The Press Box - White House Media Wellness Check, the New NBA Announcers, and a Report From the Press Box in Atlanta

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan opens the show to share some notes from the press box of the national championship game with David (1:01). Then, they discuss notes and sounds from the game, including Donald Trump’s message at halftime and Kirk Herbstreit’s emotional reaction to his Ohio State Buckeyes winning it all (11:30). Later, they get into what journalists are facing covering Donald Trump's second presidency (23:21) and the new NBA announcers for NBC and Amazon (37:35).Then, in the Notebook Dump, they discuss the appetite for profiles and movies that were never published (44:11).In the hall of departed journalists, they reflect on the life of Jules Feiffer (48:55). And Bryan shares an update on his movie career .Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at the Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that will include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be. keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, and get ready for

the McShay show on the ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. David? Yes. I got some notes from the press box for you. Okay. It's from the press box of Monday's national championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. Okay. I was cosplaying as a sports writer.

Joel Anderson was there as a real sports writer. I was sitting next to him as the pretend version. you weren't what you were pretend because you didn't actually have a story that you were that you were filing is that what makes you a pretend sports writer no i filed it was more of a metaphysical state of covering the sports media and then occasionally sitting with them in a press box subject matter doesn't qualify you as a real sports try this isn't like when i would tag along with you to a sports event just as you're like plus one and not actually have any reason to be there at all other than like, hey, cool, I get to sit in a press box. I felt like everybody's plus one. Yeah, okay. But then I got a sign to write a piece, so I guess I'm a real sports writer. First of all, I cannot tell you how much fun the experience was.

We're sitting in the front row of the press box and Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It's Ohio State Notre Dame, as I mentioned. The fight songs are playing before the game. Joel and I are sitting there just lapping it all up and just having an amazing moment of how cool is it that we get to cover this thing. Yeah. To watch this game, we would be watching at home anyway and try to figure it out together in real time.

This was heightened by the fact that Mercedes-Benz's press box is open to the stadium. A lot of press boxes. It's open air. As you know, have that glass partition. Yeah. So you feel like a gold. fish watching its owner while you're a very bizarre experience sometimes they have the sound of like the radio broadcast piped in so that you can hear but you you know I think there's a very common thing

now where you go to a big sporting event especially like a basketball arena and you end up watching the the titan the jumbo tron the whole time and you're like well it's kind of just like watching it at home but that's sort of like being in a press box sometimes is really just like watching it at home you're hearing an audio track you're staring down at a field except if it's views kind of, it's, it's not a bad view. It's just a distant view. It can feel kind of alien. It can.

And I imagine this applies to wrestling. It definitely applies to college football. When you have the partition, you lose the crowd. It sounds muffled. And a crowd is a huge part of the show. Yeah. Not to mention the bands in college football. Like that's the atmosphere.

And I'm always like, wow, I feel like a journalist, but I feel like I'm somehow been removed. from the sensory experience of the action. So that was cool. We've got an important update on press box food. Ooh. Now I've told you, sports writers never show more speed in their lives

than when the first half of a football game ends and they rush to the buffet line that has been put out for them by the stadium. Yeah. They look like Jeremiah Smith running past that Notre Dame defensive back at the end of the game. Well, the first half ends and I make my own speedy exit from my press box seat to the food area.

And I'm looking at this big buffet full of hamburgers and hot dogs and drool is, you know, coming down my lips. And then I turn to my right and I see two people and they have got a heated container full of chick-fil-a sandwiches that they're passing out. Oh, wow. in those little insulated bags, you know, that you get from Chick-fil-A? I wouldn't accept it any other way, yeah. And they're like, would you like a sandwich?

And I'm like, I absolutely would like a sandwich. And I'd actually like two because I've got my colleague over on the other side of the press box. So I come back to Joel and, you know, you can do a lot of favors for a fellow sports writer. You can read something they've written. You can point out something on the field. You could even run quotes for them. But you are no, you can never be a bigger hero. Then when you bring back a chick-fil-a sandwich.

A chick-fil-A sandwich. Jeez, that's amazing. He and I just ate the hell out of that during halftime. That was fantastic. One weird note, the college football playoff is sponsored by Dr. Pepper, which effectively, for press box purposes, deprive sports writers of their drug of choice, which is Diet Coke. So we're looking at the coolers in the press box and you can get Dr.

Pepper, you can get Snapple, which I had not encountered in quite a while. You can even get R.C. Cola, but you can't get a Diet Coke. Can you get a diet Dr. Pepper? Excellent point. So this is where I was. I'm like, look, I'm going to need something just to keep my edge over this three and a half hour game. Yeah. Hadn't had a Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper in quite a while. So I get one. I go back and I take a big swing of it. Dude, that was like Ray Liotto, snorting cocaine and Goodfellas.

Diet Dr. Pepper, diet Dr. Pepper is by far the best diet beverage, at least in terms of its lack of difference from the non-diet version. It tastes very good. I love a diet, Dr. Pepper. It tastes very good. But don't we agree it's a little mountain dewy just in the charge it gives you? Oh, it's the best. it's like it's yeah and my kids into dr pepper right now which i just think is so funny being

you know from having spent so much time in texas in waco in particular like the home of dr pepper it's funny to see it reaching the masses but like it's a but dr pepper is like the number it's like i think it's like the number two drink in the country in the country now i think it's bigger than Pepsi officially so it's it's man big shots to die at dr pepper big shouts I drank one. I was like, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to drink two and not be on the ceiling of this place. But he definitely did the job. Another issue in the press box, David, during a football game, when do you start writing?

This is for the non-reporters out there. Because when you're a professional sports writer or cosplaying as one as I was, you really don't wait till the end of the game. And then sit there and stroke your chin and say, hmm, what is the story I would like to craft? based on the events I've just seen on the football field. Now, Jason Gay, who was sitting a few seats to my right, he just looks at a screen and the whole column appears instantly. Some people are lucky, but some people like me and Joel and Shoemaker, we have to sweat it out.

We have to bleed a little bit at the keyboard, as Brett Smith said. So third quarter of this game, Ohio State takes a 31 to 7 lead. And Joel and I look at each other and go, okay, I think we know what we're writing here. Joel's going to write the big story about Ohio State, which you should read on the ringer.com right now, did a great job with it. And Connor Nevins texts me and says,

hey, how about a column on Chip Kelly, who somewhat unbelievably is Ohio State's offensive coordinator now? Of course, has had a fantastic career arc going every which way through the world of football. So again, this is for the non-reporters.

When this happens, you start spending the, commercial breaks in the press box frantically and desperately researching your subject material. Yeah. Especially if you're not Chris Ryan or Ben Solac and you don't have like sense memory of Chip Kelly coaching the Eagles. I'm like, okay, I got to now read what he said during the week. Did he mention his career?

Did he talk about this? And I'm just going through the interviews. I'm like, how many years was he at UCLA? How many years was he at this? You're just frantically doing this. It's three or four minutes left in the game. Of course, by this point, Notre Dame is coming back. They're within one score.

Now you have this different stage of sports writer panic. You're like, oh, my God, am I going to have to just stop this and start a whole piece? And write something completely different. Yeah. And also, as I was kind of researching and thinking about this, did I miss important parts of the game that led to the Notre Dame comeback, which will now be what I'm writing about in the other story? There's also another complication because you want to go down to the field. after a national championship game because everybody,

players and coaches alike, are all celebrating down there. And you can not only see them and get some color that way, but you can actually talk to them on the field. So with three or four minutes left, we get in the press box elevator, we go down to field level,

we're in this big herd of journalists down there waiting to get onto the field. This is when Jeremiah Smith has that big catch at the end of the game. Thank God for YouTube TV so we can actually watch the game instead of staring at a wild. wall.

Yeah. And then I get onto the field. I was like, oh my God, I have to find Chip Kelly. There's probably 100, 200 people running around on the football field celebrating with confetti and streamers. There's a trophy presentation going on. I'm like, somewhere here is Chip Kelly, I think. Yeah.

And I'm looking for white hair, but he's wearing a cap, it turned out. Yeah, it's not the most. I mean, I could pick him out of a lineup, but on a field full. of people. I don't know. He's not the tallest guy in the world. I don't know. Did you, did you find him? Well, I was asking everybody. He's like, have you seen Chip Kelly? Have you seen Chip Kelly? Running around and finally I find Chip Kelly

talking to a couple of reporters and I like thrust my phone into his face. Listen to him first. I get my question in. And then Chip Kelly is through this family. He's like, oh, I got to go. I got how they trots off. I'm like, well, I got it. I got enough to write something. Yeah. About Chip Kelly. I got two pieces of sound. from the game for you.

One came at halftime. On ESPN, we didn't just get to hear from Reese Davis and the guys breaking down the first half of action. We got to hear from newly inaugurated President Donald Trump. Here is part of Donald Trump's halftime show for America. Second half, today, of course, was inauguration day. And early today, President Donald J. Trump had this message. Hello to my great fellow American. This has been a historic and exciting day for our country.

In recent years, our people have suffered greatly, but starting now, we're going to bring America back and make it safer, richer, and prouder than ever before. We will have a nation filled with compassion, strength, and exceptionalism. Through our power and might, we will stop wars, and we will lead the world to peace. We will be respected again, and we will be admired again, admired like we haven't been in many, many years. And on and on like that.

Trump did eventually get to college football in the last 25 seconds when he said he was hoping for a great game. Yes. But what did you make of Donald Trump beaming into our sporting event like that? Do you ever interview somebody when they're on a junket or some sort of they're making the rounds? and your biggest concern by the time you talk to them is that you want them to say something different than what they've said to everybody else that's come before you. And you ask a question,

you just kind of start things off. How you doing today? Like whatever, and you realize almost immediately that they're going into a spiel that could take up two-thirds of the interview time and it is certainly the same thing they've said to everybody else.

That's what I feel like everybody books Donald Trump to make a speech must be dealing with where it's just like, whatever the subject matter is, you're speaking for a world economic forum, you're speaking at a football game, he's being whatever, it's like the exact, like it's going to be 75%

the exact same thing he would be given if he was just like yanked out of bed and they were just like, yeah, you got a rally in Memphis, so you're like, whatever, and that's the exact same thing. It's extreme of consciousness, grievances pre-discussed over dinner the night before,

and that's it. And then you're just like, please, just get just like you're kind of doing the thing where you're you're raising your eyebrows on on the zoom call trying to like make seeing if they can notice that you have a follow-up you want to get in yeah and and just hoping that oh for the love of God get to the point of it before you have to like just turn just turn his microphone off I love the reaction because I'm like would anybody on the other side of the aisle have been mad if president Kamala and come on at half time of the game.

She may have done a little more football, a little less grievance, at least at the top of the speech. But I think it's just like, I'm mad that Donald Trump became president today again. So I'm mad that he's in my college football game. Another piece of audio comes from ESPN's Kirk Herb Street.

Kirk Herb Street, as you know, David played quarterback at Ohio State. Yeah, you did. Buckeyes win the national championship. and there was a little emotion in old Herbie after the game ended. Fowler, Kirk Crook Street, join us now. And, man, this story can now be told, right? You guys heard it.

Holly asked him about it. We've all heard Ryan Day say the story could only be told if we win tonight. Herbie, I'll let you start as a guy, grew up there and wore the uniform. What's the story of this team? Oh, don't start with me, man. I'm a little emotional. I'm just fired up for these guys. It's, you know, when I call these games, I'm incredibly objective.

And I, you know, I love all these Ohio State teams. But this team, because of what they went through to get to this point, you're just happy, you know. Now, what they went through in college football terms means they lost to Michigan before the playoffs started. Yeah. Didn't want all the rest of their games. So that was not such a, you know, journey of an arduous journey, if you will. I had to say I am for this post game letting the mask down just a tad. I remember a couple years ago Chris Collinsworth was calling the Bengals Super Bowl

and I'm sitting there watching and being like, the Bengals have never won a Super Bowl. And if there is anybody who understands just how cool this would be for the franchise, it is Chris Collinsworth who played his entire career there who still lives outside of Cincinnati. that he was his whole life there. I think he has Bengals season tickets. And he and I asked him one time on the on the press box. I was like, you know, why didn't you say it? And he said, you're the only one who would have wanted that. Meaning fans would have just freaked out that the guy from the Bengals is putting his finger on the scale while he's announcing the game. Yeah. We just need to collectively get over this, right? Yes. You can do the game. You can do it fairly. And then you can also be a person who

has real feelings about one team or the other at some point during the process. Yeah, I think that we want, I mean, it has to be said that a lot of the finger on the scale stuff is just grievance in search of a, in search of something to point at, right? I mean, it's just like, oh, I just want to complain for the sake of it. But, yeah, I think that at the end of the day, as much as we say we want our, journalists, whatever, to be impartial. No, we want them. We want them to be human beings.

I mean, this is sort of at the center of the debate of journalism in general. It's like we don't want you to pretend that you're not who you are. We just want you to be upfront about your biases, right? And because we all have them, as much as we might try to bury them. And there is really something special about, you know, Kirk Herb Street tearing up, you know, watching this because we also, want our, I mean, the color commentators especially are sort of our avatars, right? They're the, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, the, and then, and for the people that are getting emotionally worked up about that. Oh, Ohio State win, you know, that's, he reflected that.

One thing that didn't work so well about the college football playoff was the calendar. I want to get you on this because this has been talked about in college football circus a lot over the last week and change. So this is the first year that there have ever been 12 teams in the college football postseason. That meant that it was going to be a much longer playoff, which lasted from December 20th to January 20th. Yeah. Now, a lot of those games are very successful, very, very fun. But people started to realize, especially as we got to the final, it's like, oh my God, there's been a month long football playoff, much of which is happening during another month long football playoff, aka the NFL playoffs. This all feels a little bit like an afterthought.

Yeah. I mean, you think like the biggest college football game of the year is happening on a Monday after people have watched four huge NFL games, all of which were pretty good, on Saturday. and Sunday. What do you think about that? That weird sort of, you know, calendar. Is there enough room here for both the problem? You know, I'm not a diehard college football viewer, certainly not to the degree you are.

And so I certainly had that feeling, but I didn't know if it was just because I would, maybe was incidentally more disconnected this year than years past. But for sure, it just feels like, I think that the play, I mean, I'm a fan of the playoff concept. And I know that the NCAA has a lot of things to juggle, not least of which is, you know, the players' student careers. You know, I mean, they have obligations to the school that are not just traveling and playing football games and practicing football.

Wait, what? Well, some of them. But it does, but the magic of the one national championship game, just like we always know that it's right there a New Year's Day and like whatever is certainly, you know, I mean, that's, you miss that. for sure. I don't know if there's a way to do it in a more compact way. It kind of feels like it's impossible, especially with it, you know,

I mean, just rest time in between the games and everything else. But, yeah, it is. It does just feel like it's another Monday night. You turn it on and you're just like, you know,

is this the last game or is there another one that I'm waiting for at some point in the future? I totally agree. And I think I feel the same way as college football. football fan and they have got to figure out a way to get that championship game closer to Jan 1 than January 20th. Yeah, could they back it up and still somehow reclaim January 1st or something or at least have January 1st be the finals, you know, and then the championship game is a week later. There's got to be something they can do to make it a little bit more compact, a little bit more big time. There is, if you remember, a week zero.

quote unquote in college football where only a few teams play that's just a completely made up designation that could be week one or we could still call it week zero and everybody would have to play a game and that would move the season up a little bit there's a lot of dead time between the end of the regular season

the conference championship games and the playoff like I think they could find it yeah but it's just one of those things where it's like it's the NFL and you just kind of have to get out of the way you know and as soon as the NFL playoffs start And last weekend felt like the really like the ramping up of the NFL playoffs was like now it matters. Now it's important. Teams like Detroit are losing.

American sports fans, you just only have so much bandwidth at that point. Yeah. Do I care about anything else? Maybe they should just start the playoffs on what? Just say we're starting the playoffs on like December 1st. You guys figure out the schedule. Actually throw the games, the number of games out. You guys can play as many games as you want between the,

first day of school and December 1st, you figure out the schedules. And then we'll use that all in terms of, you know, we'll use all that information to determine who's in the playoff. That'd be great. Just teams scheduling like Tuesday and Wednesday games to try to get their numbers up, you know, just, this could be really exciting. So if I had an early loss, I would just keep scheduling more teams. Yes, yeah.

So that I would be like 13 and 5 by the end of the year. Yeah, exactly. Like if Ohio State had lost in Michigan like week one, they could have just like, just opened up the coffers and just paid like a ton of like d2 teams to show up like for like every day one week just to get trounced it's like nobody else in the country has 18 wins yeah got to put us in yeah we did lose her first seven but we ran up 24 in a row after that so coming up on the press box uh what are reporters facing as they cover the second donald trump administration, layoffs, quavering owners, and a president who's throwing pins into the crowd.

Plus, Mike Toriko and the new NBA TV lineup, a failed profile of David Lynch, the Hall of Fallen Journalists inducts Jules Fifer, an update on my movie career and more on proud NFL franchises. All that and much more on a power-packed press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello, Media Consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer. producer Brian Waters here. I was thinking, David, about what journalists are facing as they cover Donald Trump, too, this time it's personal. Press and the White House, it's not exactly a football game. But as we've talked about, so much of the media's relationship with somebody like the president is about power.

Why did politicians used to talk to the newspaper in the old days? Because the newspaper was powerful. Why don't they feel the need to engage with the reporters as much today? Well, we're not as powerful. So I've got four signs here, David, that our power is waning, perhaps even to historic lows at the dawn of Trump, too. Number one is, and perhaps most notably, is the familiar problem about media organizations making money. Number two is our journalist headcount is getting smaller. as we record this,

there are layoffs being announced at CNN. They're losing 200 jobs, according to Ben Mullen of the Times, who got CNN chief Mark Thompson to talk about this. There's some sense that CNN is going to replace those jobs, which are TV operations jobs with other roles. Mullen says roles like data scientists and product engineers. That sounds good,

but those also don't sound like journalists to me. Yeah. We're just talking about the number of people that are trying to focus on this administration and everything else. And there's more layoffs coming, dude. Oliver Darcy and his newsletter status says NBC News coming this week. ABC News sometime in the future. So we're facing off with Trump or trying to cover Trump with fewer people. This is probably also a good time for our periodic Washington Post wellness check.

because I know this will surprise you, but the Washington Post has lost even more people. We should run in like an in-memorium video package for everyone that leaves the Washington Post. The Oscars package, but it's a new one every week. Yeah. I mean, this is not even the Josh Dossie group that we already talked about. This is just since you and I last spoke. People that have left the paper, Philip Rucker, National Editor to CNN,

Peter Walston, head of investigations, one of those guys that was the captain of the teams that win Pulitzer's. He's going to the Times. Greg Jaffe, reporter also did the Times, Griff Witt, who was the senior politics and democracy editor.

What a interesting title that is. Going to the Atlantic as managing editor. I was looking at Peter Walston's Twitter feed, and during the whole Jeff Bezos endorsement thing back in October, he tweeted this, Some have asked in recent days what it means to be an independent newspaper. Here's one example.

A revealing story about the post owner reported, written, and edited by the newsroom with zero interference, just like every other story. Well, apparently he's not at the post anymore. So there's that. Also this from Washington Post legend David Marinus, bestselling author. Today, he put this on blue sky. The Washington Post editorial this morning essentially equated. Biden's questionable pardons with Trump's

outrageous Jan 6 pardons was unconscionable. The newspaper I've been a part of for 48 years has utterly lost its soul. When you get the Marinus Woodstein tier taking shots at you, yeah, that's not a great place to be in. No.

It's really not, because if people are looking to like the branding of the Washington Post, yeah. Speaking of branding, the post, David, has a new motto. you remember your personal favorite democracy dies in darkness

right new motto is are you being serious is this is real okay this is not a Curtis joke riveting storytelling for all of America what the hell

you think someone was paid to come up with that first of all 100% yes that is a that is a unfortunately workshoped final conclusion of a process, yes. Rividing storytelling for all of America.

This is, that's like a bad, like, slideshow pitch, right? It's like, what's your new magazine about Brian? Well, riveting storytelling, but for all of America. I mean, it's so bad. And guess what? The Washington Post is not a place that I go to

for riveting storytelling. riveting storytelling is a is a nice byproduct to some of the pieces that you read to the to to the broader like application of the journalistic process you know you follow a story it becomes riveting certainly there's some weekend pieces and magazine pieces and featurey pieces that would fall that would fall under anybody's definition of riveting storytelling but that's not why you go to the Washington Post right You go for for relatively straight news largely about Washington, about the country, right? It would be better if they just said Washington, D.C. for all of America, right? Because because, because then you say, oh, I get, I get what they're doing here. They're making the imaginations of the government accessible, right? They're making it, they're making it interesting.

but riveting storytelling for all of America. If somebody told you that there was a new NPR show and that was a description, you got to check their new podcast. You got to check this out. It's riveting storytelling for all of America. You'd just be like, that is so try hard and also weirdly so bland for like considering the words involved that I have no interest in checking that out. Yeah, it's like got any specifics for me?

Yeah. On that riveting storytelling. No, and I think, I paid a lot of money for that lump of shit. I would, wouldn't you love, we need Ben Mullen to find out how much money was paid for riveting storytelling for all of America. Or it's like a Bezos thing, right? I mean, there's a chance that's signed off. No, I mean, there's a, there's a chance of that's just one, one all-powerful person.

I'm not, it's not saying anything about him. It's either like the owner woke up from a dream and he was just like riveting storytelling. I've got it, you know? Or, or, and also they just paid somebody $5 million to, to, pull those words out of a fabric bag and put them together. Fabric bag. It does seem to go to the problem we talked about too because it's like, what is the post going to give me that the other things I would pay for don't give me?

New York Times, wordle, cooking, et cetera, Wall Street Journal, Financial News. What is the post thing? Yeah. But somehow we've deleted politics and things that you might turn to the paper for. naturally before you get that snazzly written style section piece. At this point, the post is just like going to see your local like AAA baseball team.

It's like, see the future stars of baseball before they leave for bigger, for greener passers. So grim. Before they go to the Atlantic where they become the managing editor. Yeah. So I got problems making money. I've got journalist headcount shrinking.

I got to throw in number three, capitulating media owners. You saw the scene at the inauguration. Hey, it's Jeff Bezos, under the Washington Post, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg. They're not covering Trump

or fact-checking Trump or having a truly open forum that might question Trump. They're sitting there with him at the inauguration. They were the owners of the media. Yeah. Somebody tweet about that.

I'm like, oh, my God. I mean, sometimes it's just easy. Yeah. Then there's this, David, lack of interest in the news, or at least in the news as it's presented by traditional media organizations. Mm-hmm. This line hit me from Ben Mullen's piece on CNN. He writes, in December, the network saw its lowest period of web traffic in two years, according to analytics firm Comscore, with 90.5 million unique visits, down from a high point of 175.5 million. in March 2020 during the beginning of the COVID.

Is that CNN? That's CNN.com. Now, if we say that like the COVID numbers are steroidal because everybody was freaked and fearing for their lives and that December after a presidential election was perhaps a little low, that's still a big difference. The difference of 85 million unique visitors. Yeah. Or unique visits, I should say.

That was pretty interesting. I think that there's probably a billion different reasons for this, and we've talked about a lot of them before. But it occurs to me that, like, you know, we all have our various news feeds that we check, you know, Apple News or just Twitter, all the different social media platforms that sort of feed you the news in a pretty steady way. But when something is really at stake, you know, like if, if we're talking about, if for some reason all you have access to is a, you know,

if you can't watch TV and it's a national championship game, you're going to go to ESPN.com to make sure you got to score, right? If it's NBA traces and you're going to, you know, you know exactly where you're going to go, you go to CNN during election time because you want to know, like, up to the moment. You don't want to wait for the news to trickle through the feed is basically what I'm saying. And now we're at a point in, you know, the cycle where, like, perfectly content to let any important news trickle down to me through whatever third party website is posting for free on Apple News or whatever, you know?

I know. And that's that's that's that's the problem, right? Yeah. It used to be essential for subject X and now it's yeah, maybe for subject X. Number five on my list. Did I say four? Because I've actually got five. Okay.

Number five on my list was very apparent during Donald Trump's inaugural festivities, which he turned into an arena show. with the rock of fire explosion or maybe the village people but you're watching him and I'm like oh my God this guy's signing executive orders and tossing the pens and you know he's literally doing

part of this in a basketball arena yeah he's eventizing like everything that he's doing and somebody had a tweet where they're comparing him to Joe Biden's first couple of days where Biden wasn't taking questions and he was doing everything in his very Biden way and Donald Trump's like whoa here we go look at this content everybody enjoy this and I'm like journalists are going to be very very hard pressed to compete with that yeah they'll have great

scoops they will cover the hell out of Trump and I don't doubt anybody in the profession even those people at the Washington Post who are now stepping into holes left by other people they will do an awesome job covering Donald Trump but what will break through what will be able to compete for attention with the guy who has figured out how to grab America by its collar. Pick my word carefully there by its shirt collar and get their attention at all times. Yeah. And I'm watching that. I'm like, what do you think people are going to digest from the first couple of days of the Donald Trump?

Are it going to be the Jan six guys who got pardoned? Are we going to do this? Like, hey, look at this. Amazing. Maybe there's the amount of like the Times needs to take a page of the Trump playbook and just move the newsroom to the floor of Madison Square Garden and charge admission people can come in and you can see you can see like Jonathan Swan just getting off the hanging out the phone just being like I've got a story. I got one chief. Yeah. A hot one that'll lead tomorrow's paper.

By the way, at the National Championship, they had the thing where during Media Day there were people watching the reporters. you could go in there and watch the reporters interview the writers, I mean, interview the players. Yeah. So that's what you're essentially calling for three times. We can buy tickets to watch Jonathan Swan work the phones. Exactly.

On a lighter note, David, C-SPAN was taking calls during the inaugural festivities. I didn't totally know that was still a thing. But on the mind of one caller was the biggest issue facing America right now. I'm a bit more disappointed in the selection committee for not picking Alabama for the college football playoff finals. Instead of picking inferior teams like SMU and Indiana. Truly dark times in America. Okay.

So what's more anecdotistic? What's more anachronistic for you, C-SPAN open lines or a crank phone call? Oh, those two things go hand in hand. I love it. Also, if you get a crank phone call on C-SPAN at this point, I feel like you should just get. him the floor, right? Isn't that more interesting than whatever the other call you would have gotten? The generic political opinion that was coming next.

Yes. I think Mr. Trump, in fact, will save America, just as he's promised on the campaign trail. Let's do a little Euro step here and talk about new NBA announcers. Okay. It's part of the fun of the new NBA TV deal, which kicks in in the fall, is we get a whole new set of announcers, or at least announcers in different spots. it was announced on Wednesday that NBC is going to have Mike Tarrico, no surprise, as their number one play-by-play guy. He did NBA games back when he was at ESPN.

He did. I spent some time with him recently. It was in the Sunday night booth with him. You can read about this on the ringer.com. It's called Mike Tariko has a note for that. Just one moment from that that gives you the Tariko, thank you, Toriko method, because everybody's good, right? Joe Buck is great. Kevin Burkhard does a fantastic job.

You're watching these guys, everybody's great. I'm watching Mike Tariko and it was a Bengals game and the Bengals had fourth and one. Familiar thing happens. They can't get the playoffs so they have to call time out. Now I'm sitting a few feet behind Tariko right next to that LED video wall that's behind them. So I'm just like watching what he does. He's looking at the field and he goes, okay, Matt Lee, who was the extra Bengals lineman on the play, he came out of the huddle on the wrong side,

and that's why the Bengals didn't get the playoff. This is like a backup lineman. And then as he's processing that, he pulls up his iPad, which is in front of him, he opens it up and he starts scrolling through player participation data. Uh-huh.

This is fairly arcane information that comes from either pro football focus or the teams themselves. and he goes to Matt Lee's name. And again, nobody at home is like, knows that Mike Tarrico is doing this. Right.

And he's like, oh, Matt Lee, he's played in 11 snaps all year on offense. And you're just like, that all happened. Again,

most announcers are not looking at that data at all during the week. No. Much less looking at them in the one to two to three to four to five seconds they have while they are speaking during a game. If you hear that,

it's usually like someone's put it on a note card in front of them. But that's incredible. And nobody puts that on a note card. Like again, I've talked to spotters before. They're not talking about that kind of stuff. Yeah.

It's about participation data. He did it with an Eagles cornerback. Queen John Mitchell when he got hurt this week in the playoffs. I noticed that. He's like he's played X percentage of the snaps. That's the most of any rookie. And I'm like, what?

Yeah. It was unbelievable. Joining Tariko and NBC is going to be Jamal Crawford. He's very good. He got a lot of run last time. That would be interesting to see. I feel like he's we just starting right. So you're just kind of figuring it out how to be a broadcaster.

Right. He'll be really good. The coordinating producer is going to be Frank de grace. He is the guy who does Nets games on Yes Network with Ion Eagle. Mm-hmm. So that's a good hire too for any. And this is, do we have the NBC's NBA schedule is going to be yet? We don't know.

Well, we don't know the specifics. the nights and whatever when they're going to air them. I know they're doing the season opener. I know they're doing the All-Star game, or at least part of the season opener. Yeah. So essentially that makes Tariko one of the voices you'll get right up to the end of the season

and bring it. Yeah. He'll do the other one. I mean, he's going to be busy. He's got other stuff he's doing too. I'm sure it's a big look for NBC and for the NBA to be like our biggest, you know, our top guys doing these games.

I think it'll be interesting to, find out who the other, you know, if there's a B team, a C team, you know, who else is going to be involved? We can definitely speculate about the B team because it seems like it's going to be Noah Eagle. Yeah. I mean, that is, that is beyond expected. He'll be number two. He did the Olympics last year and was really good at that.

And speaking of the Eagle family, David, this is what's going to look like over at Amazon, which is the other new partner. Ion Eagle, the number one announcer. Yep. to note that Ion Eagle has never been a number one NBA announcer. It's crazy as that is to process. Kevin Harlan is in talks for number two. That's all per Andrew Marchand over at the Athletic.

Taylor Rooks is going to host the studio show. And in the studio with Rooks, Blake Griffin and Dirk Novitsky. Hell yeah. Love the Dirk hire, man. He was so good on Inside the NBA. I mean, I'm biased, I guess, but I just thought he was such a natural

in that environment. I think he'll be really good. I'm glad you could do that like Herbie. Just let us know how you're really feeling. About having to wear it. I remember when Dirk first came to Dallas and he was fresh from Germany and they would do these little like vignettes with him where he would go to like eat something

maybe to a German restaurant during locally broadcast Mavs games. And they were just like so charming. Let's, you know, now it's time to eat. Here we go. Let's go do this or whatever. He's gone from that to somebody who's going to be on a major NBA studio show.

Absolutely unbelievable. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds, a magazine profile that went absolutely nowhere and an update on my film career, which is going nowhere but up. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrated gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always always gratefully received i know you saw that video of former president george w bush that was making the rounds he was making lots of funny faces during the inauguration oh yeah of course twitter joke to write when you realize you took an

edible before doing something serious we would have also accepted when you see the server emerge from the kitchen with a piping hot sizzling platter of combo fajitas for two, which is more our speed probably than an edible. Some very weird symmetry, by the way, with that Bush video and the old Donald Trump video, remember where he was making that series of faces? Oh, yeah. From the 2016 election, we've come so far. Thanks to our pal, Sean Yu, who I saw tweet that out.

If you think history rhymes or at least the memes do, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke. of the week. All right, David, we always hear about classic profiles. We've had some of the authors from magazines on this podcast

talk about their classic profiles. We need to hear more about failed profiles. I had this thought because Walter Kern, novelist and journalist, tweeted that he was once sent to profile

the great director, David Lynch. Oh, yeah. Who died on January 15th. And I just want to read you his tweet because this is fascinating to me. Walter Kern wrote, Many years ago, the New York Times paid all my expenses and held out a nice check on the simple condition that I hang out for a few days with David Lynch and write up the experience. Let's pause here to remember the times when magazines paid tons of money and paid all the your expenses to go hang out with the film book.

Yes. Walter Kern continues. I did the hanging out part, but it really didn't amount to an experience. I couldn't get a grip on him at all, because there was nothing to grip. I'm not saying he was shallow, more that he was truly elusive, meaning the self that was in there, supposedly, was simply that of an artist in his off hours, which is like the self of a vacuum cleaner in its off hours,

meaning it just sits there. In his case, he smoked and drank coffee while he just sat there. And sometimes he said something, nothing memorable. Anyway, the assignment completely defeated me in a way that no other magazine assignment ever has. I think I'll write about this at greater link soon. This non-experience I had was someone so eccentric he didn't come off as an eccentric, but suffice it to say, I'm sorry to hear he's gone. He kept alive in the minds of millions, the figure of the artist. The artist is individual, useless to a society at large and therefore invaluable to all.

Wow. That's really cool. How fascinating is that? It's really wild. I mean, you can imagine involve in reporting situations where you just feel like you're not getting the stuff you know you usually find a way to make it work one way or the other

but that does feel like a particularly like defeating experience it's a just it's just so funny because you know you go in just thinking you're going to encounter a guy who's like

you know balancing plates on sticks and stuff or just do it just like whatever eccentricity pops to mind, well, sometimes the thing, the most obvious pitch is just has no reflect, you know, doesn't, doesn't relate to reality

at all. Should we have a whole series now called one imperfect story or one unwritten story? Just find all the stories that failed. Yeah, please. It's like, you know, how you get fascinated by movies that never got made

or got made but never became an actual watchable movie. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of those. I feel we need that. All right. If you have a story like this, send it to us. Lynde.curtisthrringer.com at the pressbox pod. David, we'll put on our editor's hats here and say,

keep it brief. And no George R.R. Martin related answers will be accepted. That's its whole subcategory of failed stories. I think we need to read more war stories from journalists on the press box generally. I think this because I got a note from Don Hammock, David. Don Hammack wrote for 17 years for the Biloxi Mississippi Sun Herald. Uh-huh. And he had this note to us.

He said, I've been meaning to drop you a DM since you were confused as Woge. We'll let that pass. Uh-huh. But first, Don Hammock writes, wanted to pass along my thoughts as y'all deal with the fires out there. I was a reporter at the Sun Herald in Biloxi during Katrina. And I was one of several in the newsroom who lost their house. although I was fortunate not to lose anyone close to me.

It was terrible, but now I look back and I got a lot out of the experience. Most importantly, my wife, we never would have met if our social circles and hangouts hadn't been shaken up. In fact, I met her on April 17th, the night we were out celebrating our Pulitzer at a terrible bar. It was one of the few things around that was open, so it was a default hangout. She was celebrating her birthday. We met nearly 20 years later. She hasn't kicked me out of the house.

Long story to get to the silver line. in every cloud cliche, but I really did find it. I hope you and your colleagues can hang in there. Oh, that's nice. What a great story. Great stuff from Don Hammack. If you have failed stories or just any interesting war stories, send it to us at the press box pod, Brian.

not Curtis the Winger.com. David, for our Hall of Departed Journalists, we need to induct somebody today. And that's somebody is Jules Fifer. Yes. The great Jules Fifer. 95. Partoonist, you said? So the great Jules Fifer

Yeah, he's a cartoonist He was a writer I mean he was like a He was like a God, so hard to describe his style It's like very Almost abstract, sketchy It's like a

I mean there's like a New Yorker cartoon vibe to it But it's all just sort of like It looks like he never picks up his pen from the paper You know it's all just like swirls And swashes that somehow all add up to just something sort of incredibly informative, like incredibly, like you know exactly what it is.

It's like a trick. It really, it's like, it's a, I don't even know how to describe it. For people of our generation, he may be best known as the guy that drew the picture for the Phantom Tollbooth, which was a huge book. A huge book in our, when we were kids. I mean, and still is. I was a big fan of some of his. later stuff, the man in the ceiling. I thought it was like incredibly good that he wrote

and illustrated, kind of like slightly higher young adult books. But yeah, I mean, just incredibly, an incredibly influential artist. I know he worked for Will & Eisner, who's the creator of the spirit. It's one of the, just a legend in comic books. He could be more different than him, but he think he's in some ways is just as influential because he sort of informs a less doctrinaire school of art that is of cartoon art that they followed him so i mean he's just absolutely incredible guy gary trudeau gave a quote for the times obit and you know you are important when gary trudeau is the call upon your death and trudeau said this really echoes what you just said by stripping down the art to a sequence of elegant repetitive images he found a way to convey

astonishingly sophisticated ideas without distraction no balloons, no screens, no backgrounds, no panels, just simple line drawings and the flow of bright, witty dialogue. That's right. That's right. Yeah, he was, it was, I mean, I feel like his work was often imitated. So you might just sort of look at it and say, they go, it sort of feels like the style of 70s children books, children's book illustrations, although he did a lot of political stuff for the village voices, wasn't just consigned to children's books. but he actually did more of it than people realized. It's incredibly prolific. And there's a lot of collections of his works and stuff that I highly recommend people go and check out.

He was just kind of one of one. So many, dude. And dude, this career, so he did the Village Voice strip that you mentioned from 1956 for more, and it ran for more than 40 years, according to the times. Yeah. A 40-year run at the Village Voice. then he had like 18 other careers. Yeah, he was like a playwright, a screenwriter.

Two adult novels, not graphic novels, but novels. And then he also wrote graphic novels. Yeah. As a screenwriter, he wrote the script for Robert Altman's Popeye with Robin Williams. Because going back to what you said about Will Eisner, he was a fan of the original run of Popeye cartoons. Yeah. And tried to give it the sensibility of that. that, which by the 1980s, everyone had completely forgotten and be like, what the hell am I

looking at with this Popeye movie, which was live action? Mm-hmm. Also did the script for Mike Nichols' carnal knowledge with Jack Nicholson. Just an absolutely unbelievable career. Pulitzer in 1986. He also said this about the 50s, which was kind of a formative time for him. This was in the Washington Post. I didn't want to go into the business of overthrowing the government. But at that time, the government cooperated by giving me a government that need to be overthrown.

Fantastic. Welcome to the Hall of Departed journalists. All right, Dave, before we go, a quick update on my film career. Yes. You remember many months ago, I talked about this amazing experience where an actor named Andrew Ordenberg emailed me and said, hey, I listen to the press box. I have written and then starred in this movie called When I'm Ready, which is about two young lovers

spending their final days on Earth together their final days because the asteroids are coming to Earth. Story of love in the time of an apocalypse. Yes. And he said, I would like you to be in my movie playing a radio host

who is narrating these final moments of the Earth. The movie stars Dermott Mulroney and Lauren Cohen in addition to the aforementioned. And my response to that was, yes. Yes, I would like to do that. That sounds fantastic. So we filmed the part.

When I'm Ready now has a trailer that you can watch online. It will be in select theaters from coast to coast on February 7th. Yes. And then on video on demand on February 14th, time for Valentine's Day. Now, you know, David, I worked with our boss, Sean Fennessee for many years. here at the rare writing stories. And when I would turn in a B minus, let's be generous, perhaps, generous perhaps C plus story, he was always, you know, very encouraging, very nice, go get him Tiger, et cetera, et cetera.

So I would just like to give a message to Sean Fennessee. There's no need to pull any punches about my work on the big picture. I know you have the integrity of your podcast to maintain. So just you say what you need to say. No. Well, as long as he shares his biases before he renders his judgment, I think it's fine. You think he'll start crying like Kirby? Yeah.

He and I worked together for so long and he's just so glad to see him getting voice work. Just knowing with that guy's been through this year. And all there was an election. He went to Atlanta to cover a championship game. I just, oh, Brian, I'm just so proud of you. All right, we got some only in journalism for you. These are words you hear all the time in news stories, but never hear in human speech. We now have a subcategory called Only in Sports Broadcasting.

You and I, David, were joking about how an NFL team becomes a proud franchise. Or perhaps a once proud franchise. Sure. Listen to Fox's Kevin Burkhardt during the Lions Commanders playoff game. He's going to give us that word and a bonus word as well. One's very proud franchise that has been Moribund for a long, long time for the most part, a couple years here and there. One's very proud and moribund. That's great.

That's some really high level only in journalism work there. Is anything moribund other than a sports team? Moribund. No. Have you ever heard anything described that particular word? A political party? No. I think it's only a sports team.

I think it's only a once proud sports franchise. So these words go together. A once proud team that is also, they're kind of the same word actually. I'm thinking of them as Yen and Yang, but they are synonybs. If you are once proud,

you are also by definition, Moribund. Yeah. Moribund is such a funny word to say. A smile, even as it escapes my lips. Because I'm sure KB was doing. I'm just searching the news

The New York Times had a piece a month ago Three Giants trade ideas This is the athletic I guess Three giant trade ideas To spice up a moribund hot A moribund hot stove O'Sha, here we go OSHA kills Moribund

COVID standards for health care settings That was one we'd go from Politico Okay Moribund There's this is it's such a terrible word to use in a headline. It really is. Axios.

Mortgage rates are down. The housing market is still moribund. It feels like none of those are the right word. None of those are the right word. I'm so glad you consulted the athletic for the frontier of sports writerly language. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah.

Last, last Monday's headline about an animal trapped. in an ice climbing area was elk on a shelf. Yeah, it's a good one. Elk on a shelf. Today's headline comes to us, David, from Adam Waltonbaugh. It's from the aforementioned Politico. It's about the new Donald Trump created Department of Government Efficiency. Uh-huh.

Otherwise known as Doge. Now, Doge was the brainchild, if that's the correct word, of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramoswamy. Uh-huh. You remember Ramoswamy had a little Twitter moment about visas. Yeah. And Musk said, you Ramoswamy are ejected. You're out.

What was Politico's strained pun headline? Oh, God. Doge. Doge. Uh, doge ball. Something, it's not you? you're fired, right? It's, oh,

uh, no. Um, is it a dog pun? He's, he's got to get going. He needs to get, get out of here.

I mean, I mean, out of here. Maybe think a little old west, right? We're going to, there's only room, the town ain't big enough for both of us that,

uh, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna get. Gonna get the doge, get the, I have no idea. Round up the posse?

Wait, what are we? No, no, no. We're going to get the hell. Get the hell out. Get the hell out of Doge. There we go. Okay. Yeah.

Dodge. Gosh, that's very good. I can't believe I miss that. Get out of Doge, I believe was Politico's tweet. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Proxy Magic. By our good pal, Brian Waters.

David, I normally would tease a Joel Anderson podcast coming up. But guess what? It's you, buddy. Back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.