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MEDIA

Jeff Zucker, the former NBCUniversal C.E.O. and CNN president who is now C.E.O. of the Abu Dhabi-backed joint investment vehicle Redbird IMI.

Lord Zucker & The Great Telegraph Chase

Jeff Zucker, Gerry Cardinale, and Sheikh Mansour are spending $1.4 billion to take over The Telegraph, presumably introducing the business to the U.S. and making it the thinking person’s Daily Mail. Is it a brilliant move, or might it go the way of other recent legacy reboots?
Dylan Byers • November 24, 2023
Dylan Byers • November 16, 2023
Zaz Lit 101 & Roger “The Grinch” Lynch
Fairly or unfairly, David Zaslav has become a convenient caricature for the various pitfalls of legacy media businesses.
News and notes from around the media industry before everyone begins to disappear for the holidays.
Dylan Byers • November 10, 2023
The Kushner Connection
Some Univision journliasts saw the Trump interview as glaring evidence of a broader effort by their new parent company—which has close ties to Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner—to curry favor with the former president.
A softball interview with Trump is unnerving staff inside Univision, and inside the White House, as the formerly left-leaning Spanish-language network—now under new leadership, and with surprising new Republican allies—undergoes a dramatic pivot to the right.
Sally Buzbee
Dylan Byers • November 9, 2023
When Will Met Sally
News and notes on Will Lewis’s maiden voyage at the Post and Kevin Mayer’s return to the podium.
Mark Thompson will lewis
Dylan Byers • November 3, 2023
The English Patients
News and notes on the regime change at CNN and the Murdoch baggage following The Washington Post’s presumptive next C.E.O.
Jeff Bezos solicited six-page memos from five semi-finalists and conducted one-on-one Zoom interviews with each of them.
Dylan Byers • November 1, 2023
Bezos’s Bummer, Condé Woes & Laurene’s New New Thing
News and notes from around the media business—a WaPo surprise, a legacy bloodletting, and Emerson Collective’s latest investment in the space.
The inevitability of a Paramount sale is something Shari’s fellow media executives have taken for granted since she seized the reins of CBS and Viacom from her father, Sumner.
Dylan Byers • October 27, 2023
Zaz-Shari, Bezos’ Note & ABC News Blues
News and notes from around the media industry.
In recent days, Bezos has met with the final two candidates for the Post publisher and C.E.O. position.
Dylan Byers • October 25, 2023
The Bezos Bake-off Enters Its Final Days
I’m told that Bezos is expected to make his WaPo C.E.O. selection in a matter of days. Barring any unforeseen crisis or change of heart, he will formally announce the new leader no later than next month.
Unlike his predecessors, Condé Nast C.E.O. Roger Lynch was an outsider.
Lauren Sherman • October 23, 2023
Roger Dodger
Four years into his job as a turnaround artist at Condé Nast, Roger Lynch is under pressure to grow the business after an era of relentless cutting. Now, amid a couple micro scandals, his employees are getting restless. But do they deserve to be mad at him, or simply at a future less glamorous than the past?
It’s now clear why Bob Iger hung a “For Sale” shingle on ABC and the linear networks in Sun Valley.
Dylan Byers • October 20, 2023
Bezos’s WaPo Countdown & Iger Under Pressure
News and notes from across the media industry: ESPN’s profit cliff, the Bezos C.E.O. announcement timeline, and Apple’s “clear and present danger.”
Until recently, Jeff Bezos had been relying on Patty Stonesifer, his longtime confidant and Amazon board member, to winnow the pool down from seemingly every media executive under the sun.
Dylan Byers • October 19, 2023
The Bezos-WaPo Plot Thickens
News and notes on the rag trade during an astonishing week: The Washington Post winnows its search, Mark Thompson makes CNN’s debate case, and an Axios reporter laps the field.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough took his “friends at Axios” to task over a headline that characterized the students’ letter as “pro-Palestinian,” rather than “pro-Hamas.”
Dylan Byers • October 13, 2023
MSNBC & The Media’s Third Rail
Cable news has always struggled to balance moral clarity with the view from nowhere, especially when it pertains to Israel and Palestine. For many, the atrocities of the past week have validated the importance of on-the-ground reporting in an era where success is too often determined by style over substance.
Jeff Bezos’ shortlist for the next Washington Post C.E.O. continues to whittle down.
Dylan Byers • October 11, 2023
A New Bezos Contender & More CNN Tea
Jeff Bezos is zeroing in on a new leader for The Washington Post, and it’s not one of the usual suspects. Plus, some news about the first days of the Mark Thompson era at CNN.
Meet the Press host Kristen Welker and NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and are seen as the most likely co-moderators for the next debate.
Dylan Byers • October 6, 2023
NBC Debate Prep & More WaPo C.E.O. News
Inside the late-stage negotiations for NBC News to host the third Republican debate—with the possible stipulation that it won’t be simulcast on MSNBC. Plus, updates on the remaining contenders in the Patty Stonesifer succession race.
Jeff Bezos remains committed to growing and globalizing The Washington Post—the mystery, which has become a parlor game in media circles these days, is who he will task to do it.
Dylan Byers • October 4, 2023
Bezos Succession Questions & CNN’s Max Spat
News and notes from the Sulzberger penthouse: on Mark Thompson’s new CNN, the WaPo C.E.O. search, and Zaslav’s battle with DirecTV.
While most of Thompson’s meetings have focused on the flagship linear product, he has also telegraphed in private conversations that he is committed to a long-term transformation of CNN’s business model, presumably based on the playbook he ran as C.E.O. of The New York Times Company.
Dylan Byers • September 30, 2023
CNN’s Quad Goals & Fox’s Zelensky Booking War
As Mark Thompson finally ascends to the throne of CNN, “The Quad” prepare for the post linear world. Plus: a Fox-Newsmax morality tale for our times.
In June, Jeff Bezos appointed Patty Stonesifer as The Washington Post’s interim chief executive, in charge of spearheading the search for Fred Ryan’s permanent replacement.
Dylan Byers • September 27, 2023
Inside Bezos’s WaPo C.E.O. Bake-Off 
Interim leader Patty Stonesifer has whittled down the shortlist to about five candidates, as the Bezos-owned mediaco, on track to lose roughly $100 million this year, struggles to regain its footing against The New York Times et al.
The fate of Virginia House candidate Susanna Gibson, who live-streamed her sexual exploits with her husband, could impact Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s ability to enact a 15-week abortion ban.
Peter Hamby • September 25, 2023
Political Porn on a Whole New Level
The weird, kinky case of Susanna Gibson—the nurse who filmed herself having sex with her husband while running for the Virginia state legislature—signals how far our political sex scandals have evolved, especially on the left, and especially in consequential elections.