MEDIA
Dylan Byers
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March 14, 2025
Tucker’s Last Stand
Emma Tucker arrived at The Wall Street Journal a couple years ago to replace the complacency of the Matt Murray era, with a mandate to make a product that was feistier, less academic, totally data-driven, and, sure, maybe even a little British. Naturally, her newsroom covered her office in Post-it notes and gave her plenty of grief, but it kinda worked.
Dylan Byers
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March 13, 2025
Til Jeff Do Us Part
Bezos’s subscriber-alienating decision to take greater control of the Washington Post opinion section, and to impose his free-markets ideological mandate, is not unlike the journalistic tradition at The Economist and The Wall Street Journal… neither of which are exactly pro-Trump mouthpieces.
Dylan Byers
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March 8, 2025
How Shipley Hit the Fan
Jeff Bezos had been losing patience with The Washington Post’s liberal predilection long before he mandated a purely pro-markets Opinion section, and even before endorsement-gate. In fact, the tensions that culminated in Opinion editor David Shipley’s resignation had been building for years.
Dylan Byers
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March 6, 2025
The Kiss of Jeff
The latest news and notes from the Post in-crowd and D.C. haut monde about Bezos’s intentions and opportunities.
Dylan Byers
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February 28, 2025
Oppenheim’s Split Atoms
A candid discussion with Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News president, about the headaches at his old haunt (and other industry pickles) as the television news business wades through a series of not-great options.
Dylan Byers
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February 27, 2025
Maddow as Hell
MSNBC’s $25 million-a-year anchor isn’t going to take it anymore, calling out the network—and by implication her new boss, Rebecca Kutler—for firing host Joy Reid and a slate of producers. But her colleagues are privately pointing out the irony of her latest crusade.
Dylan Byers
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February 21, 2025
No Joy in Manfred’s Mudville
MLB and ESPN announced they will part ways at the end of the 2025 season, after the sports network refused to re-up their current, diluted deal. Now, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is trying to save face while scrambling to find a new home for America’s pastime.
Dylan Byers
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February 20, 2025
McMahon on Fire & Politico’s Prince Valiant
News and notes on the latest defenestration at CBS News (and the next one, too), plus a coronation at Politico.
Eriq Gardner
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February 19, 2025
Steve Wynn’s Revenge & Defamation Nation
Trump allies sense a more favorable environment for waging lawfare against media companies, raising the question of whether the Supreme Court might reconsider Times v. Sullivan—and what the media might do to fight back.
Dylan Byers
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February 15, 2025
The Print Army Comes for A.I.
While publishers file sweeping, indignant (possibly useless) lawsuits against A.I. companies using their work to train their learning models, the industry is at a loss as to what to actually do about their A.I. futures—if there is anything that can be done at all.
Dylan Byers
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February 13, 2025
CBS News’s Blue Period
Amid the depressing Shari-Trump ‘60 Minutes’ settlement chatter, the newly reformatted and spruced-up ‘CBS Evening News’ seems to be a quickly metastasizing ratings and formatting disaster—and the latest reminder that few things unite a newsroom quite like one of their boss’s public shortcomings.
Dylan Byers
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February 8, 2025
Out of Fox to Give
Blue chip advertisers that long shunned Fox News (or at least its more crackpot-friendly time slots) are quietly coming back, leading the network to record-setting revenue. Is it the mainstreaming of Trump’s America, or an even broader cultural shift?
Dylan Byers
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February 6, 2025
60 Minutes to Midnight
Inside the agony and finger-pointing at CBS News, where executives and journalists are protesting Shari Redstone’s eagerness to settle Trump’s suit, countenancing their diminishing place in the firmament, and girding for the F.C.C. to extract maximum political pain.
Dylan Byers
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February 1, 2025
Shari Shrugged
Apparently, Shari Redstone has waited too long and stands to make too much on the sale of her declining family business to get tripped up in a journalistic ethics debate or public spat with the new president. Why not just cave? These days, everybody’s doing it.
Lauren Sherman
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January 31, 2025
A ‘New York’ Story Fit for ‘New York’
Until now, New York magazine’s union members have never threatened a work stoppage. And while their demands seem reasonable—over salary, health insurance, and (of course) concerns about A.I.—this is one of those unfortunate situations where the structural challenges of the parentco might preclude a tidy ending.
Dylan Byers
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January 30, 2025
Boiler Room
News, notes, and observations on the superficial changes inside the Brady Room and the far more significant transformations under the hood within the D.C. media industrial complex.
Dylan Byers
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January 25, 2025
CNN After CNN
The contracting news network is finally leveling with staff that its future won’t look anything like its past. But Mark Thompson is still focused on where and how people consume news, without offering a vision for how CNN competes in a more crowded media landscape.