Pablo Torre on ESPN, investigating LeBron, and becoming the New York Times' first 'creator'

23:45And so for us, it was also just a bet on like, hey, we're going to have to go to market. We're going to have to find a new partner. We're going to have to make zero dollars with the blessing of Dan Levitard and John Skipper. But if we can find a new partner, we think that the long-term view is actually just the better economic decision and strategic decision. But yes, it was scary. It was totally scary to say like, I think we want to find something that maybe – and again, it was handled very diplomatically. But I think we want to find something that feels more like us. Well, was part of it also, though, the reality that a lot of the stories of modern sports and the business of sports and the kind of messiness that you guys get into, a lot of those stories are tangled up with gambling and that sports gambling has really just totally massively changed both the sports media landscape, but obviously also professional sports.

24:42I mean, was that something that you guys were thinking about as well? Yeah, in the back of my head, absolutely. In terms of like, look, we have a docket in which we have this full free reign to do what we want. And it would have gotten increasingly uncomfortable for us to investigate sports gambling with a partner that needed to basically like, take its logo off the episode. you know like you don't it's just it's it's it's it's a strange it would be a strange dance but you know as someone who worked at espn and john skipper says all of the time the greatest business in the history of media was espn and the cable bundle uh for reasons of you know hey wait you want you say in new media you want subscriptions what if you paid for like a lot you paid for multiple subscriptions to shit you never watched how for 80 subscriptions how much money were you

25:32Ben Smith:making from DraftKings and what are the economics look like now? Oh, the economics of DraftKings are above my pay grade. I believe the publicly reported figures around what MetalArk is making. I don't want to be the one to say them, but they're out there somewhere. I just don't know it off the top of my head. The New York Times deal, I can say, because it's been reported and I'm trying to be a good corporate citizen. Ben, you messy journalist, is no, I appreciate the question. Obviously, it's a seven figure deal. So into that goes paying for the staff, which is as described, is paying for me, is paying for production.

26:03So we feel great. I mean, honestly, we feel really good that there's some investment.

26:09Ben Smith:And we'll still be able to watch you on YouTube. I don't need to go into some New York Times app. This is a key thing. So what I said as a real first principles problem was editorial independence. Like we can do the Weed Taste Test athlete branded weed episodes. We can have whatever, anything from Lena Khan, who's been a guest on our show to talking about something messy, you know, in the Middle East. We want the freedom to just do that, even if the Times newsroom might be like, whoa, why is this guy who gets high on Tuesdays? Why is he investigating our sources on Thursday? That was important to me.

26:42And yes, most critically, it was we want to be outside of the paywall. We want to be free on YouTube. We want to be a podcast that you can listen to without having to pay for anything. And so that is the structure uh the basic contours of it and then they'll sell the ads yes it's a licensing deal yes yes yes and they it's yes it's amazing this is like they're doing creator that new york times is doing essentially creator deals now these are like the type of deals that like you know this podcast studio caa is like putting together and they're doing it for it's amazing to see that the

27:15Ben Smith:times is in that business yeah no it's i mean you see you're seeing right now the new york times and fox like racing to scoop up uh to scoop up the pablo torres actually you know and portnoy are not so dissimilar. I mean, that's actually like, you know, it's funny, we had, speaking of, we had Clay Travis on a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, in the sort of sports is everything, sports is like this swallowing bigger and bigger chunks of American culture, kind of as you said. You know, his view is that in particular, the opportunity in sports media is on the right. That sports media got too woke that, you know, the real kind of opportunity is to make fun of trans athletes, basically.

27:55Ben Smith:And that's where Clay seems to be taking it. And that's where he thinks he sees kind of growth among other things. What do you make of that? I think that's on some level, as I say often, if shamelessness is a market inefficiency, then this is the error for you, right? Like I, it's totally fine. That is an eternal truth, by the way. You know what? Touche. Touche. What I would say is that But certainly there has been a disconnect between how apolitical a lot of sports fans actually are, even right-coded a lot of sports fans actually are. If you think about college football, by the way, and Clay came up as a really prominent college football writer and reporter.

28:41He knows this. It's the second most popular sport in America, right? That list of 100 most watched broadcasts, it's the NFL and then some college football. So the idea that you're talking to the South a lot, objectively true and not to be underestimated. And by the way, it's insane to imagine a world in which sports does not have media outlets that are speaking directly to that. But what I would sort of observe, though, around the trend lines around how ESPN is programmed, how Fox is programmed, is that there is no shortage of programming for those audiences. Now, there might be a lack of desire to wade into the culture war with the fervent sort of hunger that Clay has in which he's picking fights and that, you know, barstool, less of that in terms of explicit political sorts of fights, but certainly unafraid.

29:34I would say that, you know, if you're telling me that, man, I'm watching football broadcasts, I'm watching college game day, and this is too woke. It just tells me you're not actually watching college game day. You're watching a clip of someone who maybe did something once, who tweeted something once. Like, it's like, come on, the hours, the tonnage speaks for itself as a math question. And so for me, the real like thing that I am marveling at as, you know, who's the Joe Rogan of the left? Something I do believe, by the way, as silly on its face as that question is for lots of reasons we can make fun of.

30:09Joe Rogan started in MMA, right? And so the whole idea was, is sports a portal to other things? My belief is that absolutely yes. And in that way, I am realizing I have sort of tracked a path as I desire to do more things beyond merely straight sports to use sports as the gateway into other things. So that part I fully agree with. But in terms of like what's the rarest commodity in sports media, it isn't right leaning people complaining about things, by the way. Like there are lots of former USPM people who are right leaning, who complain about things and have large channels in which they complain about things.

30:43And they are very popular. And it's not just clay. I would say that the real rare commodity is like people doing journalism into powerful entities. You know, Clay is owned by Fox. Like, you know, I mean, let's not be let's not pretend as to our level of just like punk rockishness. Like, let's put it let's disclose all of it. And then we can talk about what we're doing.

31:05Ben Smith:Yeah, everyone will work for either Fox or The New York Times in some near future situation. Probably. That's going to be the whole Internet. Well, we have to take a short break, but we'll be right back with more from Pablo Torre.

31:31so i mean speaking of espn and journalism and one of the things that i was really curious about is you spent a lot of your career there and then you left and you obviously did some incredible journalism there i believe i was reading on your wikipedia page that you were the first person to report on the slogan, trust the process, as part of the, which I don't think anybody, that was, you know, I don't think anybody should have done, though Joel Embiid is a friend of Semaphore's, did a great event with us last year. So I still believe. Thank you. Yeah, that's an amazing scoop. But I'm curious, you know, you worked at ESPN for a long time.

32:09What do you make of ESPN's priorities these days. I mean, you know, I am a consumer of extremely online sports Twitter, who, you know, really is, I think, like, pretty upset at ESPN these days. I mean, like, they got rid of Zach Lowe. He was a favorite. You left ESPN and started doing amazing sports investigative reporting for YouTube. ESPN is, like, hiring influencers and giving Stephen A like$100 million or whatever it is, but getting rid of kind of a lot of their longtime investigative people. I mean, you've you were there for a long time. You've hosted, you know, a lot of things for them. What do you think about ESPN's trajectory?

32:46So first thing I want to thank ESPN for helping me put my daughter through school, you know, like, thank you. Thank you for that. I still aspired to appear as Michael Wilbon's backup, co-hosting with Tony Kornheiser on PTI, to the extent that I do anything ever for ESPN. Again, it would be that. And I'm hopeful that maybe I can continue to do that while also being this guy saying these things. We will see. Again, when Skipper was president, they were always balancing the fundamental conflict of we are paying billions of dollars to leagues and also operating the biggest newsroom in sports media.

33:19Right. And so there was always just this very difficult dance that anybody who knows anything about the media business is trying to sort of thread the needle of. And now over time, I would say, as the cable bundle has frankly become what is self-evident, the luxury good that is reporting in journalism has become more and more endangered, if not almost extinct. And so that's ESPN the magazine going away. That's ESPN.com changing in material ways that is social and the outsourcing of audience to certainly influencers. And again, I'm trying to both resemble and reject the creator economy. While you mentioned the 22-year-old who gets hired to be like, you know, a lifestyle creator for ESPN social channels.

34:07I would observe that, you know, we're talking at a time when ESPN has just done the biggest thing. Right. That is sort of this inflection point in this dance, which is. Yes, the NFL now owns 10 % of ESPN, basically, as of we're recording this on Wednesday as of yesterday. Yes. And so just think about the two people I think about when I think about that sort of announcement, right, as someone who's like been around the offices and stuff. It's like in the boardroom, right, at the Bob Iger level, the Jimmy Pitara level, like it's so obviously what they should do. Like, is that even a question? Like, were you telling me this is not me cosplaying as those guys?

34:47It's like you're telling me that the most powerful and richest sport in America and arguably cultural institution in America wants to basically give us most favored nation status unto eternity in which we rely more than anything on their products. In fact, we have been advertising and buying and talking about their products more than any other product already. And you're telling me now we can have this assurance via financial relationship in which, yes, they're going to be certainly assets, NFL Network stuff, sorts of media production concerns changing some amount of hands. But really, like that part, the existential question of like you want to get into the business of football, you get into business with ESPN and Disney, that's such a no-brainer, right?

35:30Great business decision. That's the one brain I jump into. The other brain I jump into is the investigative journalist that he is being who investigates the NFL. And I'm like, OK, well, I was already doing the dance before. And now, again, I have no knowledge of what they have been told or not told. I'm just imagining that you have to worry about whether you are going to be a luxury good that they continue to pay for. And the trend line is indicating something that is not, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. A rising tide lifts the yachts, the super yachts. And I don't think investigative journalists are qualified to be such at this point.

36:10And the last sort of like observation around the economy of ESPN, which is really an observation around the economy of sports media, is this. ESPN also is operating at such a level of billions and billions of dollars in TV rights deals, like the most valuable properties in sports and television, that when it comes to – you mentioned Zach Lowe, who is the greatest at NBA podcasting. He's the GOAT, the NBA podcasting GOAT. So if you think about Zach and Bill Simmons and Ryan Russillo and Dan Lebitard and Colin Cowherd and throw me in there somewhere in the rotation if you want, but just like down the list, right?

36:48So that's Meadowlark. That's the ringer. That's the volume. That's some other stuff that's emerging. If you were to collect all of those guys and just do the math on that, ESPN legitimately let over a billion dollars walk out the door. Now, they missed, I would argue, the future of sports podcasting that was already in-house. But the economics of why they let it go was because it was still fractional compared to their actual interests. And so everything that I think about investigative journalism, once you see it through the lens of like podcasting, you're like, well, that was a deliberate and maybe it was uninformed.

37:29But I would say it's still a mathematically justifiable choice about what their business really is.

37:35Ben Smith:I mean, in terms of thinking about where your home is and where your corporate home is, did you – the New York Times, I mean, obviously, you see yourself as an investigative journalist. You're looking to reinvent investigative journalism. Those are things that are really core to who the New York Times is. I mean, did you turn down other offers? I mean, was the Times the highest bidder, or did you go there because you felt like that's where you wanted to be? There were other bidders that were – I don't want to be so – gosh. Transparent, I think is the word you're looking for. Ben, what you're looking for is I don't want to be so consistent in my principles.

38:08Correct. I would like to be hypocritical with you for a second, Ben. Go ahead. on this podcast about transparency. I'm trying to, I mean, genuinely what's funny is that I am, I want to toot my horn. I'm just like, I don't want to make anyone feel shitty. We just announced this fancy partnership in which I'm so thrilled.

38:27Ben Smith:I thought millennials were like supposed to be very transparent about this. You know what, Ben and I both bullied Ari Aster into telling us what movie he turned down recently when he turned down Morbius. So we can both, I mean, I'm just saying, you know. I want to live in that sliding doors timeline. You could be like, yeah, everybody does. You could be transparent like Ari. I will be transparent, actually, in a way that may make people uncomfortable, but whatever. This is not Watergate, the economics of my podcast. Look, the reality is the Times was not the only bidder with a seven-figure offer.

38:59We also valued the Times when I went to the building and had this meeting, and they told me all the things that I described that were like, wait a minute, they're trying to do a creator economy licensing deal, but also provide me access to their audience. If I earn it, right, if I can be promoted inside of the Athletics larger feeds and the Times' larger feeds. And I heard about the ways in which the Times has done that for things at the Athletic. That was the most interesting from a growth perspective, frankly, that money cannot simply buy. And I think the Times is aware of that. But they were not the only bidder that was like dangling a lot of money.

39:32And I just didn't put them in a bidding war because I always sort of valued like, again, my elder millennial-ness of like, I value the institution.

39:45Ben Smith:I'm a guy who likes institutions. Did A.G. Salzberger himself come down and sell you on this? No, I did not. I did not. I look forward to expensing things to A.G. Salzberger. No, Jesse Burden is the guy at The Athletic who was the point person, who came over from Spotify, by the way. And I was hearing about just like what he had done over there. He had told me, I don't think this is a secret. Jesse, forgive me. But like the first deal he made at Spotify was for Joe Budden. And I'm like, wait a minute. If this guy greenlit Joe Budden, I might be able to smoke weed with a little New York Times, whatever, like adjacent logo on my screen.

40:23That was actually something that meant something to me. Jordan Cohen, the guy who does PR for the audio for the Times, is just like, he's got his head in his hands right now. Dude, Jordan was on a call that I was on and I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to make his life any easier. I'm so sorry, Jordan. I'm like, borderline, yeah, yeah. Always walking that weird line.

40:46Ben Smith:Do you think that your move to The Athletic, to The Times, will change the show? I mean, do you see yourself or change what you do? I mean, are you going to be doing investigations of nursing homes and Trump cryptocurrency schemes and things that aren't sports? Certainly doing some non-sports stuff. Not because The Times has said anything about what they would like me to do or not. The editorial freedom to choose is really fundamental. Like, and this is the other funny thing of the dance, right? To be transparent is we are making the show independently, but licensing it to, as aforementioned, the biggest established incumbent in the history of the written, printed media.

41:26So how do we remain that while also drinking from their fire hose? And so the way I think about it is like, I want to do, you know, it was funny. I was like, one thing I did want to know from the Times athletic dynamic perspective, which is its own thing, by the way, that I have no illusions about navigating. Right. Like that was its own purchase and media story and all that. I was like, what are the stories that New York Times readers most liked from The Athletic that they got like sent around? They got like the biggest boost in that fire hose. And they identified a story that I loved from The Athletic.

41:56It was about how NFL locker rooms love Uncrustables. Oh, my God. That's incredible. Those like children's like ready made, you know, and I'm like, but that was one of the most popular stories at the times broadly really loved from the athletic. And I'm like, wait a minute. I do uncrustable adjacent content. Like I, so the point being like, yes, we are going to do serious investigative work that hopefully does a couple of things we're working on now that touches that. Like, I think sweet spot of this has politics in it. This has celebrity in it. This has scandal in it. This has money in it. And this has sports in it.

42:33Like, great. We want to keep doing those. Can we also make it feel like the Uncrustable story? Again, it's stupid to see about it through that to think about it through that lens to see it through that lens. But it is like, how do we do serious things that also feel like they are lighthearted enough? I am hopeful that the high and lowbrow thing is something that's meaningful in terms of what they want. And if there is a nursing home, by the way, that needs to be held to account, Ben, I will absolutely, I will absolutely be there as fast as I can. it. So Pablo, you did an investigation about did LeBron go to Kobe's funeral?

43:14I'm a big Lakers fan. People who listen to the show know this. I've disclosed this before. I'm from Southern California, so I have an excuse for it. I'm not a bandwagon. I'm sorry for your listeners. Yeah. But yes, exactly. No, it is. It's unfortunate and sometimes unfortunate for me as well. But I'm really curious, like, what was the experience? You've dealt with kind of the experience of backlash from UNC, which denied one of your stories, which you've stood by about Jordan Hudson being, I think, disinvited from being in the locker room or being on campus or something like that. I think LeBron and the LeBron stans have pushed back on your reporting, raising questions about whether LeBron was actually at Kobe's funeral.

43:56Can you just talk a little bit about what's it like dealing with LeBron's camp? What does that PR operation look like pushing back on you? What was the experience of, you know, Jordan Hudson and UNC's camp kind of pushing back on you? Like what, take us behind the scenes of what the pushback actually looks like from those camps. Yeah, the downside of investigative journalism, obviously, is that you end up making people mad. And I would say that LeBron camp is a funny camp because there are a bunch of people in it who listened to the show on prior episodes were like, thank you for doing this. I remember we did an episode about the Knicks secret recruiting video for LeBron.

44:31in which it was like Tony Soprano, like literally James Gandolfini, as well as Donald Trump, as well as Harvey Weinstein, just like an insane artifact that exists. You guys broke that story, right? Yes. You guys had the video. We had the video. We published the video. It was everything I had hoped, frankly. But at that point, I heard from LeBron's camp and they were like, thank you. Like we had not seen this since we saw it in the room. And they were glad that we'd published it. It was exactly the experience they had as people reacting to a ridiculous artifact from James Dolan. This, you know, no one pushed back in terms of like, I can say no one pushed back to me directly saying, you got this wrong for the record, which is an important, I think, element of the pushback.

45:14But really the criticism that was most bothersome was in the sense of people seeing, and this is the oldest saw in anyone who makes content, their complaints, but like someone who saw the clip but not the episode, where there was this thing of like, wait a minute, why are you policing LeBron James' right to grieve how he feels appropriate? And on that level, like what I wanted to say was we dealt with this in the episode, that literal exact point. We anticipated it. Of course, it's a natural thing. This was not an episode about what and how you should grieve. This was an episode about the most visible celebrity funeral.

45:53As far as I can tell, in the modern era in which it was live streamed from Staples Center. I watched it, yeah. Oh, then you remember Beyonce performed, Jimmy Kimmel emceed. There was a royal wedding slash state funeral. Michael Jordan cried from the dais. Everybody gave speeches. Everybody was shown on camera. The whole like, it was an awards show, but for grief, you know? And that was by seemingly a very clear intent. This was Kobe Bryant, the most favored son of Hollywood. which is a real thing that any Laker fan would attest to. He is different. The face who was not shown, who was not produced in any recorded way, was LeBron James.

46:39And so the question then was why? Like LeBron, to be clear, is like the, you know, he's the guy who essentially is the standard. Now, Luka has complicated the ease of my timeline here. It's the face of the franchise. The guy who is clearly like in the goat conversation, who you expect to be at that thing. And again, this is not about should LeBron James have been there. That's not the question I posed. The question I posed was, why did no one see him? And how real is it that no one actually saw him? So, for instance, there was this came. By the way, Ben, this is sort of like how my brain is unfortunately operating now.

47:14The reason this episode came about was because Stephen A. Smith was arguing with LeBron through first take about stuff. I don't even remember what the argument was. But Stephen A. made this offhand remark about how he's not even going to bring up how LeBron wasn't at Kobe's funeral. Oh, my God. And everyone was like, whoa, what, what? So because it had been reported in the L.A. Times and elsewhere, LeBron was in the laundry list of guys who were there. When you watch the broadcast, I interviewed, you know, more than a half dozen people. There's a clip in which Diana Taurasi, to get real Zapruder with you, there's a clip in which Diana Taurasi, the women's basketball goat, does a joke about how LeBron didn't have whatever, like a mid-range J or something like that.

47:57And she gestures to the crowd. And everyone's posting this video being like, this is her acknowledging LeBron in the crowd after the joke. I end up reporting out what is undeniably true and has never been challenged, which is that Diana Taurasi didn't see LeBron that day. That was just her gesturing at the crowd. I then reported around the Lakers organization, by the way, which has been talking about this backstage ever since it happened. Like, where was LeBron that day? The owner of the team didn't see LeBron that day. No one in the buildings. Like, he wasn't there. Okay. Yeah. And was it possible that he was wearing a six foot nine disguise for some reason?

48:36They had asked, by the way, LeBron's camp had claimed he had asked to not be shown on camera. So what we did was we interviewed one of the producers of the broadcast and said, had you heard anything about this request? Had anybody involved or anything about LeBron asking to not be shown on camera? The answer, of course, was no. So the thing about it was I didn't want to be the guy who was like grave digging for clicks. But yeah, to me, this is a story about how someone could get away with creating an impression. I'll be generous here. Creating an impression that was not actually real. How could he do that in front of every plausible camera in this era?

49:20And the answer was because some people were afraid to criticize, to ask rude questions about LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, and people weren't going to make the calls. And so we cared about this with the level of, yeah, the JFK assassination of what really happened here. But it is interesting, you know, thinking about that, thinking about Bill Simmons' response to your reporting on Belichick and Jordan Hudson. You know, he kind of famously, you know, was dismissive of your reporting, which we don't have to get into because that's been kind of well-trodden territory. But like, I mean, do you think that there is a level to which, even though there is endless sports content all day long, people, you know, spewing, shout, you know, spouting off takes all day long on ESPN.

50:05Spewing was the right verb. Spewing, yes. Spewing takes. Yes, exactly. But do you think that people are, people in the professional sports world, these figures themselves are still just not used to being scrutinized in an investigative reporting lens? They're clearly used to being talked about, but it seems like there is a distinction because the Belichick's camp and Jordan Hudson, like they also seemed to take, you know, enormous umbrage at your reporting on them as well. Yeah. Oh, no, there's a big difference between feeling like you're in the dunk tank of social media and or being observed in the panopticon of modern Internet everything and being investigated by journalists.

50:45like sorry like that's there's a real difference in which someone's gonna like make calls a lot of calls and piece together a story you don't want told um and the other thing i think that's important for me as a sports investigative journalist guy is to really take sports as if they're important you know the whole thing about like why is belichick why why do you care so much i'm like if bill belichick the greatest coach of all time and the most popular sport in America, who is also this cultural archetype for like discipline and no nonsense and do your job and no distractions and all of that. If that guy isn't important enough for me to take seriously, as he is also the highest paid employee, public employee in the state of North Carolina, then like nothing matters.

51:31So you could argue fairly, nothing matters. That's a harder counter for me to make, right? Admittedly, lots of more important things than everything I just said. But if sports matter, then someone should investigate them. And that's why I say that LeBron is worthy of it. Bill Belichick and Jordan Hudson are worthy of it. Why all these people are like unfamiliar with that because the people who used to do that, by the way, are either dead or unemployed. Like that's kind of the reality. That's the that's the the negative externality of the way in which media has gone is that no one's really monetized or incentivized that.

52:10Well, Pablo, thank you so much for doing this. This is exciting, and we're glad that we got you on the eve of your new deal so that we could ask you all of these uncomfortable questions about how much money you're making and who your other bidders are and other things that I'm sure to make your new bosses feel a little bit uncomfortable. Although they're not your bosses. I was going to say, thank you for recognizing the precise terminology of this licensing agreement. And also, thank you for holding me to the courage of my alleged convictions. I deserve all of this.

52:40Ben Smith:Thank you so much, Pablo. Congratulations. Thanks. Thank you, guys.

53:00Ben Smith:What a smart guy and a great talker, actually. What do you make of his trajectory, Max? Where's Pablo Torre heading? Well, first of all, I think it's really funny that everybody always mentions that he went to Harvard because I think that while you said at the top that Harvard is like the ESPN of sports media, I actually think that sports media in general, like people associate sports media with just like guys in a box on TV screaming at each other or like asking annoying, stupid questions at press conferences. Like it's kind of like a meathead profession. And so I think it's very funny and amusing.

53:37And I don't think it's an accident to me that everybody's always like, oh, well, Pablo went to Harvard. So he's like doing something that's a little bit smarter.

53:44Ben Smith:We should say he just says New Yorkers. He also went to Regis, which is like the Harvard of Catholic high schools. So he's extremely credentialed. He's a very smart, hardworking guy for sure. No question. And so it's not surprising that he's now working for the New York Times. I thought the interesting thing to me is, you know, and I read the story and I thought, oh, that's interesting. They're doing some sort of deal with the athletic. I didn't realize how much that deal, and I think maybe I'm wrong, but it really does seem like the first deal that the New York Times has done that really looks a lot more like a deal that Spotify would do or a deal that Vox Media or any of these other podcast networks would do.

54:27Pablo is not an employee of the New York Times. They're just simply selling his ads and kind of putting his show in their podcast feeds sometimes. But I think that that's actually really new and striking. And so, you know, when Meredith Levian, who we had on the show, was live at Cannes doing these meetings, clearly she was not just thinking, oh, about, you know, the New York Times and their old way of business. She was actually looking at the other companies that were around at Cannes, the content companies and the creators, and thinking, I'm actually in that business too, which is fascinating.

54:56I mean, Ben, was that striking to you? I imagine it was. Oh, yeah.

54:59Ben Smith:No, I think, I mean, I think like, you know, we have been talking for a year on this show about, you know, sort of the current fragmentation and the coming consolidation. And now we're just watching it in real time. Like, this is what consolidation looks like. You have big, well-capitalized companies now, including the New York Times, kind of amazingly, like snapping up these independent creators who have great businesses, who love what they're doing. It's fun to be a creator, fun to be independent, but also exhausting and annoying and nice to have a guaranteed contract. Nice to have the New York Times ad sales team doing that work for you.

55:29Ben Smith:Nice to have the resources to play with of the New York Times and The Athletic. And so, and I think, you know, it's interesting to see the Times doing it. You know, as I wrote about this in our newsletter last week, but nobody is doing this more than Fox. And I talked to Paul Cheesborough over there, who we should have on, who's sort of in the middle of this. And, you know, they've also picked up, they now have a relationship with Dave Portnoy. Clay Travis is there in sports. I mean, these are huge sports pieces of sports media. And then meanwhile, in the political media space, which is their core, they're just sort of absorbing big chunks of independent right-wing commentators.

56:00Ben Smith:And I think trying to figure out new ways where they don't kind of totally own and control everyone, like Pablo, he was very careful, it doesn't work for the New York Times. But they're building these sort of rival constellations of talent. And I do think we're going to see relatively few companies control most of what we had thought of as the creator space. I think that that's true. I think that the thing, though, that's most interesting about that move, though, is that, like, for Fox, you know, they've always had people who are contributors to football or, you know, it's not surprising that they would want to kind of add to their talent stable, having, like, essentially already done, you know, many on-air talent deals over the years.

56:40I just think that it's notable for the New York Times, which does journalism, and the people there have long—I mean, you experienced this when you were there. There was always this tension between the stars not wanting to be too much bigger than the Times itself. I mean, clearly, the Times lost that battle, and they are in the personality business with the rest of us.

56:58Ben Smith:There's a famous—I can't remember who she said this to, but there was somebody who was in a contract negotiation with Jill Abramson and basically implying that they were bigger than the New York Times. And Jill, when she was editor of the Times, told them, the New York Times is always the prettiest girl at the dance. And I'm not – yeah, and that's not as true as it used to be. It's clearly – there is a level to which it's still impressive to people. Pablo is basically saying, you know, walking into the building, it still is something – it is kind of awe-inspiring in some ways if you're interested in journalism and media.

57:30But the flip side of that is that Pablo is not an employee there, right? He is getting to do what he wants to do in Rome freely and just having the strength and power of the New York Times ad sales team and the reach of their incredible podcast network, which, of course, has one of the most popular podcasts in the country in the Daily and then a bunch of other podcasts that are increasingly popular, like the Ezra Klein Show and Ross Douthat's podcast, which I think is actually doing something really interesting. We should probably have Ross on at some point.

58:00Ben Smith:Yeah, since Barbara has been dodging us, so we should just have Ross on, right? Michael, come on the show. Although now, when we booked Pablo, we didn't know he was going to be a New York Times employee. And I'm worried now about having too many New York Times. You're a former New York Times employee. We had Meredith on. We didn't think that we were going to be talking about the New York Times when we booked Pablo. We thought we were going to be talking more about sports. Well, this is the problem with consolidation. Suddenly, you only have people from three companies. I was just thinking we should have Rachel Abrams, who's hosting the Daily lately, doing a great job.

58:29Ben Smith:We should have her on. But suddenly, you're right. We're like the Talmud to the New York Times' Torah or something. We don't want to do that. Yeah, we'll definitely have to have some variation on. I think the last thing that I want to leave this with is talking about John Skipper, who's a friend of Semaphore and a friend of this show. Pablo was mentioning him several times. He's the former president of ESPN. And it kind of did strike me, as Pablo was talking about ESPN's transition away from anything that resembles journalism, mostly into just this kind of world of sports broadcast and just talk, you know, hours and hours of talk, that the journalism part of ESPN really did seem to be propped up by John Skipper's interest in it more than any sort of value that it was providing to the company.

59:14and that's something that it seems like we've seen more and more clearly. And I think it's a little sad as a journalist ourself, but I mean, obviously it's cool because it creates these new formats like Pablo's, which probably would have never flown there. Yeah, well, thank you so much for bringing Pablo on. That was just a fascinating conversation. Thank you. Well, that's it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to Mixed Signals from Semaphore. Our show is produced by Shida Ozaki and today's episode in particular was produced by Chris McLeod from Blue Elevator Productions. Special thanks for this episode goes to Josh Billinson, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur.

59:55Our engineer, as always, is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor this week is Pat Healy, who is the standards editor for The New York Times, and undoubtedly, Bill will be watching Pablo's videos of him smoking weed, I guess, on YouTube.

1:00:12Ben Smith:with the New York Times logo next to it. Thanks for keeping an eye, Pat. And if you like Mixed Signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're watching on YouTube, please do like and subscribe. And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter out every Sunday night.