The Press Box - Why The Cut Goes Viral, The New York Times Becomes a Gaming Company, Reporters Steal From Air Force One, and the New Netflix Movie 'Scoop' With Amanda Dobbins

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

On the Final Edition, Bryan is joined by The Ringer’s Amanda Dobbins as they discuss the viral first-person essays from The Cut, how it's doing them, and why they’re so compelling (01:56). They also touch on Lachlan Cartwright’s NYT Magazine testimonial on how National Enquirer helped Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign (20:19), The New York Times as a gaming company (29:26), and White House correspondents who have taken things from Air Force One (34:38). After, they give their thoughts on Netflix’s latest film, ‘Scoop,’ about Prince Andrew’s infamous BBC interview and discuss their appreciation for procedural newsroom stories (38:35). Then, David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Amanda Dobbins Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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On Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Eduardo Ocampo, who's filling in for Brian Waters. Coming up on the podcast, the cut gives us viral essay after viral essay. How are they doing that? Plus, the National Enquirer during the Trump years, the New York Times is a gaming company. Are you, Mr. Reporter, stealing?

Pillowcases from Air Force One and a review of the new Netflix movie Scoop about the BBC's interview with Prince Andrew. All of this with today's guest host. She is Amanda Dobbins, features director of The Ringer, a host of the Big Picture and Jam Session podcast. She's the pride of Atlanta GA.

Thank you so much. She's my pal. Amanda, welcome to the press box. I wonder if anyone else in Atlanta thinks of me as their pride. I hope so. Maybe we have at least one person listening. There hasn't been a key to the city or anything like that.

When I talk about local video stores from the 90s on the big picture, I do hear from people who also visited turtles. So, yeah, does that fit under the media umbrella? I think so. Is physical media a press box interest? That's your other co-host? Yeah, that's right. Let's be clear. It's the other one.

It's not me. So first topic for today. And one, frankly, that David Shoemaker and I have not spent nearly enough time talking about, the viral first-person essays that are continuously produced by The Cut. Yes. Our friend Jay Caspian and Kang tweeted this last week. New York Magazine and The Cut are the only publications that consistently go viral on here. Can't really tell if that's good or bad, but good Lord, is it true?

You worked at New York Mag. I did. I worked for Vulture and for the magazine. So I was never under the Cut's magical umbrella. So I think I can speak with some. And it was also over a decade ago. So with, I think, a decade, wow. So I'm, you know, I'm not connected.

I'm just an admirer and a constant consumer because these things are sticky. So as somebody who was an admirer and also was cut adjacent once upon a time, what is happening here? In some ways, it is just the latest revival and repackaging of like a time-honored Internet. And before that magazine, specifically women's magazine tradition, which is, first person, usually a young woman, oversharing about their lives. And, you know, I vividly remember being a subscriber to YM magazine, which had a regular feature of the most, it was called TMI, I believe, and it was too much information for those of you who all were not reading YM or the internet. And, you know, it was something embarrassing that happened usually with respect to a crime.

rush or having your period in a place where you didn't want to have it. But then people learned about blogs. And blogs, I guess, in a lot of ways, were the first person internet extension. But I think between the combination of Jezebel and ExoJane, people learned that if you said some things that you would not normally say in public in a well-crafted or at least memorably crafted way. You could get a lot of attention. And usually you could parlay it into some sort of, at least a few other writing gigs. So that happened through the 2000s, even last year, even the last decade. And, you know, then everyone pivoted to video and these things moved away. But the cut

has figured out how to redo this and like bring it back and has also, I guess, found a new generation of young women who haven't learned from the previous generations of young women, what happens? And so we just have people out here, Sharon. Yeah. So that what happens is you become that person. Yes. Your essay goes viral. It gets massive readership.

Yes. It succeeds in internet terms. And then you become defined by it. That person. Now, there are sometimes upsides to that. You can become that person and then sell a book. from that. And I think at least one of these essays

is becoming a book. So there are opportunities, and this was kind of like always the sort of false promise of blogging and of the internet, which is like exposure will then lead to an actual career. But the last

few examples from the cut have been less, oh, this seems like a great book opportunity because this person is willing to quote unquote go there and more like an occasion for just of bringing us all together and mocking someone. So the most recent, the case for marrying an older man by Grazie Sophia Christie, who is described as a writer living in Miami and London.

Sure. Aren't we all? That's the byline. Yeah. An all-time opening sentence here. In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play rather badly the lottery. Mm-hmm.

A lot of commas. The style of this piece, I think really the writing style contributed to its, like, instant widespread derision because this is a person who, and she says in the piece, you know, attended liberal arts classes at Harvard and is definitely writing in that mega purple, like I've read some of, um, pros. and it just, it keeps going. Can I give you one more sentence? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it was like you were waiting for the Lolita thing to drop, the reference to drop, because it is, this is a piece about the woman is arguing that you should marry someone older than you. through the piece is really about you should marry, or her argument is really you should marry someone when you're like 22, which is what she does, because her argument has a lot to do with,

like, women only have aesthetic power in their early 20. So, I mean, it's, it made people mad, and she hits on a lot of arguments with respect to her physical appearance and also what it is like dating, a 20-year-old man, which struck a chord. Some of that was fact-checked true for me as well. I mean... If we're sharing here.

Sure, of course. There was a great in-response tweet that was like, here are all the things that I have learned that she's missing out from, from like dating a man also in your 20s. And she's like, I know everything about the films of David Lynch and Grantland. And I was like, ding, ding, ding! I mean, it's very funny. But so the style was ridiculous.

It was, you know, certainly not second or third wave feminism or really any form. And also the age gap was only 10 years. And so everyone was like, what's even wrong with you? The premise of this is. That was very striking me when I read the piece because I was thinking this is going to be some huge age gap. And it was like, oh, you were in your 20s. Yes. And he was 30, 30-ish when you met, 30, I think.

Right. And then you get married. And obviously those are different life phases and the younger you are, the bigger the chasm is. I don't have a ton in common with, you know, many late 20s individuals right now, much to my chagrin, even though I try at work every day. But it was one of those things. And this is like the interesting media theme of all of these was like, did no one interrogate the claims of this piece before it was published? And specifically was there not an editor? who was like, do you want to address the fact that it's not really that huge in age gap

or that maybe people don't want to hear about your high breasts or it will come off this way or like what is a flush ponytail? And you know, it is not my type of writing, but it is clearly crafted, written, edited. Like this is not just someone's journal entry. So you know there was an editorial process. But like, what is the editorial process of these and what is the intent is an interesting question? Absolutely, because do you want to interrogate this? Right.

Does this kind of piece get better with more interrogation? Or does it actually get worse in the sense that it gets less readable and less defensible? And then so it's better to almost say, here is this person's take. Yeah, but also less effective, right? I mean, I think if you're signing or accepting or editing these pieces, you do now in 2024 understand that the goal is to get people talking. You know, and I believe even the day after this piece was written, the cuts social media page was like doing memes about how, you know,

we got you guys, we know you're all reading, et cetera. So there is this knowledge of attention grabbing versus like an argument that actually makes sense and that we stand behind editorially. which in some ways is like no different than an op-ed page, I suppose. It's just, it's just gossipier, which is fun. It's more personal. Yeah. It is, it does have certain thing in common with the slate pitch of old.

Of course. I am going to argue this thing. So I was thinking of typologies here. This is the sort of out there case four cut essay. Right. The Charlotte Cowles piece from a while back. It happened to me. It happened to me.

And it could happen to you too, dear reader. Yes. which was, I mean, if you guys don't remember this, this is that the headline is how I got scammed out of 50K. And it's the, it is the cut sometimes financial columnist, which many people seized on with glee, about how she fell prey to a phone scam, a well-researched phone scam,

and handed someone in a car $50,000 in cash in a shoebox. They were in the car. She was on the, Oh, she was on the street, yes. And so that one, you know, it's like the false it could happen to you, but also really led into just some great serial style, like, online investigation of who is this person and what's going on and lots of Reddit threads, like debunking the various bank statements. You know, it just some great shoe leather journalism on the part of people on the Internet who were pissed off.

Which is special. You know, we don't get that all of the time. Then the third one that has become a really big deal lately was Emily Gould's piece, The Lure of Divorce. Yes. Which is more of... It's a throwback. It's a big, slightly harder to classify piece of personal writing.

And also really good sentence to sentence. Yeah, she's... And when I say throwback, it is because Emily Gould is, you know, one of the four... mothers of internet confessional writing. And she was there in the 2000s writing for Gawker. And she gave an interview about this piece where she says, I do it. I do one of these deeply over confessional pieces every five years. And she famously had one where she was on the cover of the New York Times magazine talking

about what it was like to be a blogger. That didn't go well for her. It didn't. But that was a big moment. But it was a really big moment. I think she got a huge book deal off of it. And then she did another one, which is, I think, my favorite of the three, which is just about how much money she has spent and or lost as a writer and calculating up all of the money and wasted opportunity. And, you know, that one to me appeals the most.

I'm still a student of Adam Moss, the former New York Magazine editor who's just like, the money is the story always. And so she frames it in terms of just some pretty galling financial decisions. And then this one is kind of the next life update, which was about struggles in her marriage, mental health struggles. And also money. And also money. And all things that she had been chronicling in smaller ways publicly on the internet throughout. So like I as a gremlin was very up to date on the gossip parts of this. but to your point, she really does have the ability to pull these together in a beautifully written and also,

there's introspection in this, even if you don't agree with what she's going through or the conclusion she comes to, that is perhaps missing from some of the other essays. It actually is edited, and you feel someone being like, let's talk about this. Totally. And just a great piece of writing on its own. It's just like I read every sentence of that and was like, wow, this is. is amazing story. And that was published and then the book deal was announced hours, if not days later. So, you know, that's like an older school model. But it still works. And I talked with a lot of people

about it online and off, you know. That's the other thing. These essays will bring together my professional life and all my media friends, but then they cross over to the civilians. Which is so interesting. Yeah. And I... It's not just, oh, that was a great magazine story. Yeah. No, no, no. You hear about it from just, you know, everyone with an Instagram. account, obviously, which is all of my friends. And I'm a certain demographic that the cut is going for. But it does kind of, like it gets picked up in the New York Post, right? It gets picked up everywhere and people just suddenly decide to have opinions.

So that's kind of fun. And that is hard to do in this media age. Absolutely. It is absolutely hard to do. Yeah. In terms of how these get assigned, is there just like a, is there an inbox my personal essay at thecutt.com with people saying, I would like to write something like this? So I don't know because I'm not privy to what the cut is doing, but I assume they're getting a lot of

pitches. And then I know that they have a lot of editors who are just taking meetings or emails or just kind of fishing around. It's kind of known at this point, right, of if you have a personal essay. This is the place to go and you're going to like dance with the devil. You know, it might break well and you might get the book deal and you might be the girl with the high breasts who's on vacation in France all the time seemingly when she's not in Miami or London. So like she's probably okay too. Playing the lottery badly. Yeah, I guess. But then there's also, you know, sometimes these are done for like promotional reasons. Like there was a great essay recently about how you can't publish a book without also publishing the like four personal essays tied

to the release of your books. So they're just, there's a farm system, right? Can you do too many of these if you're the cut? Is there a point at which readers who gobble them up and all three that we're talking about here have been enormously successful pieces of internet writing? That readers will just say, there are too many. I feel like it's an assembly line, I feel manipulated because I'm getting these over and over again no matter how good they might be. Yeah. I kind of don't think so, which is a very, a craven answer and a crave an editorial strategy. They have to be good, right? And we're talking about the three essays that really hit and that really made you go, huh, which, you know what, is great journalism. Like that's, or at least

great media, right? At some point, you got to get a reaction. But there are plenty of just like, you know, my husband and I are arguing over, like, where to send her child to preschool. And that taught me about, you know, how I didn't like my school experience. Can you tell what phase of life I'm in? And it's like, I don't really care about that, you know? So I think they already, they are trafficking. They're doing basically the old SEO model, right? Of we'll just keep doing a bunch and hope that the big ones keep hitting.

It strikes me how much has changed over the last 10 years because even a decade ago, if you published a story in the New York Times Magazine or the New Yorker, one of the men's magazines, or Grantland, it didn't really matter whether it was good at all. Merely by getting onto that TOC, you got a trip on the Twitter Mario go round for a couple of hours, for a day. You have done it. It was your day, yeah. I am amazed now when I see hard copies of, especially the Times Mag and the New Yorker,

lying around my house. And I open the TOC and I'm like, that happened two weeks ago and I didn't know about it. I had no idea it happened. And this is like the one kind of big magazine piece that is regularly getting in front of my eyes. Yes. And I am not the target audience for this. But I am very, very aware that these essays are happening. So I think it's a little bit of it.

That's both. These are the purest candy media-wise. And I do also think that these exist outside of Twitter, even though that's where we as sad media professionals encounters them. But, you know, I think, I don't know if you have this experience. I have this experience as a person with content to promote, married to another person with content to promote. Like, Twitter is essentially dead for those purposes. But Instagram is, is alive. Or at least it's alive for a certain demo that overlaps with the cut demo. Then you've got TikTok. So I think some of it is that this is very appealing.

hanging fruit to many, many different ecosystems. And so it gets outside of the sad Twitter bubble. Yeah, the kind of people like us that would see magazine TOCs. Exactly. Oh, so-and-so wrote a profile. Right. Yeah, exactly. Out of boy.

Out of girl. We can trace this to hi, Jezebel, which you mentioned. Yes. Also, I would throw in Tina Brown's New Yorker. Of course, yeah. Part of her job when she was spray painting the New Yorker in the 90s. And hiring every single good journalist who is still there, but whatever. I remember, half remembered the Daphne Merkin piece reading about it.

Yes. Its existence much later, which was called unlikely obsession. Yeah. And I, right, can I give you the first sentence of the New Yorker, this is from New Yorker's website. Personal history about the writer's obsession with being spanked. Tina was on. And that was a huge part of vanity fair before, of her vanity fair of getting people who would not normally open up about whatever they were opening up about to just dish.

Absolutely. Yeah. I love Tina Brown so much as you know. It was part of the mix, as they used to say. Speaking of big magazine pieces that hit our TOCs and our Twitter feeds, The New York Times Magazine has a piece by Lachlan Cartwright. He's a media reporter for the Hollywood reporter. He was the Daily Beast before that.

Speaking of Tina, he has a new piece out, I should say, called What I Saw Working at the National Enquirer during Donald Trump's rise. I was fascinated by this. Not only is a piece of media reporting, it has some. some of that. It's another first person essay. It's a here's what happened to me. It's a confessional. It's true. It's a form that works. He's saying I was part of this thing. Yeah. That you've been reading about. Yes. Where the inquire was helping Donald Trump win the 2016 election. Right. And this whole catch and kill thing where we pay for the rights to a story,

but ha ha, we don't run it. We pay for the rights so we don't run it. Right. And it remains locked up and nobody ever finds out about it. To me, it was also very interesting because it is, you know, another chronicling just of how tabloids work and how they have changed over the last five to ten years. You know, am I in particular gobbling up my beloved Us Weekly, you know, and other publications? But from a celebrity watching perspective, which I am and always have been, how these tabloids get the stories that they get,

can stand by them legally, even though almost all of it is incorrect. And how it really does affect our entire cultural, you know, understanding. Because, like, this all led to Donald Trump as this piece details, because he was inquire or fodder for years and years and years before he became president. And the thing, you know, we always say when talking about it is like, well, what are you going to do? Like, people are really interested. You can't stop this. The information's going to get out somehow. Like, it's just human nature at some point to want to know who's sleeping with who or who has this

much money. And if it's not here, then it's going to be there. And so that's how these places kind of survive. And I always do wonder about the people doing the work. And do you ever think to yourself, you know what, maybe I don't need to publish that. Maybe we actually could just not report on, you know, somebody's marital breakdown or somebody's XYZ. And you never really think about the people in the room who are like, oh, whatever, I guess we'll just publish it. Or we won't publish it because we're being given,

because we want Donald Trump to be president. But so it's a rare glimpse and just inside the minds of these people. who have a lot of influence and how much they're thinking about it and how much they're just kind of like, I have a job to do too. And I still need my visa. And so I guess I'll publish this and now publish that and just kind of go on with my day. There's an interesting moral quandary within that moral quantry. Right. Which is, do you see that Inquirer documentary that came out a few years ago? Yes. It was amazing because it had these guys that were like, we're going to get the picture of Elvis in the casket.

Like that was a thing. That's a real thing. Yeah. And we can argue that that is like way beyond the pale or whatever it is, sending the relative in there who is so bereaved. He has to see Elvis and then his camera didn't work. So he had to come see Elvis again, just have a moment with him so he could get the picture for the inquirer. Yeah. There's that kind of tabloid story. And then there's what we're talking about here in 2015, 2016, which is like, we just need a headline that says that Hillary Clinton is ill. Right. And it doesn't matter what. it is as long as that headline happens

as you say we don't get sued or maybe exactly so what we can do is we can find someone who is three degrees removed from the campaign who saw her take an Advil who says they saw her take an Advil once and that'll be our indication

that she's not well and we can run with this and match it to to all the manipulated images of her looking drawn or whatever and and they pay money for it, which is another thing that we know, but this piece is pretty up front about is that most places don't pay for stories, but the National Inquirer does, TMZ does.

It always shocks me how little money it is. Yes. Like, if you were, if you had a story that was going to bring down the Trump administration, I mean, I like to think that you and I would both publish it and not accept money. But, okay, so those are important stakes. what are not moral stakes? Like if you... If you're like, I don't care

and I would listen to offers, what would your price be? That's what you're asking? Yeah, the one that always shocks me is that, so that famous elevator video of JZ, Beyonce and Solange, when Solange gets very angry at Jay-Z, I think that went for like $5,000.

$5,000, but do you know what you're sitting on and do you know how much money people made off of that? Millions of dollars. I mean, I'm going at least six figures. Yes. And here is six figures is kind of, it seems where it tops out. Yes. With one of those Trump stories. But there's a lot in the $30,000, $20,000 category, according to Cartwright. Yeah, which is always, I mean, it just makes a sad situation even sadder. There's a few amazing details in here. One of the alleged catch and kill contracts is put in a safe in Lockland Cartwright's office. he uses the safe as a footrest for a while,

and then he needs to get the contract because this is another really interesting part of this piece and part of the confessional aspect is he starts talking to reporters who are writing about the inquiry and its relationship with Trump. He starts giving, feeding them details from the inside. So he needs to see this contract. So he opens the safe, gives the details presumably to an outside reporter, but then he can't get the safe closed again.

And it's like, oh, my God, the editor's going to walk in my office and see that the safe is open. So he's turning up the music at his office, like kicking the safe to try to get it close. It's really good. There's another great detail of when he gets the call from, it's the Wall Street Journal, is doing a story into these payouts. And he's in the newsroom, answers the phone. And it's like, let me call you right back in front of Dylan Howard, the infamous editor.

And then he just like seemingly instantaneously walks outside and is like, sure, I'll just tell you everything. like in the News Corp or whatever buildings, like, lobby? And if I'm remembering the timeline correctly, the journal published that night. Yes. And then Dylan Howard comes into his office two hours later and is like, we've gotten all these inquiries about this story. But I was just kind of like if I,

if my visa were dependent on this and if that were as important, you know, to me as it seems to be to him. And I guess I would at least like try to get away from security cameras before I take a suspicious call instantly. Go to my car. Yeah, or something. That was like a fascinating insight into sourcing in general.

Working through of his guilt, too, is a really fascinating part of this story. So he worked at the inquiry. It's not totally clear from this piece how many of these things he actively participated in. He seems mostly to be a witness, at least in his recounting, to the Trump part of it. Then he starts talking to reporters. Lucas Alpert, you mentioned from the Wall Street Journal, Ronan Farrow, the New Yorker. He contacts at one point. So part of the way he's working through this and has worked through this, this is Lockhart and

we're talking about, is saying, okay, so I helped the reporters outside the inquiry, the quote unquote real reporters. Right. Right about what we were doing. Right. That was part of my penance. Yes. For working at the inquirer, taking this change.

job that I knew was not great. Which to me reads as, please, I have a conscience and I understand how reporting works, so employ me again in the future, which many people have and he's done good work. But it is, there are always those sections of these essays where it's like, I have to acknowledge all my wrongdoing, but I also need to evade it enough that you'll still like me. I've got to keep you on my side. Absolutely. Absolutely. And he's a media reporter and a very successful one right now.

I'd say one that's like people are looking for that bylaw. I know certainly I am. Yeah. So there's a little bit of a dance there. Absolutely. I'm going to confess, but also I won't. Right. I mean, he is also skating through the fact that he signed a very strict NDA.

And then has now, so much of it is public record. And he's, I guess, just hoping that no one will actually be able to prosecute him for violating this. but he is also sort of dancing a legal tightrope of sorts in this piece. Some fascinating details in there. Highly recommended. Kataku did an interesting kind of piece about the New York Times where you state, preferably in the headline, something that everybody now knows to be true. Yes.

Which is that the New York Times has become, in large part, a gaming company. Yes. They're a journalism company, but they are also a gaming company. Right. And the gaming company is underwriting. any journalism that they do or a lot of it. This completely checks out in my household. How about yours?

Absolutely. I'm curious how you divide gaming rights in your household because we have one account and I play all the games. And so, and that happened very early on. I think as soon as they added Wardle, I would just go and I'd get there first. And so then my husband would log on to the account that, to be fair, is under his name. and then would find that Wordle was no longer available for him for the day. And so he's just seated all gaming rights.

And now I do all of them. This is what's happened to me. Yeah. And my kids who really aren't old enough to effectively solve the puzzles, especially my eight-year-old daughter, has started demanding that I get to input the letters. Oh, okay. So lately I've come in and my mother-in-law's been staying with this last couple days,

and there are four people working on the game. That's great. It's bringing people together. It feels like I wasn't invited to. a meeting. What is the popularity of the games in your household?

Wordle's definitely number one. I'm trying to think what number two would be. Connections has been big lately. I've been on a big connection streak,

but it's, I either, as soon as I make a mistake on connections, I quit. Because I'm infuriated. You just want to throw a perfect game?

Well, it's also kind of like, the thing with connections is that I can either do it in about a minute or I'm stumped. And I think I'm really angry about being stumped and angry about not having a perfect score, so I'm just out. And, you know, I guess I could, and I also can't stand the indignity of getting everything wrong just to know what the answers are. So yes, I guess I do need to throw a perfect game. I'm often brought in it as to continue this

baseball analogy as the closer for connections. Like, we're stuck. Now we'll let Brian in. Okay. Because maybe he can help us put us over the hump. And I'm like, oh, those words are... Yeah. Yeah, especially if there's like a sports thing or something.

They found an interesting slide, and it's in this piece. It was in an SEC report. And it just shows, I don't know if you saw this, how much time is devoted to everything at the New York Times. So we've got like a huge chunk for news. We've got gaming.

We've got cooking here, which is a little small, I would think, just again, Maybe this is the Curtis household, how much we use the New York Times app for what we're going to cook tonight. And then we got the athletic here, which is probably its own story, as a tiny little, tiny little piece of the graph. Recently just one anecdote, which is probably not indicative, but recently learned my husband is paying. We're subscribers both to the New York Times and separately still to the athletic. So maybe there are a few other people out there like us.

Interesting. It is interesting to me, too, how this is coming back to the Conception News. newspapers that you and I grew up with. Me, ForwardStart Telegram, you, AJC, I'm guessing. Yes. Newspapers were, if not gaming companies, they were that. They were comics companies. They were look at cool ads for the department store companies.

They were pictures of adorable kids in your community, possibly including your own child. Yes. That was very exciting. It was this lifestyle brand that also incidentally included news. And if we'd done a Occasionally. And if we'd had a neat little chart like this that we have for the New York Times

and what are people actually reading in here? It would have been very big. So what the Times has managed to do, unlike almost any other newspaper in America, sadly they're the only one, is be like, here you go, kids. Here's some games. Here's some fun.

Yes. Here's some stuff that doesn't seem like news. But that will draw you into the paper. Yes. And we'll fund the other things, which is the business model that, you know, along, I guess, with classified ads that sustained newspapers for forever. So people seem to be really flummoxed about this sometimes.

It's like, oh, everyone just plays Wordle at the New York Times. To me, that's reassuring, you know, of all of the various business models that they have undertaken, that one is at least, I'm like, this has some sound financial sense behind it and isn't really hurting anyone. Really surprising. Remember when they bought Wordle? It was like, oh, that's cute. Yeah. Now it turns out to have been this like inspired purchase.

It really does. When I was young in the business, we had a new editor in Slate and we had a crossword puzzle. This is like early 2000 Slate. And one of the editors' first acts was to cancel the crossword puzzle. And I saw literally yesterday a headline in one of my media newsletters that says Slate has a new crossword puzzle. So we've come back 20 years later, we figured out it's not the think pieces they're going to light our way. It's that little crossword puzzle. Another fabulous story I saw that I had to talk to you about.

This was in Politico's West Wing Playbook, which is written by Eli Stokel's Lauren Egan and Ben Johansson. It's called The Real D.C. Crime Wave, and it is an epidemic of White House correspondents stealing things from Air Force One. I'll give you one great paragraph. Several colleagues of one former White House correspondent for a major newspaper described them hosting a dinner party

where all the food was served on gold-rimmed Air Force One plates evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time. Listen, you want a reporter that can take advantage of opportunities. You know what I mean? And these are people who are not allowed to accept gifts anywhere else. They're not paid very much. And maybe they're not going to notice that a plate is missing. Does it raise some ethical questions about our political coverage?

Of course. Did I already have those questions? Yes. So I thought about it in these terms. Yes. Ethics-wise. Sure. Would you rather your White House correspondent be going to a cozy holiday party and getting their picture taken with Joe and Jill?

Right. Or would you rather than be rooking the occasional pillowcase and plate off of Air Force One? I think I'm going with the latter. I agree. It's also natural behavior. How many toiletries have you taken from like nice hotels throughout the world? Molten Brown. Right, exactly. That's expensive.

Oh, wow. These slippers, they'll fit right in. You know, they don't charge for those. So listen, I get it. It was also, and I don't want to, like, step on your segue, but there was a similar plot point in scoop. There was. Yes.

There was. I didn't think about that. Yeah, which is that the teaspoons regularly get stolen from Buckingham Palace. Which is, of course, right? Of course that would happen. Yeah. And there's a interesting point, which is maybe the only smart thing Keeley Haas is allowed to say throughout the movie,

which was tough for me because I love Keeley Haas. She's like the moment that the teaspoons stop disappearing, we know we're in trouble as an institution because people are still invested in this. It has some sort of power. So they just budget for extra teaspoons. Okay, before we plunge all the way into scoop, I just want to just come back to your point about journalists being freeloaders. Sure. I mean, don't you remember when you started and having some mentor, and I think somebody just told me this directly, it's like, look, you're not making any money. You don't have a medical plan or a very good. one, but you get to watch movies for free and you get book galleys. And me thinking, what a deal.

This is fantastic. Also, because media parties have apparently been in discussion somewhere, you can get free food and booze if you go to the events, which is definitely how I, not how I fed myself entirely, but at least one or two nights a week, I was dining on someone else's dime. How I drank in my 20s or drank good stuff. That was definitely. coming from some kind of media party. Yeah. And even today, when I go to, like, a football game at halftime, you should see these sports writers. These are not people in their 20s.

These is 50s, 60s. They run for the hot dog buffet that is served in the press box. Yeah. It's like Usain Bolt. I mean, we are going for that free, crappy hot dog because. Listen, also, when you and I were coming up, you needed to, you wanted to try to take a continent-ass job, even for six months to just get a run at the game. fifting tables. You know, you guys have, you would not believe what just gets put on the giveaway table

or used to be 15 years ago. I'm sorry to say. It's not the point. When I worked at Glamour, I got several trips into the beauty closet. Brian, that was, I mean, it's, it's the closest I've ever been to the Devil Wars product coming true in real life. It was astounding. So again, you just, you have to take what's available to you. All right. Let's talk about Scoop. I got so excited when I saw this was I was like, I mean, all the Venn diagram comes together. Media movie, Royals, Jillian Anderson doing an accent, everything one could want. This is on Netflix. Do we want to do a quick plot summary here? Sure, yes. There is a booker at the BBC, and please help me with this name, Sam McAllister. Real-life Sam McAllister, played by Billy Piper wonderfully in this movie,

who somewhat offhandedly at the beginning of the film is pursuing an interview with Prince Andrew. the Prince of York. Yes. Charles's brother. Prince Andrew, as we know, has a friendship with serial sex abuser and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein during this period.

He is accused or would be accused later of having sex with a 17-year-old on three separate occasions. Jeffrey Epstein, while the events of this movie are going on, gets arrested, he dies by suicide in jail, and all of a sudden,

Prince Andrew has some interest or at least potential interest in going on television and explaining himself. So this movie is about how the Booker at the BBC and all the other people of the BBC maneuver him into a chair for a show called Newsnight. Yes. Where he gives what turns out to be a disastrous. A career ending, if you can call it a career, a reputation ending interview. This is in November 2019 that the real interview happens.

I absolutely gobbled this movie up and really enjoyed it. What did you think? Oh, I loved it. I mean, it is Taylor made for me. It's a newsroom movie, which I love. It is a movie about the workings, the behind the scenes of the royal family. And it does have actors who have also appeared on the crown. So that's also just my absolute catnip.

And this movie stars Jillian Anderson, Billy Piper, Keeley Hawes, and Romola Garay, who are just like the Mount Rushmore. of British actors of a certain age to me. So I thought it was a delight. But I also thought it was very smart. It was well-paced. It got everything right in terms of portraying how these stories come together and sort of the negotiation and the strategy and the thinking that on both sides that goes into an event like this, which is like, like a pretty strange, sort of outdated but still existing form of media event.

I love a newsroom movie, but I love that kind of newsroom movie, which is a procedural newsroom movie where you really understand why things are happening. In this case, news night is a little bit like nightline, the ABC Nightline was over here, where it's a very smart, well-respected show that has gotten a little bit of fusty. Yes. And so getting somebody like Prince Andrew on there for an hour and talking to him about this is not only that show becoming unfusty, but getting this big scoop that everybody is going to want to watch. Exactly. And then there's all this wonderful procedural stuff about how do we interview this guy?

Because he's not going to come on here and confess. So how do we carefully ask questions to him in such a way? Right. And even that question of what do we want from the interview? What are we going for? which is a fascinating and I think very smart way of thinking about the interview process that many people who conduct interviews just go right past because there is a goal and there is something that you're trying to present to these people and how you ask the questions

and how you approach and how you set everything up is all influenced by like what experience you're trying to give. Yes. And Billy Piper, Sam McAllister, the character, has something where he says, he wants to be heard. Like, he wants to talk. So trying to push him into a corner right off the bat is not going to be the move. The move is going to be to ask some broader questions at the beginning.

And let him talk his way into the corner. Yes. Which real life Prince Andrew and Prince Andrew Rufus Sewell in this movie does. Do just remember. And that's an interesting part of. the movie where at the end they are sort of recreating word for word some of the more memorable quotes from this television interview. Yes.

Including the Pizza Express and Woking, which is as an adult royal watcher is seared into my brain. Holy crap. And the sweating? I can't sweat because I was shot at during the Falklands War. Yeah. I mean, it's just... Because one of the, his accuser had the victim in this case had accused, he had accused, him of sweating profusely.

That was part of the evidence. Yeah. And he was like, no, I can't sweat. It's hard to make a compelling piece of media about another piece of media. But this really is. And even in the way they film that final interview and the reaction shots that they do between, like the Newsnight team and Prince Andrews team and that, and they do manage to frame it so you understand in real time how it's just absolutely.

going up in flames, which was the experience of watching it, but they don't just replay the interview. No. And in fact, it's interesting to watch this and go and then go back and rewatch that interview. Because if anything, the real interview is even more damning than the dramatized version, I was watching, I was like, oh, my God. I mean, it was an absolute, absolute car crash. And Emily Maitliss, who is the News Night presenter here, played by Gillian Anderson, the movie.

And I wanted to ask you about Gillian Anderson's performance and just, a second. She has this amazing way of asking questions about this because she just keeps repeating the details, repeating them over and over again. So if he had not said any, if he had actually tried to figure out a way to finesse them, right. He would have failed because the viewer would have just been constantly reminded by these very, very specific details. But in fact, he doesn't, he is not good at finessing them or even trying to finesse them. And he winds up answering every single detail. Which is a great snapshot of, I like this movie as a news movie, but I really also like it as a

Royals movie because this incident, but also the way Rufus Sewell portrays Prince Andrew in this movie really illustrates why these people are so bad at their jobs and why they get into the situations that they keep getting into. and we obviously saw the, you know, the whole Kate Middleton fiasco ahead of time where they just, they all think both that they're still entitled to deference and that everyone is just going to kind of believe them. But they also, like, think they're good at this and they think that they know best. And by they, I mean, like, the actual members of the royal family.

And so there's no strategy. There's no, I need to, you know, manipulate it this way, I will just say what is the truth or my version of the thing and everyone will accept it. And it's like, no, that's not the world we live in. This is 2019. This is not Barbara Walters' 1985. But it's not like those ever went well for the royal family in 1985. They didn't. But you would just think like the question at the center of this movie is why would he sit down and do this on television? Why? Why? Why? Like what is the, and the movie,

very, explains it very, very well. And we go into, like, his staff sort of saying, like, I think this is a good idea. We find you so charming. And if people will just get to know you, yes, they will, you know, want to believe you or perhaps just start thinking about you in some other frame. Right. Which is obviously insane. Yes. But that is what this is. And you're just looking at it, and you're like, oh my God. But it was funny because when I, when I sat down to watch, I was like, I don't understand this question at all. You don't understand why somebody would do this. And we see him getting some very minimal media coaching. Oh, my God.

It's really, it's. And which he seems to, even that minimal coaching, he just completely ignores it when he's in front of the camera. What did you make of Gillian Anderson's performance? That she was very good. She, her accent did remind me of her speaking voice as Margaret Thatcher in the Crown, speaking of the Crown actors. And, you know, I'm an American, so I don't have the ear for the slight variations in the British accent. So maybe there's a big difference. I was just like, oh, you're doing Margaret Thatcher as a

righteous news anchor, but with better hair. But I liked her. I thought that she was good. I thought the four women all had a, well, the three women, I guess, and then poor Keeley Hawes had a lot of chemistry. It did. And she and Jillian Anderson had this way of like, when you meet television people off the air, they're often very offhand. Yes. They are their TV persona, but they're also different. Yeah. And just the way she talked to her staff, I'm like, that, that feels right to me. TV people I have known over the years.

Yes. She also has a WIPIT that she brings everywhere, including into the studio with her, which I was doing some light research. There's a whole British tabloid industry, apparently covering Emily Maitlis' Wippet. There was like a faux outrage story about how the WIPP had had the seat on a crowded train during rush hour. and how thoughtless to give that to the whip it instead of a pat? I mean, that was just a whole, like, whoa. Also, there is a major, I guess emotional,

but certainly like the intellectual breakthrough of the film for the Emily Matless character is after her dog runs away for a while and then comes back to, she's on the jog while while everyone else seems to be at the palace setting up, which I was stressed out about. I mean, I do understand. The timing of that scene was a little confusing. If your talent, you do show up a little later,

guess, but I was like, ma'am, you need to get to the palace. You need to like get this dog back. But when the dog comes back, someone, you know, another dog lover offers some sage advice about bringing a dog to you that is also the strategy that she takes for the interview with Prince Andrew. So, you know, there's something about like in a British film, people can only understand interpersonal relationships through how you manage a dog. Spot on. There's also this wonderful scene where they're talking to Prince Andrew before the interview. It's a scene where we're going to try to convince him to come before the cameras. And she has a line where she says something like, I can't tell you the questions because I don't know them myself yet. But when I do know them,

I still won't tell you. Which is a wonderfully charming way of saying there will be no conditions. Right. Yes. No red lines. But it works. Yeah. They also use the verb or the adjective forensic. A lot in this is going to be a forensic interview, which is I thought just right on. Also, before we go, we have to talk about the Billy Piper character, Sam McAllister, because this is a very interesting person that exists in the world of TV and in print and podcasting, which is a booker. The beloved booker. And that was my main take around.

I was like, finally, a movie about the bookers who are, who have kind of the hardest job or one of them. And in any form of media, because they are the person who wrangles the interview. And they have to deal with not just, you know, press machines. and kind of elusive targets like Prince Andrew, but then they have to deal with, you know, celebrity PR. They have to deal with political machines. Their job is essentially to have people call them and yell at them and or tell them no and deal with logistics for weeks on end

until they finally negotiate and coax someone into doing something that they straight up should never do. You know, that's the other thing. That's the skill. That's the skill. And I think this is a great portrayal of all the work and smarts and knowledge that goes into it. But also, you know, the savvy, Billy Piper says to the Keely Haas character, like, I'm not going to lie to you. There will not be, I'm very honest.

This is what's going to happen. And is straightforward, which is I think the right strategy, but still she manages through her charm. to get to convince them that something that is straight up a bad idea is a great idea. What does she keep writing to people? She gets all these emails during the day, all these pitches. And she writes back, would love to talk. Would love to talk, yeah. Just to everybody.

That's her control plus V response. Would love to talk. They always have to take the phone call that no one else wants to talk, take. They always, you know, and they just have to negotiate, like, how far apart our chair is going to, you know, be. What will everyone be wearing? What will? There's so much stuff that people get so particular about.

And it's such a thankless job, but it is like a huge part of the job. The era of the climactic confrontational celebrity television interview has ended. Well, yes. But then you think of Oprah with Megan and Harry. All-timer. That was a, that was, that was, that was, there's these mini revivals. of which that was unbelievable. Yes.

And I think, I'm trying to think, before that, the last major one that I could think of was Caitlin Jenner with Diane Sawyer. Mm-hmm. Which was, and even that felt a little bit anachronistic at the time of like sitting down to watch ABC 2020 or whatever it was. But I do remember that being significant and sitting and watching it. But for the most part, because celebrities have a direct line. of contact to the world in form of social media. It doesn't make sense, especially to be live on camera with an intermediary. And for the most part, they've learned that.

What we would be more likely to see now is what we got from Ashton Kocher and Milakounis after the day Masters and trial where they appear there with no makeup and do the whole we hear you, we've listened. Yeah. And it's a video that they make and put out. on social media. I mean, I guess politicians still do it, right? They're still in politics. At least, I mean, you know, we could argue with Trump, it sort of has gone both ways with him. Yeah. Because he's on very loud on social media,

but also does weirdly agree to some mainstream media interviews. His strategy is clearly just, I need to be on camera. And also, we're just content avalanche. Exactly. And so, and I'll just, the more exposure, the better. The idea of a Barbara Walters and Monica Lewinsky, to name another famous one sitting down and being like, here is an hour where all the questions you've been wanting to ask will be answered. Right. That is very, very rare.

That's what this is. Yes. That is what this is portraying. But everything you've been sitting at home talking about, I'm going to ask this person. Right. Remember Connie Chung and Gary Condit 20 years ago? That was a big one. It was such a feature of television.

The Britney Spears, also Diane Sawyer, really sticks out of my mind. And there are always rumors now that there was a rumor that Britney Spears wanted to do a similar special with Oprah. People now, after Harry and Megan, will, like, float the idea in page six of maybe I'll sit down to Oprah and tell my side of the story. And then there's just a resounding, that will go terribly for you. Like, do not do that. And then it never seems to happen. And then they're, they're supposed to be like, oh, we read the room here. Never mind.

That is so funny. All right, Amanda Dobbins, big picture. sham session, Royals watching in all of its many forums. Thank you so much for coming on the press box. Thanks for having me. What a delight. All right, David's been waiting patiently for more than 40 minutes here. Am I allowed to talk now?

Okay, great. You're good. You're good. Thanks for giving Amanda the floor. It's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the Strain pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about the human-like rabbits in children's lit was our bunnies ourselves.

Today's headline comes to us from Chris Alford, who does athletic comms at the University of North Texas. Great city of Denton, Texas, David. He brings us a local headline from the Dallas Morning News. You've heard that there's going to be a total solar eclipse on April 8th next Monday. I was blissfully unaware of this. My sister just came to visit. She just left today. But she lives in Waco, teaches at Baylor.

and apparently Waco's right in the line of the best possible viewing of this thing. There's like a few cities, Indianapolis, Waco's, mother ones, but they are, this is all secondhand. I've not done my research here. But she said they're like, like selling, like all the hotels are sold out and like the football stadium is sold out and people are going to gather together in the football stadium to watch the solar eclipse. Absolutely. It's the path of totality is what some lucky North and Central Texans happen to be in. It's a big deal. I feel also I've gotten a little over eclipsed.

I've been told there's a lot of once-in-a-lifetime celestial events happening. Yes. And they have begun to run together. I was just like watching one of these with my kids not that many months ago out in our front yard through the special seer. So I understand your blissful unawareness of this. And I, I. But this is the path of toast. we're talking about here.

I mean, I guess that's a big deal. Anyway, enjoy that all Texas. It's pretty incredible. We've always talked about the, you know, we're all yearning for the monocultory once had. There's nothing more old school monoculture than gathering together in large numbers to watch the sun do a thing.

So to look up at the firmament. Yeah. People are the old times. Well, Dallas Morey News has a huge piece about this, David. Let me give you a little prompt here. a reminder that a total solar eclipse is about the sun and the moon

and the people looking at them possibly from Baylor's football stadium. What was the Dallas Morning News's strained pun headline? Orbs are we going with orb? Let's stick with the sun and the moon.

Oh, sun moon and stairs. Oh, my God. Is that it? you reading the Dallas Morning News on the slide? That's a great one. I thought that was going to be one that was better than theirs, but I guess they got to it. That's great. The sun, the moon, or sun, moon, and stairs. I think I would have gone with the sun, the moon, and the stairs.

But yes, you drilled it. Fantastic work. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Eduardo Ocampo. Thank you, Eduardo. Okay, next Monday, that is April 8th. we are going to have a special guest host of the press box because David Shoemaker is on assignment. By on assignment, I mean he is really on assignment. He's covering WrestleMania.

So sitting in with me on this show is going to be Danny Parkins, who hosts afternoon drive on the score in Chicago. I met Danny a few years ago when I called him up and asked him to explain parts of the wonderful world of sports radio to me. But if you follow him on Twitter, you know he's interested in way more than sports. which in politics and all kinds of things. It's also got a new book coming out called Pipeline to the Pros, which is about basketball. So Monday, April 8, Danny Parkins on the press box. And then next Thursday, April 11th,

a writer I have been wanting to have on this podcast for many, many months now, Olivia Nutsi of New York Magazine is going to be here. Olivia has written some of the very best and most memorable political profiles of the last several years. can't wait to talk to her about the campaign, about her career, about magazine writing, Olivia Nutsi, Thursday, April 11th. But you, you, dear listener, are hereby instructed to come back on Monday when there will be more lukewarm takes about the media.

Have a fantastic weekend.