"I'm just going to get ahead of the spin and announce that the Mueller report supports everything I already thought."

"And if the redactions were removed, it would support everything I already though[t] even more."

Glenn Reynolds gets ahead of the spin.

I almost feel sorry for the TV news people. They have to put on a show, but they'll have to talk about the report without reading it. It's 400 pages. What can they do except roll out some pre-written material?

William Barr is doing a press conference on the report at 9:30, and the report won't be available until 11. That pretty much forces everyone to give immense priority to Barr's presentation, and not just for the 1 1/2 hours between 9:30 and 11. They'll have to keep talking about that, because they'll only be getting started reading the material.

What can they do, once 11 rolls around, to avoid continuing to analyze the Barr presentation (which will include denouncing his decision to do a press conference and dominate the news in advance of the release of the text)? You can be cynical and say the text won't affect the media, and everyone will keep saying what they were already saying, and that is, in fact, my baseline assumption. The TV news is awful.

But what could they do if they wanted to immediately and competently cover the report — the report and not the Barr press conference? Presumably, the media have teams of people to read the report quickly and get ready to go on camera with something. There should be different strategies for diving into it. Someone should be ready to go on camera opening the report and trying to read the first page, right there in real time (the way reporters struggled with the final Bush v. Gore opinion on camera, genuinely trying to figure out, under extreme pressure, what the hell happened).

The second person could be quickly reading the introductory section during this time and go live with a deeper explanation, detailing the conclusions, and the particularities of the language in the introduction. Or the second person could be someone who'd completed something that can be done in 2 minutes: an assessment of the extent of the redactions and where in the report the redactions were heaviest (with some ideas about what this means about why the redactions took place).

You could fill the first 20 minutes or more with material like that, and it would all be new and text-based — not about the Barr press conference. During that time, you could have teams of readers with different strategies for getting into the report. Some readers could be assigned to sections of the report, others could be assigned search terms (such as names or letter strings like "obstruct" or "collu"). I don't know how many readers CNN or MSNBC or Fox has to put on the reading task, but use the people you have and break up the assignment. Others who are good at grasping and analyzing material can go on camera without reading. Let them ask the questions in an effort to get what they need from those who've done the reading, and have someone listening to that and directing readers onto specific tasks, and cue up these readers to go on camera as soon as they've come up with answers.

Hey, now I think it would be great fun to run this project! I believe it can be done well. I presume professional newsfolk could come up with an even better strategy than I just sketched out. I'll watch and judge their work. I don't trust them even to try to do it well, and I understand Glenn's cynicism. Or is it cynicism? Maybe he's just doing what he can to make it harder for the media to do a bad job. That's what I'm doing too. I have hope!