EXEC SUMMARY: Welcome to the weekend! Here are updates on WarnerMedia's shakeup, Amazon's adjustment, Sunday's bookings, and much more…
Ten things to read this weekend
Some of the best stories from the media beat in the past week:
-- "10 years gone:" Poynter's Tom Jones looks at what's happened in the ten years since Denver lost the Rocky Mountain News.
-- "Head-spinning:" Michael Grynbaum, writing from London, looks at how The Daily Mail has shifted its tone on Brexit, and why that matters.
-- Former Obama W.H. policy adviser Erik Martin's op-ed for the Post: "We need a PBS for the Internet age." One proposal: "Tax major technology companies to pay for better content."
-- On a semi-related note, Christine Schmidt's NiemanLab followup to a new Free Press white paper: "A tax on digital ad spend (*cough* Facebook and Google) could bring in $2 billion for journalism."
-- What happens when the need for sensational clickbait meets a serial fabulist? Gizmodo's Jennings Brown has answers in this extraordinary exposé about a "fake doctor who conned the media."
-- In the new issue of CJR: Editor Kyle Pope says "we" in the press "fail to do what we desperately must: step away and start reporting on people in realms outside our own."
-- Illustrating the power of local reporting: "Glen Mills leader Randy Ireson steps aside after Inquirer investigation into abuse."
-- A first-person story by ProPublica's Marshall Allen showing how accolades like "Top Doctor" are sometimes scams.
-- "Their News Isn't New:" Alex Wong's piece for the NYT about "sports anchors in the era of social media."
-- Meet the woman in charge of "shaping, managing, and executing the messaging of the world's biggest modern icon:" Beyoncé's publicist Yvette Noel-Schure.
And here are a few more that you probably already read... But just in case you haven't...
-- Casey Newton's story revealing how "the call center model of content moderation is taking an ugly toll on many of its workers."
-- "At Deadspin, can the cool kids of the sports Internet become its moral authority?" by Ben Strauss.
-- "Reporting through a veil:" CNN's Clarissa Ward on why she was invited to visit Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan.
Leaving Neverland" on Sunday
| | The Michael Jackson estate is suing HBO over "Leaving Neverland." But the documentary will premiere anyway this Sunday night.
"About 40 minutes elapse before the participants begin to lay out the most disturbing allegations, and from then on, 'Leaving Neverland' is not easy to watch," Brian Lowry wrote here.
The first two hours will be shown on Sunday, and the remaining two hours on Monday. It's about "dreams turned to nightmares," Lowry wrote, with two accounts of Jackson's alleged sexual predation "that derive power and credibility from their strikingly similar parallels."
-- Chloe Melas previewed the film on HLN, watch the segment here...
-- Chloe notes: "Oprah Winfrey is sitting down with both accusers in a special set to after on Monday night... 'I'm gonna get it' from Jackson's fans, she said, but 'this movie transcends Michael Jackson. It allows us to see societal corruption.'"
-- Director Dan Reed to NPR: "I think we're blessed with a kind of gathering momentum behind the idea that we should listen to the people who say they've been sexually abused, whether they're women or children or men."
This Sunday on "Reliable Sources"
I'll be joined by Maggie Haberman, Jim Acosta, Jennifer Rodgers, Olivia Nuzzi, Bill Kristol, Shelby Holliday, Adam Moss and more... Email me your Q's for the guests... See you Sunday at 11 a.m. ET!
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- John Bolton will be on CNN, CBS and Fox's Sunday shows this weekend...
-- The Dem primary's newest contender Jay Inslee will be on ABC's "This Week..."
-- Jake Tapper on Trump's rather rough week: "I think the best part of the President's week, for him, was that 20-hour overseas flight..." (Twitter)
-- Former NSC officials, some even on the record, told Politico's Nahal Toosi about the "chaotic early days of Trump's foreign policy..." (Politico)
-- Susan Glasser summing up her newest column: "The bills are coming due for Trump, and if there's one thing we know about the President it's that he doesn't like to pay his bills..." (New Yorker)
Trump speaks at CPAC on Saturday
The president's 11:30 a.m. speech -- with a 50-minute-long time slot -- will be his first time talking in public since the Hanoi summit ended without a deal. I'm guessing that his comments will fuel this weekend's news cycle...
Publisher contradict's Trump's tweets about Cohen book
Someone must have told POTUS about last year's reports of a Michael Cohen book deal. This time last year Cohen shopped a proposal for a pro-Trump tome that was "positioned partially as a rebuttal to Michael Wolff," per The Daily Beast.
Center Street, the conservative imprint of Hachette Book Group, got on board, but by May 2018 the deal was called off.
On Friday morning Trump falsely claimed that Cohen wrote a "manuscript" for the book and submitted it "long after Charlottesville and Helsinki." He said "Congress must demand the transcript of Michael Cohen's new book, given to publishers a short time ago." He tweeted about it again later in the day. But Center Street's publisher told Politico that "we never saw a manuscript from Mr. Cohen." Only a book proposal. Whoops...
"Bigger than Russia"
CNN's Chris Cuomo noted the numerous investigations into Trumpworld on Friday night. The banner: "BIGGER THAN RUSSIA." He alluded to his 9 p.m. rival Rachel Maddow: "As I've been telling you, I don't see the Mueller report being a monumental moment to END this presidency. I know others do. One's on TV right now, and brilliant at it, and maybe they want to make that case, that the end is near. I don't see it." Cuomo said "the problem for POTUS is all the OTHER threads being pulled at, other than Mueller, other than Russia."
Hey, speaking of 9 p.m. hosts...
Cicilline wants to haul in Sean Hannity | | Sean Hannity was identified as one of Cohen's clients in court last year. Hannity downplayed the relationship at the time. And he said this to POTUS in an interview that aired Thursday night: "He was never my attorney. He did apologize to me for his attorney saying that in court."
Re: hush money payments, Hannity told Trump that Cohen "said to me at least a dozen times that HE made the decision on the payments and he didn't tell you."
Rep. David Cicilline, a member of House Democratic leadership, reacted by saying that Hannity "is now volunteering himself as a witness. I look forward to his testimony." His office confirmed on Friday that Hannity "should share" what he knows "under oath before Congress." Fox has not commented, as Manu Raju notes here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- WaPo's Greg Jaffe and Jenna Johnson ask: "At what point does all the alarmist talk of civil war actually increase the prospect of violence, riots or domestic terrorism?" (WaPo)
-- Julie K. Brown's latest: "Alan Dershowitz suggests curbing press access to hearing on Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse." We'll keep an eye on this next week... (Miami Herald)
-- Isaac Lee on Jorge Ramos's expulsion, "and the sorry state of Venezuelan media..." (CJR)
-- Willie Geist has an interview with YouTube's CEO Susan Wojcicki on "Sunday Today..." (NBC)
-- "Fox & Friends" will now have "a live studio audience on a monthly basis..." A.J. Katz checked out Friday's show... (TVNewser)
A disturbing incident and the power of TMZ
Andrew Bucholtz of Awful Announcing wrote: "On Friday around noon, long-time San Francisco Giants CEO Larry Baer got into a public altercation with his wife Pam in a plaza in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood. Just over an hour later at 1:03 p.m. Pacific, video of that was published on TMZ."
Baer is apologizing and the police department is investigating. Bucholtz said it's "pretty remarkable to see only an hour between incident and published video." True. The SF Chronicle was also tipped off to the video by a "worker in the area who said he witnessed the incident." But "the witness sold publishing rights to the video to TMZ."
FRIDAY NEWS DUMP?
Post publishes "editor's note" amid Sandmann lawsuit
Last week the Washington Post was sued to the tune of $250 million by the family of Covington Catholic teenager Nick Sandmann. The suit alleged defamation. On Friday afternoon the Post published an "editor's note about updates to its initial coverage of the Jan. 18 incident at the Lincoln Memorial." It says that "subsequent reporting" allowed for "a more complete assessment of what occurred" that day.
>> Former RNC comms chief Doug Heye told me: "One of my biggest complaints about news media is how much they act like politicians, etc, they're critical of when they're in the spotlight. The Post could be decrying this Friday afternoon news dump if the Trump Administration did this. But when The Post is in the wrong, they do the exact same thing..."
Amazon removes anti-vax documentaries after CNN asks questions
CNN Business producer Jon Sarlin emails: On Friday, two days after our report on Amazon and anti-vax content, Rep. Adam Schiff wrote an open letter to Jeff Bezos, saying that "Amazon is surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children, a direct threat to public health, and reversing progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases." Schiff sent similar letters to Google and Facebook last month.
A few hours after the letter came out, the films were off of Amazon Prime. But, as of now, the company has left up the books and anti-vax ads. Unlike Facebook and Google, Amazon's remained mum on this...
Adding Amazon to the misinfo debate
Sarlin adds: The whole episode highlights how much Amazon has been left out of the broader debate about misinformation on Big Tech. Is this the start of a new debate on what Amazon sells?
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
By Katie Pellico:
-- Facebook, Twitter and Google provided "too little information" in helping the EU fight disinformation ahead of Parliament elections last summer, commissioners claim... (PressGazette)
-- YouTube is demonetizing Momo videos, "even those coming from respected news organizations and popular creator commentators..." (The Verge)
-- Madison Malone Kircher's take on the Momo hoax: "How are kids supposed to learn to be smart online if adults are such big dummies?" (NYMag)
-- Rob Picheta shows how "Instagram is the leading social media platform for child grooming..." (CNN)
Levy leaving
Turner president David Levy confirmed his departure on Friday. "I am ready for a professional change," he wrote in an internal memo that summed up his 33 storied years at the company. Over the years his portfolio expanded to include oversight of ad sales, distribution, sports, and other parts of Turner. (Reminder: CNN is a unit of Turner.) Here's my full story...
These five things are all true:
Levy and Richard Plepler's exits sent shockwaves through WarnerMedia this week...
Staffers are curious, and some are concerned, about what's coming next... Many are sad to see these execs go...
These sorts of changes are normal when a new owner takes over...
AT&T execs are confident in their ability to restructure and reorient Warner to win the streaming wars...
Plepler and Levy's phones are blowing up with messages of support and suggestions about new jobs...
Lowry's analysis | | Brian Lowry emails: The twin exits of Levy and Plepler mean about six decades worth of institutional knowledge are walking out the door. But it also signals that AT&T had its own design for Time Warner, and that the company wants execs who will implement that strategy. Whether they have the right plan is of course the big question, with the only disclaimer that given the pace of change in the business and uncertainty as entertainment companies brave the streaming waters, the assumption appears to be that institutional knowledge -- and just as significantly, the long-established relationships that come with it -- isn't what it once was...
Notes and quotes
-- NYT's John Koblin and Edmund Lee say Plepler's exit was the talk of Thursday night's HBO premiere of Alex Gibney's "The Inventor..." Attendees like Koblin took photos of his empty table... And the mood at the afterparty was "like that of a wake..."
-- Bloomberg's Joe Nocera says "HBO's anti-Netflix strategy is walking out the door..."
-- BTIG's Rich Greenfield writes that, "on paper at least, it sounds like AT&T understands that you need to leverage all your assets and go all-in to drive success at scale in the direct-to-consumer world..."
WSJ on what's next
WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey will announce plans to bring the HBO and Turner divisions closer together as early as next week.
Stankey has "spent the past 10 days meeting with the various units and conducting what one attendee called internal audits," the WSJ's Joe Flint reported Friday. "His message: There needs to be more working together..."
Zucker to gain oversight of Turner Sports
"CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker is expected to take on oversight of Turner Sports as part of the restructuring," Flint's story said, citing sources. He said "Zucker didn't respond to a request for comment. A CNN spokeswoman declined to comment."
Zucker is passionate about sports as well as news, so a combo of both makes sense. The move would put all of Turner's live programming together...
ESPN adding daily gambling show
The "Daily Wager," hosted by betting analyst Doug Kezirian, "will air daily from 6 to 7 p.m. ET on ESPNews beginning March 11," TheWrap's Tim Baysinger reported. "The series is said to be a news-and-information show..." Fox Sports 1 has had a daily gambling-themed program since last August... And there's certainly more to come...
--- Context via SBJ's John Ourand: "ESPN slowly has been wading into gambling-related content. Scott Van Pelt's 'SportsCenter' has a 'Bad Beats' segment; ESPN+ and ESPN.com have sports betting content; and ESPN produces two podcasts around sports betting..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
By Katie Pellico:
-- "Meet the unlikely duo trying to save us from our screens" with Moment, an app to help curb excess cell phone usage... (CNN)
-- Holly Shackleton, i-D's EIC, has been tapped to take that title to Vogue International starting in April... (WWD)
-- "The U.S. music industry posted its third consecutive year of double-digit growth, according to the RIAA's year-end revenue report..." (Variety)
-- Natalie Jarvey says Instagram says IGTV is off to a "slow start..." The company is going to pay some creators "a small sum to subsidize the cost of producing videos on IGTV..." (THR)
-- NYT deputy media editor Connor Ennis is mostly moving off the media beat, taking charge "of a group of reporters covering a range of topics including retail..." (NYTCo)
-- Ahead of the Arctic air mass in store for the East Coast this weekend, NYT's Brad Plumer shows "how the weather gets weaponized in climate change messaging..." (NYT)
Podcast: What Adam Moss told me
Adam Moss is stepping down from NYMag at the end of this month... So we sat down for an exit interview of sorts...
-- "It's good for the organization to get new blood, or get a sense of rejuvenation," he said. "I think you're doing an organization a favor by getting out of the way."
-- His POV about digital disruption: "This was like never a, you know, 'Oh my God, things are ending.' In fact to me it has always been 'things are beginning.'"
-- The experience of being a mag editor: "You're like a kid in kindergarten. You're playing with a bunch of people and you're making something together." But you're also the boss, and over the years he's "become less and less interested in like, the bossness, the management, all that kind of stuff."
Look out for the interview on Sunday's "Reliable" broadcast... You can also hear the full interview via Apple Podcasts or your favorite pod app...
Susan Zirinsky's first day
Friday was Susan Zirinsky's first day as CBS News prez... And Sunday is her birthday... So her "48 Hours" team sent her off with cake and mementos: | |
How the newfangled cable bundles are faring
Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw reports that "Hulu's live service is nearing 2 million subscribers, while YouTube TV has eclipsed 1 million." This is "a sign the two internet companies may be outmaneuvering competitors like Sling TV and DirecTV Now..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
By Daniella Emanuel:
-- CJR's Amanda Darrach profiles Seamus Hughes -- deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University -- who broke last week's news on Coast Guard officer Christopher Hasson's planned attack...(CJR)
-- Fortnite is launching a theme park called "Weezer World" in celebration of Weezer's 13th studio release called "The Black Album..." (Variety)
-- Sarah Perez writes about the closing of Alpha, "a geek-friendly streaming service that focused on TV, pop-culture, sci-fi, comics, video games and more..." (TechCrunch)
Ryan Adams cancels UK and Ireland tour
"Ryan Adams' upcoming UK and Ireland tour has been canceled after allegations the US rock singer had an inappropriate relationship over the internet with a teen girl beginning in 2013," CNN's Emily Dixon reported Friday. Adams "was due to play nine dates in Britain and Ireland in March and April." Ticket-holders will be fully refunded, Ticketmaster said...
| | Chloe interviews Tyler Perry about Madea's funeral
"Tyler Perry's 'A Madea Family Funeral' hits theaters on Friday and for fans of the beloved Mabel 'Madea' Simmons, played by Perry, it's the end of the road," Chloe Melas writes.
After 11 films, the character is retiring. Perry said "I'll be 50 this year and I'm just at a place in my life where this next 50 I want to do things differently." But there's one caveat: "She's also run out of things to say in my point of view. So if there's something else for her to say maybe one day she'll return but for right now, no, I think I'm done."
Lowry reviews "Apollo 11"
I just have to say: I cannot wait to see this film. #SpaceBuff
Brian Lowry emails: CNN Films' "Apollo 11" is getting an exclusive Imax window this week before hitting regular theaters on March 8, capitalizing on the uncovered 65mm footage used to assemble it, which is pretty dazzling. The documentary actually works best as a companion to "First Man," the recent Neil Armstrong movie biography... Read the rest here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
-- Kelly Clarkson is returning to host the Billboard Music Awards on May 1, Chloe Melas reports...
-- Best wishes to Jerry Lee Lewis and his family... He suffered "a minor stroke" on Thursday night, according to his FB page...
| | | That's a wrap! Thanks for reading. Hope you have a great weekend. Email me with feedback, story ideas, anything... | | | |
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