| | | | Serious question: So is Breitbart now running Donald Trump's campaign or is Trump now running Breitbart? The overnight news that Breitbart News exec chairman Steve Bannon is now the Trump campaign CEO formalizes a long and mutually beneficial relationship between the two media companies. (Trumpbart?) It's also a signal that nothing is off limits between now and November 8. Important context: Trump is also listening to former aide Roger Stone and former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. Taken together, the men are conservative media experts and masters of the political dark arts. Here's my full story... -- I agree with Jay Rosen, who tweeted, "Agree or disagree. Today was the most interesting day yet in the monstrosity — and novelty — that is the Donald J. Trump candidacy..." | | | 'Courting the conservative audience he already has' | | Dylan Byers emails: Bannon and Ailes' influence over the Republican nominee epitomizes right-wing media's influence over the Grand Old Party. It also highlights the degree to which Trump, a media-conscious reality TV star, seems more preoccupied with courting the conservative audience he already has than expanding his political base in order to win the election.
Read Dylan's full piece here, with input from Nicholas Kristof, David Axelrod, Bill Kristol, Stephen Hayes and Mark Leibovich... | | Dylan adds: Think back to June when VF's Sarah Ellison reported that Trump was "considering creating his own media business, built on the audience that has supported him thus far in his bid to become the next president of the United States." No surprise, today's news revived speculation about Trump TV.
"I can't help wondering whether Trump may be thinking post-November of creating a media organization of some kind that caters to disgruntled white men of the kind who fueled his campaign, and Ailes and Bannon could be a part of that braintrust as well," Nick Kristof told Dylan... | | -- VF just published this must-read profile of Bannon by Ken Stern...
-- Ben Smith: "The effective merger of Donald Trump's campaign for president and the obstreperous, resilient media outlet Breitbart makes more sense than anything else that has happened so far this crazy year..."
-- Lawrence O'Donnell tweets: "Trump's new campaign hire is like hiring a pilot who has never flown a plane. Or even been a passenger on a plane..."
-- Ex-Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro writes: "Many former employees of Breitbart News are afraid of Steve Bannon. He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies..."
-- Bill Carter and I will be talking about this on "New Day" at 6:45am Thursday...
-- Worth re-reading: David Carr's April 13, 2012 column about Andrew Breitbart... | | Dylan emails: Once in a blue moon you get a TV moment that crystalizes the entire presidential campaign -- that was Brianna Keilar's interview with Michael Cohen, which should be earmarked for inclusion in all books written about the crazy saga that is 2016. Here's the video. Now to the transcript:
KEILAR: Well let me ask you about this -- so you say it's not a shake up, but you guys are down. And it makes sense that there would...
COHEN: Says who?
KEILAR: Polls. Most of them. All of them.
COHEN: Says who?
KEILAR: Polls. I just told you -- I answered your question.
COHEN: Which polls?
KEILAR: All of them. | | Cohen told me tonight that the viral moment is being misconstrued. But Cohen told Keilar that "I don't care about those poll numbers... You're going to all be very surprised when he polls substantially higher than what you all are giving him credit for."
As I said on "AC360" tonight, some Trump surrogates are edging toward denialism about the polls. They're cherry-picking results from sketchy polling sources and claiming that crowd sizes are important data points. | | Devastating news for CNN's morning show family.
The senior producer of "Early Start," Matt Null, "passed away on Monday while on vacation with friends overseas," Christine Romans reported this morning. He was 34. "Matt led our 'Early Start' team for more than three years. He was an exceptional producer. He was hardworking, dedicated to bringing you, the viewer, the news every morning."
On a personal note, Matt was one of my favorite producers in the building, always cheerful despite his overnight hours, a true rising star here. He will be missed so very much. | | | What's going to happen to Gawker.com? | | Tom Kludt emails: The future of Gawker Media might not include... Gawker.
Gawker.com, that is, the flagship site that published a portion of Hulk Hogan's sex tape, which prompted the former pro wrestler's lawsuit, which drove Gawker Media to bankruptcy. Univision officially purchased all seven of Gawker Media's sites yesterday, but the Spanish language giant is considering transferring the namesake site back to the bankrupt LLC, or "mothballing" it (buying it, but leaving it dormant).
"I think we're all pretty pessimistic about the site existing," one employee says...
-- More from Tom: When Isaac Lee visits Gawker's offices on Friday, he will likely receive a pitch from employees like Hamilton Nolan, Gawker.com's longest-serving writer. "We've heard a lot about Isaac Lee's commitment to fearless journalism. He has a reputation for a guy who very much buys into the idea of fearless journalism," Nolan said. "I hope he demonstrates that by keeping Gawker.com open." Read more... | | | Tom adds: Regardless of the site's fate, the company's future will not include its founder, Nick Denton. At an all-hands meeting held this morning at Gawker HQ, Denton confirmed that he will be leaving Gawker, according to an employee who attended the meeting. Denton, who was found personally liable for $10 million in the Hogan judgment, told staffers that it would be too much of a liability for Univision if he stuck around... | | | Gannett sweetening its bid for Tronc | | | Some breaking news in the WSJ tonight: "Gannett has privately sweetened its bid for Tronc, according to people familiar with the matter, hoping to overcome resistance to a sale from the parent of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times... Tronc is expected to respond by the end of the week, some of the people said, indicating that Gannett's long pursuit of the storied newspaper chain may soon come to a head." Get caught up on the Gannett-Tronc history here... | | | Larry Wilmore speaks -- and he has a lot to say | | Don't miss this John Koblin Q&A with Larry Wilmore. He says the cancellation of "The Nightly Show" wasn't a total surprise, but the sudden timing was: "I didn't know there was a possibility that we'd only have four shows left... I thought we would at least have the chance to go through the election." He says "There weren't any talks. It was just pretty much fait accompli." Other highlights:
-- He hasn't talked with Comedy Central prez Kent Alterman in a while: "You can tell when the network is not really feeling it, I guess..."
-- "My scenario was like, 'Look, you're still working out 'The Daily Show,' let's work out both of these shows and have them work together.' Let's give both of these shows a chance to really find an audience would have been my suggestion..."
-- "They're under a lot of pressure themselves. We know what a tough situation it is over at Viacom..." | | | Green Party's moment in the CNN spotlight | | "We not only have the right to vote, we have the right to know who we can vote for," Jill Stein said tonight during CNN's Green Party town hall. She was challenging the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan group that will only invite Stein on stage if she gains 15% support in national polls.
-- More: Here's the CNNPolitics recap of the town hall.. | | | Trump knocks Clinton's lack of news conferences | | | Hey, Trump and political reporters have found some common ground: He would like to see Hillary Clinton hold a press conference. "She is so protected. They are so protecting her. She hasn't had a news conference in like 250 days," he told Sean Hannity in the town hall that aired on Fox tonight. "I think she's in the Witness Protection Program," Hannity responded... | | | They could be co-hosts... | | | The staging of the Trump town hall reminded me of Nate Silver's tweet from last week: "Is the show gonna be called Hannity & Trump (rolls off the tongue better) or Trump & Hannity?" | | "He was like an early investor. It's like being one of the first employees at Google, and seeing the stock go up."
--RNC chief strategist Sean Spicer talking about Jeffrey Lord, who joined CNN one year ago as the channel's first "Trump supporter." This is a buzzy profile of Spicer... | | | "Cauldron of crap content" | | | News Corp CEO Robert Thomson says "lesser media companies are contemplating" an exit from printed papers, but not his. The best quotes from this town hall session at The Daily Telegraph are about the commoditization of digital media. "There is a vast cauldron of crap content out there," he said. "It's ladled out liberally by distributors and recyclists who are not environmentally sound but are the news equivalent of strip miners... That is why we have to work so hard to protect our intellectual property and assert ... our values and the primacy of acts of creation." The Australian has more... | | | Changes to NYT books coverage | | Dean Baquet memo: "We have decided to place all books coverage — daily and Sunday — in the hands of Pamela Paul, the current editor of the Sunday Book Review and one of our biggest stars. It will be Pamela's job to think about how our coverage should change and, of course, how it should not change."
Why it matters: "This may seem like simple tinkering in the flow chart. But it is large in the life of The Times and in American publishing. Currently, the line between Sunday and daily reviews — a line established when the paper was divided according to print constructs — means that the great critics Michiko Kakutani, Dwight Garner and Jennifer Senior do not write for the cover of the Review. It means that we don't often coordinate in deciding which books are so important they deserve both a daily and a Sunday review." Paul will also oversee Alexandra Alter's publishing industry beat...
-- Also: Baquet says unequivocally that the paper will "maintain our Sunday Book Review. It is hard to imagine the paper without it..." | | | "Civilized discourse does not have to be dull" | | Brian Lowry emails about John McLaughlin, who died yesterday at the age of 89:
This doesn't feel so much like the end of an era as a reminder of how the current one began. McLaughlin championed a kind of discussion that was lively, in a manner that cable news and other talk shows would come to embrace. At least one critic compared "The McLaughlin Group" to professional wrestling, which seemed particularly apt – sure, there were punches thrown, but it seemed preordained that none of them would ever land cleanly.
McLaughlin's over-the-top style made the show a natural object of parody – Dana Carvey turned in a dead-on impersonation of the host ("Wrong!") on "SNL" – but he clearly wasn't the only one who was paying attention, noticing that fusty chat about politics could be stylistically transformed into something capable of holding an audience's attention. It's not a stretch from that to the modern landscape, where it's not uncommon to turn on cable news and see a "The Brady Bunch"-like grid of experts and analysts heatedly throwing opinions back and forth.
"Civilized discourse does not have to be dull. That's No. 1," McLaughlin told me in a 2002 interview, during which he also objected to the term "shout-fest." Over the years, McLaughlin made a lot of predictions on his show. But here's a guess even he couldn't have foreseen where it would all lead... | | | What do you like about today's newsletter -- and what do you think we should improve? Email your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We'll be back tomorrow... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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