallies in actual battleground states.

Like, what's the over under on battleground states? rallies that Trump was going to actually do. And that would determine whether or not he's running for president. You know, is it over, greater than or less than seven battleground rallies in the, you know, between now and election day? I think it's a valid question. But I think that it's the same questions we had last time Trump ran, which is to say that Trump sort of, well, sorry for the wrestling metaphor.

I mean, the wrestling, uh, vocabulary. But Trump's going to, as always sort of works himself into a shoot over these, this, this stuff, right? I mean, it's like, I don't know what his motivation is, um, you can, kind of imagine what they are. But, you know, I, I, no matter how serious he is right now, I'm guessing he will get more serious as, as, you know, voting time approaches. We'll see.

I don't know. What do you think? He likes rallies. I mean, that was kind of the only way his first campaign existed. Yeah, but couldn't you imagine a world in which he just gave like a weekly rally in Florida and, and, and people, like, bust in from other places. to see him like it's woodstock or something. Yeah, just in like one,

we decide to like do all the tapings in one arena. Yeah, I'm doing a homestand. Like, whatever. This is a, by the way, we can't forget that the best part about his announcement was that Don Jr. could not attend because he was on a hunting trip

in the mountains out west. It's still the funniest thing I have ever heard. I hope Cormant McCarthy was considering a line like that for Stella Maris. put together an in-memorium list, David, of the journalists and media people we lost. This is a partial list, of course. From the sports world, soccer writer Grant Wall,

who just turned 49, shockingly at the World Cup, New Yorker baseball writer and fiction editor, Roger Angel, died this year at age 101. Vin Scully, who was still on Twitter, Dodger announcer,

and Major League Baseball announcer, died at 94. ESPN NFL reporter John Clayton, CNN sportscaster Fred Hickman died. From outside the sports world, Bernard Shaw, the legendary CNN anchor, Hollywood reporter Nikki Fink, historian David McCullough.

By the way, this was a lot more people than I remembered on this list. Vogue's Andre Leon Talley, Granta editor, former editor Ian Jack, Jewel Campbell, who created the SI Swim Suit issue. The Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout, drama critic over there and essayist. The conservative funny man who we talked about on this podcast, PJ O'Rourke,

Barbara Aaron Reich, author of Nicolland Dime, Mort Janklow and Sterling Lord, who were gigantic names in the world of books. They were agents. Mike Davis, who wrote City of Quartz, Gail Green, the food critic, Peter Sheldall, art critic at the New Yorker, Eric Bolert, the media critic,

and then just last week, CNN correspondent, Drew Griffin. Holy mackerel, that's a lot. lot of people. Yeah. And a lot of very, very talented and significant contributors to the world we talk about. We also lost a couple of publications. The print edition of Entertainment Weekly. I'm not sure I had more fun on a podcast this year than when Owen Glyberman and Ty Burr came on and talk about EW in its heyday. I mean, don't you feel like for people you had to have been there in the 90s? But holy dude, how much did we learn about? pop culture from the weekly edition of Entertainment Weekly that arrived in our mailbox.

Oh, it was transformative. I mean, it's, it introduced, I mean, as, you know, we didn't have the Hollywood reporter or anything like that growing up, you know, when Entertainment Weekly took off, it kind of gave us the vocabulary to think about the film industry. And I mean, and obviously it's a very specific angle, but like, dude, we weren't thinking about that stuff in that way before. you know the the the the the most information the most complicated thing you knew was like what the highest grossing film of all time was before that you know and and maybe you learn that from entertainment weekly um it was yeah it was it's it's wild how significant it was and the fact that it was weekly i think added to its significance i do think that being a weekly sort of a lot like leaves you exposed to be totally just eaten a lot of a lot of

by the internet when when you know that and when when just sort of web publishing and social media just occupy so much of our lives um the coolest thing about entertainment weekly at the time was like the photo spreads and that stuff's just gone the moment that you can post those things online you know where they would get like the cast of the x files for the new season and they would get the cast of like the new star wars movie like whatever it was i mean i know the vanity fair had dibs on the first dibs on a lot of that stuff but any sort of nerd culture thing where you could like look at the costumes, like hold your face up to the semi-glossy page and just be like, is that, like, what iteration of blaster rifle is he holding in this picture, you know?

That was really cool stuff. What was funny is back in those days, and I don't want to talk about somebody, don't want to sound like somebody talking about penny postcards here, but weekly did have an immediacy to it. You would get this thing and be like, oh, my God, here are all the movies and television shows I can watch this week. and it felt incredibly immediate. It also was interesting because it was this gateway to nerdery.

You talk about nerd culture. That was on the edge of how nerdy you could be in a mainstream publication at the time, probably was the leading edge of how nerdy you could be about Star Wars and Harry Potter and all these other things. That was a gateway drug to the nerd culture world, the vulture world, the ringer, everything we have now. Yeah. And then the cool part about EW, which I remembered with Glyberman and Burr was like, it had a spine editorially. It had critics. Yeah, it did for real. It had letter grades. It had features that were not just like, there's an awesome movie coming out. Check it out. It had standards to it. And it was not just something that was like, here's the cool stuff to watch. But here's the stuff that's great. And here's the stuff that's not so great.

Really interesting combination when you think about it. We also lost the print edition of Parade Magazine this year. By the way, this weird state of journalistic quasi-death is you lose the print edition, but you still exist in some form, at least notionally on the web. Yeah. It's kind of interesting.

Long form is still a podcast, but it stopped recommending articles in 2022. Washington Post Magazine was just shuttered a couple of days ago by management over there. And finally, we lost book forum. just a week or so ago. Any thoughts on that publication for people

who might not have been reading book forum or have worked in the world where book forum had some sway? I mean, it's one of the more shocking losses in a list that, you know, a long list this year and certainly in previous years when you tally them all out. Book forum just sort of seem like,

I'm not quite sure I was ever super profitable so I don't really know what the it seems weird that it would ever get to a point where it couldn't continue also it sort of seems like in this day and age that there's always it seems like there's always a half-life or the ability to find to discover a half-life for journals for you know outlets like that like

and maybe it still will you know I mean I'm not just talking about like the Sports Illustrated Apparel line but also just like why not Could you not sell book forum to somebody who would continue it as a blog or, you know, whatever? But yeah, I mean, it's, it was one of the most sort of low key but intrinsic pieces of the sort of book world. And, you know, as a reader, as an editor, you know, as someone who worked in publishing, but also as particularly as a reader, it's like when you pick up a paperback book and you look on the back, well, you know, you know, know if there's like a glowing blur from the New York Times, you're, you know, there's some level of significance conveyed by that. But if you, if you're looking for like the two or

three sentence blurb that actually like can convince me to buy a book, book form was up there. You know, book form was maybe cream of the crop. And it may, I mean, yeah, I'm just trying to think about it. I mean, it's like weirdly like, yeah, book form, there's nothing with the consistency of book forum. And it's just incredibly, like, disheartening that they would disappear. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. I know.

I know. Why don't you? Reduction Magic by Erica Servantes. I didn't mean for this episode to sound so downbeat. But that's okay. Right? This is, this is news. This is, this is media stuff.

I don't know that this ever feels quite as jolly as a mother. as some other beats in this world. Coming up this Wednesday on the press box, Stephen Roderick is going to join me to talk about the piece he wrote 10 years ago on Lindsay Lohan and the director Paul Schrader making a movie together. If you want to go find it on Google,

go find it and read it. You will really enjoy the backstory. David Shoemaker and I are going to sail away for the holidays. David's going to celebrate a birthday. Happy early birthday. Got some plans for that. You want to share with us? I don't actually know.

I don't have any plans. Usually, you know, my younger son is going to be four on January 1st. So my birthday just generally fades into his birthday. It's a good way to be. Mine's December 31st, then you're obligated to stay up until midnight anyway because it's, you know, the ball drops or whatever. And then, you know, it's somebody else's birthday. So I passed the torch as the ball drops.

and I think we're probably going to celebrate him a little bit more than me this year. I loved it when we'd live together because on New Year's Eve, we'd have what passed for a nice dinner early to celebrate your birthday. Yeah. And I think I would pay or try to pay if I had any money. And then the night would just turn into New Year's Eve. Yeah. So we'd still be celebrating, but it would just, it was kind of a chocolate and my peanut butter kind of holiday. Yeah.

I'd always go to somebody else's party. event and then at midnight people would start buying me the drinks like I would just sort of like co-opped whatever was going on. You know it's his birthday too, right? Yeah, or not at midnight. Like once we got there, I was like, wait, you're here. You're here on your birthday? Like you're doing this instead of something.

Let me get you a drink. Do you know what kind of plans we normally have? Not a lot. All right. More lukewarm takes in 2023. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.