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Dylan Byers & Julia Alexander
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Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (Wednesday is an Inner Circle exclusive)
Ace media reporter Dylan Byers brings readers into the C-suite as he chronicles the biggest stories in the industry: the future of cable news in the streaming era, the transformation of legacy publishers, the tech giants remaking the market, and all the egos involved. Also featuring a weekly dispatch from Puck’s crack streaming/media analyst, Julia Alexander.
THE LATEST ARTICLES
Dylan Byers
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November 15, 2024
The Mark-est Hour
A gloomy company-wide meeting revealed Mark Thompson’s CNN is still caught between the linear past and the digital future, and nonpolitical news versus 24-hour Trump TV. Insiders wonder who’s paying attention to the content while others wonder if a more sinister fate beckons.
Dylan Byers
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November 14, 2024
How Chris Wallace Cut the Cord
The backstory of Wallace’s self-defenestration at CNN—the latest shoe to drop in an era that won’t stop ending.
Dylan Byers
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November 8, 2024
CNN’s Existential Post-Election Season
With the election in the rearview, C.E.O. Mark Thompson will finally implement his true transformation plan at the network—including the culling of hundreds of jobs. Many of CNN’s own journalists, plenty of whom were blinded by Trump’s significant victory, have evinced similar naiveté about their own fates.
Dylan Byers
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November 7, 2024
The #Resistance Is Futile
With Trump 2.0 upon us, a number of D.C. media people are cautiously wondering if the highly lucrative, gung-ho cri de coeur, green-room-and-book-deal #resistance marketplace of his last term will return to town with the 47th president. Alas, Trump may not have changed, but the industry sure has.
Dylan Byers
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November 1, 2024
Render Unto Cesar…
Inside 30 Rock, word that Comcast is considering spinning out NBCU’s lesser cable assets—potentially severing MSNBC from NBC—has kicked off a furious sequence of questions about the future of both networks, and about the fate of NBC News Group boss Cesar Conde.
Dylan Byers
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October 31, 2024
Bezos’s Inferno
The latest news, notes, and hunger cries from within The Washington Post, which finds itself embroiled in a largely predictable self-immolation of its own design—the latest scandal produced by an owner, management team, and rank-and-file that appear to operate a little too comfortably in opposition to one another.
Dylan Byers
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October 26, 2024
Washington on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
The decisions by Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong to spike endorsements of Kamala Harris have created an uproar inside The Washington Post and LA Times, respectively. Is this a genuine gripe, an assault on democracy, or simply the latest grievance consuming a legacy media industry mad as hell and unwilling to take it any longer?
Dylan Byers
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October 24, 2024
Playbook’s New Playbook
As Ryan Lizza remains mired in Nuzzigate, Politico’s leadership has been reassessing its Playbook franchise and accelerating long-standing plans to overhaul it.
Dylan Byers
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October 17, 2024
McMahon on Wire
The nightmare on 57th Street continues as CBS News chief Wendy McMahon preps for a meeting with incoming Paramount leaders David Ellison and Jeff Shell amid a series of ongoing scandals and micro-scandals that have the newsroom and media chattering class in an uproar.
Dylan Byers
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October 11, 2024
Dangling McMahon
The Tony–Ta-Nehisi drama consuming CBS News couldn’t have flared up at a worse time for its now-embattled chief executive, Wendy McMahon, as David Ellison and Jeff Shell begin taking meetings with Paramount division heads to familiarize themselves with the business—and, presumably, decide who among them is expendable.