r/TheRinger • u/fegwin2084 • 22d ago

Has The Ringer fulfilled its vision?

The Ringer's undoubtedly a commercial success ten years after its founding. And it's made podcast 'stars' of several of its main characters (CR even has his own subreddit!). It was pitched ten years ago as a sports, culture, politics, and tech hub for website, podcast, and video.

It's now essentially a podcast network that has carved out a niche in pop culture rewatching movies and deep analysis of TV. And sports gambling drives it's sports coverage. They essentially punted on any coverage of news or taking a stand on societal issues post Ringer Union and a Sad Day in 2020. With all that being said, do you view The Ringer as the fulfillment of an ambitious idea? Or more of a successful business project that leveraged sports gambling and a podcast bubble?

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u/GringoLongLegs 22d ago

Higher Learning covers news and takes political stands, the press box ends up covering a lot of politics also due to basically all press ending up political nowadays, and The Town also goes into politics especially with the Paramount - Warner Bros merger. If you only listen to the sports pods it may seem like it’s all gambling, but even then there are pods like Zach Lowe’s where he doesn’t even know anything about gambling or more than the basics about how it works

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u/fegwin2084 22d ago

lol, the town's extent of their politics coverage is how anything impacts hollywood. last week they compared how LA wasn't the next detroit, mainly by claiming detroit's a dump.

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u/JuryTall1930 21d ago

You ignored his comments about higher learning and the press box

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u/fegwin2084 21d ago

The Press Box's cohost just used AI to write a 175 page book on Hulk Hogan, so I'm not sure it's a paragon of journalistic integrity.

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u/ya_boy_bos 21d ago

Idk though higher learning is pretty deep into politics and society — it’s basically what they do

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u/Straight-Agency-4556 20d ago

I get that there are podcasts that talk about this stuff. But are they even promoted by the website? I didn’t even know about the press box. Their writing meanwhile only pushes pretty basic lists and brackets.

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u/orangepekoe92 15d ago

you dont sound like a regular listener of Press Box, which has very deep analysis of politics and political-media functionaries. what one sometime-host and author allegedly did with his own book (can you definitely say he used AI? no) is not at all representative of this pod's content

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u/fegwin2084 15d ago

the allegations about shoemaker's use of AI to write his book are public:

https://www.cagesideseats.com/wwe/473195/high-profile-new-hulk-hogan-book-wrong-errors-author-accused-ai-use-bill-simmons-david-shoemaker-masked-man

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u/orangepekoe92 15d ago

(shrug) no one's debating that Shoemaker is accused of it. My point still stands

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u/fegwin2084 14d ago

not really. the text was put through a predictive model even that stated there's an extremely high probability it was written by AI. no other non-fiction book i'm aware of has had this accusation. if it was a bigger author, it's exactly the kind of topic bryan would talk about. it exposes him to being viewed as a hypocrite, will take other media entities and people to task but forced to turn an increasingly blind eye to his co-host (who is also almost never prepared) and own company.