The Press Box - What Do You Tell Someone Who Wants to Be a Journalist? Plus: Jon Stewart, New Hampshire, and ‘Barbie’ Think Pieces With The Washington Post’s Chris Suellentrop

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

On the Final Edition, Bryan is joined by his big brother in the media, Chris Suellentrop   After thousands of conversations, their first recorded discussion will address the following: Advice you give to students who want to be in journalism (2:30) Whether or not the New Hampshire primary is a semi-decisive moment (13:02) The expectations set for Nikki Haley and how to interpret the results in real time (24:52) Jon Stewart’s new show coming in February (36:27) An inevitable “somebody’s got to say it” think piece on ‘Barbie’ (45:52) Host: Bryan Curtis Guest:Chris Suellentrop  Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Galaxy lights, Coachella, Lightning Bolt necklaces. Did you catch all the Scandival clues? Last March, one cheating scandal launched a reality TV investigation that generated hundreds of conspiracy theories, thousands of podcast episodes, and millions of dollars in revenue. I'm Jody Walker, host of an American Scandival. Ahead of the Vanderpump Rules premiere, relive the pop culture phenomenon that rocked a reality nation,

starting January 23rd on Ringer Dish. Hello media consumers. Welcome to Press Box final edition. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters. Coming up on today's pod, after two weeks of media layoffs in absolute hell, what would you tell a young person

that says they want to be a journalist? We will talk about what the New Hampshire primary looked like on the ground and on cable TV. Plus the NBA's mystery scoop, John Stewart returns to the Daily Show, and the Barbie movie became the ultimate thinkpiece machine. Again, our guest host today is Chris Sullentrop. He is the politics editor for Opinions at the Washington Post.

As a writer, he has filed everything from video game reviews for the New York Times to presidential campaign dispatches for Slate. He has been my friend since he watched over me in the Slate interned bullpen more than 20 years ago. Chris, welcome to the press box. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. So two things before we start. First up, we've had 19,000 conversations in our lives about the media business.

This is the first one that is ever being recorded. Kind of a moment there. And second, I said this on the pod last week. You were my Big Brother professionally and personally. So on behalf of the Ringer Podcast Network, let me present you with the nickname Big Brother Chris. I could not be more honored to accept this title. And I've worked very hard to earn it. Although I feel like maybe you're the big brother now.

Like I started out as big brother and then you. But I won't argue with you. I'll yes and you. I'm your big brother. You're my little brother. That makes me the Texas Longhorns and you, the Aggies. I'm not sure how you feel about that. Let's face it, cousin was already taken.

So, big brother it is. All right. Let's start with some notes of media grief here. If you track back a year, the Los Angeles Times Chris has now laid off about a third of its staff according to NPR's

David Falkin Flick there were more layoffs this week 115 journalists including the writers on the Dodgers, Angels, Clippers and National College football beats Time Magazine had layoffs Condé Nast has announced

layoffs so workers there went on strike Tuesday chanting bosses wear Prada workers get Nata always proud to be a moment a journalist in a moment like that because those people will write good headlines if journalism still exists in five or ten years. I wanted to ask you this. You and I were young kids in this business together. Now we count as savvy veterans, I guess. If a young person came to you and said,

I want to get into journalism, what would you say? I think I would give the answer that my creative writing professor gave me in college, which is if you can do anything else, you should. But if you can't, it's a lot of fun. It's been 20 years of contraction for us, as you know. But inside that contraction, there's tremendous opportunities.

And they think sometimes it's blogs, sometimes it's podcasts. I think you're going to be, you've got a new show on Applevision Pro that you're about to announce. We're saving that for the end of the pod, but go ahead. So there will be new opportunities.

And people will be stars, you know, Pat McAfee wouldn't be a star without YouTube, right? So there's opportunities out there. Or barstools, another great, yeah. And so there will be opportunities. But would you have done it all over again? That's my question for you. 100%. There you go.

I mean, what I used to tell people is I'd give them two of what I thought were clever answers, which is one, it was never a great time to get in the media business. 20 years ago wasn't like lots of jobs great salaries come on in yeah if we wanted to be rich we would have done something else we would have done something else and the second one was just about every place i've worked and many places you've worked didn't exist when we were in high school so you may think okay that weekly sports magazine i wanted to work at isn't the same thing anymore that daily local newspaper isn't the same anymore but that's not you know, a guarantee that there will not be something that takes its place.

It might even be better or different than the other thing. I do think I would tell the young person, you should know some things about the world you're getting into. I saw the sports writer Kevin Van Valkenberg tweet this week, the quality of your work won't save you. I think that's probably right. There's been this thing in journalism that, oh, you know what? If you're great, cream rises to the,

top. That is still true in many senses of the word. But I'm not sure it's, if it was ever absolutely true that it's absolutely true now, especially after this many rounds of cuts and layoffs. I also think you were entering a world that in large part doesn't know how to pay for itself right now. So you, young person, are hoping that's a temporary condition. Right. And there are jobs that didn't exist 20 years ago. There are also a bunch of jobs that existed 20 years ago that no longer exist. And there used to be a big city columnist in every city. You know, you probably have to move to a company town now.

You have to live in New York. You don't have to. But the odds that you have to live in L.A. or New York or Los Angeles are astronomically higher than they were 30 years ago when you could kind of be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. And then, but all those things that people say they want from the news media, investigative reporting, you know, government accountability reporting, those are the things they don't pay for. Right. And those are the things that the old model never paid for. Those things rode on the model of, hey, look, look what the price of bras at Dillard's is. Look where, what time the movies are.

Here's how much a new car is. That bundle was destroyed a long time ago, and we haven't figured out how to replace it. And hopefully we do, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I was talking about this with Claire Malone last week. it is, it's very hard to describe how much a newspaper was a lifestyle brand 30 years ago. Your whole life was in there. The movie times were in there. As you mentioned, the Dillard sale.

Your new car was in there. Your favorite team sports scores plus your own high school team sports scores. Maybe your child's name was in the newspaper. I mean, I take all that away and say, hey, we still got the school board. That's important, but that's not going to make the sale. As your big brother, I'm a little. little bit older and a little bit wiser than you. And I mean, I got my summer job in college as a park and rec worker at the city of Olathe, Kansas from the newspaper. I opened up the newspaper and

there was an advertisement in it in 1993 or whatever year it was, 1994. And I said, we need seasonal maintenance workers at the city of Olathe Parks and Rec Department. I showed up and that's what I did for three summers. And it was, you know. It now sounds impactful. impossibly antique, like our grandparents getting a job during the Great Depression. Show up for work. Right. It sounds like I got off on like a steamboat and there was a blacksmith. It was like, yes, son, come, I'll apprentice you.

But that's what happened. Something else I tell this hypothetical young person asking if they should get into the business, I would say there may be a countdown clock on the jobs you have in a way that's a little different than there was before. I'll give you two examples just from the last week. Sports Illustrated laid off a whole bunch of people on Friday. And then they told a second group of people, hey, you're not laid off, but you're probably going to be laid off in 90 days.

Here's the date. If something magical doesn't come along and save Sports Illustrator, save this much of Sports Illustrated. Another one, Jack Herrera, Los Angeles Times reporter. He tweeted, I saw that he had been laid off. I went to his Twitter account and found that his pin tweet was him announcing last June

that he would start as a national correspondent for the LA Times. So you're talking seven months from the proud, here's my new job tweet, send me tips to the end of the job. So look, there was always countdown clocks. You and I had entry-level jobs in this business that would time out. I think after porn, it wasn't like, oh, you got the job forever. It's like, let's see what you got, kid. Now I feel the countdown clock is sometimes all.

on you all the time, not because of your quality, but because the publication may not exist in the same way. Yeah, and I, look, I've definitely talked to more people in high places and journalism in the past three months that I realized are thinking about leaving. It is a really dark time. The economy's good. Trump is back, which certainly, I'm not saying that's good

for for American politics, but it's supposed, you know, it putatively was good for the American news media and the opinions business. I'm not sure it was good for the opinion writing business, but it was certainly good for the opinion clicking business. And the, and the journalism is in free fall. That's what's the way to say it. You know, yeah, I don't, I don't think there's anything else. I mean, it's not this.

We're not taking a week or two snapshot here. when you look at, like I said, the Falcon Flick line, it's not just what the L.A. Times did this week. It's what the L.A. Times has done over the past year. And that's not terribly unusual. I do want to go back to a point you made this at the very beginning from your creative writing professor, because I think it is absolutely the right one.

When somebody says, okay, Chris, I'm going to be a journalist, they are almost always expressing a journalistic instinct, some bit of their DNA where they're like, this is what I have to be. and some of them come into the business, you know, like I'm going to be the next Woodward and Bernstein and what updated however you want, Maggie Haberman, Lawrence, right, whatever.

I'm going to be that guy or that gal. And some come in and go, you know what I love? I love football. I love politics. I love Marvel movies. And journalism is my medium to express that. I am a huge nerd and I can imagine myself nowhere else but in journalism expressing my nerdery to the world.

And to your professor's point, what else is that person going to do than be a journalist? Absolutely. And it's also, look, people, journalists are cynics, but we're also sort of like earnest lovers of the American experiment, at least Washington journalists are. And it's an act of public service for most journalists who are highly verbal, extremely, intelligent people, almost all of them could have been high-paid corporate lawyers. And they chose to, you know, engage in a profession that has some elements of self-angrandizement, as you point out, but also to sacrifice their earning potential as an act of what they regard as service to this country and our system of government. I totally believe that sincerely. And we'll take your mockery offline. All right, let's talk about Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. Should we call this a

semi-decisive moment in the presidential campaign? Look, historically, if you win Iowa and you win New Hampshire, you win the nomination, right? It's also true that Donald Trump has won, you know, a minuscule percentage of the delegates necessary to become the Republican nominee for president. So it's both over and not over at the same time. It's Schrodinger's nomination on some level. You were in New Hampshire. Can you tell me how you wound up in a photo with Nikki Haley? I can. So I drove up from my home in Rhode Island, arrived on a Monday morning. I get a call from Karen Tummelty, who's our senior political columnist. She says, you might want to mosey on over to the restaurant next to our hotel because

Nikki Haley's coming. And I had actually seen, this might have been on Tuesday, but I had seen Haley on Monday in an event. So I mosey on over there, walk into the restaurant, sit down and they asked me. They said, are you with the press? I said, yeah, I've got a table. And I walk in and sit down with Karen, who's just having. lunch and Nikki Haley doesn't, I guess it was announced, but the location was unannounced, get out the vote retail stop. And she goes by table to table and approaches our table,

Governor Sununu, who had endorsed her and was driving her around. And we're like, we're with the Washington Post. He's like, okay, forget it. And then Haley comes by and we're like, we're with the Washington Post. And she starts talking to Karen. And so I say, well, sit down. Why don't you sit down and then Nikki Haley sat down and then of course I'm like oh wait I don't have any questions for Nikki Haley I'm not prepared for for her to actually take me up on this offer um and so Karen uh uh Karen texted a photo of the three of us to her text with tummoldy if I can uh you know get all of you to sign up for Karen tumbley's SMS experiment uh and that was the most new hamps thing because also CBS's Bob Costas was sitting two booths, two booths behind us.

It is in the photo, just kind of like popping his head up like a whackamol character. So that's New Hampshire. Bob Costa, you said Costa's, not the famous sports broadcast. It was, yeah, it was Jim Gray and Bob Costas. No, Robert Costa, my apologies. Bob does work for CNN now, so you never know. Did you make it to the Double Tree Hotel in downtown Manchester, which semaphore called the bustling nerve center of the American news media.

So I drove over on election night in the hopes of finding bustling reporters and it was totally dead. I mean, there were like a few people there. I remember 20 years ago going to those bars and thinking, this is just the coolest thing. Like, Joe Trippie's here, who's managing Howard Dean's campaign. you know, various TV personalities are here. It's for what, I don't know if it's because this election's not competitive. I don't know if it was because Iowa was so cold. But if there was a scene, I was too old and too uncool to find it.

I'm heartbroken that the campaign bar is dead because that is, speaking of getting into the business, that's one of the romantic things about being on a campaign as you get to hang out. with your fellow gimlet-eyed reporters after a long day of rallies. Yeah, I mean, our listeners don't know, but you edited me 20 years ago on the campaign trail. And I was at the scream when Howard Dean made the, yelled his scream. And I filed my story. And I went back to my room and I got a phone call from you. And you said, Chris, why didn't you mention that weird dying bird noise that he made?

And I just wanted to get the edit done so I could get down to the bar and hang out with everybody. But we had to revise because I couldn't hear the scream over the crowd. But you could. And that does highlight to what extent these are mediated events. These are, yes, you see things you don't otherwise see by being on the ground. But also, there's a weird way that your editor back in Washington or in New York or in your case, Seattle, actually sees things you don't see, knows what,

what quote the conversation is about when, especially back then, pre-iPhone, pre, you know, we had barely Blackberry. You know, you were almost more like a foreign correspondent. You were out in Iowa or New Hampshire, not necessarily knowing what they were talking about on cable TV.

I think that's probably changed. Oh, absolutely. Pre-Twitter, right? I mean, because that would have been, immediately 9,000 tweets and reporters look down on their phones and go, oh, that's the story. He made a weird noise. Here we go.

It's going to affect the campaign for better or worse. I was settling in while you were, you know, expending your shoe leather on the trail watching CNN on Tuesday night. It was a really interesting night of television. First of all, they had some exit polls that looked pretty favorable for Haley early on. And even with all the cable news caveats we've come to know and love, There was a little bit of a hint, you know, oh, maybe we got something here, which, you know, I don't accuse CNN of any bias except they want a more interesting race.

And if Haley had made it a more interesting race, I'm sure they would have happily taken that. Also loved Anderson Cooper. He was setting up the night's events. This was around 7 o'clock Eastern. It's the first wave of poll closings that happened in New Hampshire. Please listen here as Anderson Cooper gives viewers a preview of what is to come on CNN. Disaster for Donald Trump in a general election, even against a historically unpopular

Joe Biden. We're closing in on the end of voting in most of New Hampshire. The first significant round of a result coming up, our cameras and correspondence are in position bringing every moment, including the big reveal of the winner. It's New Hampshire's choice and there's much more ahead. The big reveal of the winner. Do we hear the language of reality shows? Granite state voters move that bus, keeping into cable television?

Who will get the rose tonight? The reveal is also known as the election result. It did sound kind of like Anderson Cooper or whatever. Not Anderson Cooper. That wasn't Anderson Cooper, that it was Arthur Anderson, that it was the whatever the name of the accounting firm that, you know, that rolls the Oscars and Libran, yeah, whatever you like. That rolls the Oscar ballots into the theater as if they were the ones

counting the votes. This also happened on Iowa caucus night. CNN is really pushing the, this is the way to count, this is democracy in action. And there would be pictures of people like counting post-it notes basically for caucus votes. And John King is just like, this is how it's supposed to be done? And I was like, really? Is this, is this how it's supposed to be done? Just a person with like 12 post-it notes, you know, I thought it was a little tighter than that. Yeah, it's almost like the more, the more archaic the election and vote counting, the more cable news loves it.

I mean, they were indulging in that in New Hampshire, too, where they just have somebody reading off a big paper, you know, like, oh, this is a democracy. This is democracy. But, I mean, my first election was 2000. And I remember we spent a month making fun of Florida for, you know, holding up hanging chads and counting them. holding them off to the light and being like, who is this one for?

And I realized they weren't actually like trying to figure out. Well, do this person write Haley or DeSantis or Trump on this, on this scribble? But it felt it felt a little bit like the Florida recount where I was like, this is yes, this is democracy in action, but maybe we don't want to see it too close. Yeah, there was a whole democratic subplot, right? People writing in Joe Biden or ceasefire or various things. voting for Dean Phillips.

That was weird. So the first wave of polls closes at 7 Eastern time. The AP rule, which I learned during Iowa, is you can't call a race until the polls are completely closed, which in New Hampshire happens at 8 p.m. But Dave Wasserman, who is at Redistrict on Twitter, at 720 says, I've seen enough, his catchphrase,

Donald Trump has won the New Hampshire primary. So now we've got a weird deal where everybody who's on political Twitter knows that the primary is over. Still interested in the margin, but the primary is over. But cable news spends another hour telling you that it is still in doubt. How do we describe Dave Wasserman's role in the political media now? Yeah, he's, it used to be, and it still is for most places, that the AP, the Associated Press, is the official race caller.

but he's kind of the unofficial race caller, right? Like he's the guy who comes, everyone sort of looks to him and is like, well, if he called it, he's probably right. He's never been wrong. And he goes faster. Now, most news organizations, I think for good reasons, don't call elections before the last vote, before the last poll closes. So in New Hampshire, you have a few towns that haven't closed at 8 o'clock p.m.

And so I'm sure the people who do the vote counting at AP and CNN and Fox News all shared his assessment. But I don't know that I don't think they were holding off for for dramatic reasons. They were holding off for sort of like reasons of civic virtue and that they would also come under great amounts of criticism if they came out and said, while people are still voting, this thing's over, guys, go home. Well, they got it in Iowa, right, because they did it as soon as people walk. into the caucuses, but in many cases, hadn't actually voted. They took a lot of grief for that because they took that as the polls closing, but then they have like the Pledge of Allegiance and all these other things and no one had actually had actually voted.

So it was sort of like calling it when people were still in line. You know, we'll see. I did think that exit poll drama was a little overplayed, you know, because CNN definitely was like, oh, look at this electorate. Look how different it looks from the Iowa electorate. 65% in Iowa thought that Donald Trump was the legitimate president. But then they, and here it's 49-49. And I thought, okay, it's 49-49.

Probably all but all of the people who think Joe Biden is not legitimately the President of the United States are Trump voters. And then some percentage of the other 49 are also Trump voters. And that's what he got, 55 or so. And I was like, that number needed to be a lot higher for for Haley to have a chance. Before we got those raised eyebrows on CNN, like, oh, maybe, maybe a little surprise coming tonight. Maybe we got something here. I was also fascinated by the expectation setting part of the night because as soon as you understand that Haley's going to lose the election, it all comes down to how much she's going to lose by and how. we as media members should interpret those results in real time.

And there's this whole list and DeSantis had this in Iowa too where people are like, we're going to win. Oh, we're going to lose, but it's going to be single digits. Oh, we're going to lose. It's going to be double digits, but it's going to be close. Like how, what is the way to do that? Basically, we were arguing can Nikki Haley beat the spread? It was like basically like, well, we think this race is Haley plus nine.

So, you know, if she, you know, so if she, you know, comes within single digits, then she won. She beat expectations. And it's like, well, the margin matters if it determines who wins the election or if it determines who gets delegates, which are the real thing we're accumulating here, is delegates that attend a convention that will be held in Milwaukee, I believe in July. and then they will elect a Republican nominee. But we were sitting there being like, well, it's super important that if she's at 9% she won and if she's at 10% she lost, that's just, that's absurd. That that is an important metric. Right, the difference between 10 and 9 is going on to South Carolina or.

Right. She gets to stay in if it's 9.9.9. but if it's 10.1, she's got to go home. Because Jimmy the Greek or, you know, because Cousin Sal picked it the other way. We need to get John King and Cousin Sal on a podcast. I want to see John King's winning weekend before we get to South Carolina. Also, a fascinating moment of media stagecraft that is related to that was as soon as CNN and the AP call the race, which is about 820, so 20 minutes after the secondary wave of polls close.

Nikki Haley sprints to the podium. And I mean, this is like, you know, an NFL draft prospect at the combine. She is at the podium because right now, she, without the full results, she can say what she wants to say. Is that what it is? She can say what she wants to say. She can. People are still watching because the results aren't over.

It seemed like, and I'm speculating here, I don't have inside information, that they knew the margin was going to grow. So she could come out at when she was down seven instead of down 11. And then I was slightly annoyed that people who know a lot more than me about how to win a presidential campaign like David Axelrod were saying, well, you can't win by coming in second. And I was like, were you alive in 1992? Literally what Bill Clinton did, won the New Hampshire primary by coming in second, defying expectations, came out early and said, you've made me the comeback kid. That is literally what, you know, Bill Clinton did not win Iowa because he lost it to Tom Harkin, who was a home state senator, did not win New Hampshire because he lost it to Paul Songas, someone that are, your listeners probably don't remember. And then came in second and won.

That is a thing you can do. There's reasons to believe that Nikki Haley will not do that. But it's not like it's unprecedented for someone to come in second and quote, win this thing. at least in expectations and momentum. I love the way Haley described her second place finish. Tell me if this doesn't wind up in the annals of political lore. At one point in this campaign, there were 14 of us running, and we were at 2% in the polls.

Well, I'm a fighter, and I'm scrappy. And now we're the last one standing next to Donald Trump. And today we got close to half. of the vote. Close to half of the vote. That is an all-timer. We got into a two-person race and got close to half. I mean, speaking of reality TV, I mean, that is, I am the biggest loser, right?

Like, that is. I did it. That is at all-timer. That's up there with Joe Lieberman announcing that he came in a, who finished, I don't remember, but like fifth or sixth or something like that and said, I'm in. a three-way tie for fourth place heading on to New Hampshire. We got close to half the vote. Are you as obsessed as I am with the fact that CNN has three different desks on election

night? I got the Anderson Cooper desk. We got the League of Extraordinary Host Desk with Jake Tapper and Abby Phillip and Aaron Burnett and Caitlin Collins. And then we have the Dana Bash desk in New Hampshire on the ground, which is kind of like Sunday night football throwing it to Jack Collinsworth and Rodney Harrison on the field before the game? Yeah, there are a lot of desks.

I mean, they have so, I'm probably less obsessed than you are with the array of desks. Didn't MSNBC kind of pioneer this in 2008? They would throw to the Oberman Matthews, Maddow, Chuck Todd desk that was like a little mini desk and everybody loved that desk. And now everyone's like, well, we've got one, but we've got two or three. And yeah, I don't, you know, it's, we've got to get everybody some air time, right? Like that is part of this. Like we've got this big roster, politics, if you're CNN, that's what it is, right?

You mentioned the Trump bump. Here we go, right? We're going to lean into this. We've got to make sure everybody gets a touch, as they say, in the NBA. You get a touch, you get a touch. this Republican guy whose name I always forget, he gets a touch, you know. We got to get everybody at touch. It's a little, I'm a little bit more obsessed with how on election days and other big news events,

CNN has this sort of like, has on a normal day, they have a roster of daytime hosts, many of which are young, accomplished female broadcasters. And if it's election day, all those people get shoved to the side. It's like, no, no, no, no, not an election. I know every other day you get to be on TV at 11 a.m. But Wolf Blitzer's coming in today. Jake Tapper's coming in today. You guys, you guys don't get to do your job on, on a real news day, basically.

That's what it feels like they're saying. I got to talk to you about this NBA mystery scoop because this is one of the funniest sports, Twitter stories in recent memory. It actually happened during New Hampshire primary coverage. All right. Inside the NBA was on TNT. And the context here is the Milwaukee Bucks had fired their coach. and everybody was trying to figure out who the bucks were going to hire to replace him.

Inside the NBA had the scoop, and I want you to listen closely for the source of said scoop. I want to tell us that breaking news. So great in clutch, okay. Are we ready for breaking news? We have news in from CNN. They are reporting. From CNN? Sport. From CNN sports that Doc Rivers has accepted the Milwaukee Bucks head coaching

position. As you may remember earlier today, Adrian Griffin relieved of duties. They were second or third best record in the NBA and CNN Sports is now reporting that Doc Rivers will be the next coach of the Milwaukee Bucks. CNN sports. Yeah, I just love Jamal Crawford going CNN. And then the other person goes sports, like as if that explains it, which it just adds to the confusion. I also love the now mandatory thing where you go to music every time you show B-roll of any sports. So we have Dr. Rivers clapping on the sidelines and we must put some music behind this because we couldn't just show that by itself. So CNN Sports existed back when the failed bit of CNNSI was a cable network. Before that, when the late great Nick Charles and the late great Fred Hickman were paired up.

But nobody on sports Twitter knew what CNN Sports meant. Brian, I think you and I are in an extremely small. I think, I mean, we're in like a micro generation that would remember CNNSI. Like, you had to be. Yeah, I barely remember it. I just, I don't remember watching it. I remember it existing. I was an ESPN guy.

I was Coke, not Pepsi. Not that. And as you know, dude, like this is NBA scoops for whatever reason, through whatever strange turn of history have become, like, you know, the hunger games of sports journalism. Adrian Wojnarowski at ESPN, Shams Sharani at the Athletic, you get paid the big bucks to find them.

And every scoop, we have a scoreboard who won, who lost. And what was so funny about this is not only did nobody know what CNN sports was, then CNN, of course, they're not going to mention it on the air. Caitlin Collins is going to be like, excuse me, let us interrupt this important night for American democracy to talk about the Doc Rivers news. CNN does finally put it up on its website. website in the wee hours of the morning and there's no byline.

It's the first ever CNN Sports Bomb. I don't know. It turned out to be right. Wednesday morning, they hired Doc Rivers. You know, that's what I'm saying. Like this is, do they have a Twitter handle? Is CNN Sports? Is there so, are they on blue sky, threads? Where do I follow this thing? There were a couple of theories about this. I saw Kevin Draper, the New York Times. saying maybe somebody loaded a scriptwriter loaded this up somehow into a script because it was announced on NBA TV and by the way it's all the same company TNT CNN NBA TV it was loaded up and then an announcer just set it on the air before it happened and then but they did double down to the

press and say no no we've vetted this scoop it is it is real and then it did turn out to be real other funny part of this Chris is last summer ESPN laid off Jeff Van Gundy and in one of of the funnier excuses ever made and ever printed. They said this to the New York Post, or this is a line from the New York Post. While Van Gundy was one of the best game analysts in sports, fact check true, top ESPN executives were wary of his desire to coach again. At this point, Jeff Van Gundy had called 17 consecutive NBA finals for ESPN. 17.

Who's done anything for 17 years? So they replace him with Dr. Rivers, and he does not make it to January, 20. 5th. Great stuff. Yes. Great stuff. I still miss Van Gundy. Bring him back.

Bring him back. And look, and if you want to get rid of him because of his salary or because he's, you know, carping about the refs and the league doesn't like that, you could just say that, right? We don't need to make an excuse that he's going to leave us for the NBA. In other news, John Stewart is back, sort of. Starting in February, he will be hosting the Daily Show, but only on Monday, which we, what we know is the Maddow, where you host your own show, but you only do it once a week. How do we feel John Stewart plays in 2024?

I mean, this both feels like the ultimate do-over, like an apology for sitting out 2016. Like, I'm sorry, guys, I could have stopped Trump. I didn't. I'm calling my own number. I'm back. I'm going to do. But then at the same time, it feels like it's eight years too late. were past cables dead um i guess this could live as as as as social media clips or youtube or something

um but it feels like it feels like a do-over but also in a new media environment that he hasn't figured out you know that he hasn't mastered yet which is the point of a tv talk show now right just to generate clips for social media as far as i can tell yes as far as i can tell the point is like a loss leader to have, like, you know, make people feel, it must not be. Obviously, people watch these shows. But, but if I think back, like, if I can truly date myself, since we started out talking about what an incredibly old man I am, I'm like, my parents watched Johnny Carson and David Letterman, like, every night, like, on their television. That was like, you know, you watch the 10 o'clock news. This is the central time zone, the greatest

time zone. So you watch the 10 o'clock news. Get some sports high, you may not know who won the game. You may not know what the weather tomorrow is going to be, so you've got to watch these local TV celebrities. And then after that, some jokes from Johnny Carson and some celebrities talking about the news. That just seems like a totally unnecessary. I mean, I know these shows exist,

but they're like prehensile tales on our television, you know, this was sort of like evolutionary holdover from the broadcast era. Yes, and they exist totally out of context on the internet. And I know this because my mom doesn't know who John Stewart is, doesn't have cable. I don't know that she knows what the Daily Show is, but she became this huge fan of Trevor Noah because she would get on the Daily Beast in the morning during the high resistance years and be like, this guy is giving it to Trump. I like him. I'm not monetizing this in any way unless I'm actually going through, I guess, the official Daily Show YouTube page.

I'm not sure she was, but like it just to her was just like, here is, here is my thing, right? I got, this is funny. This is, this is my, this is my person. And so I guess that's what you do now. Right. And doing it once a week is a way to kind of maybe try to do the John Oliver thing. I'm just coming in once a week. It's special.

I've got, it's prepared. You're going to want to watch this either live or online. Look, he's certainly proven to be really, really good at that job. I was a Craig Kilbourne Daily Show lover, so as you know, I was slow to warm to the John Stewart show. I was like the last person to concede, okay, this is objectively like really great television. Yes.

And the, you know, the Stuart Colbert Golden Age of the Daily Show has to be, you know, in the, you know, among the greatest show. shows ever, ever put to air. And so, um, I, people will watch. We'll see what happens. It's, it's funny because there's a, um, I feel he has so many sons and daughters and television now, just the style of here is a funny clip from cable news. Here is a even funnier quip about the clip I just showed from cable news. Like that's obviously John Oliver's in that camp, many of the other shows that have come out of the old daily show Colbert. If you've ever watched Greg Gutfeld, I don't know if you have. I've done it like twice that he's

doing John Stewart. Like, it's not funny, but he's doing John Stewart on Fox News. And Twitter's like this now. Like, here's the funny clip from the cable news station I don't root for. And here is my line about it. Like, he created that style of comedy. As you said, Johnny Carson, all these guys were always topical comedy. But I just feel like the whole clip line thing was a product to large extent of the Daily Show. Right. And he was a more, um, Part of the reason he was more appealing or more sort of broadly popular than the old Colbert show, not the current CBS one, but the one that came after the Daily Show is that the Colbert show sort of appealed to sort of a real comedy nerd.

It was this extremely cerebral parody of the Bill O'Reilly show that he did in character. Stewart was a much more mainstream TV comic, incredibly skilled, incredibly funny, but, you know, hit you in the gut, you know, not something like, sometimes you be watching Colbert and you'd be like, I appreciate this. You know, I'm enjoying this both on a hilarious level, but also there's an intellectual appreciation of it. Stuart was just, you know, he was more Carson than Letterman, I guess. It's funny what happened to his reputation in the last couple of years. I don't know if people didn't like the Apple show because it was too sincere. If, as you say, he abandoned everybody during the resistance years, during the Trump years,

or if his kind of pox on both your houses style of comedy fell out of favor a little bit. But I feel he got really scuffed up over the last couple of years. He became a favorite thing to dunk on on Twitter. And it went way too far. I agreed with some of the points, but it was also like, really say John Stewart wasn't funny? Like, we've now come all the way around to like, we don't like, I don't know. I got off the train before we got to that stuff. Right. I think one of the things that happened was John Stewart has hours and hours and hours of

television of himself on, you know, for, and, and like many Americans, has learned and evolved on issues like trans issues and other things. So people would pull up jokes from the 90s or something that he had made and then say, See, John Stewart was a, you know, is bad, right? Like he's not, he's not progressive enough. And I was like, well, I understand your anger, but, you know, a lot of people didn't, you know, were not as perhaps educated in 1994 or whatever year this clip is coming from as they are in 2024.

I mean, the Apple TV show, honestly, I never saw a second of it. So I think some of it is like, well, I heard that it was more earnest, more sincere, less, you know, and that all of that may be true. Isn't the real problem that it's on Apple TV? That's the real problem, Chris Sondrop. Last topic for you. I go to the New York Times homepage today. There is a piece by Pamela Paul. It is called Barbie is Bad.

There, I said it. Now, as somebody who edits columns and me as somebody who reads columns, we understand this as the inevitable, somebody's got to say it, think peace that inevitably appears when something like Barbie comes out and it's beloved and it makes a billion dollars. The timing is a little weird because it came out right after Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie were snubbed by the Academy Awards. But I have a bigger point, Chris, which is that Barbie has become the ultimate think peace machine in American life. I believe you commissioned one, a Barbie think piece for the Washington Post last year. I got that right. I published a very excellent column by Tyler Austin Harper, who's a professor at Bates College,

talking about how Barbie and Oppenheimer actually cover the same topic, which is the effect of human beings on the physical environment and how you can see the effect of humanity in the fossil record through oil, plastics, nuclear waste. And so the Anthropocene begins with Barbie and Oppenheimer in the 40s and 50s. Now that's a thing. That's a Barbenheimer think piece. I want to give you some. This is from the New York Times last year.

And again, this is not their coverage of Barbie the movie, Greta Gerwig, the amazing success it had. These are just the think pieces involving Barbie. Anxiety in the age of Barbie by Maureen Dowd. The hunger fed by Barbie and Taylor Swift. Barbie has never been a great symbol but she's an excellent mirror watching Barbie and thinking about death why Barbie and Ken need each other

that was a podcast featuring Ross Douth that I am tempted to click on and finally and most memorably I saw Barbie with Susan Fuluti and she has a theory about it so the two great subjects fueling America's opinion pages are Barbie and Trump maybe in that order

look go ahead No, I was just because it's the allure here that a lot of serious subjects on the opinion pages. There's a lot of very worthwhile subjects that maybe, you know, takes a little bit of convincing, a little bit of elbow grease to get a reader to open. But if you can bring Barbie to the opinion page and have a good piece about it, like the one you just outlined, that it gives writer and the page both a little bit of, a little bit of an element they don't normally have.

Right. It's a way in. But also just it's a, look, it's a movie that made a billion dollars that wrestles with real ideas, that is hilarious, that looks like a 1950s MGM musical. What's not to like? You know, other than I guess Pamela Paul who didn't like it,

but I mean, that column, which I read, is more about the reception of Barbie. It barely discusses the movie. mostly discusses the hype. It's basically, I don't like Barbie hype. Okay, you know, but look, here at the Washington Post opinions, Brian, we only publish columns about Barbie that are excellent. And, but yeah, look, we like that. We do, we do politics, but obviously if you can, I think, I think your boss knows the power of the intersection of pop culture and sports and, you know,

the intersection of pop culture and politics is also a really rich topic and can bring in readers that that may not, you know, you may not normally get. And I'm all for that. I feel we're just getting started because this week we got the Barbie discovers the patriarchy at the Oscars. That's absolutely going to get written. Maureen Dow may be writing that as we speak. Then I saw tweets about how the movie had centered Ken too much.

And that's how we got to those. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's a think. dream house. That's a great piece. That's good. That is a great take, though, because I think the movie, as great as Ken is in the movie, the movie has too much Ken. I left the movie thinking Ken is one hilarious joke, but possibly slightly too much of him. And this is, it's Greta Gerwig's fault. Why did only Ken get nominated? One, because she made Ryan Gosling look so good as the director, and two, too much Ken. Chris thinks and think pieces.

I just want everybody, it's not necessarily his opinion. He's just throwing out a mapping out where somebody would go with this. Welcome to a slate editorial meeting from 2002. But anyway, go ahead. I like to surprise guests with a couple of questions. So here's a couple of surprises for you. You are a Kansas City Chiefs fan.

You're going to be watching the big game on Sunday. What is one thing you would change about NFL coverage on television? Wow. Unprepared. I was going to say one thing I would. changes i would give joe thuny a healthy pectoral muscle but that's not that's not covered that's not coverage on on television um pregame show do you want uh phil sims not to be wearing glasses in front of sunglasses in front of a las vegas hotel romo and nancy watch a lot as an a fc guy we get a lot of

rome i've sort of warmed to romo i was a romo skeptic as as as you know in his early early days i like Pamela Paul and Barbie, I think I was reacting to the Romo hype rather than the merits of Tony of Tony Romo himself. But I mean, the only thing I want from this Super Bowl is another win, right? Like I think, but how would I change? I don't, these days, I obviously want something to change because I've stopped watching the pregame shows as much as I used to. I used to consume... They need to completely change. I used to just consume limitless quantities of sports TV analysis.

And now I don't know if it's because I'm old and busy and a married man with children or if it's because they're not good. But like I just tune in for the game now, not the analysis. I just think podcasting and writing on the internet has just grown so much and grown so much in a more sophisticated direction that it just feels like two different universe. And this is not even about the ringer. It's just like you you read this and you listen to people and you're like, wow, I learned a ton about football. And then you watch a pregame show and you're like, I didn't learn anything about football.

All I learned was what game is being played today and some really normy opinions about who's going to win, maybe some picks at the end. So I just think they've almost. And again, it's television rights for a broad audience. I don't, I don't, it's just like CNN covering an election. And we wouldn't expect it to be on a different level. But I just, it's like, what, what am I here for? That's what I run up against. Right.

You know, a little bit less complaining about analytics, a little bit less. But and just, you know, more coverage of the Big 12 and AFC West on my television. I think if we got that, I think now that Texas, your team is leaving the Big 12, I can finally maybe adopt an SEC team. My wife is at UT alum, so maybe I can't, I couldn't root for them as. long as they were in the Big 12, but now that they're going to the second best conference in American sports, maybe I can have an SEC team. Hook them. There we go.

Last question. The piece of advice you give most to somebody writing an op-ed or column about the art of the art form, as it were. I mean, this is going to sound kind of obvious, but really, if you've typed out a phrase, that is familiar to you, that sounds, you know, go back and change it. You know, I mean, I think our first boss, Jack Schaefer, if you read Jack's columns, there are no familiar phrases in them. You can tell that he just slaves over them so that there's not a metaphor or simile or comparison that has ever been typed before. And so often you're reading. something and thinking might be good and the point might be original, but then it all of a sudden

says, you know, and she's going to South Carolina with a head of steam. And it's like, oh, please, not head of steam. Anything but that. And just, you know, sweat the sentences. There you go. All right, Chris Sullentrop, you can read the pieces he works on in the opinion section of the Washington Post. He's on Blue Sky. He's fled over there at Sullentrop. sk-y-dot social. Big Brother Chris, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you.

Loved it. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic. As always, by Brian Waters. A little housekeeping in our letter from the editor segment here. I personally have loved

the new format for the Thursday show in which we bring in a guest host to do the press box, but in a slightly different way every week. We've got some great response from all of you, a lot of great response for Claire Malone last week. I have a huge list of people that are coming on or that I want to come on.

And let me announce a few here. Joining us next Thursday, February 1st is Puck writer, Puck founding partner, if you will, Teddy Schleifer. He writes about Silicon Valley and politics. He's got a big piece up just now on Puck about all the rich Republican donors who are huddling, only in journalism, about how they should spend their money. Should they keep the Nikki Kemp, Haley campaign alive? Should they give her that head of steam, Selling Tribe referred to, in South Carolina and beyond?

That is coming up next Thursday, February 1st. Then we're going to go into Super Bowl mode. We should have some very fun stuff around the game. And then Thursday, February 22nd, A Stead Herndon of the New York Times is going to be back on this podcast. He does the run-up podcast. We will talk politics, of course, but I'm going to draw them out on a few other subjects. always love to have us dead here at the press box. Your job, media consumers, if you choose to accept it, is to send ideas for guest hosts to me at the press box pod. You can tweet at me, you can send a DM.

Those of you who do the latter know that I am always checking that inbox, at least trying to give you an emoji thumbs up when you send funny puns and stuff. Love hearing your ideas. We have asked some of the people you've sent already, so keep doing that. And finally, I want to say I appreciate the number of you who have done a lot of quiet work on social media, putting this podcast in front of people who might not, who might like it, excuse me,

but might not know they would like it. We're getting bigger this year. And I want to thank you all who have retweeted, rethreaded, sent it to people. I am eternally grateful. We will do our best to live up to your kind words. Coming Monday, Shoemaker's back. We got to talk WWE and Netflix.

When his Venn diagram and my Venn diagram are exactly on top of each other. Plus more about our hellish month in media. We need to stand back and take stock of everything that has happened in this industry. Plus, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a fantastic video.