About the time that I started teaching journalism in Washington, D.C., I saw a movie in which Beltway professionals (including speechwriters) played a rather cynical bar game. I think the movie was “Speechless,” with Michael Keaton and Geena Davis.

If my memory is correct, the game was called “Spot the soundbite.” The goal was to watch a long, complicated political speech and then to accurately predict the tiny, often sensational 5-10 second “bite” that would make it into television news reports.

The message, of course, was that substance and nuance didn’t mean much in public life. Emotions and feelings linked to a fleeting soundbite — which could be funny or emotional or whatever — were what mattered. All together now: “Where’s the beef!” It was also clear that it was easy for journalists to pick good, sharp soundbites from “good” candidates and bad, stupid soundbites from “bad” candidates.

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), in which host Todd Wilken and I discussed the latest example of a preacher getting caught, in the age of YouTube and social media, failing to understand the rules of “Spot the soundbite.”

I heard about this epic news story when a former student — who has national print and television experience — sent me a wry email that said: “It’s weird that this random preacher’s sermon merits an NBC News story, no?” Indeed. In the world of short attention spans and tiny online news reports, this sermon by an unknown preacher, in a tiny church, in the middle of nowhere, in an obscure denomination, deserved a 900-word report.

My witty former student knew, of course, why this sermon received lots of national news coverage — including staff (not wire service) coverage in The New York Times (we will get to that shortly).

Yes, this preacher said some genuinely bizarre and disturbing stuff about women and marriage, especially when viewed through a #ChurchToo lens. However, was it national news that an unknown pastor said these things? Well, it is if the sermon contains the word “Trump” and this pastor can be turned into an archetypal symbol of white evangelicals in flyover country, the rubes many journalists blame for electing Orange Man Bad in the first place.

This preacher did not understand how to play “Spot the soundbite.”