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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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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.
Dylan Byers
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October 9, 2024
The Tony–Ta-Nehisi Affair
Inside the totally predictable, somewhat absurd, and quasi-tragic fallout from Tony Dokoupil’s aggressive questioning of Ta-Nehisi Coates, the furious response inside CBS News, and the latest round of navel-gazing media existentialism.
Dylan Byers
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October 4, 2024
The Great TV News Comp Depression
The industry-wide resetting of TV news contracts is now firmly underway, it seems, and most talent will be affected—at best by a smaller-than-anticipated cost-of-living raise, often by a pay cut, and, at worst, by a delicately choreographed defenestration.
Dylan Byers
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October 3, 2024
Anchorman
Brian Williams’ latest return to television—well, to streaming—is not only a first step toward a possible career revival, but also a potential harbinger of the future of cable news.
Dylan Byers
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September 28, 2024
Hoda to a Nightingale
Yes, Hoda Kotb deserves to ring in her seventh decade by sleeping in past 4 a.m. But the truth is that the star left her cushy $20 million-plus per year deal only after NBC proposed a pay cut. “This is the age of the great resetting of TV news contracts,” one veteran media executive told me. “Everyone is getting their pay cut or their jobs eliminated.”
Dylan Byers
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September 26, 2024
All the Nuzzi Fit to Print
The latest news and notes on the depressing media plot consuming the political-media class: the Olivia Nuzzi-R.F.K. Jr.-Ryan Lizza demure selfie lust triangle.