The Press Box - To Tweet, or Not to Tweet | The Press Box (Ep. 566)

Episode Date: January 29, 2019

The responsibilities faced by journalists when tweeting about breaking news stories (03:00), the mass media congregation in Atlanta for the Super Bowl (20:45), and saying goodbye to one of New York’s oldest literary bars (38:00). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up guys? It's Liz Kelly and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. Before you get to the show, make sure you check out The Ringer.com for our extensive NFL coverage leading up to the Super Bowl. We also just published our 2019 NFL draft guide where you can find all things draft related leading up to the first round on April 25th. It includes prospect rankings, scouting reports, mock drafts, and much more. We'll be updating it regularly with new analysis that takes all the latest developments into account. Once again, you can check that out on the ringer.com. new indictee Roger Stone

appeared in the media this week and we were all reminded that he has a giant tattoo of Richard Nixon's face on his back if you had to get a tattoo of someone's face on your back who would it be

oh man but are you going to answer this question too because I think we probably I think we probably have the same answer can we answer on the count of three okay You don't want to go first? You want me to just do it at the same time?

Let's do it at the same time. Let's see if I'm right. Ready? Okay. All right. One, two, three. Brent Musburger. See, I knew it.

I knew it. No, that's not true. This is a really hard time in world history, American history in particular, to try to single out a person for whom you would be willing to give up that much, permanent real estate on your body. Yeah, imagine if you've done Mark Zuckerberg like six months ago and then it seems so embarrassing now. I don't know that I ever would have done Michael Jackson, but we're not that far removed from

a lot of people picking Michael Jackson as the answer to this question. Oh, dear. There are a whole lot of people who are being canceled who were, who, you know, would have formerly been tattoo opportunities. You know, I mean, everyone knows probably that my instinct is to go pro wrestler, but again, I think this applies even more so this principle of place. even more so to the pro wrestling world. Yeah, that's dicey.

Who knows, yeah, I mean, you can play it safe, you know, with certain people, but, you know, I might be tempted to go Sputnik Monroe. Oddly, I think that the safest thing to do when giving up that much of your body to a tattoo is to go the ironic route. And Richard Nixon might be the best answer. Yeah. Somebody who's so besmirched already that they couldn't possibly get any lower, because you're kind of acknowledging that it's a flawed human.

I like that. I think we've, I think we've reached it. We are the obeyed giant of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast where you're not allowed to cheer on journalistic layoffs, especially if you're the fucking president of the United States.

We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker. Hello from the Super Bowl, David. In Atlanta, how are you? I'm doing great, man. New York is cold. Brooklyn in particular is very cold. and a lot of the country is cold, I guess, right now. How's Atlanta? Is it warm?

Yeah, kind of cold in Atlanta, 40-something degrees today. So it's cold everywhere. We got three big topics to talk about today. First, David, when faced with something like the Covington Catholic standoff, is a solution for journalists just not to tweet. We debate second, we talk about some early notes from the Super Bowl media human centipede here at Atlanta, where I am recording this podcast. And finally, RIP to the Half King, one of New York's cushiest

or maybe crustiest literary bars, we discuss the past, present, and future of the journalism bar, plus, of course, our notebook dump and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But let's start with number one, David. Never tweet. My way of revisiting the Covington Catholic stuff is to talk about a solution proposed by New York Times columnist Farhad Manjew in a January 23rd column, which was called Never Tweet.

Here is Manjew's argument, more or less. The Covington saga illustrates how every day the media's favorite social network tugs journalists deeper into the rip currents of tribal melodrama, short-circuiting our better instincts in favor of mob and bot-driven group think. In the process, it helps us bolster the most damaging stereotypes of our profession instead of curious, intellectually honest chroniclers of human affairs, Twitter regularly turns many in the news, myself included, into knee-jerk outrage bots. reflexively set off by this or that hashtag cause misspelled presidential missive or targeted

influence campaign. Woo! That was a big sentence. That was big. We will unpack this, but what was your first reaction to Manjou's, I don't know if it's a solution to our problem, but at least kind of a, you know, band-aid to our collective Twitter problem. Well, I got to admit that my first exposure to this column was.

was someone eye rolling about it on Twitter. So I was let in through a slightly biased point of view. You know, I got to say, I'm very sympathetic to this argument. I mean, I'm sure most people listen to this probably don't know how little I tweet mostly because that's the way it works. If I'm not tweeting, they're not noticing. But yeah, I mean, there's certainly a, whether or not I'm fully sympathetic to the argument, I'm sympathetic to Manjou's later in the piece he gets to why he tweets less or why he's

on Twitter actively tweeting less, even as he continues to use it to read or interact or engage. I feel the same way, you know, I mean, you get kind of get caught up in the cycle of, you know, responsiveness and and you know you spend you spend a lot of brain space trying to come up with that that perfect quip you know i mean it's always right there on the tip of your brain but then it takes you you know too much of the day just kind of cycling through all of these funny all of these thoughts with the attempt of like being the being an optimum twitter user right and really that's great material you should just use on slack you know so why ruin it on twitter listen slack is a forgiving audience.

They don't, there's only an upvote. I mean, you can put lots of emojis after slacks, but, you know, it doesn't feel quite as bad as like, you know,

getting totally ratioed. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, though, reading the, reading the column, it felt a little bit, I mean, the connection to the,

to the Covington High School incident was really pertinent. I mean, this was one of the few times that immediately springs to mind where we had like numerous public, numerous public figures who are, you know, active on Twitter who, who, you know, address the situation snarkly or aggressively and then formally apologized on Twitter saying, you know, I shouldn't have gone out there, shouldn't have extended myself so far. I understand it. It is very pertinent to the argument. But it also felt a little bit like an argument in search of a hook. And in some sense, it felt like it felt like a tweet storm. You know, I mean, this, the, the, the, the argument that he was making just was just, I mean, it felt like something that I would normally engage, I would normally read on Twitter, which I guess, I don't know if that's irony, but it's, it, it doesn't, it, it, it, for some reason didn't quite stick as a, as a, you know, a strong argument to me.

Yeah, I'm with you that I'm sympathetic to the overall deal as a personal choice, as a mostly personal choice. I just don't know if I want every other journalist on Twitter or lots more journalists on Twitter to be disarming themselves at the same time. I'm not actually convinced that's a great idea. And, you know, if you,

and I, you know, if you want to say like, don't get stuff wrong anymore, um, or, you know, don't jump to conclusions.

That's fine. But I just don't think that, I don't know that that's what the effect of this would be. I mean, to me, like reading this piece, it all sort of comes back around to some, an argument we've been having for two years. And this is the media and I think the left more generally of which most of the media fits into, which is the sort of when they go low, we go high argument, right? You know, Trump or, you know, whatever bad actor is going to be saying this stuff on Twitter

anyway, do we act like the dispassionate journalists who stick to New York Times style and wait and, you know, counteract something really poisonous and awful with dispassionate facts? Or do we get to come in there and argue the same way? And if not like in a disingenuous way, but just arguing like a forceful, you know, bring it on kind of way. I mean, that to me is kind of what this is at its face. And I'm just like, again, like I'm sort of with you. I want to, I want to tweet less. Like that would probably make me happier and it certainly made me more productive.

But I don't know that I don't know that I want other people to do that. And I just, because I just think, I think what this argument is about at the end of the day, it's sort of like Covington in a way is a kind of. And we can talk a little bit about whether people even got. got that wrong, but Covington is sort of, you know, Laura Wagner's piece in Deadspin, was pretty convincing that they didn't. But like if you, but to me, Covington is almost the wrong thing because it's like, they're going to be bad actors on Twitter, one of whom might be the president of the United States who are just going to keep going, right? Yeah. And if you just, if you just lurk more and post less as he counsels, then what's going to happen? You know, what is really,

Is that, do you just seed, you see the, you know, the screed, the argument, you know, the sort of moral high horse tweet to somebody else? Again, I just don't know if that's a right idea or not. Yeah, I mean, when I, when I hear the phrase never tweet, you know, I've seen that on Twitter many times, but my, my, the way, the place that I see that phrase used most is, as you mentioned before, in ring or slack. and it echoes down from the from the heights of the editorial wing whenever whenever some other journalist gets caught out tweeting something stupid or wrong or you know fill in the blank and you know it said often tongue and cheek and and and you said it right I mean the the argument or the the the directive is don't tweet don't get stuff wrong on Twitter you know don't and don't make a fool of yourself on Twitter because the flip side of that

I mean, from even a productivity standpoint is that there's no, I mean, there's an endless number of pieces on the ringer, and I'm sure in every other periodical that have originated in tweets, right? I mean, it's a very regular occurrence that someone will tweet something and their editor will email them directly, like write that column, right? Or write that story. So, I mean, and I know, I mean, your Twitter timeline is a, I mean, is a, you know, museum to pieces that were about. are in the process of being written or have already been written or will soon be written. You know, I mean, you use Twitter very productively a lot of the time. But I think that, yeah, I mean, I think that in general, you're right.

I mean, we don't want to disarm because then we, Twitter doesn't become a better place because it's, it doesn't, because it's better curated. Your, your argument is right. It will become, it will be run over by the bad actors or by, you know, the, the, the, the, people who, who certainly will never, never tweet, right? I mean, they're the people who, the loudest voices will become, you know, the least desirable voices. Also, I just, I just think, you know, I always, I always see people saying, I want to tweet less, which, which, again, I think is like, you know, perhaps a noble goal. But isn't just reading, just, if you're, if you're saying that what I want

to do is just read Twitter more and tweet less, that also seems like. a bad goal to me. Shouldn't you just read something else? You know, I mean, like that. It's just so weird to me. It's like, I want to lurk more. I want to lurk less. I want to, I want to, I want to lurk. I don't want to lurk at all, you know, that just feels very funny to me. All of this, by the way, just feels like whenever I read one of these pieces, it feels like self-help, you know, something that you write out to yourself on January 1st. Yes. That is posing as something that's going to help humanity. And I just read it and I go, I just think this is something you want to do for yourself and you're kind of making this into a think piece. I mean, later in Manjew's column, he says,

I tweeted for my wedding and during my kids' births, really? And now, so if you're that guy and you're hanging up Twitter, then like that just sounds like, boy, you know, that we really hit a weird part here, right? Like when my children being born, I assume this applies to you, too. I haven't checked your timeline lately. I was not tweeting from the delivery. your room. That was that was not happen. No. And I would not currently be a living human being if I'd try to do something like that. And nor did I want to. So anyway, all this just feels like self-help to me. It really does. And it just feels like, and this is by the way, a really common journalist thing. I want to do X. So I will recommend that humanity do X. And it's like, but why you just do

X? Why don't you just do it? And that's cool. And good for you. And you can even write about how you're doing it. That might be an interesting piece, but I don't know that that lesson needs to apply to all the rest of us. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, there was one, I mean, it's a minor point, but there was a sort of interesting reaction that surfaced on Twitter in reaction in the piece, which was that it was a sort of that not tweeting kind of comes from a position of privilege or the decision to not tweet because for the vast majority of journalists out there who are still climbing the journalistic ladder and don't have a, you know, terminal or at least, you know, a comfortable job at the New York Times that, you know, this is how you get noticed.

You know, this is how people, not, I mean, not just get noticed, but remember that you exist for the most part. I mean, certainly you're, people, journalists interact with each other and with, and with potential future job, you know, hires more on, way, way more on Twitter than they do just in the act, just in the, you know, the daily act of like perusing written pieces on the internet or in print, you know, and, and, I mean, we all have favorite writers that we discovered through, you know, the 140 character limit back in the day. And, and I think that's, you know, it, at the risk of taking the argument way too seriously, I think that that, that is a good, you know, that is an important point to make. Um, yeah, I mean, I think that's right.

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's, listen, it's, when my child was being born, it was, it never occurred to me to tweet, but, but even in retrospect, it's one of, that's, it's, it's one of the, uh, kind of reliefs of not tweeting. I mean, as much guilt as I feel for not interacting on Twitter and I do, you know, I mean, it's, as much as it's, it helps with my general productivity and my peace of mind, you know, I mean, you feel guilty. That's, you have people following you that, you know, we're following you when I was, following me when I was tweeting a lot. And, you know, and, you know, you know, you know, reactively all the time. And now I'm not producing anymore. But, you know, it's just nice to not even have to, like, go through that mental calculus of, like, how long has it been since my last tweet and how many do I need to, how much do I need to tweet to stay relevant or whatever? I mean, that's, that's, you know, part of what we do. And it's, and it's, you know, and I think that it's not separate, I think, from the privilege argument. There is a, I mean, Manju goes through some of his most kind of objectionable tweets or the ones that he regrets the most. And I think that that's a natural thing sort of as we go along in life, that we, I mean, especially as our job titles change or place of employment's change, our general like life, state of state and life changes that you just tweet in different ways and you generally like everything else skew in a conservative direction.

And I'm not sure. Or friendly or friendly or direction. Yeah. Yeah, you become, yeah, certainly more friendly, more, more. I mean, I don't mean, conservative. like politically, but just, you know, you're just less likely to take on some of these, you know, hot topics or whatever or to go on. You're not, right, you're not ripping somebody else's head off to. I mean, I think you're

probably less liable to do that. Yeah, and I think that that goes to sort of your self-help argument or that, you know, this is, it's a, it's a fine thing to say. I mean, listen, you don't, you don't need a self-help book to define what it's like to, like, reach middle age. We have 50 years of American sitcoms that teach us about that, you know? I mean, it's, it's, And I think that in some sense, this is just putting into words what every human goes through and whether or not it's on a social media platform. It's a natural progression. Yeah. One first, like with everything, right, first comes addiction and the companies make money through addiction and then comes self-help and people make money through self-help, right?

You know, cure for addiction. So if we're addicted to social media, then there's going to be this whole. kind of industry and in this case think piece industry that's going to rise up telling it's just like it's like marie condo for for twitter right it's going to tell us how to feel better about ourselves uh you know by tweeting less or whatever and it's sort of like and again that doesn't rule out any piece about regulating facebook or something like that like that's a to me is a completely different thing because that's he's actually not making a moral case in this against twitter he's just it's just sort of like don't do this but

Yeah, it's like, to me, we're now officially in the time of people telling us how to manage our addiction to this stuff. And here we are. All right, David, on that bright note, do you want to go to the overworked Twitter joke of the week? We celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. They didn't take our advice. They didn't take Farhad Manjew's advice. Oh, man. All right, let's do it.

What a transition. There were a couple of government shutdown Overworked Twitter jokes this week. The shutdown, as you know, David, at least temporarily ended on Friday when Trump, who was taking on incredible amounts of water, agreed to reopen the government without getting anything in return.

It was a very overworked Twitter joke to say there may not be a wall, but there is a cave. Thanks to Raj Bonla of Austin, Texas for that one. Another one from the shutdown, David. I can't believe the real partial government shutdown was the friends we made along the way. Now, I don't cite that because it's pretty common Twitter Madlibs, right? But it was made by comfortably smug and Ben Shapiro, which is kind of a Twitter moment, I think, when they made the same joke.

Also, I saw this variation, which I preferred, which is, quote, maybe the real shutdown was the friends we bankrupted along the way. Pretty good stuff. And finally, last week, Yankees closer, Mariana Rivera, David, became the first ever unanimous inductee into the baseball Hall of Fame. Never happened before. First time. It was an overword Twitter joke to say, congrats to Mo Rivera on joining Bruce Springsteen as the only humans with 100% approval ratings from the Baseball Writers Association of America. There was also a variant that said this was a feat previously only accomplished by Marriott, Bruce. Springsteen and Seinfeld among baseball writers.

Pretty good. That's a good joke. It's a good joke. Hitting sports writers of whom I am surrounded by a mass of this week for their obsession with Bruce Springsteen, Seinfeld and Meritius, will never, ever, ever get old. Speaking of which, topic number two, should we talk about the Super Bowl? Let's do it, man. We have a ringer contingent down here.

Now, most of the people down here are football writers. So as I think I said last week, they will be harassing the football players this week. I'll be harassing the media members. That's my job, which is a little bit different. And so far, the festivities have really only been underway for a day or say, let's say half a day now that it's Monday afternoon as we record this. But I am always amazed at what Sports Rider Disneyland, the Super Bowl and these big events turn into. You just sort of wander down the hallway. and all these guys who you see only as a Twitter avatar or if you still subscribe to a newspaper,

their picture in the newspaper are just suddenly around. And maybe I'm the only one excited by that. But it's just Kevin Clark told somebody, he said, I think Brian's kind of excited. He's right. I am excited. I was just,

I just had that kind of glow in my eye. I was like, oh my God, everybody's here. Everybody under, everybody with, I hasten to add a paying job whose paper has not gone. on out of business in the last 10 minutes.

It's amazing to see everybody in one place. Okay, a couple notes. I want to say, I can, I can understand your excitement. I can understand your excitement because whereas most of those football writers have spent, you know, the past 20 weeks trying to identify who the next Tom Brady is going to be. You're just out there trying to figure out who like the Ray Rado of 2025 that you're going to be profiling online is going to be. Yeah, the next Ray Rado, that'll be a big search.

We're going to find him somewhere. A great piece to speak, by the way. Thank you very much. A couple notes for you. One is I'm amazed at what a subject Tony Romo is still. And I don't remember, forget a Super Bowl. I don't remember a sporting event in our lifetime where the announcer has been almost as big a story. You know, Rombo's not the number one or number two story for the Super Bowl,

but he's probably in the top five. Yeah. And that's just incredible. I mean, do you ever remember anyone even caring at all who was calling the game beyond those sad souls who cover the sports media? And everybody, even everybody here is talking about Romo. It's kind of amazing. I can't, I mean, obviously, I'm not, I'm not old enough to, you know, ever to have been around for anybody else on his level, sort of on the up and up.

Certainly there was, you know, some valedictory of Madden's last Super Bowl or whatever. But, like, yeah, I mean, Tony Romo is, we talked about this before, but it's funny because there was the Tony Romo, you know, surge when he first started. And then there's a lot of this season was sort of a, you know, more fallow period for, for at least the publicans perception or the Twitter perception of Tony Romo. But, yeah, he's certainly bounced back into this, yeah, this just, like, glorified position. And yeah, I mean, I don't know that this is a,

I don't know if it's because this is a Super Bowl in search of storylines. But it definitely feels like he's getting a lot of, he's getting a lot of attention. I was talking to this guy, Jared Waitley today, who is the Australian play-by-play man. He will, he will call the Super Bowl for Australia. He's here. There's an Australian play-by-play call the Super Bowl. And Jared Waitley is delivering it. And he told me that Australian color analysts have taken note of the Romo effect and are asking themselves, how can we predict plays? How can we see the future in the way Romo does?

So whether it's cricket or Australian rules football or whatever or rugby, that Romo is kind of like an international symbol of great and announcing right now, which is just wild, right? Because the NFL is down the list in Australia. I just found that to be amazing. Note number two, I cannot stress how incredible the geography is here when you walk into the aforementioned radio row. Imagine this just kind of giant airplane hanger of a room. And so if you're David and Brian, you know, Fort Worth, Texas radio extravaganza. You get a little table off to the side. You know, maybe you get a little banner or something.

But in the middle, there are all these gigantic and incredibly elaborate sets. And, you know, I always love to be on the lookout for signs of journalistic power. And to me, you know, so we have like CBS sports over here. I saw Boomer Seiz and doing his WFAN show, you know, a stuff. And in the middle, Mike Floreo's pro football talk thing is like the biggest set. and I just you know I feel yeah and I felt I felt I felt sort of felt like there's something self-conscious now that you want to be the biggest set on Radio Row right it's not it's not like an arbitron rating or some other or salary or the king of all media Howard Stern kind of thing it's really having the biggest set that's the thing and he does and then you walk into so that's one big room then you walk into the joining room and that's kind of where the print people hanged out and all of a sudden everyone becomes less glamorous. You know, the half zips that everyone are wearing on Radio Row suddenly just become really, really, really shitty, you know,

button down shirts that don't fit or aren't tucked in at all. You know, a lot of khaki pants going, more khaki pants than we're on the Rams sideline the other day. That says something to you. And it's so funny because as a kid, you know, I'd hear on the radio about Radio Row and the Super Bowl and everything. And even now when you go in, they check your, your security badge like nine times before you get down there. And I just think, imagine anybody who's not a super who's not a sports writer coming down. This would be the least glamorous place in the world. I mean, there's, you know, it's so exciting. Oh, my God, covering the Super Bowl. And then you get down there and you're like, oh, my, this just could be any convention with, you know, sort of haggard looking white men.

This just, there's just nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing romantic. take about this. And again, I'm not complaining. Like I said, I'm so happy to be here. I just think the image, the image and the, and the romance of Radio Row is, is probably not exactly what it is when you, when you actually get up close. So there's that. But you get to see Mike Lurio's giant set. So that's, that's something. You get to see Mike, you can see, and I did see, and I saw Floreo kind of standing off near her building today. That was kind of a moment. I'd like to talk to you about this controversy. This is like the dumb version of Covington, which was the pushback to videos of LA bars being unexcited about the Rams winning the NFC championship game. Did you see this?

Yes, I did. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, it was like one one video in particular where the Rams make the kick to beat the Saints in overtime and they're like four people and nobody stood up, nobody cheered, nobody just kind of like wanted another drink. And this whole kind of debate about whether LA is a sports town. First of all, there are like a double digit people here, I believe from the LA Times. Of course,

Rams are in the Super Bowl. So media-wise, LA is excited. Arash Marcosi, who is a newly minted LA Times Sports column, is tweeted for future big sporting events. I'm going to go to a random bar

with six people and one TV to capture the emotions of an entire city. Which is pretty funny. But it was such a big hit on Twitter, right? Because one, that's what people want to believe. about L.A. And two, that is sort of L.A.

at some level, right? I mean, it's not fair exactly. But part of L.A. really is that sort of level of, you know, sort of mild to heavy disinterest in everything. Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, listen, one of

the greatest parts about living in L.A. was that you could find a bar with a seat and a relatively big screen TV playing the game you wanted to see just about whenever you wanted it, right? I mean, it's, part of it's just that it's this, it's this sort of unholy, I mean, bar scene-wise is sort of like unholy cross

between New York and the suburbiest suburb that ever existed. And so there's this like kind of vibrant or expansive bar scene, but there's, you know, there are TVs in every bar, there's an overabundance of space. And so it doesn't strike me that it's that hard. to find, you know, a bar with a TV and a football game on that nobody really cares about. Now, you're right. It is a very funny joke. I think Hirash's joke is, you know, it kind of answers it just appropriately. Finally, I don't think we can talk about anything on a media podcast without talking about the layoffs this week at Huffpoho, at BuzzFeed, and other places.

and the Super Bowl version of this was I reached out to a number of people who were, let us say, magazine writers, big columnists at newspapers, the kind of people I think who would have been sent to the Super Bowl without a second thought, even a couple of years ago. And I'm not talking about the 80s, you know, where the Boston Globe sent 30 people. I mean like a couple years ago, those were the people you'd see at the Super Bowl. And they were kind of kind of not, they were not coming. and kind of, you know, it was a kind of sign of the times that they're not coming. And I don't want to cast that as the worst thing in the world because there are plenty of people

who don't have jobs at all. And I'm not even sure at the end of the day that we need one billion Super Bowl columns from everybody. But that is something I think that's just another of the 100, you know, signs of media and sports writerly illness that are in the world right now is that just lots of that that sort of sign assure am I using that word right that you're going to get to go to the Super Bowl every year if you're a certain level of writer I think it's just done and you know that is again if we talk about moving from that kind of old newspaper remodel where so many people went to the big events

you know, whether it was the Masters, the Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby, Rose Bowl, National Championship game, all that stuff, to one where, you know, a smaller and smaller number of people are going to go, a lot more TV, people are going to go, a lot more brand people are going to go

to the point where they outnumber the journalists. Yeah. And I think we are rapidly getting there if we're not there already. Yeah, I mean, listen, I think that there's, that part of that is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, you, you talked about the way that, you know, the scope, the size and scope

of Radio Row, and certainly that's something that's evolved over time. It's not that long ago that, you know, Radio Row would have been a much more manageable or much less, you know, Epcot Center-esque experience. And, you know, there's got to be, there's got to be a lot of writers out there. I mean, certainly I've talked to some that, that encounter that sort of atmosphere. And they're like, I don't even know why I'm here. You couple that with a subject that we've talked about, that our boss Bill Simmons has talked about a million times that just like the at-home viewing experience

for almost every sport is just vastly superior to anything you can get live, right? So it kind of diminishes. The reason for being there then would be, you know, the peripheral stuff, which is a real and a very significant part of the sports writer's job, talking to athletes, talking to coaching, coaches, management, just generally just telling the story of what happened.

they're on the ground. But even that, when the media industrial complex has grown to the point is now, what you're getting out of it is not necessarily. I mean, you have to approach it a very specific way. It's not like it used to be. You know,

these writers aren't flying on team planes or getting any sort of real good intel. They're getting the same sound bites that the athletes have prepared and then give it to everybody else. And, you know, I mean, I was at home watching ESPN this morning and they already were, you know,

doing interviews on the ground. stuff and you could, you know, everything was just so canned and it's not a reflection of ESPN or anybody else, but it's easy to watch that and just be like, well, I mean, if I were there, I know I'd be getting the exact same lines, you know, and the exact same people coming, the exact same, you know, Super Bowl players from years past coming on to give their two cents and then explain what charity or what, you know, who's subsidizing their trip to the Super Bowl this year. And it just all seems, you could, you could understand why journalists themselves would kind of throw their hands up in the air and why you know their,

why management would would throw up their hands for them, I guess. Yeah. And I would probably, you know, say that even even 20 years ago before, you know, the walls came, came up or the curtain came down, pick your metaphor in quite the way it has now that the soup, something like the Super Bowl, unless you were covering one of the two home teams or unless you were, you know, a real big deal NFL writer, the Super Bowl was 90% of, going to the Super Bowl,

was 90% about status and 10% about journalism, right? It was a way of announcing that you have reached a certain level of sports writerdom. It was about career development, right? Because you're seeing all your pals and, you know, potential future coworkers and boss, future bosses and all that stuff or going on, you know, television or a radio show. So I think that was always it. I just think the, the kind of status level of, you know, the,

status era of sports writing is again for at least this particular group is coming to an end it's also funny when we talk about radio row is I don't know what the numbers are but there are a billion local sports radio shows here and a lot of them are bringing their entire lineup because I see their their they're you know booth filled from day to night with hosts doing a live show and you know to me like such a such a strange underrated story of this sports media period is how lively and sort of how much life sports radio still has left in it. I mean, talk about a medium that seems to have expired like, you know, 10 years ago. But a lot of those places are still making money, even in the podcast era.

And that's amazing because, again, I don't have a number. I don't have the numbers and it would take a little bit of research to figure it out. But when I look around, when you look around the journalists, the print journalists, you're like, This is a profession that feels a little bit on the ropes. When you look around Radio Row, you're like, this is a profession that may be technologically behind the times or rapidly getting there, but it sure looks like it's still making money.

It kind of looks like newspapers did like, you know, 20, 25 years ago. And I would call that a mild upset. Yeah. I mean, in some sense, this is the, I mean, this is more perfect for radio than the written word, right? I mean, at least not just that it's radio row, but just the, you know, if you're going to be getting the same sound bites out of everybody, then personality goes a long way, right? Or just like hearing. You might as well get them alive. Yeah, exactly. Hearing those words come out of their mouth, you know, goes a long way. And there's also, you know, I mean, the radio is still a medium about GITs, you know? I mean, it's about who you have sitting in front of you and talking to you. And I think in some ways, in some ways with the writers, there's, it's, it's almost like they're hamstrung by the presupposition that they could get everybody, you know, that everybody's a phone call away from that quote. And if you're not getting

them, then, then you're doing something wrong. But yeah, I mean, it's, it is, it is, it is, it is, striking. It is striking. I mean, I've, I have, I have only peripheral experience with, with, uh, the radio world. But it, it's amazing how, it's amazing like the kind of like outlays for just remote record. I mean, the amount of money that you can spend on doing a live remote is, is just mind-boggling when you think of all of the, you know, jobs that are lost and, I mean, you know, with downsizing and everything else. I mean, you could spend like, you know, $10,000 plus dollars just having somebody talking live on the air for five minutes from another location. And so it's, it is pretty wild. The amount of, like, the, the, the vibrance, like you said, the life that sports radio has left in it compared to some of the rest of the journalism, the journalistic world. let's do topic number three quickly David media bars the new york times uh reporter derrick m norman reports at the new york bar

the half king has closed its doors half king was owned by a group that included writer sebastian younger and scott anderson uh it was a semi legendary is that the right word new york literary bar uh since opening in 2000 it was a site of readings and book parties that you and i attended together over the years a place where the friends of Tim Hetherington and Chris

Hondros, the war photographers who were killed in 2011, gathered to grieve. I remember when play magazine closed where I was working at the time we had our goodbye party at the half king.

What? The media bar. You and I spent way too much time in media bars. A partial list would include Chumley's, Old Town Tavern, White Horse, the Algonquin, Scratcher.

Can we, Can we get that in there? In the modern era for sure. Yeah. Langen's, which is the old Murdoch, New York Post place. Is the Bidi Bar still a thing? Let's say journalists are still going to drink. And I can provide evidence of that from Atlanta.

Sure. But are we now, again, and not sadly, just because the March of Time sort of leaving the era of the, of the journalist bar? if that sounded like the bad pitch for a trend story it was. I mean, to some extent, sure. I think this actually relates more to our first topic in a sort of sneaky way. But if, you know, in a world where we're always, so many journalists are like always on call, if not literally because their editor said they are, but they're on the call of Twitter, you know, and they're, they feel responsible to react to everything in real time.

That certainly puts a damper on, you know, your after hours proclivities. I mean, it's hard to imagine, you know, Dan Jenkins in his time, in his prime, having much of a Twitter presence after 6 p.m. Or at least not one that Sports Illustrated would have been excited for him to put out into the world. Probably not. But, you know, it's funny you mentioned Play Magazine closing, you know, the sort of sad stories about the Half King that were in that piece. he's at Tim Hetherington and, you know, I have, I mean, some of my sort of most poignant, I mean, I guess it's no surprise, most poignant memories of times in these bars, despite having spent much time in whatever the modern equivalence of them are, are, you know, both sort of sad moments where

everybody just is looking for a place to gather, but also for, you know, in some instances, trying to reclaim the kind of imaginary, the imaginary, the imagination. ideal of what a literary bar or a media bar was, right? I mean, it's... There we go. Yes. And I think that's where... That's where... And that's where it's sort of most powerful or poignant now is kind of searching out

that bar, searching out that, you know, finding that place where people like you gather. And, you know, that's the story of bars in the world. But I... But there is such a... There is such a tradition, you know, especially... in New York of all of the all like every bar has every bar has a you know signed copy of the cover of Angela's ashes on the wall you know or whatever like every you know every every bar has some claim to literary to you know to literary lore and uh and listen that when you're when you're

move to a city and and you're trying to figure out what you're doing with your life and your career if you're if you're dealing in the words whether there's journalism or fiction writing or whatever else. I mean, there's nothing like the comfort you get from from sitting underneath a framed copy of a book that you love, you know, I mean, or a writer that you have, a picture of a writer that you admire and to sort of dwell in the same place, you know, as, where some book was, you know, that you love was written before to, to, to put out your laptop or your notepad and jot down a few words there. I mean, there's a real power to that. I think it's undeniable.

And I think that, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, there are more, there are things more powerful in this world than that sort of tradition and that sort of history. And, and, you know, real estate prices is, is, is the answer to that question. Yeah. No, but your point of, your point of base, right, you made a second ago, because it feels like before you become a writer, you pretend to become a writer. You're not, you're not, you're not actually. writing anything or not actually write anything that's actually very good but you're like what if i go to this bar um and and play hemingway because a writer i really like was here before me and he used to hang out here or she used to hang out here and they were really good um and if i come here i'm going to

kind of you know through some magic seance kind of imbibe some of their talent somehow or i'm going to carry myself like them you mentioned dan jenkins you and i used to go to p jrks because That's where he used to hang out in New York. Also because they had really good cheeseburgers, but yeah. They had really good. That was mostly our interest. But the Jan Jenkins part was cool too. I'm also glad you mentioned Frank McCourt because I was going to say,

I feel like we would walk into a bar in New York, be like, oh, wow, Frank McCourt used to that's cool. And then we go down the street and there would be another copy of Angel's Ashway. Wait, this was also Frank McCourt's bar? Like, I thought that the last one was, we had more than one. It was, I felt, I felt that there was like, there were about two or three Frank McCourt bars in there. I can't quite figure out what was the other one.

The other one I feel too is that the, it's also that sort of feeling of belonging to the fraternity of writerdom, which is a slightly different romantic feeling than just, you know, trying to drink at the same place. Another writer of the past did, you know, getting to, it's sort of like journalists getting together, especially now, and commiserating about, you know, how shitty their publication is, are their editor or, you know, I know this is going to come as a shock to people,

but journalists are incredibly insecure people and want to, you know, tell you about either all the good things they did or all the bad things they did at some length. And that's kind of the use of the literary bar, right, is to get the whole tribe together for somebody to kind of take the lead and, you know, send out the email and pick the appointed night and then everybody sort of shows up and, you know, know, bears their soul in a mildly to very annoying way. Yeah. No, I think that's right.

I mean, I think that, I mean, I don't know that there's, I mean, listen, take away the literary bars and we're all, we're all performing as a, as, we were all performing as a, as, we were all performing as writers before we were writers, right? I mean, we were all ripping off, you know. Some of it still are. Yeah. We were all aping to writers that we read growing up or that we were reading contemporaneously and and trying to be that person.

and then eventually through that you'd figure out what you can do or you develop your own style but yeah no i i think that's i think that's absolutely right i mean listen if if every bar were more literary the world would be a better place i feel comfortable in saying that but um but you know there's the it's it's sad to see these bars go it is i mean it's it's uh the half king was a The Havkin was a great place. A lot of the other bars on the list that you mentioned still exist, but exist in sort of, you know, mutant forms. A lot of Planet Hollywood kind of ways, yeah. Sure, yeah.

I mean, and that's just sort of the, I mean, the literal cost of doing business in New York City. You know, it's nice when you could, I mean, maybe I was blind to the sort of consumerist aspect of it in my early days, too. I mean, I think that there's some places that did seem pristine. you know, part of it's getting there at the right hours, but, you know, Chumley's before it closed down was just, you know, one of those places that even, even as the, even as the sort of after work set moved in, you could, you could feel a little bit of magic in the floor, you know, and, and, you know, I, I think that it's, it's, it's, there's something great about it. I mean, really, there's, it's just, there's something fantastic. I mean, you come to a literary city to, to be a literary person. It's nice to, it's, it's nice to be able to drink that way. too. Let's quickly do the notebook dump. Our obsession with 2020 presidential media continues, David. This is my favorite note of the week.

The big story was, I think, the Kamala Harris campaign roll out with lots and lots of people in Oakland. But let's, I think my favorite was this note from the New York Times, Joe Biden said he made a mistake in supporting the tough on crime drug legislation of the 80s and 90s. Okay. That's not an uncommon stance for a newly. woke Democrat trying to appeal to the changing Democratic electorate. But in a tweet, Alex Shepherd of the New Republic notes that Biden boasted about his role in passing the 1994 crime bill in his memoir, which was published 14 months ago. So this is almost Charles Barkley. I didn't read my own autobiography level of denunciation.

14 months ago. Oh, yeah. Being woke. Wasn't that apparent wouldn't that kind of apparent that the crime bill was going to be a thing? Like 14 months ago?

Maybe it takes... It takes a long time to write a book. You think so. I'm thinking Joe Biden's maybe not being honest about this. I don't know. I don't think he maybe doesn't regret it as much as he says.

The other really weird thing was the Hillary Clinton 2020 thing, which is kind of resurfaced every couple of weeks and made another run this week. CNN reported that Clinton was telling friends that she

may in fact run for president in 2020 and then an NBC report splash cold water on that saying a source close to Clinton says it seems like supportive chatter from people and not much more than that. This is strange and I want to associate myself with this tweet

from Nira Tandon who runs the Liberal Center for American Progress. She says every few months, someone whispers to her reporter that Hillary has not signed in blood that she won't run and we get this media swarm which is an opportunity to drag her it then ends within a day with actual

advisors saying she's not running it's painful and mean and should end yeah I agree with that it's weird because it'd be one thing I think if it were Fox News which is you know still in what did Hillary know about

Benghazi and the Russia stuff or whatever mode kind of 24-7, but it's actually not. And again, I don't, I don't know if she's 98% not running and just kind of, you know, kind of, you know, semi-officially 2% thinking about or just leaving her options open, which she, of course, has every right to do. But it's just a really weird, persistent news story. And something, by the way, if you put Hillary 2020 in a headline, oh, boy, is everybody going to get excited about that? the other one I had was to continue to follow the story on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Millennial Reachout.

She had a tweet that included the phrase, All your base are belong to us. So that was kind of a moment in Twitter. And then also, she also waded into a Tomi Laron Cardi B. Twitter fight, which is kind of funny. She also had a thing where she was accusing Politico and at least one other news outlet of misattributing a quote.

Did you see this? Stephen Colbert had asked her about the pushback she's getting from Democrats and others and he said I want to ask this question in a respectful manner knowing also that you're from Queens so you will understand this question on a scale from zero to sum.

How many fucks do you give? And then Politico says Akazio-Cortez reached to her side as if rummaging through an imaginary bag and pulled out her hand to make a circle. I think it's zero. She said to laughs and cheers from the crowd. So the Politico headline was Akazio Cortez says she gives quote zero in quote fucks about pushback from the Democrats. Casio Cortez did not like that. She said this reinforces lazy tropes about

women leaders in media. Older plus season but unlikable, passionate but angry, smart but crazy, well intentioned but naive, attractive but uninformed or gaff prone. It's unoriginal, lazy and men don't get the same either or coverage. What did you make of that? I'm inclined to cut her some slack. I think that I tend to agree with her more than I disagree with her. And even when I disagree with her, it's usually a matter of volume, I mean, a matter than anything else. But I think that the matter of degree, I should say, but the amount of times that like the never tweet argument has been directed at her since she rose to public prominence and by, you know, people on her ideological

and people who are ideological allies nominally has been pretty pretty wild I think that you know even if you buy that there's a case to be made that you know she can just tweet all she wants she can say whatever she wants

and I mean and show her career will will rise or fall based on her own statements but it is sort of it is it is sort of wild just to watch the media in general try to figure out what rules she needs to be held to in real time and just sort of groping with that. I mean, she's more cut from the cloth of these journalists that we were talking about before who can't get off Twitter than she is any other politician.

And so there's this sort of weird, there's this, you know, weird incongruity between the standard they're holding her to and the standard they hold themselves to. but it's a, I don't know. I mean, it's, it all seems just like, just a, that and that in the Hillary stuff are the same. It just seems like just such a bizarre use of anyone's time right now. Yeah. The only other thing I would add to that is, isn't part of her issue here with Stephen Colbert? Yes.

Isn't he the guy who asked this question away like, hey, I know you're from the Bronx, so let me ask you. Like, isn't he the one sort of. playing into the stereotype instead of just being like what do you think about this um because it sure seems to me like this whole thing started when he asked her that question that particular way yeah um i think i think that's true and i think that if she weren't a candidate who he thought he could have a conversation about fucks with and she wouldn't have been there sitting next to him you know i mean and that's a politician not a candidate but but yeah i mean i agree um i also just think that it's you know, people are allowed to make jokes.

And it's okay to be like, to say you don't think that joke's funny, but to like, there's, I don't know what the, what the moral standard is when you're talking to Stephen Colbert. The, also, Ocaso Cortez went back and forth with the Washington Post fact checker, Glenn Kessler. Yes. About whether she deserve three Pinocchio's for a statement about the living wage. And Max Reed, our old pal tweeted, uh, you can tell she's extremely online because she has this one guys she can't stop fighting with but also won't block.

So that was also, I thought that was very funny. And finally, David, Fox and Friends apologized last week for airing a graphic that said Ruth Bader Ginsburg was dead. This is according to Mediites Ken Meyer. Fox explained that this was a technical error that emanated from the graphics team.

Technical error. We accidentally declared a, a Supreme Court just. to whom much of American jurisprudence will hang to be dead on the air. Whoops. So I don't really have anything to add to that. That's the press box for this week. Chris Almeida helps with the research.

Jim Cunningham is our producer. Back next week, David, with more hot takes about the media. See you then, buddy. All right, man. I'll talk to you soon. David, I want to ask this question in a respectful manner, knowing also that you're from Queens, so you will understand this question

on a scale from zero to sum, how many fucks do you give? Um, I mean... You had more than one? Yeah, no, I think that's right. There we go, yes. You don't need a self-help book to define what it's like to, like, reach middle age.

We have 50 years of American sitcoms that teach us about that. You know, I mean, it's... There's something great about it. I mean, really, it's just... There's something fantastic. You come to a literary city to be a literary person. It's nice to be able to drink that way, too. Mildly to a very annoying way.

Whoops. Who had to get a tattoo of someone's face on your back? Who would it be? Oh, man. Are you going to answer this question, too? Because I think we probably have the same answer. Can we answer on the count of three? Okay.

You don't want to go first? You don't want me to just do it at the same time? Let's do it at the same time. Let's see if I'm right. Ready? Okay. All right. One, two, three.

Brent Musburger. See, I knew it. I knew it.