| | | | It's not every day that the #2 editor at the Wall Street Journal defects to The New York Times. So now that Tuesday's news is sinking in -- deputy EIC Rebecca Blumenstein moving to the NYT -- I checked in with sources in and around both papers. Enthusiasm is obviously high at the NYT. Over at the WSJ, it's a "massive blow to morale, to say the least," a longtime Journal staffer said.
WSJ mind meld: "At the top levels of the WSJ, Rebecca was perhaps the most respected by rank-and-file journalists. Reporters saw her as an ally, especially women, who have never been well-represented in the WSJ masthead." Why else is it such a blow? "Part of that is just her deep experience as a reporter and bureau chief, but also just because she's a nice person who happens to be very smart and good at her job. Her departure looks very bad, as she was widely expected to take the helm after editor in chief Gerry Baker..."
Mood music: This comes amid layoffs at WSJ offices around the world... an editorial restructuring... and deep disagreements throughout the newsroom about the paper's Trump coverage. | | Next Monday Baker "will host a town hall meeting... where he is expected to address the paper's reporting on the new administration and answer questions from his staff," Politico's Joe Pompeo reports.
Joe's story has lots of insights into the mood at the paper -- if you're wondering why VF's Sarah Ellison has been calling around for a deep dive look into the WSJ, his story will show you. It ends with this quote from an unnamed WSJ editor: "He doesn't have the support of newsroom. I've never worked at a place where the editor in chief didn't have that." | | The push-back against that assertion is: the WSJ is a big place, there are a wide variety of views about Trump coverage and other issues, and Baker is being attentive to it all. Then again, HuffPost's Michael Calderone says he tried multiple times to get Baker to comment for this story, out Wednesday night, about the internal grumbling...
Key graf: "Baker has never inspired the kind of widespread reverence in the newsroom that, say, Marty Baron has at the Washington Post. And he's now facing what some say is especially low morale and concerns whether the paper is blowing the biggest story in recent memory..." | | -- Sending all the best to Charlie Rose right now. "He will have an aorta valve replaced" this week "and step away from 'CBS This Morning' until March as he recovers..." (CNNMoney)
-- Matt Garrahan's big scoop: "Ivanka was a trustee for a large bloc of shares in 21st Century Fox and News Corp that belongs to Rupert Murdoch's two youngest daughters..." (FT)
-- "NBA scoopmaster Adrian Wojnarowski is close to an agreement to leave Yahoo and join ESPN," Kevin Draper scoops... (Deadspin)
-- More signs that Facebook is really serious about TV: MTV's head of scripted development Mina Lefevre is becoming Facebook's head of development for original programming. She'll report to Ricky Van Veen... (Variety) | | Trump picking and choosing polls | | The other day Jake Tapper summed up the takeaway from Trump's "negative polls are fake news" tweet this way: "Any polls suggesting anything negative about the President or his policies is not, in his view, real." Now, positive-looking polls, on the other hand…
On Wednesday @realDonaldTrump posted a bit of the Politico/Morning Consult poll showing support for the travel ban policy… and posted a link to a story about an Emerson College poll on Trump, the media, and trust.
These two polls don't meet the reporting standards of CNN and some other major news organizations. Why? Well the Morning Consult poll is "conducted online and doesn't meet our standards because respondents are selected from an opt-in panel, meaning only those who've signed up to take surveys can participate," CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta emails... | | The problem with the "trust" poll | | The Emerson poll asserts that "voters find the Trump administration to be more truthful than the news media." These are the #'s: "The Trump administration is considered truthful by 49% of voters" while "the news media is considered untruthful by a 53%-majority of registered voters."
The sample size was just 617 registered voters. But there's a bigger problem. Quoting Agiesta again: The poll "was conducted using ONLY landline telephones, and therefore excludes the opinions of the roughly half of U.S. adults who are only reachable using cellphones." Landline-only homes skew older and whiter than the rest of the population.
I think everyone agrees that some Americans trust Trump more than the news media right now. I think everyone agrees that newsrooms have a lot of work to do to regain trust. But landline-only polling is not a way to make progress... | | Trump got the crime #'s right | | | Normally this would not merit a headline. But on Tuesday the president lied about the murder rate, repeating an oft-debunked assertion about it. So it's noteworthy that on Wednesday, he stuck to the facts. Elizabeth Landers and Jeremy Diamond's CNNPolitics headline was "Trump correctly cites rising crime rates in cities." | | | The Daily Beast was first to notice this one: Three times in one week, press secretary Sean Spicer alluded to a non-existent terror attack in Atlanta committed by someone from overseas. Did he mean to say Orlando? Or something else? No comment from Spicer yet... CNN's Holly Yan, filing from Atlanta, pieced it together here... | | One minute at Wednesday's W.H. press briefing, Spicer defended Trump's anti-Nordstrom tweet, asserting that dropping Ivanka Trump's line was a "direct attack" on the president's policies. Another minute, Spicer said the recent Yemen raid was "obviously a huge success" (obviously?) and said "anyone who suggests it was not a success does a disservice" to William "Ryan" Owens, the Navy SEAL who was killed.
The through-line here? A catch-all dismissal of criticism — whether it's from companies, senators, anonymous government officials, or anyone else. I'll be talking about this with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota on "New Day," 7:50 a.m. Thursday...
-- WashPost's Aaron Blake: Spicer's new standard seems to be that "an operation that results in the loss of American life cannot be questioned..."
-- CNN's Gloria Borger right after the briefing: Trump is "taking the power of the presidency and turning it against an American retailer..." | | | "He watches me on CNN probably more than my mom watches me on CNN... If he had a Nielsen box, it'd be even better..." | | Thursday: NYT's Pamela Paul | | | Bestselling book lists are fascinating these days. A quick look at Amazon's top 20 shows "1984," "Hillbilly Elegy," Milo's forthcoming book, a David Horowitz tome subtitled "Trump's Plan to Save America," "It Can't Happen Here," and "The Handmaid's Tale." So what's going on? I'm going to talk about it with Pamela Paul, the editor of the NYT Book Review, on our "Reliable Sources Livecast" Thursday at 12:15pm ET... live on the CNN home page... we'll post the podcast afterward... | | -- Gerry Smith calls this an "odd-couple partnership." I think it makes a lot of sense! "Readers who buy one-year online subscriptions" to the NYT "will also get unlimited access to Spotify's premium service..." (Bloomberg)
-- On Wednesday night the "CBS Evening News" issued an on-air correction "about showing wrong drug in story about price increases..." (Via NewsBusters' Curtis Houck on Twitter)
-- "Wikipedia editors have voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source for the website in all but exceptional circumstances after deeming the news group 'generally unreliable...'" (The Guardian)
-- Time Warner's Q4 earnings included this mention of the AT&T deal: "We remain on track to close the transaction later this year." (TheWrap) | | HBO Now passes the 2 million mark | | | How well is HBO Now doing? The "stand-alone digital streaming service" launched in April 2015... and it has now "surpassed 2 million domestic subscribers, Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes told investors Wednesday," per Variety's Cynthia Littleton. Bewkes: "We're really pleased with the progress..." | | Viacom's "turnaround plan" | | Stand by for news from Viacom CEO Bob Bakish... He will share his so-called turnaround plan with investors on the company's Thursday A.M. earnings call.
Some of the details are already leaking out. WSJ's Keach Hagey had a must-read story Wednesday morning about Viacom focusing on "six key channel brands out of about two dozen." The winners: Nick, Nick Jr., MTV, Comedy Central, BET, and Spike. The board approved this plan on Monday, Hagey says. "Viacom has no immediate plans to shut down channels, the people said, but it will begin shifting content spending to the core brands — at the expense of weaker ones such as CMT and TV Land — and lean more heavily on them to earn carriage fees..."
-- More: On Wednesday evening, THR's Lesley Goldberg reported that Spike is being rebranded as the Paramount Network... | | Iger: "Way too much pessimism about ESPN" | | "Disney Sales Fall as ESPN Troubles Drag Down Cable TV Profit" was the Bloomberg headline about Disney's earnings on Tuesday. A bunch of other news outlets reached similar conclusions. So these remarks from Bob Iger to CNBC's Julia Boorstin are noteworthy:
"I think there's way too much pessimism about ESPN because ESPN is still in demand from three constituents you want to be in demand the most from. One, distributors, two, consumers, and three, advertisers. And the reason it's in demand is the brand is still strong, the product is still good and we've invested nicely to keep that product as high quality as possible." He wouldn't get into details about subscriber loss... But emphasized ESPN's presence in new bundles like the Hulu live service... | | ICM acquires Headline Media Management | | | Congrats are in order to Michael Glantz and company -- "ICM Partners has acquired New York-based Headline Media Management, the boutique talent agency that reps TV news and sports personalities including Savannah Guthrie, Wolf Blitzer, and Chris Berman," Variety's Cynthia Littleton reports. Glantz and Lou Oppenheim will become partners at ICM... | | #CNNDebateNight wins the night | | | "If you thought televised debates were over for a few years, then you forgot: THIS is CNN," TVNewser's A.J. Katz writes. Tuesday's Cruz-Sanders debate about Obamacare, moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, "ranked No. 1 in cable news last night among adults 25-54, per Nielsen data." It averaged 932,000 viewers in the demo... | | O'Reilly topping Trump's old show | | | Another example of the ratings gains all across cable news right now: "The O'Reilly Factor has topped NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice with Arnold Schwarzenegger for three-straight weeks after trumping the president's former show on Monday night," TheWrap's Brian Flood writes. "Monday night's edition of Factor averaged 4.5 million in total viewers, compared to 3.5 million viewers for Celebrity Apprentice…" | | #1: Tapper won widespread praise and attention for his Tuesday afternoon interview with Kellyanne Conway...
#2: Jonathan Swan of Axios said "a source with direct knowledge tells Axios that Republican operatives were urging at least one conservative-friendly website to write Jake Tapper hit pieces yesterday after his hard-hitting interview..."
#3: Tapper tweeted, "So now we sit and wait to see which obedient attack dog follows orders. Arf arf!!"
#4: The sarcastic hashtag #TapperDirtFile started to trend on Twitter... Check it out here... | | Tom Kludt emails his latest story:
Trump is president, the Republicans are in power, but Matt Drudge is ticked. To be clear, Drudge's ire doesn't seem to be aimed at the White House -- at least not yet. But for the second time since Inauguration Day, the founder and proprietor of the Drudge Report admonished congressional Republicans for failing to pursue policies that helped the party -- and Trump -- succeed on Election Day.
"No Obamacare repeal, tax cuts! But Republicans vote to shut Warren? Only know how to be opposition not lead! Danger," Drudge tweeted Wednesday morning.
Reminder: Drudge was one of Trump's biggest and most important boosters in conservative media. The website gets about 21 million visitors worldwide -- and you can bet that a lot of those readers are sympathetic to Trump... Read more... | | Netflix: There's no such thing as too much TV | | | Frank Pallotta emails: Some say that TV is oversaturated... that too many shows are being made... that it's unsustainable. Netflix, on the other hand, is saying there's NOT ENOUGH. The company announced today that 2017 will bring "more than 1,000 hours of new series, films, stand-up specials, documentaries" for its members around the world. Netflix's game plan is to basically drown you in its product... | | Hearing from Selena Gomez | | Chloe Melas was at Netflix's panel event previewing all the new programming... She emails:
From Charlize Theron's "Girl Boss" to Bill Nye's "Save The World" to Selena Gomez's "13 Reasons Why," it was a star-studded day. One of the most powerful moments came when Gomez opened up about her own personal struggles and her time in rehab last year. She said she hopes that her star power will bring attention to the importance of "13 Reasons Why," which is based on the young adult novel about a teenage girl who commits suicide and leaves behind cassette tapes explaining 13 reasons why she took her life. For more on what Gomez said, click here... | | Lowry reviews "The History of Comedy" | | | Brian Lowry emails: At the risk of shilling for the home team, CNN's latest documentary series, "The History of Comedy," is quite good. But what really stood out to me was the fourth episode, subtitled "Spark of Madness," which deals with the darker side of stand-up — including substance abuse and depression — and features various comics addressing those issues in an extremely frank manner. The series debuts on Thursday... | | | Gervais revisits his "office" character | | | More from Brian Lowry: In another opportunistic bit of nostalgia, Netflix premieres "David Brent: Life on the Road," a movie in which Ricky Gervais (who wrote and directed) revisits his character from "The Office," roughly 13 years after the short-lived original British version... Read all about it here... | | About the climax scene in "Lion" | | | Have you seen "Lion" yet? Tonight my better half Jamie interviewed Dev Patel on stage after a NYC screening of the film. Patel is nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar... He talked about the climax of the film... No spoilers here, but if you saw "Lion," you'll know what this means: the man who helps Saroo in the village was actually the best English speaker in the village, not an actor... and all of the "extras" were locals too... so all of the emotions were genuine... | | | For the record, part three | | | Lisa France emails:
-- Lady Gaga responds to Super Bowl body shaming by saying she is proud of her body and you should be proud of yours too...
-- Jamie Lynn Spears' 8-year-old daughter is recovering from her ATV accident...
-- Wednesday marked the 10 year anniversary of the death of Anna Nicole Smith. I went on Erica Hill's HLN show to talk about it. One thing I didn't get to mention was BuzzFeed's story last year about Trump saying she was beautiful until she opened her mouth... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. See you tomorrow! | |  | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Check out Five Things for Your New Day, CNN's morning newsletter. Give us five minutes, and we'll brief you on all the news and buzz people will be talking about. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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