The Press Box - Trump and Haberman, LeBron's Sideline Interview, and the Meltdown at Harper's | The Press Box (Ep. 459)

Episode Date: April 24, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down Donald Trump's infatuation with Maggie Haberman (03:00), the media's outrage regarding sideline reporter Allie LaForce's question to LeBron James (23:00), and the fallout from 'Harper's' magazine firing editor James Marcus (41:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Intercom is the business messaging platform that does the manual work for you, automatically qualifying leads and scheduling demos. Their chatbot and messenger free you up to focus on the prospects most likely to convert. You can leave your pipeline to chance, or you can use Intercom. Start for free at intercom.com.com slash growth. That's intercom.com slash G-R-O-W-T-H growth. David, on April 20th, every media organization in America did a story on athletes, and weed.

Get it? 420. Weed. What I want to know is, what other dates on the calendar would you like to see become a fake peg for feature stories? This is easy for me. Okay. March 16th. Stone Cold Steve Austin Day.

Austin 316. I got it. Yeah. Austin 316 says, I just commissioned a feature story. What about an oral history of all news, New York radio stations that runs on October 10th? is 10-10 wins like a is that a universal thing? Everybody gets a 10-10-wins punchline. When did we like aren't we in the post-420 world at this point?

If we're at a point where professional athletes are smoking weed on camera for like for sports media outlets, aren't we past the point where we need to peg this onto like national like elbow in the ribs, tee weed smoking day? Yeah, is it just that journalism is essentially dad humor at a high level? And so they're just, they're just catching up. on the joke. I think that's part of it. Look what you're getting away with. I think that it's the tyranny of pegs. You know, it's like if you have faith, if you have faith in your, if you have faith in your investigation into athletes and weed, it doesn't need to be published on 420.

Yeah, I'd just like to see more things shoehorned into the blank and weed template. Okay, go. North Korean diplomacy and weed. A quiet place and weed. Yeah, athletes and weed seems a little bit too restrictive at this point. You're listening to the press box, a disappointingly sober part of the Ringer podcast now. The Press Box is the media podcast. We are not allowed to assemble a seven-round mock draft. Had Tip Roger Sherman on that one. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer.

I felt last week was an incredibly good week for substantial big ringer stories. Did you, David? Really enjoyed Lindsay Zolads on the Me Too Rehab and Allison Herman on Amy Schumer. And if you insist on finding our stuff, you can read me on the Denver Post's Endangered Sports section. And David, in audio forum on Westworld in our new pod, Westworld, the recapables. Thank you. David, three topics for you today for this podcast. First, we talk about Trump's fixation, or is it reliance on New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman? Second, sideline reporter Ali LaFource asks LeBron James a real question and everyone loses their ever-loving

minds, were they right to? And finally, three inevitable things about American life, death, taxes, and Harper's magazine firing its editor. What is the place in the journalistic culture for a monthly like Harper's today. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, a topic I like to call, wake up Maggie. I think I got something to tweet to you. Literally the same joke I was just about to make. I love this podcast. I knew you would. We both settled on the same horrible headline. David, the nation's political class paused this weekend for the funeral of Barbara Bush. But Donald Trump, as he often does, tweeted through it. And here are the tweets that caught my eye. You ready?

The New York Times and a third-rate reporter named Maggie Haberman known as a crooked H. Flunky, who I don't speak to and have nothing to do with, remember that line, please, are going another way to destroy Michael Cohen. That would be Trump's lawyer and his relationship with me in hopes that he will, quote, flip. They use non-existent, quote, sources and a drunk, drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman on it for his own account, lawyer who I have always liked and respected.

Most people will flip if the government, that is with a capital G, David, lets them out of trouble even if it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don't see Michael doing that, despite the horrible witch hunt and dishonest media. A couple notes about these tweets, by the way, Maggie Haberman, name was initially spelled with two Bs before Trump corrected himself. Also, he appeared to confuse Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz with Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein. He died in 2006, Corey in the Washington Post.

Did not know Trump was a fan of the Heidi Chronicles. Also, a Tom's photographer, this is also per the Washington Post. Tom Benner saw Trump looking at his phone in South Florida today. There was like a photo of Trump in a motorcade, like looking at his phone. I don't know if he's looking at his mentions or actually composing these tweets. Anyway, the subject of Trump's hire was a Friday, April 20th story in which Haberman and Sharon LaFranier and Danny Hakeem reported. about Trump's potentially deteriorating relationship with Michael Cohen. What did you make of this whole Trump, Twitter, binge, Tweetstorm, et cetera?

Yeah, putting me on the spot, as always. I don't know, man. In some ways, this was, we talked last week about how we were kind of seeing a Trump that's sort of like a parallel universe Trump in certain ways. I think this is sort of the opposite end of the spectrum. This is the pure distillation. It's like as you said, while all living past presidents are at Barbara Bush's funeral, Donald Trump is just like in the bunker just, you know, typing in the tweet version of nuclear codes. I mean, it's just going absolutely, absolutely haywire.

Yeah. Was he just mad that he wasn't there? Well, he was there and he wasn't. I'm not saying like he wanted to go. No, no, no. It creates a strange insecurity in him. I think a lot of people have read that back into it. I don't know that he was seeing live photos.

from there or anything, so I'm not sure how much that would have mattered. But knowing that like the Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, yeah, Melania, George W. Bush. I mean, these are people that he all has an extremely complicated relationship with, to say the least, are all at this funeral. Sure. All of whom he has invaded against except Melania publicly. And he is perhaps, you know, insulted her in different ways. Yeah, now that she laughed at an Obama joke at the, at the, we'll see, we'll see what kind of response she gets on Twitter now. here's a subject I have talked about to bring it back to Maggie Haberman for a second,

which is the interesting specific media story here, right? I've bandied about with people online is why does Trump talk to Maggie Haberman? Yeah. He insisted in the tweet that he didn't. But Michael Schmidt, New York Times reporter, posted a photo of Trump and Haberman in the Oval Office together. And here's some sound from Trump's interview with Haberman and other times reporters last July. Sessions gets the job. right after he gets the job, he recuses himself.

Is that a mistake? Well, Session should have never recused himself. And if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else. He gave him no heads up at all in any sense. Zero. Why do you think he continues to talk to her,

despite the fact that she has broken, surely, more devastating stories about Trump and the Trump White House than anybody? I think that there's some appeal of being a part of living history that it's kind of hard for you or I or anyone else who's not a president or someone of that stature to wrap one's mind around, right? People roll at the red carpet for Woodward to come in and write these books that end up being like 50-50 praise and just cut total takedowns, right? Yeah. Because it's sort of the thing that you do. And I think that certainly for Trump, I mean, without.

you know, over analyzing him. You know, he grew up in New York. The New York Times is, you know, the newspaper of record. And to have, you know, their top reporter there asking you, imploring you to talk about yourself, there's a lot of flattery built into that. Writing about you every day. Yeah. Which even he couldn't get from page six and the gossip column, the Daily News.

Sure. Right? And his, and the way that we've heard, you know, that's been reported that he takes in media or the media is kind of presented to him, it's a lot about the pull quotes or a lot about the part that's underlined either literally or figuratively. And, you know,

I think it's totally feasible that he's had a very high opinion of her on any given day. The more interesting question is why, yeah, you're right, why does he continue to talk to her if this is how he really feels? And, I mean, I guess the question is

whether he really doesn't, has changed his opinion of Maggie Haberman or is not sure that it's confusing her with someone? I don't know. It's very strange. Yeah, I would guess from the outside that his opinion of Maggie Haberman

can't have gotten better as she's broken story after story. We should say that the particular one in this case that made him angry was a Friday, this Friday, April 20th story, which included a couple of things like she and her co-writers, right. Mr. Trump has treated Mr. Cohen poorly

with gratuitous insults, dismissive statements, and at least twice threats of being fired. And she got, and somebody got the quote from Roger Stone, Donald goes out of his way to treat him like garbage. You know, whether that, I think there's a couple of things. One, another theory is essentially that she's just so good at her job. Yeah. That you have to talk to her, right?

Yeah. That Trump sees some kind of benefit or, you know, requirement. I wouldn't believe that with just about anyone else except for Donald Trump. But yeah. Yeah. I think that there's some, I think there's definitely some truth there. Also just that he just like likes the attention. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Not only good. In the moment for sure. Yeah. Right. Like somebody's calling and he can get on the phone and talk. He likes to talk. And you're right. He comes from the as sensitive as he's made out. He's portrayed to be at times. He definitely comes from the no publicity or all publicity is good publicity school. Right. He is the headmaster of that school. Yeah. He is the dean. And I think it's probably I think it's probably easier for him to read some of our other pieces and sort of dismiss it all as publicity. But when the piece is about Cohen and the piece has his has other friends and conversations. anonymously or on the record, sort of notching points against him as well. I mean, God, Roger Stone, who would have thought that he would have, I mean, I guess anyone would have thought he would have gone on the record there, but on this for this story, you know,

that's got to hit him where it hurts. And I think that it's, you know, it's probably a cumulative effect. Yeah, I think that it's interesting, it's interesting because Trump gets so much negative publicity from the major news outlets in the United States, that it's interesting when something sets him off. Yeah. Like, what is the ingredient that you really do? In this case, Haberman herself has written that he finds the New York part of this investigation much more, he has advised him much more threat.

We've seen elements of that from the very beginning. Right. Then the Mueller investigation. Here's Haberman responding on CNN to what she thought was the nature of Trump's relationship with Michael Cohen. The president has destroyed their relationship pretty handily on his own over a very long period of time. And that is what the story was about, which is that he has been, he is abusive, according to almost everyone I speak to, to most people in his orbit and family is not accepted from that. But he is particularly abusive to Cohen over the years.

And then the question becomes, does that come back to haunt him? But essentially, I think the takeaway from that, David, is that like the Trump gets defensive when it's really getting close, right? And it's getting close to the mark. You know, something about him trying to fire, you know, wondering out loud whether he should fire Mueller, right? Or reporting about him insulting Jeff Sessions, right? That's not that threatening, right? The end of the day, Trump probably likes that that's out in the world. He probably likes to know that Mueller and Sessions are reading those kind of stories.

But when it's something like this where it's like, uh-oh, she's making a really good case that Michael Cohen could flip to use his word on me, then I think he just gets a little, you know, ugh, yeah. I mean, I think it was Jonathan Chate last week who made, I thought a really salient point about all this is that with all the talk about flipping and, and, you know, people. giving up the goods on Donald Trump and whatever turn of phrase from the, you know, from the, you know, from the olden days that you want to use. It really seems like somebody should be out there saying like, it doesn't matter what Michael Cohen does because Trump hasn't done anything wrong. One would think that that would be the conversation that the president, at least the office of the White House, was steering the narrative in that direction.

But instead, Trump's just sort of going in with this like flipping thing. And I know he made the point that anyone would flip, given the pressure. and I guess you can read into that anyone would What he would say is that anyone would lie under oath for the sake of not going to jail. For a long time, yeah. But the entire narrative has now turned into Will Miller find out what Trump did wrong

and not did Trump do something wrong? Yeah, it's not I'm innocent. It's like, don't worry, he won't flip on me. Yeah. He knows how to handle. He knows how to play this. Alan Dershowitz was on TV last week or over the weekend saying if you dig into anybody

with a portfolio as big as Trump's, You can find things. You can send him to jail for something. Right. You know, it's just like everybody's making. Which was not, he's innocent. Yeah. It's a really bizarre like series of like this, this tapestry of excuses.

This was part, a small part of a very bonkers Twitter weekend for Trump. Should we go over some highlights? Can we talk about Sylvester Stallone? Are you going to get? Yeah. Let's start there. Sylvester Stallone called me with the story of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. His trials and tribulations were great.

His life complex and. controversial. And yes, I am considering a full pardon. Yes, that's pardon Jack Johnson. This is something I can align myself with Trump on for sure. But just the whole. But what a weird tweet of all the tweets. Okay. Beyond the Jack Johnson bit. Yeah, so Vester Stallone called me. I loved there was an amazing line in the time. I mean, just like we could just isolate literally every line in the times. Right. But this one was particularly funny to me. The White House did not immediately respond to a question.

about the frequency with which Mr. Trump and Mr. Stallone communicate. Could be daily. Could be hourly. There was also this tweet about Mr. Peepers. Oh, my gosh. Where he was using the air quotes. Yeah. So the exact quote is, the Washington Post said I refer to Jeff Sessions as, quote,

Mr. Magoo and Rod Rosenstein as, quote, Mr. Peepers. This is, quote, a quote, According to people with whom the president has spoken, end quote, there are no such people and don't know these characters, just more fake and discussing news to create ill will. Okay. Wait, so I'm confused. Is he saying that Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein don't exist

when he says there are no such people? Also, are you as mesmerized by Trump's use of air quotes as I am? Yes. Mr. Peepers. Yeah, I'm actually very impressed by his tweeting style in general. A couple of people pointed out that there are very few people in the press corps under the age of 40 who, you know who that is. Mr. Peebers? Yeah, or Mr. Magoo, even.

They may have heard Mr. Magoo. Oh, under 40. Yeah. Do I say under 40? Yeah. They may have used, they would have any idea who Mr. McGoo was. No. Mr. McGoo is old for us.

Yeah, you're aware that it's like derisive, but that's about it. Another tweet from the weekend, sleepy eyes Chuck Todd. Definitely the weirdest of his insults. A fake news NBC, slippery Comey, maybe number two, but a fake news NBC just started, just stated, excuse me, that we have given up so much in our negotiations with North Korea and they have given up nothing. Wow. We haven't even given up anything, ampersand, they have agreed to denuclearization so great for world. World is capitalized.

Site closure and no more testing, exclamation, point. I love the wow as the sort of acerbic response to the first part. It definitely feels like a dad text or something, you know, and it's just. Like one of your parents is upset about like a sports take and is forwarding that on to you? Yeah, wow comma is an amazing way to start a sentence, especially for a world leader. There's also a tweet this weekend that just said a complete witch on exclamation point. I missed that one. I guess that got lost in the haze.

I don't know. I'm sure it meant he doesn't like he doesn't link his tweets, right? So sometimes it's like it's his, it's his like kicker. Sure. But you don't, if you're not there at the moment, you don't quite understand what it was to? It's true. Do you see the thing? Do you see the minor kerfuffle about him referring to Marlago?

as the Southern White House. Yes. And that's a, that's a, an apparent ethics violation because you should not be able to buy your way into any remote White House.

Remember when things like, it's a branding opportunity? Remember when things like Marilago and Twitter? And you mentioned the photo earlier of like the idea that he wouldn't give up his iPhone. You remember when those were

the controversies that momentarily obsessed us? Yes. That was, that seems like a very, very long time ago. I'm not sure if that means that like all of that was meaningless and we should not care about

such things in the future or if it just means that, You know, it's hard to remember the rain after the monsoon is hit. I think it's pretty much the latter. One more chapter to this, which was the photo of all of our living presidents and first ladies, standing together at Barbara Bush's funeral, George, H.W. Bush. I think photos like that are interesting. I also think we can over romanticize that there was this world before Trump when everything was fine, right?

and everything was a cordial and all the politicians were nice, right? I just want to say with it with, you know, again, it is, it is, there is something I am not immune to, you know, having my heart warmed by seeing a photo like that. But in Trump is certainly an outlier in media terms and presidential terms and everything terms, right? Sure. But everybody in that photo had their rough edges. and everybody, you know, a lot of the people in that photo ran really nasty campaigns back in the day. This is it reminded me that remember when that George Bush wrote to Bill Clinton upon losing the presidency and handing it over to Clinton was going around on Twitter like crazy in 2016. Like, look at the guy I used to this office.

Let's just not over-romanticize old politicians. Let's not let Trump turn everyone who came before him into a saint in every part of their lives because of his behavior. and his tweets and everything else. Yeah. That's all I have to say on that. Yeah, I'm with you there. All right, David, now it's time for our overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Should we just get Stormy Daniels's sketch out of the way first? Yeah. I mean, that's the best one. Yeah, last Tuesday, Daniels and her lawyer, Michael Avanotti, released an artist rendering of a man who threatened Daniels allegedly threatened Daniels in Las Vegas after she negotiated to sell her Trump affair story to a magazine. He was kind of a The perp

It was kind of a long-haired Vagely handsome looking guy With a 5 o'clock shadow Nice drawline, yeah That's jawline, right If you read media Twitter You saw people ID the assailant As noted actor Klaus Kinski

Mark McGrath The puppet Gary Johnston From Team America World Police That yes Johnny Damon That's from our producer Jim Cunningham Good job Jim And most commonly

The famously bad Tom Brady courtroom sketch. You think. Thanks to Jackson, Claire, and Kyle Madsen for that one. I think that every week there should be an unofficial

caption contest on Twitter. This fit the bill. Yeah, this was like the world's unofficial caption contest. The world sees a photo and everybody makes a joke simultaneously. David, did you see that

Shania Twain is back in the news? I did. Asked by the Guardian about Donald Trump, America's favorite 90s pseudo-country crooner said, quote, I would have voted for him because even though he was offensive,

he seemed honest. dot, dot, dot, dot. I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation for being not that, right? It was the lowest of low-hanging fruit to tweet, that don't impress me much. People who might have felt warmly about Shania Twain before, but now are mad that Shania Twain showed some Trump curiosity. I just think, yeah, any Shania Twain lyric tweet is a winner in my book.

That's from Daniel T. Clark and Colton Saylor. Also, by the way, I enjoy the Shania Apolitone. afterwards. Quote, as a Canadian, I regret answering this unexpected question without giving my response more context. I want to start every sense of my life with as a Canadian, comma. Matthew Zitland, who this week gets promoted to permanent guest host of the press box for his numerous contributions to this podcast, sends another good one. David, did you happen to say the new American panic over lettuce? Oh, yeah.

The remain. Right. Cases of E. coli were discovered. Lettis grown in Yuma, Arizona, and the Centers for Disease Control issued a warning about all remain lettuce in the United States. We were tossing lettuce into the trash in my house. Did you see the overworked Twitter joke? It's the decline and fall.

Wait for it. Of the Romaine Empire. Yes, yucksters include Emily Nussbaum and the New Yorker, Dan Zack of the Washington Post, and Peter Sutherman. It's like a list of writers I really like. I know. It's like a list of journalism award. My favorite thing about this segment is reminding me to check out the latest stories by these great writers. Right.

Dan Zack tweeted that. He must have written a good one also. And finally, I should say, news came last week that LeBron James bought 15 gray suits for his calves teammates, which they wore to game three of their series against the Pacers. And then the calves lost game three. Yeah. After which a bunch of people tweeted stuff like, I hope LeBron kept the receipt. But the best tweet came from basketball writer Rob Mahoney, who wrote, quote, for sale, 15 suits barely worn.

If you can make jokes using apocryphal, artist Hemingway quotes, you got to do it. Yep, that's so good. Thanks to David Mulhern for that one. All right, speaking of LeBron, David, let's talk about his interview with Ali LaForce after this brief commercial break. Hey, guys, this is Sean Fennessey, the editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and I want to tell you about a podcast I host called The Big Picture. Each week, I welcome a different filmmaker to talk about their latest movie and how it was made. I've talked to the directors of some of my favorite movies, including Jordan Peel, Greta Gerwig, Ryan Johnson, Barry Jenkins and dozens more.

You can find new episodes on the Channel 33 feed every Friday by going to the ringer.com backslash podcasts or by subscribing to Channel 33 wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you'll check it out. Our second topic, David, I'd like to call LaForce is with me. I am one with LaForce.

LaForce is with me. I'm one with LaForce. In game two of that aforementioned Cavs Pacer series, LeBron James, scored 46 points. But the question he was asked after the game wasn't LeBron. How big was that performance? Or what can you say

about this team's heart? It was this from Turner reporter, Ali LaForce. During this game, we got the really devastating news. The Spurs announced that Aaron, coach Popovich's wife,

officially passed away. I know you're close with Pop. Any words or thoughts you'd like to share with him? Oh. Oh, shit. I mean, I'm a huge pop. On Friday.

It starts at 7 p.m. It starts at 7 p.m. I mean, I'm a huge pop. I love pop. That's such a tragedy. And, you know, my best wishes goes out to pop and his family. I know that's devastating news. And holy, it's just a lot.

I mean, the NBA family, we all stick together. I know we compete every night. But something like this happens, it puts everything in perspective. if so. And thus started one of the great sports media Twitter fights of 2018. We'll get into the circumstances in which the question was asked in just a second. But let me say this flatly, as if LaForce had just walked up to LeBron and asking the question cold. Yeah.

I'm okay with it. Yes. I'm not offended. I'm not offended at all. And I, what do we want sideline reporters to do, right? Do we want them to ask the toothless question that I like to make fun of on Twitter? or do we want them to ask interesting questions that might actually elicit news

and or an interesting response? And if it's door number two, there are going to be moments that are a little bit awkward. That's okay. Yeah. That's okay. Where did you fall on this?

I was sort of perplexed by the whole controversy. I mean, I understand it logically. But I didn't, I think I caught on right about the time that like Ernie Johnson was apologizing for it. Right. I was going on to explain the context, but yes. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I guess, I guess if I were going to take exception to it, it would just be like, you know, asking that question, asking about, you know, death in a post-game interview.

But I don't disagree with the depth of the question, the surprise L aspect, the, you know, potential conscience. potential controversy of it. I just, it seemed like, I mean, maybe I'm just too cynical, but it all seemed like sort of what, I mean, that's exactly what I would have expected her to ask. And it seemed, and I would not have expected anything, you know, I would have expected LeBron to be exactly as prepared for it as he was. I saw a journalist on Twitter saying the question wasn't appropriate. And I guess I don't really care that much whether it was appropriate, right?

And for many of these journalists that were tweeting this, appropriate is like so far down their list of journalistic values, right? You know, they want to get news and hold the people accountable, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then like appropriate is like number 39 on the list. Yeah. And it's probably two tweets away from a thoroughly inappropriate tweet that they tweeted themselves. Right. But I guess I'd rather her ask an interesting question than an appropriate question.

Yeah. I mean, I don't have much, I mean, you know, you're not going to find me using phrases like outrage culture. around this podcast or this office very frequently. But there is certainly, there's certainly a degree to which we, on Twitter especially, people get offended for other people. Like people will call things inappropriate.

They'll call things offensive, but they won't point out who is actually offended by it. Is it Greg Popovich by proxy? Is it LeBron? Right. Someone has to be offended for something to be offensive, I think, sort of definition. He's standing like they say in court.

Yeah, exactly. And so if you're just like this, you can't do this, like someone out there might be upset that I don't really, I don't really get it. Yeah. Why does LeBron, by the way, why does LeBron have to answer this? Why can't he say something like this is, you know, if she asked him, pops a question cold again, going with this for the moment. Why can't he say it's awful news, but, you know, I'd like to call pop and tell him what I feel before I, you know, endeavor to say something on camera. I think that the only, the only, if you want to talk about propriety in this situation, I think that it's that, I mean, you could make the case that LeBron or any athlete in his position for them that this is the most rote sort of robotic thing they do in the course of a day.

Like playing basketball is a million times more kind of spur of the moment than this. Like this is just improvisational. Yeah, improvisational. And this is, and so that's why it was more of a surprise to like go, because it's hard to get further out of left field, I guess, when you're used to saying like, like, he was, he was just like trying to figure out which of the four, like, this team just needs heart answers he was going to give and then and and that question came. But, but I mean, honestly, it's like if if the side if more sideline reporters were asking questions like that, then we'd probably, like you said, it would be a more interesting enterprise altogether. A friend of mine sent a note and said he felt, what he felt uncomfortable with was the fact that Aaron Popovich's death was being milked for content by the media, right? That everyone was trying to get a sound bite or a video clip that they could throw up on Twitter.

and, you know, kind of win Twitter for five minutes. Right? And he's right, right? That is what journalists were doing, or lots of them, right? Here's Kevin Duran hearing the news from reporters at Warriors practice. What? Literally, Kevin Glewley, just found out two minutes ago. Yeah, they just put out a statement two minutes ago.

Seriously? Prayers and caduce is God to his family. Damn. I don't know what to say, man. And I guess I share the squeamishness at some level, but you know what? It's journalism, right? And let's say a reporter from the San Antonio Express News, right after that was announced, called up Tim Duncan, told him what had happened, got Duncan's thoughts and put them up online. How is that any different, right?

Other than Tim Duncan not being on camera, how is that any different? How is that not just like a very basic function of journalism? I just don't want to get it. Yeah. No, I'm with you there. And as it turns out, Ali LaFourst didn't pop this question into LeBron, right? As LeBron explains here. This is where it gets good.

Yeah, in an uninterrupted video, she actually gave him a heads up and asked him if he'd like to say something. That a question was asked to me postgame, and a lot of people felt like I was blindsided. That is absolutely false. Ali LaForest told me that she was going to ask me the question and if it was okay. And once I started talking about it, once we were on air, actually my emotions just kind of took over. And that was just my emotions coming straight from my heart. You know, funny, I think that this all speaks to something larger about sports television, which is we say when we watch these games that we want journalism, right?

We want skepticism. We want hard-headed reporting. But I think what we really want is probably comfort. We want a nice, well-produced, not-too-upsetting experience. And anything that has any kind of awkwardness or any kind of rough patch, we just go, oh, I don't like that. Yeah. I don't like it. I just want to watch this game and enjoy it.

I wouldn't want the athletes to be upset or anything like that. I don't think we do want journalism out of those things. Well, there's a small irony that this is that, you know, Greg Popovich is involved in this. story because he's he's the only thing that's made post-game interviews or, you know, sideline interviews worth discussing over the past several years. Right. Those are content in and of themselves. Yeah. And there's, you know, I don't think anybody cares that, that deeply about it, but you can certainly

find the, I mean, across the internet, there are many takes on whether Popovich is being disrespectful to the sideline reporters or whether he is like, you know, sublimating the crap. You know, if he's taking some just some brilliant meta, you know, take on the whole form. Absolutely. Or both. Or both, yeah. It's a, yeah, we do. We wish that the sideline reporters would ask more hard-hitting questions.

Ryan Rissillo, a friend of the ringer was talking on his podcast just last week about how some people should just stop asking pop basketball questions and just start asking him about politics, Donald Trump school shootings, whatever. Just the thing of the day, just make him answer those questions with hopes they could get an answer. of him. Yeah. Just jog him awake, sort of, you know? Something interesting. Um, and I think, you know, there's probably something to do that. If you don't want to talk, what's the point? If you're not going to say something, if you're not going to ask an interesting question and get an interesting answer, then that, then that seems sort of meaningless to me. Sure. Why not, right? I saw people tweeting about LaForce's producers, essentially they were saying, don't blame her, right? She's just, if you have a problem with this, she's doing what her producers want them to do. And it's true that

in the story of sideline reporters, producers are almost always the villain. I cannot tell you how many times when I've done stories about this. I'll go to a producer of football game and they'll say, oh my gosh, so-and-so sideline reporter, she is just,

she's as big a member of our team as anybody. And then they give her three minutes of a three-hour broadcast. Yeah. Which is like saying, David, you are the most important employee at the ringer, please write one sentence a month

so we can publish it. I mean, just like your actions actually just indicate exactly the opposite. Correct. But I think in this case, and I understand you're trying

to defend her by saying this, but I think you're blaming the producers as taking a certain agency away from her. Because to the extent I know about this world, if they said that and she did not want to do that and did not feel comfortable, she could just say into her talkback, I'm not going there right now.

Sure. I don't want to do this. Yeah. You know, I don't think this is appropriate. Well, they're shielding. Yeah, but they're shielding her just like an editor would, right? I mean, like that, I mean, I'm not saying that Sean Finacy would, you know, jump in,

I mean, you jump in front of a figurative bullet, but, you know, it's, it's, he, they would certainly protect you if something like, if this sort of controversy, uh, arose in something you wrote. Um,

but yeah, I mean, I just, it is, it's funny, it's funny that the producers sort of are, you know, kind of writing to her defense.

I, it's, well, it's not, it's more people on Twitter. It's blaming the producer. Oh, right.

It's like, don't blame LaFor's, blame her producers. Which sort of just seems unnecessary. Yeah. It's, I mean vaguely insulting if anything else. I totally agree.

I don't know. It was definitely weird, but I don't know why that, I don't know why this is the moment of great, you know, outrage. I think that, I feel like all of the content about this, about her passing leading up, I mean, before that was just as problematic if you're going to be offended by something. Yeah, I feel this is like, like love of Greg Popovich. Yeah. angst about sideline reporters I have a Twitter account and want to tweet something Yeah

Like all coming together into one weird ball Yeah That just doesn't seem really right at all The I think of the you were talking about the You know she's a very big part of the team That whole sideline reporter thing And I think I feel like that kind of reached its High Point when Doris Burke was doing that

But still you know occasionally working games And they so and you know the network was forced To try to reconcile those two things Dorisberg was a very big part of the program because everybody, because there was a large, you know, course of people saying, give her more to do. So they had to sort of, you know, explain that they care, you know, she had an very important role.

That's right. And then they compensated by actually giving her a very important role. Yeah. Yeah. But the idea that she had an important role as a sideline reporter, I mean, there might have been a ton going on behind the scenes, but you're right. That's not a very important part of the show.

And to, I think the more you defend it, the more that people are going to kind of call. bullshit on it. And I think that that's probably part of this whole thing, too. It's the sideline reporters. It's the, you know, feeling like the sideline reporters are trying to be portrayed as something more than unnecessary, which is we're comfortable, like you said, we want comfort. We want the simplicity of sideline reporters asking benign, totally disposable basketball questions. So we can see the guy who just scored 46 points. Sweat. Yeah. And potentially get like something dumped on him or whatever. Sweat drifting, dripping off his forehead.

And smiling, right, talking about its good game. Acting human but not too human. Being sad about someone passing is too human. The great example, of course, the uncomfortable sideline interview. Jim Gray, 1999 World Series, asking Pete Rose whether he's going to come clean about his gambling. Which led the Yankees Chad Curtis weirdly to boycott Gray after a World Series game. Like, I'm not, the team decided we're not talking to you. And again, that was another one exactly what I'm talking.

about everybody who had ever written a column about Pete Rose had said all those things. Sure. But just saying it on television and saying it in that time of place made everybody freak out. Yeah. My favorite part of that story is Gray once told me that he was just in the middle of this media maelstrom. And he gets a letter from young Roger Goodell, who is navigating his way through the bureaucracy of the NFL. Yeah, Commissioner saying, I thought you were absolutely right. I just wanted to just send a letter to support.

I didn't think you did anything wrong, which Goodell's office, in fact, confirmed to me that Roger had sent that letter. And I don't know if Roger was like what appealed to him was just the moral element of justizing Pete for gambling. Or he, you know, he does not strike me as somebody who likes hard hitting journalism as a value. So I always found that totally fascinating. All right, David. Finally,

a segment about a brouhaha from the magazine world that I'd like to call Harpers. Harper's Fury. That's a West Virginia reference, by the way. David, when was the last time you thought about Harper's? And I don't mean thinking about it in a John Jeremiah Sullivan published a piece there in 2002 kind of way. I mean it's a vital magazine that's still publishing. Last week, editor James Marcus told the New York Times he'd been fired after he took a, quote, principled stand concerning a March essay the magazine ran that was critical of the Me Too movement.

We'll talk about the essay in just a second, but has Harper's, like the new Republic magazine before it entered the zone where the actual stories it publishes get less attention than whatever scandal is consuming the magazine?

Yes. I mean, frankly, the last time I thought how long have I been in Los Angeles two years almost? Yeah, two and change, I think. I mean, so that's the last time I thought about Harper's.

Leaving New York was the moment you forgot about Harper. The last time I saw a copy of Harper was on, you know, a coffee table. at someone's apartment or, you know, in a publishing house waiting room, you know? I mean, that's honestly, probably the last time I thought of that. I'm sure I've read Harper's, although I was going over.

Have you? I'm sure I read something out of Harper's. I don't know. I mean, I would, I say I'm sure because it's this sort of like, it's ingrained into me as part of the discourse. But I was looking through like, you know, scanning through like Long Reads Best of 2017 to see if there was any Harper's content that I, that I could, you know, mention for this story. and I couldn't, nothing, nothing fell in my lap.

Yeah, I was looking at the, the TOC for the May issue. Jeff Dyer, Rick Moody, Rebecca Solnit, Jonathan D. Not bad. Jonathan D. is a little professor of mine. Great, great man. Not bad. Yeah. Here's the tote board for the transactions column of Harper's.

Lou Lapham, longtime editor, an extremely purple writer, ran the magazine for 28 years and left in 2006. Noted Texan Roger Hodge goes from 2006 to 2010. then Ellen Rosenbush from 2010 to 2015. Christopher Cox becomes that it lasts all of three months in 2015. That's all you need to know about what's going on there. Right. And then James Marcus from 2016 to 2018.

I was struck by Marcus's comment that Harper's President Rick MacArthur is, quote, looking for a doormat at this point to edit the magazine. So what Jerry Jones is to Dallas Cowboys coaches Rick MacArthur is to magazine editors. Is that about some of them?

Yeah. I think that makes it. I think that makes it, it's a pretty good, that does a pretty good parallel. Yeah. Also, we talk about this particular controversy.

What led to Marcus's ouster begins, and again, I'm quoting the Times here, Marcus tells the New York Times that MacArthur suggested the magazine, quote, run a contrarian piece on the Me Too movement. Always, we've all been in editorial meetings like this.

Go ahead. Always what you want to hear, right? Let's run a piece that will cover us all in shit. Yeah. Julia Malucci, who's the Harper's vice president of public relations, not an editorial role

reached out to Katie Roefe she's the one who reached out to Katie Roefe because she had a personal relationship with her some point of connection to her. She the publicist and she says maybe think about the fact that the publicist had to assign stories because the editor didn't have ideas. I don't know. Maybe that's how bad it was.

So this story gets a sign. I know. Royfey writes the story or you know it's not yet published right and then this whole thing starts out in journalism world right? Word circulates that she's going to out the creator of the shitty media men list in the piece. Moira Donaghan, who was the creator, then outs herself in an essay in the cut,

rampatively. Roy Fiann says that she wasn't going to out anyone. And then Nicole Cliff, who had a big Twitter thread about this this week, which we can talk about, who wrote for the late website, The Toe's, started offering other writers who had pieces in Harper's money to pull their articles in protest. Right, right, right. which is now where we are. That is a lot.

And then the piece kind of comes out and is like barely mentioned, right? Like I actually read it for the first time when it was getting ready for this podcast. Yeah. Well, it came out. I didn't even like, it was like, oh, right, it came out actually. All I remembered was the controversy about the story. So if you want to talk about Harper's the institution, I mean, just sort of the place for these like grand old magazines in the modern era. I mean, there was a point where a magazine, even a bi-monthly magazine, was still just like,

a blog, right? I mean, I guess not a blog. It was the, it was the mid-length ringer thing piece of media back then. And then you had, you had your, you know, there were weeklies that were the blogs, right, of that era. But the fact that it's not just the publication is so spread out, but that the, you know, the machinery that undergirds it is still such a sort of dinosaur that it takes, I mean, how long did it take between,

Donning an outing herself and the piece came out with two months later or something like that. I think that's about right. I mean, it's kind of crazy, right? And especially if you're going to stand by this piece and still publish this piece, if you, I mean, the new media, I mean, the 2018 thing to do would be to put it up on the internet during the, during the controversy. Right. We believe in the story. We believe in the story. And here's all the evidence you need that we're not outing anybody.

This is just a slightly, you know, contrarian take. But the presses were still running or something, right? I mean, it was triggered by a fact-checking query, right? Which is just like what, like, listen, I know a lot of wonderful fact-checkers. You know, I mean, you come across, if a magazine is employing fact-checkers to do this, kudos to them, right? There are too many places that are running without a fact-desk in 2018 and whatever. But, I mean, what a failure to trigger that sort of response and not be able to contain it? it seemed like that Harper's response is a little bit unbelievable on that point.

Well, yeah. Right. Well, there was also this thing where Royphy wasn't calling Donigan. Right. And saying, are you this person? I am reporting on this. It was a fact checker doing it on behalf of Royfei. Right.

So it's been outsourced to another person. Right. Which made the whole thing stranger. Very, very odd. To the point about the old schoolness of Harper's, Rick MacArthur in a 2014 feature in the time. Oh, yeah. To correspond with literary friends like William Volman and Robert Caro, he sends notes that he composes on a typewriter.

He also uses Word perfect, or he did in 2014, because he feels, quote, Microsoft Word argues with him. He also saves his pieces to 3.5 inch floppy disks, which did not know you could really readily find anymore. He also called the Internet. This was kind of a, this was a notorious quote at the time. He called the Internet. So the Internet to him wasn't much more than a job. giant Z-Rox machine. Yes.

And he said of Harper's, we're trying to create an island, I hope, of economic and literary sanity. The world is coming back in the direction of paywall's end of print. God. So it wasn't just... It's absolutely... It wasn't just a magazine that's lumbering along like a magazine. It was purposefully, you know, ancient, right?

The whole idea of was, please go to this newsstand or, as you say, waiting room on publishing house and read my magazine story. I think it's funny To me, Harper's interesting 15 years ago There were like two Entry-level jobs Into magazines

Or there were two frequently held ones Let's say this Yeah There was a Harper's internship And there was a new Republican internship Sure, those are the two internships That you took in lieu of going to J-School The better than J-School

Take that Exactly Because unlike J-School pays like a couple hundred bucks Or something like that The Harper's camp You had our old pals Tommy Crags And Rafe Bartholomeo

The New Republic Camp You have Stephen Roderick just about every known white male political writer and me. And you? And the cultural difference was amazing because I couldn't have been a Harper's enter, not forget being qualified or whatever, which I certainly was not into for anything. But I couldn't have been it because I'm too dorky, right? The new republic camp was just a lot like dorkier and, you know, more stiff.

Sure. Stiff is a good word. Harper's camp just feels cooler. You know, that just... Well, especially from where you're sitting. I'm sure that people in the Harper's desk would probably disagree. Yeah, but Harper's felt like it didn't need a nut graph, you know, like, right? Oh, no.

It wasn't like, you know, the contrarian Olympics. I mean, you could be walking the door at Harper's and you're like collecting art for the front of the magazine, like literal art, you know? I don't remember that job existing in the Republic. I was there. Literal art. But the amazing thing, too, and both these magazines had this in common is the magazines themselves have slipped. Meanwhile, their alumni network is running the world or running big chunks of the media world, right? on the masthead of the New York Times Magazine

you have Harper's alums Jake Silverstein and Bill Wasick Clara Jeffrey who had its mother Jones Craggs, Rand, Deadspin and Gawker Christian Lorenzen who's the book critic at New York Magazine. Harbors people everywhere. Yeah, I'm sure that's the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure, yeah.

Yeah, and that's just a very, very, very short list. Yeah, no, it's sort of crazy. I mean, you saw this when the New Republic was sold? I'm not sure if it's been sold since. Which time, yeah. Yeah. But when there were like a lot of the alum,

of the New Republic sort of came out of the woodwork to just decry the direction it had taken and, you know, what it... Right, it was somebody who was a contributing editor who just like, wait to that guy to arrive at the magazine. Right, but it's this sort of like this giant world of people who were like weaned there, who went on to bigger and better things, who are now, who feel territorial about the New Republic. Yes. And I'm sure the same is true for Harper's, but it's sort of like, you know, no one's, like, you're not trying to stick around and keep this place afloat. You're not going to use your newfound celebrity to change the, to mean, to change the modern perception. of it, right, outside of a tweet or two. You don't currently want to write for Harper's.

Yeah, exactly. I think we need to codify a rule of journalism here. This is not perfect, all right, but Curtis's law of magazines which is something like this, right? The smaller the circulation and the bigger the gap

between your former and current level of prestige, okay? The bigger and more insane the controversies your magazine will produce. Sure. I mean, this is also the Republic, right? This is Harper. Like, you will just then have these crazy controversies.

Yeah. This isn't happening at the New Yorker right now, right? Esquire, you know, got rid of their editor and a bunch of people quit, but this is, this comparable thing is not happening there, right? Mm-hmm. This is happening in Harper's. Yeah. I mean, I think if MacArthur wants to, you know, stay as far away from the internet as

possible, I mean, I guess it's too bad for him because he's just like, you know, welcomed himself into the internet in the worst possible way with this sort of ridiculous controversy. The only time that people are going to have talked about Harper's in years. as people is, you know, blog posts about him firing his editors all the time for crazy stuff. Totally. How long was Chris Cox there? Three months?

Three months. I mean, would you take a job where the previous editor-in-chief had only lasted three months without some just catastrophe being attached to it? Yeah, and I believe what his alleged violation was that he wanted to redesign the cover of the magazine. And MacArthur said, no. That's what it was reported as. Also, this one, I forget about this one, after firing Roger Hodge in 2010, John Koblin reported that a staff member was listening at the door of MacArthur's office while MacArthur was giving an interview to the New York Times about the firing. Yeah.

And produced a picture in the New York Observer of this staff member going like this. Uh-huh. I mean, just imagine if something like that happened at ESPN. Jim Miller would have already written like four oral histories about it. That would have the most incredible thing in the world. if John Skidman was listening in John Skipper's office when he was giving an interview and that's just that is

utterly incredible to me but it happened and it was so incredible we just forgotten about it. Wait I know we I know we've already been through the stories about Hodges' you know lack of or old fashioned

old fashionedness but you just said please keep going you just you mentioned Hodge and I just pulled up this note that said a couple months after his firing so presumably contemporaneous with that story A senior editor helped convene a meeting about publishing Harper's on the iPad.

MacArthur did not attend, but shortly thereafter staffers began receiving Xeroxed articles from MacArthur in their mailboxes that trashed the iPad and Kindle. Which weirdly connects back to his idea of the internet as a giant Xerox machine. Yeah, and then when somebody from the Times said that the Atlantic was profitable in that year because of their heavy investment on the web, his response was, quote, they're lying. They're a private company and they can say, whatever they want. Okay.

Okay, that's fair. I mean, it's fair that someone in that, you know, decade ago would have thought that the web would never be profitable, at least not in the, you know, structure in which money was being made at that point in time. There were some crazy stuff going on. I mean, you know, sort of paywalls and, I mean, this was the beginning of the paywall era, and that's all just sort of, it's maybe unfair. We've talked about this when we talked about Condi Nast not that long ago.

It's maybe unfair to compare Harper's to the ringer. Or, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of, there's big content differences, but to compare, you know, Harper's to something that is relatively new, that was born in the internet era. But, you know, it's not that hard to compare Harper's to Lafam's quarterly, which is what Lewis Lafamemann did when he walked out the door, and they have a great internet presence, you know? They find a way to manage to be current and not be, you know,

and to be vital, but presumably they're making money, even if, I don't know if they're operating as a nonprofit or what. It doesn't matter. They're doing fine. Yeah. I mean, what a strange thing is like not doing as well as Lapham's Quarterly. The strange measure of media success. But that's the thing is I don't feel like Laugham's Quarterly aspires to quite as well.

You know, they don't have their, they don't have their, there is quite as much starch into their shirts, you know. And I just, it's, it feels like that, you know, if you can be that. You can be what Harper's was. You can do it the way that, you know, N plus one is doing it, but it's with a little bit of a wink. you know, they're very self-serious over there too, but they still feel self-aware and modern. Right. And I don't know. It's like it's all just so crazy.

We don't need to do a classic Michael Kinsley story every week. But this one's particularly relevant since he was turned out of the Harper's editor job for Lewis Lapham. I don't know how long he was polishing this line. But the Washington Post called him about doing a profile of Lapham and Lapham's quarterly, as you mentioned, right? And this is what he said. He called Lapham a very mysterious character. One of the mysteries is, what the hell is he saying when he's writing? I sometimes feel like I'm in a reading comprehension test, and I'll turn the page and there will be questions like, what is the theme of this past?

One of the great lokey magazine burns of all the time. All right. That's the press box for this week. Thanks to our fearless producer, Jim Cunningham, and contributed to overwork Twitter joke, Jim Cunningham. David Shuemaker. See you next week for more hot takes about our media. universe. I've got another hour on Harpers, but we'll let it go. That'll be a bonus pod. All right. See you buddy. So you're sleepy eyes, Chuck Todd. Yeah. Intercom is the business messaging

platform that does the manual work for you, automatically qualifying leads and scheduling demos. Their chatbot and messenger free you up to focus on the prospects most likely to convert. You can leave your pipeline to chance or you can use Intercom. Start for free at intercom.com.com. That's intercom.com.com slash g-r-o. W-T-H growth.