| | | | | Exec summary: Happy Friday! David Leonhardt says POTUS "essentially wants a monopoly on information..." Chris Stirewalt says reporters shouldn't attend the rallies... The NYPost says Joanna Coles is leaving Hearst... John Landgraf suspects this is the "gilded age" of TV... But first... | | Let's start with something different. Something funny. And something hungry. The goats! A herd of goats from a rent-a-goat business walked off the job and started chowing through a Boise, Idaho, neighborhood on Friday morning. The pictures went viral on Twitter. Baaaaaaad goat puns abounded. The NYT interviewed local homeowners. The NBC and CBS nightly newscasts showed the goats being rounded up. And now the story's gone global. I just watched a BBC segment about it.
But the goats wouldn't have achieved international fame if a local resident hadn't called a Boise TV station.
"We got a call into our newsroom right after 7 a.m., during our morning news, about 'some goats on the loose in Boise,'" KTVB reporter Joe Parris told me. "I thought it sounded fun, and got the address and drove over."
That's how Parris got the scoop. There were a LOT of goats, so he called the control room. "I thought we should go live to finish our newscast. So we did, and it really caught on fast," he said. Really fast. | | The perils of reporting in the Twitter age! | | His first tweet -- "They are going house to house eating everything in sight" -- was shared tens of thousands of times. KTVB said Parris "had to delete Twitter off his phone this morning to do our live show because his phone was getting too many alerts from his viral goat tweets." Thanks to Parris, "for a few minutes the internet was a moderately happy place," the NYT said.
Boise's other local stations arrived on the scene later. Parris leveraged the attention to promote a "goat-reporter" job opening at KTVB... | | | NOW ON TO THE DAY'S OTHER NEWS... | | Joanna Coles leaving Hearst | | Alexandra Steigrad's Friday afternoon scoop: "Joanna Coles, the chief content officer for publishing giant Hearst, is leaving the company... Coles gave Hearst President and CEO Steve Swartz her resignation in recent days and on Friday was negotiating her exit package, one source said..."
Coles did not respond to my request for comment. She has been a larger-than-life figure at Hearst for years. So what will she do next? Steigrad says it's unknown...
--> Context for the move: "A recent shake-up in the upper echelon of Hearst saw executive Troy Young last week named president of Hearst Magazines. Young had been president of the digital division..." | | Meantime, over at Condé... | | | ICYMI: Condé Nast confirmed its plans to sell Golf Digest, W and Brides on Thursday. This long memo from Bob Sauerberg also outlined other plans for changes throughout the company... | | One full week since Ronan Farrow's story... | | Les Moonves is right where he was a week ago: Running CBS. If you want to really understand what's going on, read William D. Cohan's latest for VF.
"It's clear by now that the #MeToo movement is accustomed to the swift retribution that has followed a piece of bombshell reporting," Cohan says. "But the Moonves saga is unfolding differently." Why? Partly because Moonves has powerful backers in and around CBS who insist on due process. And partly because of his contract. "Those who would prefer that Moonves just vacate Black Rock immediately are getting a chilling lesson in how Wall Street works," Cohan says. "Someone who has earned between $60 million and $70 million a year for a decade, and whose CBS stock is worth around $175 million, probably won't ignore a potential $200 million payout..." | | "Weeks if not months of uncertainty..." | | | Moonves faces "several weeks if not months of uncertainty as two seasoned attorneys -- Nancy Kestenbaum and Mary Jo White -- review the allegations against him," Dylan Byers wrote in Friday's PACIFIC. "Sources at CBS anticipate their investigation will last into the fall because it involves a review of the entire CBS culture, not just the company's CEO..." | | The probe of CBS News will wrap up "this month" | | Oliver Darcy emails: CBS News president David Rhodes told employees on Thursday that an outside law firm's investigation into misconduct by news division employees "is in high gear and is expected to return its conclusions this month." In the message, first reported by Variety, Rhodes said that CBS News management was not privy to "incremental updates on its findings" and said that one reason for its long duration was "new areas of inquiry" added for the lawyers. (That could be a reference to the allegations in The New Yorker against Jeff Fager.)
"I'm sure colleagues want to see resolution of this matter as soon as possible. I do too," Rhodes wrote. "Independent findings are critical to getting this right." Read the full memo here...
--> Earlier this week, Fager told me he'd be back in the office on Monday. THR's Marisa Guthrie wrote Friday that "those close to Fager say he is demoralized, concerned about his legacy, and worried about the future of 60 Minutes..." | | -- Best news of the day: "Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, is through heart surgery and doing well," NBC's Claire Atkinson writes. "Zucker is on a leave of absence through August to recover and is expected back at the network in September. A CNN spokeswoman confirmed, 'Yes, he's doing great.'" (NBC)
-- Steve Schmidt and "fellow nonpracticing Republican" Elise Jordan are teaming up for "Words Matter," a weekly podcast that might be another "Pod Save America" in the making. Joe Pompeo has the details... (VF)
-- Just in: A judge has ruled that this defamation lawsuit against a freelancer for Deadspin can continue... (WSJ)
-- "More than 30 people were let go" from Good Media Group this week, Jordan Valinsky confirms... (CNNMoney) | | Leonhardt: "Trump essentially wants a monopoly on information" | | My guest on this week's "Reliable" podcast is NYT op-ed columnist David Leonhardt. We talked about his most recent pieces, including his assertion that Trump's "campaign against independent information" has been "especially chilling this week."
Leonhardt connected the dots between Trump's "fake news" epithets, elaborate lies, and extreme attempts to discredit Robert Mueller's investigation. "He essentially is on a campaign against anyone who represents an independent source of information," Leonhardt said.
We also discussed conspiracy theory thinking, the role of partisan media outlets, and changing coverage of climate change. Check out the pod via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, or Stitcher... And/or read Julia Waldow's recap here... | | Newseum's "fake news" problem | | Hadas Gold emails: I love the Newseum. I often send DC visitors to the beautiful building on Pennsylvania Ave. I often go to the Newseum for events, but I haven't stepped into the gift shop for ages. If I had, I would've seen something alarming. The museum dedicated to the First Amendment and freedom of the press is selling T-shirts that tout "You Are Very Fake News." Poynter's Daniel Funke first pointed this out on Friday. Outrage ensued. After all, this is the same the museum that features a moving memorial to journalists around the world who have been killed while reporting.
So why is the Newseum selling these shirts? Museum spokesperson Sonya Gavankar defended the decision to sell the shirts. "Fake news is a word that is in our popular culture now and this is intended to be a 'satirical rebuke' and appears in our store with T-shirts that include a variety of other 'tongue-in-cheek' sayings," she said in a statement. "The mission of the Newseum is to champion freedom of the press along with all the freedoms of the First Amendment, so being a place where people of different viewpoints feel welcome is very important."
BACKGROUND: The Newseum is in a dire financial situation. It's deep in debt. But Gayanka said revenue from the store is a small percentage of the Newseum's budget...
BOTTOM LINE: Fostering free speech is a wonderful ideal. But the Newseum is not a place to make a quick buck off a cheap joke...
Read Hadas' full story here...
| | Thumbs down to the Newseum | | --> CNN PR's Emily Kuhn tweeted Friday night: "@Newseum, you know better. No amount of revenue justifies this lapse in judgement and an about-face on your mission."
--> Michael Barbaro called the shirts "a very bad idea:" The museum exists to "honor, examine and protect the news media, not embrace the bywords by which others seek to undermine it..."
--> The New Yorker's Adam Davidson tweeted: "No f***king way @Newseum. You sell "Fake News" shirts and call it part of your commitment to free speech? No. Just no." | | By Oliver Darcy:
-- Katherine Miller is shifting roles at BuzzFeed. She will transition from politics editor to editing features and writing more, BuzzFeed DC Bureau Chief Kate Nocera announced Friday. Matt Berman will take over as politics editor…
-- Bret Baier told Jimmy Kimmel he thinks Trump "likes the opinion shows" on Fox News "a little better than the news shows…"
-- David Uberti looked at the different ways The Verge and NYT responded to right-wing trolls dredging up Sarah Jeong's old tweets. He writes that the "divergent responses provided a clear snapshot of arguably the largest fault within journalism today…"
-- Interactive graphic of the week: NYT created this to put into perspective how much Apple is worth at $1 trillion… | | This Sunday on "Reliable" | | | How's this for a pairing? Trump White House vet Anthony Scaramucci and Clinton White House vet Joe Lockhart will join me on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." I'll also speak with Susan Glasser, Margaret Talev, and Kim Masters... See you Sunday at 11am ET... | | Should reporters stop attending Trump's rallies? | | I get a lot of reader/viewer email about this -- saying, in effect, news outlets should stop covering the media-bashing rallies altogether. It's one thing to abstain from airing the rallies live... CNN and MSNBC stopped doing that a while ago... But ignore the events altogether? That's a much more drastic editorial decision. Even when Trump repeats himself and spews hateful rhetoric, his words are newsworthy. The NYT counted "15 inaccurate claims" at Thursday's rally.
POTUS has another rally coming up on Saturday evening... | | Here is Stirewalt's suggestion... | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt proposed an intriguing idea on Friday. Speaking on "Outnumbered," Stirewalt said maybe it's time to "stop having reporters" at Trump rallies. "Everybody should stop having reporters penned up like veal in the back of those things for the President to use as a prop, and then some of the reporters to exploit that for their own personal benefit," Stirewalt said. "This is not helping anybody. Get out of the hall. Leave the cameras -- get the reporters out of the hall. Quit letting [Trump] use you as a foil." | | Bret Stephens' warning to Trump | | As I said earlier this week... and as Jay Rosen has been saying for months... Trump is leading a "hate movement" against the journalists who cover him. In Saturday's NYT, Bret Stephens has a blunt warning about "incitement."
"What should be clear is this: We are approaching a day when blood on the newsroom floor will be blood on the president's hands," he writes...
--> Speaking of: When I appeared on "BBC Newsnight" on Friday, the anchor's first question was about American journalists fearing for their safety... | | Hemmer's advice for Schlapp -- wait, what? | | Oliver Darcy emails: What in the world? Top White House comms aide Mercedes Schlapp joined Fox News on Friday for an interview, and anchor Bill Hemmer seized upon the opportunity to give her some advice about how to interact with the media. Specifically, Hemmer told Schlapp that she needed to "go on the offense" against the press after the clash between Jim Acosta and Sara Sanders. Hemmer later ended the interview by asking Schlapp, "Are you tired of winning?" C'mon Bill, you're better than that!
FLASHBACK: Last month Politico mentioned Hemmer's name in connection with the W.H. press secretary job... | | -- Read Matthew Continetti on what Ben Shapiro's celebrity status "tells us about the changing nature of media, the emerging sensibility of conservative youth, and indeed the future of American conservatism itself..." (Free Beacon)
-- Read Megan Garber on "a sense of pervasive despair" about our info-polluted world. "The subsequent tragedy of this new environmental reality is that no one has been able to figure out a reliable method of clearing the air..." (The Atlantic)
-- And read Adam Kirsch on The Way We Read Now: "A new survey of America's favorite novels shows that storytelling moves us far more than literary quality..." (WSJ) | | BuzzFeed's procedural win in court | | Via CNN's Katelyn Polantz: The federal government will have to tell BuzzFeed whether the four then-intelligence chiefs -- James Clapper, Admiral Mike Rogers, John Brennan and James Comey -- briefed President Barack Obama on the dossier by January 10, 2017. This is a win for BuzzFeed. The court says the news organization should get information from the FBI that could prove it acted appropriately when it published the dossier.
WHY THIS MATTERS: "BuzzFeed will use the information it receives from the agencies to defend itself in a defamation case about the dossier in Florida federal court. A Russian tech mogul claims the news organization defamed him by making public false statements about him contained in the document. BF says the dossier was newsworthy because it was in the hands of the top intelligence authorities and known to the then-President..." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- What a scoop for The Guardian: The first-ever interview with Osama Bin Laden's mother... (Guardian)
-- Emily Kohlman flagged this: In an effort to customize news consumption, NYT's new iOS app feature, "Your Feed," allows users to choose specific channels and individual journalists to follow... (NiemanLab)
-- Donie O'Sullivan emails: Dems running in November's midterms were warned on Friday not to use devices produced by Chinese manufacturers ZTE and Huawei... (CNNMoney)
-- A great read by Amy Kaufman: "Where has the romantic comedy gone? To Netflix..." (LAT) | | Landgraf's remarks at TCA | | Brian Lowry emails: FX chief John Landgraf addressed the TCA on Friday -- and offered a few veiled swipes at Netflix, which poached the network's top producer, Ryan Murphy, with a big-budget overall deal in February. The FX CEO said his network's approach was not just about "snatching up established talent from our competitors," but developing it "from the ground up."
Landgraf did say that he's "pro-talent" and happy to see producers like Murphy and Shonda Rhimes being compensated for their talents, while predicting that the "profusion of content" would continue as streamers continue to scale up their efforts, and AT&T invests more in HBO. Read on... | | | More from Landgraf via Vulture's Josef Adalian: "The man who coined the phrase 'Peak TV' has decided that descriptor is now passé. With the explosion in new program announcements showing no signs of slowing down, '[It] makes me suspect the Golden Age of television has become the Gilded Age,' FX Networks CEO John Landgraf declared Friday..." | | Not too many shows -- too many stories? | | | One more bit of insight from the TCA session, via Variety's Daniel Holloway: "Landgraf warned of what writer Paul Schrader has called 'narrative exhaustion,' saying, 'Profusion of stories is very good if you want to talk about innovation and diversity.' But, he added, that thanks to that same profusion, 'It's very hard if you're talking about trying to surprise the audience and delight the audience.' Everything 'feels vaguely familiar' to an audience inundated with options. 'I once said to this group I thought there was too much television,' he said. 'In some ways I think there's too much story. Too much narrative.'" | | ICYMI: Lowry's weekend movie reviews | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Carrie Underwood is denying speculation that her fall last year -- which she said resulted in a "gruesome" injury to her face -- was staged to cover for plastic surgery...
-- And last but not least: Drake's official "In My Feelings" video is a fun tribute to the #InMyFeelingsChallenge... | | |
Thanks for reading! Email me your feedback... See you Sunday...
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