Media Monday: Pablo’s Paper Trail & MS NOW’s Streaming Bet

**Jon Kelly** (0:01)
There's actually, like, there's a happy medium here where sometimes the Times can be too patrician and institutional.

**Peter Hamby** (0:10)
Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Monday, August 24th, which means it's Media Monday. Today, Jon Kelly and I discussed the uneasy relationship between The New York Times, beholden to the standards of Ivory Tower Journalism, and creator journalists online, in particular, Pablo Torre, who dropped a bombshell report last year about malfeasance inside the Los Angeles Clippers front office. Torre now works for the Times, and his report still hasn't been confirmed by other news outlets. You got to wonder if his reporting would have passed muster inside the Times newsroom.
We also discussed Ms Now making a play for digital subscribers and a new revenue stream, and whether their plan can actually work.
We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.
Happy Monday everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. If it's Monday, it's Media Monday, and I'm of course joined by our fearless leader, Jon Kelly. We're going to talk today about the New York Times' uneasy relationship with the creator, influencer, journalist, economy, which is flaring as Pablo Torre's Watergate-style investigation into Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard. Still hasn't been proven yet, and ESPN actually did some reporting recently that contradicted his very high-profile investigation, which got a lot of clicks. But there are questions about the underpinning journalism there. We're also going to talk about Ms Now trying to build a subscriber business. I'm actually a little bullish on this, which might surprise people. We'll see if Jon is a bear. I assume he might be, but they're trying to build out a kind of digital footprint that people pay for. Anyway, we'll get into that. Jon, it's good to see you. I was on the couch the other night, flipped on the TV. The Little League World Series is on. Do you have a scouting report on the Bayonne, New Jersey Youth Squad? Do you know about this team?

**Jon Kelly** (2:29)
Yeah, no. They're rapidly advancing. I think they just took out the Connecticut Youngsters to advance their Bayonne good sports town, Peter. Also, surprisingly, one of the nicest country clubs that you'll find in the Northeast. I know you're a big golfer and you just turned 45, so you're trying to think of some special life moments to create for yourself here.
But my days of 50, 70 baseball are over. We moved on to 60, 90 in the real thing.

**Peter Hamby** (3:03)
I'll save it for the Patreon, your explanation of why Bayonne, New Jersey is a big sports town. But that was a provocative statement on your part. Let's go, speaking of sports, to the ESPN, Kawhi Leonard, Pablo Torre dust up. Now, Dylan wrote a piece called The Life of Pablo. Good headline, as usual. This was an Inner Circle exclusive. I know this because I tweeted this story and a lot of people wanted to read it and they were DMing me being like, Yo, dude, can you post a gif link or whatever? Subscribe, people, we're gonna talk about the importance of subscription business to the future of journalism later. Anyway, I'm gonna read you Dylan's lead here. On Monday, that would be last Monday, ESPN reported that the NBA's nearly year long investigation into the Los Angeles Clippers found no evidence that the team's owner, Steve Ballmer, had secretly funneled money to Kawhi Leonard in order to circumvent the salary cap. The piece, bylined by veteran investigative reporter Don Van Etta Jr. and NBA insiders Baxter Holmes and Ramona Shelburne, seemed to radically alter the trajectory of a scandal that has dogged one of the NBA's top players, cast suspicion on its wealthiest owner, and raised uncomfortable questions about the integrity of the league's economics. Well, it also raised uncomfortable questions about Pablo Torre, Harvard man, the kind of guy who likes to use the phrase, my journalism, when talking about his investigations into Bill Belichick's girlfriend on his podcast.
Look, I want your take on this. I have friends who are friends with Pablo, who like Pablo, really like Pablo Torre. I like him too. I just think that sometimes on his YouTube show and podcast, he presents his scoops with a lot of throat clearing, a lot of hoity-toity arrogance that I'm doing the big work, that mainstream journalists are not in the sports world. They're beholden to the big leagues and the big agents and the big networks. Look, there's a lot of truth to that. A lot of sports journalism these days should be put in quotes because it's just yelling and not substance. But my take when I watched his investigation into Steve Ballmer and the claim was basically that he got an environmental startup company to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard so he could be paid more so that the Clippers could re-sign him. Then if you watch the YouTube show, Pablo came out with this stack of papers. It looked like the Warren Commission Report. It was this massive thick stack of papers. He's like, I've done all of this investigation, whatever. Look, there's probably some shady dealings out there among owners in all the leagues.